He turned lightly, as he always did. 'My uncle is the best seaman I have ever known. The fairest of men, loved by all who tried to know him. But she was not his ship, you see?'
She tried, but she did not understand. All she knew was that her husband, who had given her everything, was now only another memory. Like all those who haunted this house, and were named in their roll of honour.
Adam said, 'I have asked Ferguson to tell the servants. I did not… feel capable. By this time tomorrow, all Falmouth will know.' He thought suddenly of Belinda. 'As all London knows now.'
He seemed to reconsider her question. 'There is always hope. But it may be unwise to dream too much.' He faced her again, but seemed distant, unreachable.
'I have called for a fresh horse. I must ride to the squire's house without delay. I would not want Aunt Nancy to hear it on the wind like common gossip.' For the first time he showed his emotion. 'God, she worshipped him.'
Zenoria watched his distress with pain. 'Adam-what must I do?'
'Do?' He wiped his face with the back of his hand. 'You must remain here. He would have wished it.' He hesitated, realising what he had said, and what he had omitted. 'So would your husband. I am sorry… I will ask Mrs Ferguson to keep you company.'
A horse was being led into the yard, but there were no voices.
'Please come back, Adam. Neither of us must be alone.'
He looked at her steadily. 'I liked your husband very much. I also envied him to an unhealthy degree.' He came to her again and kissed her forehead very gently. 'I still do.'
Then he was gone and she caught sight of Bolitho's one-armed steward standing out in the dusty sunshine, staring at the empty road.
She was suddenly alone, and the pain of bereavement was unbearable.
She cried out, 'Are you all satisfied now, damn you? There he rides, the last of the Bolithos!' She stared about her, blinded by hot, unexpected tears. 'Is that what you wanted?'
But there was only silence.
She did not know what time it was or how long she had managed to sleep; it was as if someone had spoken her name. She slipped out of bed and moved to the window. The night was warm, and a bright half-moon spilled a glittering silver cloak down from the horizon until it was lost beneath the headland.
She leaned further from the window so that her robe slipped from one shoulder, but she did not notice it, nor think of the livid scar which was revealed there. A mark of endurance, but to her it was a mark of shame, of sick humiliation.
She could smell the land, the sheep and cattle, and thought of the ideas Catherine had shared with her, plans which would have brought life back to the estate.
Then she heard it; not words but something else, a soul in pain. She glanced round in the darkness. She had not heard Adam return, and had imagined him to be passing the night at Roxby's house.
The next moment she was on the big landing, her bare feet soundless on the rugs, her candle lighting up each stern face on the wall: ships burning, men dying, and Bolitho's own words in the Bible as every portrait slid away into the shadows.
Adam was sitting at the table, his face buried in his arms, sobbing as if his heart were breaking. His hat and sword and the coat with its gleaming lace were flung across a chair, and there was a smell of brandy in the air.
He looked up sharply and saw her with the outstretched candle. 'I-I did not mean to wake you!'
Zenoria had never seen a man cry before, and certainly not from such depths.
She whispered, 'Had I known I would have come earlier.' She saw his hand hesitate over the brandy and added, 'Take some. I think I might quite like a little myself.'
He wiped his face roughly and brought another goblet, and watched her as she placed the candle on the table and curled up on the rug in front of the black, empty grate. As he passed he lightly touched her hair as he might a child's. He stood looking at the Bolitho crest and fingered the carving, as others had done before him.
'What happened?' Zenoria felt the brandy searing her throat. She had only tasted it once before, more as a dare than for any other reason.
'The squire was very kind to me.' He shook his head, as if still dazed by what had happened. 'Poor Aunt Nancy. She kept asking me how it must have been.' He gave a great sigh. 'What could I tell her? It is a sailor's lot. Death can lie on every hand.' He thought suddenly of Allday and his quaint comments. 'An' that's no error,' as his old friend would have said. Thank God they had been together, even to the end.
He said abruptly, 'I am no company, dear Zenoria. I had better leave.'
She leaned over to replace the goblet and heard him exclaim, 'What is that? Did they do this to you?'
She covered her bared shoulder as he dropped on his knees behind her; he carefully moved her hair to one side and felt her tremble as light played on the top of the scar.
'I would kill any man who laid a finger on you.'
She tried not to flinch as he lowered his head and kissed the scar. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it would alarm the whole house. But she felt no fear; where there had been disgust, there was only an awareness which seemed to consume her completely. She could not even resist as he kissed her shoulder once again, and touched her neck with his lips. She felt him pulling at the cord around her shoulders, and only then did she attempt to fight it.
'Please, Adam! You must not!'
But the robe fell about her waist and she felt his hands caressing her as he kissed the terrible scar that ran from her right shoulder to her left hip.
With tender strength he laid her down and gazed at her body, pale as marble in the filtered moonlight, and his hands gave persuasion to what they both now realised was unstoppable, as it had been inevitable.
She closed her eyes as he held and imprisoned her wrists above her head, and heard him whisper her name again and again
She waited for the pain, but she returned his kiss even as he entered her and they were joined.
Later he carried her upstairs to her room and sat near her, watching her until the sun began to drive away the shadows.
Only then did he finish his brandy and leave the room.
The candle had long been gutted when the first sunlight touched the big room and lingered on the family Bible, with its memories of dead heroes and the women who had loved them.
They were all ghosts, now.
10. POOR JACK
TO ANYONE unused to the sea's ways its sudden change of mood, which had followed the jolly-boat's precarious passage through Hundred Mile Reef, was impossible to believe. The squall had departed and had not returned, and the vastness of this great ocean stretched away on every bearing, unbroken, and in the noon sunshine, like blinding glass.
Bolitho climbed forward into the bows where a small canvas awning had been rigged to provide the barest of privacy for the two women. Catherine was waiting for him there, her borrowed shirt dark with sweat, her forehead showing signs of sunburn as she watched him over the slumped shoulders of the resting oarsmen.
She took his hand and guided him down to the bottom boards so that he could rest his back against the curved side.
'Let me see.' She held his face in her hands and gently prised open his left eyelid. Then she said, 'I'm going to put a bandage over it, Richard.' She kept her voice very low so that nobody else could hear. 'You must rest it.' She looked aft where Allday sat at the tiller, as if he had never moved. She had to give herself time, so that she would reveal no despair to Richard. Three days since the Golden Plover had slid from the reef. Hours of work on the oars, and rigging the solitary mast and sail to stand away from the reef's fierce undertow, and set some sort of course for the mainland. For all they had seen or done they might have remained stationary. She tried to picture how this small, eighteen-foot craft would appear to an onlooker, had there been one, while it rode sluggishly to a canvas sea
