Bolitho stared at her, expecting bitterness or resentment. There was neither. It was more an acceptance of something which had always been there, and always would.

Catherine said, "You will have to go, Richard. No matter what you feel for your wife, or for what she connived at with my late husband. It is not in your nature or mine to run away." She touched the cheek near his damaged eye, her voice a whisper so soft that he could barely hear it.

"Some may call me the vice-admiral's whore, but such fools are to be pitied rather than scorned. When you look at me as you are doing now I can barely let you go. And every time you enter me it is as the first time, and I am reborn." She lifted her chin and he saw the pulse beating in her throat. "But stand between us, my darling Richard? Only death will ever do that."

She turned away and called to Allday, whom she had sensed to be waiting in the hall. "Stay with him-you are his right arm. Under these circumstances I cannot go. It would only harm him."

The carriage had returned to the door. Bolitho said, "Wait for me, Kate." He looked strained but alert, his black hair still dishevelled from travel, with the single loose lock above his right eye almost white where it hid the terrible scar on his forehead. A youthful, sensitive face; he might still have been the captain Allday remembered and described so vividly, in tears for a fallen friend. Then she moved against him and touched the old family sword, seen in all those portraits in Falmouth.

"If I had a wish in the world it would be to give you a son to wear this one day. But I cannot."

He held her closely, knowing that if her reserve broke he could not leave her, now or ever.

"You once said of me, Kate, that I needed love 'as the desert needs the rain.' Nothing has changed. It's you I want. The rest is history."