The meandering track that ran around the wide curve of Falmouth Bay was just wide enough to allow passage to horse and rider, and only slightly less dangerous than the footpath which was somewhere beneath it. To the stranger or the foolhardy either could be hazardous.

On this particular dawn the coast appeared abandoned, its sounds confined to the cries of seabirds, the occasional lively trill of an early robin, and the repetitive call of a cuckoo which never seemed to get any closer. In places some of the cliff had fallen away, so that where the track ran closer to the edge it was possible to hear the boom of the sea against the jagged rocks below. Rarely still, it was never to be taken for granted.

There was a damp chill in the air but this was late June, and within hours the horizon would be hard and clear, the sea glittering with a million mirrors. The horse and rider rose slowly above a steep slope and paused like a piece of statuary or, like this bewitched coast, a vision which might suddenly vanish.

Lady Catherine Somervell tried to relax her body as she stared back above the drifting mist. They must have thought her mad at the big grey house below Pendennis Castle, like the stable boy who had snatched up a lantern when she had startled him out of sleep. He had mumbled something about calling the head groom or the coachman, but she had refused. As he had saddled Tamara, the powerful mare Richard Bolitho had found for her, she had felt the same sense of urgency, and a conviction which her rational mind could not dismiss.