'And your opinion of him?'

'That he is daring, brave and the epitome of all that makes the encampments of the French along the heights of Boulogne a most dangerous threat to the safety of Great Britain.'

Drinkwater's hostility towards D'Auvergne evaporated. The two had discovered a common ground and Drinkwater rose, crossing the cabin and lifting the lid of the big sea-chest in the corner. 'So I have always thought myself,' he said, reaching into the chest. 'Furthermore, I have this to show you…'

Drinkwater returned to the table with a roll of canvas, frayed at the edges. He spread it out on the table. The paint was badly cracked and the canvas damaged where the tines of a fork had pierced it. It was D'Auvergne's turn to show astonishment.

'Good God alive!'

'You know who she is?'

'Hortense Santhonax… with Junot's wife one of the most celebrated beauties of Paris… This…' He stared at the lower right hand corner, 'this is by David. How the devil did you come by it?'

Drinkwater looked down at the portrait. The red hair and the slender neck wound with pearls rose from a bosom more exposed than concealed by the wisp of gauze around the shoulders.

'It hung there, on that bulkhead, when we took this ship in the Red Sea. I knew her briefly.'

'Were you in that business at Beaubigny back in ninety-two?'

Drinkwater nodded. 'Aye. I was mate of the cutter Kestrel when we took Hortense, her brother and others off the beach there, émigrés we thought then, escaping from the mob…'

'Who turned their coats when their money ran out, eh?'

'That is true of her brother certainly. She, I now believe, never intended other than to dupe us.' He did not add that she had been Hortense de Montholon then, sister to the man his own brother Edward had murdered at Newmarket nine years later.