peace and enjoy some reasonable hock, which might slake your thirst after a hard ride.'
Adam brushed some dust from his sleeve to give himself time. A hard ride. To put him at ease? Or was it sarcasm? Montagu would know very well that it was only three miles from Pendennis.
They walked together along a high-ceilinged corridor. There were, Adam observed, no pictures of any sort on display. And all the while he could feel the other man studying him, although he was looking directly ahead.
He said, 'I understand that you recently painted the Prince Regent, Sir Gregory?' Nancy had told him. It had not helped.
'Yes, that's true.' He gave a quiet laugh. 'But another man wearing his garments for most of the time. He was `too busy,' they said.' Then he did turn to look at him. 'I know you do not wish to be here. Neither, as it happens, do I. But we are both good at our work, and for that reason if nothing else, it will qualify.'
There were voices, unreal and echoing, like an empty vault. Montagu said sharply, 'My proteges. We shall take another route. A barn of a place, but it suits.'
The gaunt servant had reappeared, by magic, it seemed. He had a finger to his lips.
'Sir Gregory, your nephew-'
Montagu said curtly, 'We'll slip past them. He must get used to interruptions if he hopes to line his purse!'
He opened another tall door and entered what appeared to be one huge room. It was hung with sheets and there were trestles, a bench of clean brushes, beyond which another figure in a paintdaubed smock stood stockstill, one arm outthrust as if he was painting some invisible canvas.
The room had a glass roof, with rolling shades to contain or deflect the bright sunlight.
Montagu said, 'This way.'
Adam did not move. Ile could not.
Sitting on the floor directly opposite him, with one leg bent under her, was a girl. She was so still that for a second longer he imagined it was a work of beautiful statuary. Then her eyes moved, seeing him, accepting, dismissing him. Her gaze returned to the motionless, outthrust arm of the painter. She was naked but for some sort of robe which had fallen across her thighs while her arms were pulled above her head, fastened by a chain around her wrists.
Montagu paused. 'Do not overwork her, Joseph.' He lifted part of a sheet to shield the girl's shoulders, with the casual disinterest of a housekeeper covering an unwanted chair.
They walked past another screen and into an adjoining room. Over his shoulder Montagu said, 'Imagination as well as skillsomething you will doubtless appreciate, Captain Bolitho?'
Adam looked back at the closed door. As if it had never happened. But he could still see her, her body poised, motionless in the unwavering light.
'What were they doing?'
Montagu gestured to a solitary chair. 'Doing?' He smiled. 'Soon it will be the beautiful Andromeda, chained to a rock to be sacrificed to the sea monster, before she is rescued by her lover Perseus. Imagination, you see?'
Adam was seated in the hard chair, one arm resting across it although he had scarcely felt Montagu move him. He attempted to adjust his neckcloth and coat but Montagu held up his pad.
'No, Captain. As you are. The man others see, not necessarily the one you would have him be.'
Uncanny that he could ignore the restless, sometimes piercing stare, the accompanying squeak of crayon.
Someone's wife, or mistress? Who could she be? He could laugh out loud at himself, but he wanted to keep that image fixed in his mind. She was lovely and she would know it. And yet in that single moment he had seen only indifference, or was it contempt?
Montagu walked back and forth, muttering to himself, darting occasional glances at his subject. Adam tried not to move, and wondered if the chair had been chosen especially to remind each victim of its importance.
Montagu said, 'Lady Roxby tells me that you are in Falmouth for only a few days.' He made stabbing adjustments to his sketch. 'That is a pity. I understand that you have seen a great deal of time and action at sea of late?' He did not wait for or expect a reply. 'I shall require you here again, of course.'
Surprised again, Adam found himself nodding. 'I will do what I can.'
'A fine woman, Lady Roxby. I never truly understood how she came to enjoy her life with Sir Lewis.' The quiet chuckle again. 'The King of Cornwall. But they succeeded when many do not.' He gazed at him for several seconds and said, 'Your sword. The sword. I am surprised that you came without it. I need it, you see. Part of the legend. The charisma.'
There was no scorn or sarcasm. He heard himself say, 'I still find it difficult to wear without misgivings, Sir Gregory.'
The crayon hesitated in mid-air. 'That does you credit, Captain.' He inclined his head graciously, as if to confirm it. 'I knew your late uncle, of course. Very like you in some ways, especially when it came to sitting for a mere painter! Restless, always searching for excuses to leave.' He turned his pad to the light. 'It is coming.' He stared at Adam again. 'It's there, right enough. The same look, and yet…' He swung round as the servant peered around the door.
'What is it? You know I will not be interrupted!' Just as quickly the mood changed and he winked at Adam. 'Not exactly what I told my nephew, is it?'
Adam realised for the first time that Montagu had a short, pointed heard, which had been concealed by the untidy smock. It was not hard to imagine him one of the King's cavaliers. What age was he? Seventy, or more?
He was ageless.
Montagu swung away from the door. 'My nephew is about to leave. I must just speak with him. I Ic will not like what I am about to tell him, but he will listen, and he will learn.' lie tossed back his smock, the cavalier and his cloak.
In his absence Adam looked around the littered room. Empty canvases, a half-finished painting of sea birds circling a ruined belfry, the chapel he had seen when he had approached the house. How long ago was that? Even the filtered sunlight should have told him. He had been here for over an hour.
How had it happened? Was it Montagus restless energy, his ability to switch moods and subjects with the ease of creating different images in his mind? He had not thought of Unrivalled once during this time. Not of Turnbull, nor of Herrick, nor even of the array of shipping at Plymouth. The smell of action. This was another world. He thought of the girl again, her arms pinioned above her head, her breasts full and taut. Montagu saw beyond the sheets and the untidy trestles. It was or soon would be a great rock, where the beautiful Andromeda waited, chained and helpless, a sacrifice to the monster. It was clear, without doubt or question. Imagination, he had said. It was far more than that.
Montagu was hack, wiping his stained fingers on a rag.
'I think that will suffice, Captain. I shall work on it tonight. I find it suits the subject.' The keen eyes settled on him again. 'You have been badly hurt, I think. That will come into it.'
Adam smiled, surprised that the tension within himself had dissipated.
'In the navy, it is a risk we have to accept.'
Montagu smiled politely. 'The hurt I see goes deeper than any wound of battle.' He shook his head. 'But no matter, Captain, it will come to me.' He gestured to the tall harp Adam had seen by an open fireplace; he had assumed it to be mere set-dressing for another painting. 'Music of the gods, yes?'
Then he said, 'Tomorrow, then?' Again, he did not wait for an answer. 'I would not wish to interrupt your birthday celebrations, when you have so little freedom from the sea.'
The adjoining room was deserted, the sheets folded untidily, the trestles waiting to be transformed into a rock for a lovely captive. The chains lay where she had been sitting. Only the sunlight had moved.
Adam heard the horse stamping outside the entrance. In seconds he would make a fool of himself, perhaps destroy the only moment of peace he had found in this old house and its strange, ageless owner.
But he heard himself say, 'Please, the girl who was here, Sir Gregory…'
Montagu faced him again, almost like a duellist now, measuring the distance, the threat.
'She sits for me, and those I choose for their potential. She is very skilled. It is not merely the act of disrobing, posing before men with neither expertise nor scruples.' He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. 'And she plays the harp to perfection.'
The main doors were open, the sky was still clear; in a moment he would be out on the road again.
Montagu held out his hand. 'Does that answer your question -the one you did not ask me?'
