Bolitho plucked at the front of his shirt, one of the elegant selection Catherine had bought for him in London while he had been with Their Lordships.

He had always hated the capital, its false society its privileged citizens who damned the war because of its inconvenience to them, without a thought for the men who daily gave their lives to protect their liberty Like-He thrust Belinda from his mind, and felt the locket which Catherine had given him. Small, silver, with a perfect, miniature of her inside, her dark eyes, the throat bared as he had known and loved it. In a compartment at the back was a compressed lock of her hair. That was new, but he could only guess how long she had owned the locket, or who had given it to her. Certainly not her first husband, a soldier of fortune who had died in a brawl in Spain. Perhaps it had been a gift from her second, Luis Pareja, who had died trying to help defend a merchantman taken by Bolitho and then attacked by Barbary pirates.

Luis had been twice her age, but in his own way he had loved her. He had been a Spanish merchant, and the miniature had all the delicacy and finesse he would have appreciated.

So she had come into Bolitho's life; and then, after a brief affair, she had gone. Misunderstanding, a misguided attempt to preserve his reputation-Bolitho had often cursed himself for allowing it to happen. For letting their tangled lives come between them.

And then, just two years ago when Hyperion had sailed into EnglishHarbour, they had found one another again. Bolitho leaving behind a marriage which had soured, and Catherine married, for the third time, to the Viscount Somervell, a treacherous and decadent man who, on learning of her renewed passion for Bolitho, had attempted to have her dishonoured and thrown into a debtor's prison, from which Bolitho had saved her.