Honour This Day

She smiled for the first time. To be called a whore is one thing; to be one is something very different.'

He gripped her hands even tighter. 'There are so many things -'

She twisted from his grip. 'They must wait.' Her eyes were very bright. 'We cannot.'

He said quietly, 'Call me what you did just now.'

'Dearest of men?' She pulled the ribbon from her hair and shook it loose across her shoulder. 'Whatever I have been or done, Richard, you have always been that to me.' She looked at him searchingly. 'Do you want me?'

He reached for her but she stepped away. 'You have answered me.' She gestured towards the other door. 'I need just a moment, alone.'

Without her the room seemed alien and hostile. Bolitho removed his coat and sword, and as an afterthought slid the latch on the door. His glance fell on the pistol and he uncocked it, seeing her face when she had discovered him. Knowing that she would have fired at the first hint of danger.

Then he walked to the door and opened it, the shadows and the fears forgotten as he saw her sitting on the bed, her hair shining in the candelight.

She smiled at him, her knees drawn up to her chin like a child.

'So the proud vice-admiral has gone, and my daring captain has come in his place.'

Bolitho sat beside her, and then eased her shoulders down onto the bed.

She wore a long robe of ivory silk, tied beneath her throat by a thin ribbon. She watched him, his eyes as they explored her body, remembering perhaps how it had once been.

Then she took his hand and pulled it to her breast, tightening his fingers until he thought he must hurt her.

She whispered, 'Take me, Richard.' Then she shook her head very slowly. 'I know what you fear now, but I tell you, it is not out of pity, it is from the love I have never given to another man.'

She thrust her hands out on either side like one crucified and watched as he untied the ribbon and began to remove the robe.

Bolitho could feel the blood rushing through his brain; while he too felt momentarily like an onlooker as he bared her breasts and her arms until she was naked to the waist.

He gasped, 'Who did this to you?'

Her right shoulder was cruelly discoloured, one of the worst bruises he had ever seen.

But she reached up with one hand and dragged his mouth down to hers, her breathing as wild as his own.

She whispered, 'A Brown Bess has a fearsome kick, like a mule!'

She must have been firing a musket when the pirates had attacked the schooner. Like the pistol.

The kiss was endless. It was like sharing everything in a moment. Clinging to it, never wanting it to finish, but unable to hold on for a minute longer.

He heard her cry out as he threw the robe on the floor, saw her fists clench as he touched her, then covered her in his hand as if to prolong the need they had for each other.

She watched him tear off his clothes and touched the scar on his shoulder, remembering that too, and the fever she had held at bay.

She said huskily, 'I don't care about afterward, Richard.'

He saw her looking at him as his shadow covered her like a cloak. She said something like 'It's been so long -' Then she arched her body and gave a sharp cry as he entered her, her fingers pulling at him, dragging him closer and deeper until they were one.

Later, as they lay spent in each other's arms and watched the' smoke standing up from the guttering candles, she said softly, 'You needed love. My love.' He held her against him as she added, 'Who cares about the tomorrows.'

He spoke into her hair. 'We shall make them ours too.'

Down on the jetty Allday seated himself comfortably on a stone bollard and began to fill his new pipe with tobacco. He had sent the barge back to the ship.

Bolitho would not be needing it for a bit yet, he thought. The tobacco was rich, well dampened with rum for good measure. Allday had dismissed the barge but found that he wanted to remain ashore himself. Just in case.

He put down a stone bottle of rum on the jetty and puffed contentedly on his new clay.

Perhaps there was a God in Heaven after all. He glanced towards the darkened house with the white walls.

Only God knew how this little lot might end, but for the present, and that was all any poor Jack could hope for, things were looking better for Our Dick. He grinned and reached down for the bottle. An' that's no error.

Gibraltar 1805

11. The Letter

His Britannic Majesty's Ship Hyperion heeled only very slightly as she changed tack yet again, her tapering jib-boom pointing almost due east.

Bolitho stood by the quarterdeck nettings and watched the great looming slab of Gibraltar rise above the larboard bow, misty-blue in the afternoon glare. It was mid-April.

Men moved purposefully about the decks, the lieutenants checking the set of each sail, conscious perhaps of this spectacular landfall. They had not touched land for six weeks, not since the squadron had quit English Harbour for the last time.

Bolitho took a telescope from the rack and trained it on the Rock. If the Spaniards ever succeeded in retaking this natural fortress, they could close the Mediterranean with the ease of slamming a giant door.

He focused the glass on the litter of shipping which seemed to rest at the foot of the Rock itself. More like a cluster of fallen moths than ships-of-war. It was only then that a newcomer could realise the size of it, the distance it still stood away from the slow-moving squadron.

He looked abeam. They were sailing as close as was prudently safe to the coast of Spain. Sunlight made diamond-bright reflections through the haze. He could imagine just how many telescopes were causing them as unseen eyes watched the small procession of ships. Where bound? For what purpose? Riders would be carrying intelligence to senior officers and lookout stations. The Dons could study the comings and goings with ease here at the narrowest part of the Strait of Gibraltar.

As if to give weight to his thoughts he heard Parris say to one of the midshipmen on the quarterdeck, Take a good look, Mr Blessed. Yonder lies the enemy.'

Bolitho tucked his hands behind him and thought over the past four months, since his new squadron had finally assembled at Antigua. Since Catherine had taken passage for England. The parting had been harder than he had expected, and still hurt like a raw wound.

She had sent one letter in that time. A warm, passionate letter, part of herself. He was not to worry. They would meet again soon. There must be no scandal. She was, as usual, thinking of him.

Bolitho had written back, and had also sent a letter to Belinda. The secret would soon be out, if not already; it was right if not honourable that she should hear it from him.

He moved across the quarterdeck and saw the helmsmen drop their eyes as his glance passed over them. He climbed a poop ladder and raised the glass again to study the ships which followed astern. It had kept his mind busy enough while the squadron had worked up together, had got used to one another's ways and peculiarities. There were four ships-of-the-line, all third-rates which to an ignorant landsman would look exactly like Hyperion in the van. Apart from Obdurate, the others had been new to Bolitho's standards, but watching them now he could feel pride instead of impatience.

Holding up to windward in the gentle north-westerly breeze he saw the little sloop-of-war Phaedra,