Then she said in a quiet, firm tone, 'I never questioned that Jonas was a sailor, nor will I you. Just say you'll come back to me an' none other.'
She moved quickly before Allday could reply and reappeared with a tankard of rum, which she put into his hands, her own around them like small paws.
'Now you just sit there and enjoy your pipe.' She stood back, hands on her hips. 'I'll make you some victuals, which you must surely need after one o' those men-of-war! ' She was excited, like a young girl again.
Allday waited until she had turned to a cupboard. 'Mr. Ferguson will be calling for me later.'
She turned, and he saw the understanding in her face. 'You are a very honourable man, John Allday.' She went into the kitchen to fetch his 'victuals', but called over her shoulder, 'But you could have stayed. I wanted you to know that.'
It was pitch-dark with only the sliver of a moon to lighten the sky when Ferguson pulled into the inn yard with his pony and trap. He waited until Allday's figure loomed out of the gloom and the trap tilted over on its springs.
Allday glanced back at the inn where only one window showed any light.
'I'd have taken you in for a wet, Bryan. But I'd rather we waited 'til we're back home.'
Bryan was too anxious to smile. It was his home, the only one he had.
They clattered along the track in silence, the pony tossing its head when a fox passed briefly through the glow of the lanterns. The bonfires were all out now. There would be plenty of headaches when the dawn called the men back to the fields and the milk sheds
Eventually he could stand it no longer.
'How was it, John? I can tell from your breath she's been stuffing you with food and drink! '
'We talked.' He thought of the touch of her hands on his. The way she looked at him, and how her eyes smiled when she spoke. 'The time went fast. Seemed only a dog-watch.'
He thought too of the catch in her voice when she said over her shoulder, 'But you could have stayed. I wanted you to know that.' An honourable man. He had never seen himself in that light.
He turned on his seat and said almost defiantly, 'We're to be wed, an' that's no error! '
The two weeks that followed Anemone's brief visit to Falmouth to land her passengers seemed to pass with the speed of light. For Bolitho and his Catherine it was a world of fantasy and rediscovery, and days and nights of love which left them spent in one another's arms. There had been shyness too, as on the day of Bolitho's return, when like conspirators they had ridden to that cove they called their own, to avoid well-meaning callers at the house, to be with one another and nobody else. It was a small crescent of pale sand wedged between two towering cliffs, and it had been a landing place for any smuggler daring or reckless enough to chance a passage through the jagged reefs until a rock fall had closed the only way out.
Leaving their horses on the cliff path they had climbed down to the hard-packed sand, where she had pulled off her boots and pressed her own prints in the beach. Then they had embraced one another, and she had seen the sudden shyness, the hesitation of a man still unsure, doubting perhaps that the love was his for the asking.
It was their place and always would be. He had watched her throw aside her clothes as she had done aboard the Golden Plover at the start of their brutal ordeal, but when she had faced him there had been a wildness and a passion he had not seen before. The sun had touched their nakedness and the sand had been warm beneath them when they had realised that the tide was turning once again; and they had splashed through the hissing, lapping water, the sea's embrace sharp and cleansing as they had laughed together, and waded around the rocks to the safety of another beach.
There had been evenings, too, of formality, with Lewis Roxby's household doing its best to provide lavish banquets and entertainment that would ensure that his nickname, The King of Cornwall, remained unchallenged. Moments of tranquillity, memories shared and reawakened while they had ridden around the estate and surrounding villages. Old faces and some newcomers had greeted them with a warmth Bolitho had never experienced. He was more used to the surprise he saw whenever they were both walking together. It was probably inconceivable that the returned vice-admiral, Falmouth 's most famous son, should choose to toil along the lanes and hillsides like any bumpkin. But he knew from long experience that after the confines of a King's ship, the monotonous food and the strain of command, any officer who failed to exercise his mind and body when he could was a fool.
Allday's announcement had caught them by surprise. Bolitho had exclaimed, 'It is the best thing I have heard for a long, long time, old friend! '
Catherine had kissed him on the cheek, but had been bemused by Allday's sudden uncertainty. 'I am a troubled man, ' he had proclaimed more than once, as if the pleasure shown by everyone else had dispelled his earlier confidence.
As they lay in their bed, listening to the distant boom of the sea through the open windows, she had said quietly, 'You know what disturbs him, do you not, Richard?'
She had leaned over him, her long hair silvered in the filtered moonlight, and he had held her closer, his hand pressing her naked spine, still damp from their eagerness for each other.
He had nodded. 'He fears that I shall leave him on the beach. Oh, how I would miss him, Kate! My oak. But how much pleasure it would give me to know he was safe at long last, able to enjoy his new life with this lady I have yet to meet.'
She had touched his lips with her fingers. 'He will do it all in his own way, Richard, in his own time.'
Then she changed the mood, the touch of reality which had intruded to remind them both of that other world that was always waiting.
She had kissed him slowly. 'Suppose I took his place? I have worn a seaman's garb before. Who would notice your new coxswain?'
Ferguson, smoking a last pipe in the balmy night air, had heard her familiar laughter. He had been glad for them; sad, too, that it could not last.
There had been news from Valentine Keen at his Hampshire home. Zenoria had given him a son, to be named Perran Augustus. From the tone of the letter Keen was obviously ecstatic with pride and delight. A son: a future admiral in his eyes already.
Bolitho had been curious about the choice of Perran, a very old Cornish name. Zenoria must have insisted upon it, perhaps to assert herself against Keen's rather overwhelming family.
Catherine had said simply, 'It was her father's name.'
Her mood had not lightened and Bolitho had imagined that it was because of the poisoned past. Zenoria's father had been hanged for a crime committed when fighting for farm workers' rights, and Zenoria's own involvement had indirectly caused her to be transported. Keen had rescued her, and had cleared her name. Bolitho still wondered if it was truly love, or gratitude which had given them a son.
'What is it, Kate?' He had held her to him, and she spoke softly.
'I would give everything to bear you a child, our very own. Not one to don the King's coat as soon as he is able, like so many of the names I see in the church where your family is honoured. And not one to be spoiled beyond his or her own good! ' He had felt the tension in her body as she had added bitterly, 'But I cannot, and mostly I am content. To have and hold your love, to cherish every moment together no matter how short they might be. Then at other times I have this demon inside me. Because of me you have given so much. Your friends, or those you have believed to be so, your freedom to do as you please without the eyes of envy watching every move She leaned back in his arms and studied each feature of his face, the rare tears unheeded on her skin. 'You do so much for others and for your country. How dare they squeak their petty hatreds behind your back? In Golden Plover I was often terrified, but I would have shared it with none other. Those qualities you do not even know you have lifted my heart. They talk and sing of you in the taverns a sailor's sailor they call you, but they can never know what I have seen and done with you.'
And then at the end of the second week the Admiralty messenger rode up to the old grey house below Pendennis Castle, and the orders they had both been expecting were delivered in the usual heavily sealed envelope.
Bolitho sat by the empty grate in the big room where he had heard his first stories of the sea and of distant parts from his father, his grandfather: it was now difficult to distinguish one from another in this house where life for so many of his family had begun, and as each grave portrait on the walls could testify, to which few had ever returned. He turned the envelope over in his hands. How many times, he wondered? Upon receipt of these orders… will proceed with all despatch… To a ship or a squadron, to some unknown part of the expanding power of Majesty,
