But Allday had been there, and had seen everything. The Spaniard's cutlass had gone clattering across the bloodstained deck, his severed arm with it. Another blow had finished him. Allday's own revenge for the wound which had left him almost constantly in pain, unable to act as swiftly as he once did.

But abandon him, even out of kindness? Bolitho knew that only death would ever part them.

He pushed himself away from the window and picked up the fan from his sea-chest. Catherine's fan. She had made certain he had had it with him when he had boarded Truculent at Spithead.

What was she doing now, all those six thousand miles astern? It would be cold and bleak in Cornwall. Crouching cottages beyond the big grey house below PendennisCastle. Winds from the Channel to shake the sparse trees on the hillside, the ones Bolitho's father had once called "my ragged warriors." Farmers making good damage to walls and barns, fishermen at Falmouth repairing their boats, grateful for the written protection which kept them safe from the hated press gangs.

The old grey house would be Catherine's only sanctuary from the sneers and the gossip. Ferguson, the estate's one-armed steward, who had originally been pressed into naval service with Allday, would take good care of her. But you never knew for certain, especially in the West Country.

Tongues would wag. Bolitho's woman. Wife of a viscount, who should be with him and not living like some sailor's whore. They had been Catherine's own words, to prove to him that she did not care for herself but for his name and his honour. Yes, the ignorant ones were always the most cruel.

The only occasion when she had revealed bitterness and anger had been when he was called to London, to receive his orders. She had stared at him across the room they shared which overlooked the sea, that constant reminder, and had exclaimed, "Don't you see what they are doing to us, Richard?"