Now the ship was fully awake, hammers thudding somewhere, while the sail maker and his mates squatted about the main deck, the 'market place' as it was termed on most working days, needles and palms going like Maltese tailors.
Tolan was saying, 'Mr. Paget is waiting to see you, Sir Graham.' He was thinking about the quiet house overlooking the harbour, and the woman, and wondering just how much Frogface Paget knew.
Bethune picked up the cup. It was empty. Again.
He recalled the wine, the last glimpse of the harbour and the winking lights. She had known almost from the beginning. He had felt it, as if she had been fighting a battle, against herself, perhaps. And who else?
He had never really believed it would happen. A word or a glance, he never remembered.
She had said, 'You must leave, Graham.' Even his name on her tongue had excited him.
He had held her, like two people frozen in a waltz without music. He had tried to kiss her, but she had turned her face away, had pushed at his shoulders, shaking her head, words lost in her hair, body tensed as he held her, tightly and without pretence. Then she had said, 'I don't love you, Graham. You know what I said.'
Her arms had fallen to her sides, like that moment on the balcony.
'I have never stopped loving you, Kate! '
He had held her, her waist, her back, her shoulders, had felt her body trembling, as if she were going to break away and run from him.
The room had been almost in darkness, but he had seen her eyes, and her mouth, the lips parted as if she wanted to say something. To explain, to protest; he did not wait.
But she did not resist; her mouth met his. It seemed to be endless, uncovering her, touching her body, her skin, then finding her, taking her.
He was still not certain if he would have pulled away, if she had tried to stop him.
Afterwards they lay together in the humid room, the overhead fan unmoving.
There had been no words, as if each was afraid to shatter the moment.
Tolan said, 'Flag lieutenant, Sir Graham.'
Bethune stood up and faced him. 'Send them both in.' He regarded him for several seconds, lost for words, which was unusual. 'Thank you, Tolan.'
'Sir Graham?'
'I shall not forget.'
He walked to the quarter windows and shaded his eyes, the water hard and bright, unmoving.
And she was over there. And he had once described Adam Bolitho as reckless.
Catherine folded the letter with great care, but hesitated before sealing it.
The house seemed very still, only the fan swaying slowly back and forth to stir the heavy air. The shutters were lowered so that the sunlight crisscrossed the room in fiery bars.
It was probably noon. She propped the letter against the inkstand and plucked at the loose robe which covered her body from throat to ankle. Beneath it she was naked, still damp from bathing herself, as if to wipe away the feel and touch of each vivid memory.
She could open the blinds and go out on the balcony, and the view would be the same. The ships, the harbour's unending panorama of coastal and local trading craft.
And yet everything was changed, and she could not believe it.
She ran her hand inside her robe, across her shoulder, then down and around her breast. Forcing herself to relive it, confront what she had allowed to happen.
I do not love him. She did not even know if she had spoken aloud. Nor did she care. Perhaps it had been inevitable, and yet she would never have believed it of herself. She had become used to it, the stares, the hints, the lingering grip on her hand.
She was stronger than any of it. She believed.
She thought of Adam, out there in the flagship, doubtless fretting over his lost freedom as a frigate captain. As Richard had done, and had shared it with her.
How would Adam take it when he heard about Bethune, and their liaison?
She was on her feet, the tiles cool to her bare soles. II was not like that. She picked up the ring from the table, so brilliant even in this shadowed room, rubies and diamonds. She could remember the little church in Cornwall where Richard had slipped it on to her finger. All so clear despite the years, and the pain in between. Where Valentine Keen had married Zenoria. She could still hear his voice. In the eyes of God, we are married. And that other memory, of Adam's despair as he had watched Zenoria, whom he had loved, become the wife of another man.
Adam's heart had been broken; he more than any one would understand what had happened here, within a mile of that other, grander house where she had seen Richard's ship coming to anchor, when they had been reunited against all odds.
She had even pulled off this ring before Graham Bethune had arrived. Shame? Guilt? I do not love him.
She knew it was impossible. It would ruin Bethune. He was young for his Admiralty appointment, and she knew enough about the navy to realize what envy might create. His wife would do the rest, and destroy him.
She looked at herself in a tall glass. Heard herself say, but I'm not young any more, not just a girl who wanted to love and be loved. Even in the dim light she could see the mark on her shoulder, where he had pressed against her, and she had given in. Her eyes flashed. Willingly…
A door opened slightly; it was Marquita.
'You rang the bell, m' lady?'
Catherine had already forgotten.
'I want you to take this letter to Mr. Jacob down by the jetty.' She waited for the girl to hold it. 'Give it to nobody else, Marquita. You understand?'
Marquita nodded slowly. 'Mister Jacob, m' lady.' She looked around. 'You not eaten?'
Catherine put her arm around the girl's slender shoulders. 'Tell Cook to go home. I shall not need anything.'
She clasped her shoulder, taken off guard, as the noon gun crashed out across the harbour.
'Big trouble, m' lady?' The girl's eyes were studying her anxiously. Both her mother and father had been slaves. It reminded her of Sillitoe, and Bethune's warning. Sillitoe, the man of power, feared by almost every one, who had cherished and protected her ever since that hideous night in Chelsea. Who had never touched her. She would not desert him now.
Perhaps when they returned to England… But the picture refused to form.
All she could see was the door of that Chelsea house, and what some one had carved on it. Whore!
She called out, but the room was empty.
13. The Only Ally
After the oppressive heat in the harbour the commodore's headquarters seemed cool by comparison within its thick, white-painted walls, with commanding views across the anchorage and main channel, and out toward the hazy blue horizon. There were old cannon along the bastion, probably Spanish, a hundred years old or more, with Commodore Swinburne's broad pendant hanging limply overhead.
As the gig had pulled out from beneath Athena's great shadow, Adam had felt the sun on his shoulder like something physical. He had seen Stirling on the forecastle, watching while the second anchor was swayed out to its cathead, ready to let go without a moment's notice if a storm should break over the island.
Fraser the sailing master had said cautiously, 'Glass is steady enough, sir. But out here… you know how it is.'
Troubridge had accompanied him, pleased, Adam thought, to get away from Bethune and his mounting impatience.
The gig had passed abeam of the captured barque, and it was hard to believe she had ever been raked by Lotus's broadside; the dockyard workers had patched and painted over most of the damage. Adam felt there was hardly a piece of the Villa de Bilbao he had not examined. The metal bars to keep the slaves secure, and long
