The old disease gnawed at him, tugging him two ways: Elizabeth and the trusting brown eyes of his daughter, the comforts and ease of domestic life. And against it the hard fulfilment of a sea-officer's duty. Always the tug of one when the other was to hand.

Elizabeth found him emerging from the Red Lion, noting both his dirtied clothes and the carriage drawing steadily up Sheet Hill.

'Nathaniel?'

'Eh? Ah. Yes, my dear?' Guilt drove him to over-played solicitude. 'Did you satisfy your requirements, eh? Where is Louise?'

'Taken offence, I shouldn't wonder. Nathaniel, you are cozening me. That coach…?'

'Coach, my dear?'

'Coach, Nathaniel, emblazoned three ravens sable upon a field azure, among other quarterings. Lord Dungarth's arms if I mistake not.' She slipped an arm through his while he smiled lopsidedly down at her. She was as lovely as when he had first seen her in a vicarage garden in Falmouth years earlier. Her wide mouth mocked him gently.

'I smell gunpowder, Nathaniel.'

'You have disarmed me, madam.'

'It is not very difficult,' she squeezed his arm, 'you are a poor dissembler.'

He sighed. 'That was Dungarth. It seems likely that we will shortly be at war with the Northern Powers.'

'Russia?'

'You are very perceptive.' He warmed to her and the conversation ran on like a single train of thought.

'Oh, I am not as scatter-brained as some of my sex.'

'And infinitely more beautiful.'

'La, kind sir, I was not fishing for compliments, merely facts. But you should not judge Louise too harshly though she runs on so. She is a good soul and true friend, though I know you prefer the company of her son,' Elizabeth concluded with dry emphasis.