He said quietly, 'I heard your harp when I left here before. I was very moved by it.' Unconsciously, he gestured. 'In this setting it seemed so right, so perfect. Now that I have met you I understand why.'
She stared at him, defiant or angry, it was impossible to tell. She was taller than he had realised, and the gown did nothing to free his mind from that first time. The chained wrists, the painter's motionless arm, her eyes touching his for no more than a second.
But she said, 'You have a way with words, Captain. With women too, I suspect. Now, if you will allow me to pass?' She looked down, startled, as two of her yellow roses fell to the ground.
He stooped to retrieve them, and saw her feet, barely covered by leather sandals, as brown as her throat and arms.
She stepped hack, and almost lost her balance as her heel snared the hem of the gown.
lie gripped the roses, one of the thorny stems drawing blood, but without any pain. lie felt nothing. It had been her quick withdrawal which recalled it, a stark, ugly picture. The young black girl, violated, beyond anything but terror and revulsion. When he had reached out to reassure her of her safety she had responded in the same manner.
He said, 'I-I am so sorry. I never meant to offend you.' There were voices now, someone laughing, a horse stamping, ready to leave. It was over. It had not even begun.
Adam stepped from the path and felt her pass him, so close that the gown touched his hand.
He looked after her, and saw that her hair was as long as he had imagined. She was probably going now to adopt a pose for another artist. Disrobed, perhaps, her lovely body open to another man's stare. What did she think about? Was it a way of avenging herself for what had happened to her? To prove she was inviolable?
If he could find that stable boy he would leave now. Before…
He stared at her, unable to accept that she had turned back, her face no longer calm. She reached out and seized his sleeve. 'Your hand! It's bleeding!' She prised the two roses from him and laid the entire bouquet on the scorched grass at her feet.
She had produced a handkerchief from somewhere and was wrapping it around his fingers as Montagu, followed by his servant, appeared in the walled garden.
'Now then, what have we here?'
Adam saw it clearly. Anxiety, suspicion; it was far deeper than either.
She said, 'Roses. My fault.' She looked directly at Adam and said, 'I have seen many men of war, Captain. But only in portraits. I was unprepared.' She knelt to recover the roses, or herself.
Montagu said, 'You see, Captain, your reputation precedes you!' But he was smiling, unwilling or unable to hide his relief.
'So let us begin. I've roughed out some ideas.' He beamed. 'Besides, we must not detain a man on his birthday!'
He turned and called something to his servant.
She stood, very upright and composed. 'I did not know, Captain.' She broke off a rose and attached it to the lapel of his coat. 'To remember me by.' Then, very deliberately, she broke the other stem and placed the rose in the bosom of her gown; his blood made a bright stain on the silk. 'And I shall remember you.'
He watched her walk unhurriedly along the path and out of the garden.
Montagu was waiting for him. 'Come along, while the light is good.'
Adam thrust his hand into his pocket. The handkerchief was still there. Not a dream.
'I'm delighted that you remembered to bring the sword. Memories, eh?'
The same room, the same unwelcoming chair.
Adam saw the canvas for the first time. An outline. A ghost.
Montagu placed the sword carefully on his bench and made a few swift sketches.
'I would not ask you to leave the sword, this sword, with me. I think, Captain, that you will need it again soon.' Adam waited, his eyes on the tall harp. Montagu was giving himself time. Weighing the chances, like an experienced gun captain watching the first fall of shot.
He said suddenly, 'I see that you are wearing the rose. Shall I keep it in the finished work?' So casually said. So important.
'I would be honoured, Sir Gregory. I mean it, more than ever now.
Montagu nodded slowly, and rolled up one sleeve.
'I shall tell Lowenna what you said.'
He began to paint very briskly.
He had made up his mind.
Lowenna.
Adam Bolitho entered the church and closed the tall doors behind him. After the heat of the morning and his walk into Falmouth from the old house it seemed a cool haven, a refuge. He was still wondering why he had come. He felt his shirt clinging to his skin, as if he had been in haste or had some pressing reason for being here.
It was dark after the sunlight of the square, and the streets where people looked at him as he passed. Interest, curiosity or, like some of the old Jacks by the ale house, hoping to catch his eye for the price of a drink.
Perhaps he had come to clear his head, unused as he was to the awesome meal which Grace Ferguson had prepared in his honour. Duck and local lamb, fish as well; it would have satisfied Unrivalled's midshipmen for a year.
And John Allday had made an appearance. It must have cost him dearly to come, Adam thought. Older, heavier, shaggier, but otherwise the same. Unchanged. The first moments had been the hardest. Allday had taken his hand in both of his, and had stood in silence, holding it. Remembering, so that he had shared it, seeing it as it must have been. The hardest part.
Allday had told him about meeting Tyacke when his ship had called here. And other names had been mentioned, faces appearing as if from the shadows. The hardest part…
He walked deeper into the church, seeing the tablets and sculptures, soldiers and sailors, men who had died in battle, at sea or in some far-off land for some cause few would now remember. There were all the Bolithos, their wives too, in some cases.
He looked back through the church, at the aisle where he had given his arm to Belinda when she had married his uncle.
There were others in the church. Resting, escaping from the heat, praying, but all separate, alone with their thoughts.
He thought of the untidy studio, and Sir Gregory Montagu's sharp, assessing gaze while his brushes had moved tirelessly as if controlled by some independent force.
And the girl. He'd not seen her again, and yet, as he had ridden from the house he had felt that she was there. Watching him.
He had sensed Nancy 's immediate interest when he had mentioned her, but even she knew very little. Born in Cornwall, but had moved away when still a child. As far as London, where the family had somehow become involved with Sir Gregory Montagu. Her father had been a scholar, a man of refinement, but there had been some scandal and Nancy had heard little more, except that the long-haired girl named Lowenna sometimes came to the old glebe house with Montagu, but was rarely seen anywhere else, not even in the adjoining village of Penryn.
She knew more than she was telling. Before she had left for her own house, she had taken his arm and murmured, 'Don't break your heart, Adam. Not again.'
A warning, but she had not been there in the walled garden. Like stripping away a curtain of secrecy, when he had seen the girl Lowenna, her defences momentarily broken down… Andromeda, the captive waiting to be rescued from sacrifice.
He had paused opposite a finely crafted bust of Captain David Bolitho, who had died in 1724, fighting pirates off the African coast. He had been the first Bolitho to carry the sword Montagu admired so much. And now Unrivalled would be going back there. He touched the scabbard at his thigh. Will I be the last Bolitho to wear it?
Montagu expected him to make another visit. lie was afraid of hope, afraid of hoping.
'Why, Captain, you are not wearing my rose.'
lie swung round, his shoe scraping on an iron grill, and saw her sitting at the end of a pew, her face pale against something dark, even black.
I le gripped the back of the pew, hardly trusting himself to speak.
