She said, 'I've already told him so-I have asked him to do a portrait of you and me.' Their eyes met and it was as before, as if the cabin were otherwise empty. 'Together.'
Bolitho smiled. Her eyes seemed to caress him. 'He is far better at it than being a flag lieutenant!'
Ozzard waited for them to be seated, then joined Sophie in the pantry ready to serve them.
Catherine said, 'How every woman would envy me. Three handsome sea officers, and nobody else to share them!' She looked at Bolitho and saw his change of expression. 'Tell me, Richard, what is wrong?'
Jenour forgot his embarrassment and his inner pleasure, and Keen was suddenly alert and all attention, as if he were himself in command of this vessel.
Bolitho said quietly, 'I believe we are being followed. The master says not, but I have a feeling about it.'
Keen remarked, 'I have rarely known your feelings to mislead you, sir.'
Catherine watched him from the opposite end of the table, wanting to be close to him, to share the sudden intrusion.
She asked, 'Why? Because of us?'
Bolitho glanced at the pantry hatch and said, 'We are carrying enough gold to pay the whole of the military at Cape Town.' He heard the clatter of plates and murmured, 'Tomorrow, Val, I shall want all your experience. Take a glass and go aloft. Tell me what you see.' He hesitated. 'My eye may try to deceive me.' He turned to Catherine and saw her dismay. 'I am all right, Catherine.' He looked away as Ozzard entered, the girl with serving dishes behind him. I have to be.
True to his word Samuel Bezant, master of the Golden Plover, dropped anchor beneath the Rock's towering protection just two days after sighting the strange vessel astern.
Bolitho sent Keen and Jenour ashore to offer his compliments to the port admiral but decided to remain in the comparative privacy of the poop. Catherine stood beside him staring up at the great wedge-shape of Gibraltar and said, 'I wish we could walk there together.' She gave a small sigh. 'But you are right to stay here. Especially if you still believe that sighting the other vessel was no accident.'
Keen had climbed aloft with his telescope and had reported seeing the topmasts and yards of a small, two- masted ship, very likely a brig. But a sea-mist had closed over the horizon and when it cleared the other craft, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had vanished; nor had she been sighted again.
Bolitho ran his hand down her spine and felt her stiffen. He said quietly, 'I cannot bear to leave you alone.'
She faced him, her lips slightly parted. 'What would they think if they came here and found us… well, found us?' She laughed and moved from his reach. 'But I love being here with you. Even at home you are still the King's officer. Here you are forced to stand aside and allow others to do the planning and sail the ship as they must… and there is time for us. I see you at peace; you reading your Shakespeare aloud to me in the evenings-you make it come alive. And you smoke your pipe, something you rarely do, even at Falmouth. It stirs me with need and desire at the same time.'
'Are they not the same?'
Her chin lifted and she looked at him straight in the eyes. 'I will show you the difference when…'
But a boat thudded alongside and shortly afterwards Bezant came aft to report on his visit ashore. He looked troubled, even angry.
'The port admiral would take no refusals and threatened to make his displeasure known to the Admiralty with the next mail-packet.'
He glanced uncomfortably at Catherine who said, 'You may speak in front of me, Captain. I am no stranger to bad news.'
Bezant shrugged. 'I am ordered to take twelve prisoners to Cape Town. This is no vessel for such miserable work.'
Bolitho asked, 'What kind of prisoners?'
Bezant was already rearranging things in his mind. 'Oh, just army deserters, Sir Richard, not true felons. They are said to have decided to hide aboard a transport when it left Cape Town. They decided to run, rather than remain out there.'
Bolitho barely remembered the port admiral but knew from his reputation that sending these soldiers back to their regiment would be his idea of justice. It was not his province to imprison them until another ship called, which could better accommodate them.
Catherine asked quietly, 'What will happen?'
Bezant sighed. 'They'll be hanged if they're lucky, m'lady. I once witnessed the army's idea of field punishment.' He looked at Bolitho and added, 'Like a flogging round the fleet, Sir Richard. Few survive it.'
Bolitho walked to the open stern windows and winced as sunlight reflected from the open sea lanced into his injured eye.
'What is it, Sir Richard?' Bezant stared from one to the other.
'It is nothing.' Bolitho tried to soften his tone. 'But thank you.' He turned and saw the pain in her expression. She knew. She always knew.
Someone tapped at the door and Bolitho heard the mate, Lincoln, muttering to his captain.
Bezant sent him away and said harshly, 'Hell's teeth! Beggin' your pardon, m'lady, but I am beset by trouble!'
He calmed himself with considerable effort, and yet seemed strangely glad to be able to share his problems with Bolitho, despite his fame and his rank.
'I sent my second mate ashore to visit the garrison surgeon. He has been in pain since we quit Falmouth. I thought it was caused by too many visits to the taverns or the like. But it seems it may be very serious, something eating at his insides. Jeff Lincoln and me have sailed watch-an'-watch afore when he got sick, but not on long passages like this 'un.' He dropped his glance to the deck, as if he were seeing the cargo glittering with menace somewhere below.
'Jeff Lincoln has brought off a temporary mate until we can make other changes. His papers seem in order, and the port admiral's aide doesn't appear ready to discuss that either.' He suddenly gave a broad grin. 'But sailors don't expect things easy, do they, Sir Richard?'
He lumbered away, calling out instructions to his boatswain as he went.
'It won't affect us, will it, Richard?' She was still watching him for some sign of pain in his injured eye.
Sophie entered with a pile of clean shirts and announced excitedly, 'There's other land over yonder, me lady! I thought this was all the land over 'ere!'
Catherine put her arm round the girl's thin shoulders. 'That's Africa you can see, Sophie.' They watched her astonishment. 'You've come quite a long way.'
But the girl could only stare and whisper, 'Africa.'
Bolitho said, 'Go and ask Tojohns to take you where you can see it with a glass.' As the door closed he said, 'I'll not be sorry to get away from this place.' He almost shuddered. 'An unlucky landfall.'
The door opened again but it was Allday. 'You wanted me, Sir Richard?'
Their eyes met. How did he know? Bolitho said, 'I want to issue some pistols. A brace each. Do it when the hands are turned-to for weighing anchor.'
Allday glanced at Catherine's figure by the open stern windows. He said casually, 'Already done, an' me an' Tojohns have got a piece each.' He grinned. 'No sense in trusting Mr Yovell with one-he's likely to kill himself!'
Catherine said, 'I have my own little toy in the cabin.' Her voice was suddenly husky. 'I nearly used it once.' Bolitho looked at her, remembering the drunken army officer who had made a play for her in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Bolitho had called him out, but the soldier's friend had dragged him away, offering frantic apologies as he went. Afterwards Catherine had opened her reticule and had shown him the tiny pistol inside. Barely enough to do more than wound a man. But certainly it would have laid low the drunken soldier if things had gone against her man.
Once during that last night she had said aloud, 'If anyone tries to hurt you ever again, they will have me to reckon with. Your pain is mine, just as my love is always yours.'
And now she was here with him, and danger was once more closing in. He heard the plaintive tune of a fiddle, and the steady grate and clatter of the windlass. Men bustled about overhead, and in the Golden Plover's shadow he could already see her sails being loosened. Ready to make the passage south along the African coast, skirting
