'You still haven't explained 'may' - and there's a strange look on your face!'
He sighed and turned back to look at her. 'Well, you know my views on this peace treaty we've signed with Bonaparte, and that neither my father nor I - nor most of our friends - believe Bonaparte truly wants peace. As a result of the Treaty, he's already had more than a year to restock his arsenals and from the Baltic get supplies of mast timber and cordage which we had cut off for years by blockading places like Brest. So now he's busy refitting his fleet: new sails, masts, yards. New ships, too. Now - or very soon - he'll be ready to start the war again.'
'Yet all the French we've met in the past weeks seem happy with the peace,' Sarah protested.
'We've only talked to two types - innkeepers, who smile readily enough as they take our money, and the monarchists who've returned to France from exile and have been trying to get back some of their possessions. They have to believe that Bonaparte really wants a permanent peace; otherwise they're admitting to themselves that they'll soon be exiles in England once again - only this time probably for the rest of their lives.'
'You keep on saying Bonaparte will start the war again, my darling, but what proof is there? After all, the ministers in London aren't fools!'
'Aren't they? Have you met Addington or any of his Cabinet? And Lord Whitworth, the British minister in Paris, can't have looked out of the Embassy window - or else they're ignoring his dispatches in London.'
'The British government might be stupid and the French innkeepers greedy, but that hardly proves Bonaparte is going to war again!'
'Perhaps not, but we'll know for sure when we ride back through the port of Brest. Will the sight of men o' war being refitted in large numbers convince you?'
'Nicholas, why did you propose Brittany for the last part of our honeymoon?' she asked suspiciously.
'Don't you like it?' He was suddenly anxious, the picture of a nervous bridegroom anxious for his bride's comfort. 'The weather is fine. Not much choice of food, I admit, but the inns are not full of our countrymen - they go directly to Paris!'
'You haven't answered my question!'
Her eyes, green flecked with gold, were not angry; they did not warn that she felt cheated or duped. It was obvious she would accept it if he gave the real reason. Only evasions or half-truths would upset her, although good food was rarely spoiled by being served on fine china. He leaned over and kissed her. 'I have another wife,' he confessed solemnly. 'I married you bigamously.'
She undid the top two buttons of her dress, recently collected from a French dressmaker using materials Sarah had brought with her from England. 'The sun has some warmth in it, if you wait long enough, but not enough to tan. Yes,' she said matter of factly, 'I knew about that when you first proposed. Anyway, your mother warned me. In fact she used almost the same words. She said what a shock it had been for her as a new bride when she realized that her husband had another wife. She was very relieved that I already knew about you and your first bride, the Navy.'
'Well, we met under unusual circumstances.'
She blushed as he reached over and undid the next two buttons of her dress, pulling back the soft material so that he could see her breasts.
'Bonaparte has done one thing for us - the French fashions help lovers,' he said, and kissed a nipple, touching it with his tongue so it stiffened.
It was strange, she reflected, that you held your husband naked in bed; you even walked round the bedroom naked in front of him, and it all seemed quite natural. Yet out here in the sunshine, lying on the grass with bare breasts, she felt shy, as though this was the first time that Nicholas had unfastened a button. But how right he was about French fashions! Unlike in London, bare arms in the drawing rooms were commonplace here and very few French women of fashion bothered with corsets, although those sensitive of their plumpness wore narrow stays. And the flimsy materials! Often they were almost transparent, and most respectable women wore petticoats, but she had seen several women who passed for respectable wearing dresses that revealed their whole body when they stood against the light, and it was quite extraordinary how often they found themselves in front of a window. Still, anything was welcome that freed women from the constriction of corsets: why should women have to live as though squeezed in a wine press for the sake of fashion? Nevertheless, she pictured some women she knew and imagined them freed of corsets: it would be like slitting the side of a sack of corn!
She felt her breasts hardening as he pretended to inspect her nipples for the first time, commenting on their colour and size. Did he really like large nipples?
'Very well,' she said, concentrating with great effort, 'so the Navy is your first wife and you are honeymooning in Brittany with your second on secret business. What business?'
'It's no secret,' he protested. 'Our passeports are in order: the French authorities admitted us - welcomed, almost - to the country, enchanted that we are on our honeymoon, so if I happen to be able to count up the number and type of ships being fitted out in Brest, and perhaps La Rochelle and L'Orient... well, that would be only the natural curiosity of a couple interested in ships and the sea. After all, you have only just completed a voyage to India and back, and you love looking at ships - don't you?'
'Of course, dearest,' she said with a smile. 'And having closely inspected my breasts, taken my virginity, counted the ships and returned to London at the end of your honeymoon, what do you report to whom - and why? Surely the Admiralty must know what is going on in the French ports?'
'If not what happens on nearby clifftops. No, the Admiralty as such is not the problem. The man who seems to be completely hoodwinked by Bonaparte is the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord St Vincent. He's laying up ships of the line and frigates. That in itself doesn't matter so much because they could be commissioned again in a few weeks, but he's letting go all the prime seamen: they are being turned loose and are just disappearing like chaff in the wind, looking for work. You can commission all the ships again in a month and get them to sea - providing you have the seamen.'
'But, dearest, surely an admiral like Lord St Vincent realizes all that?'
'Of course he realizes he needs trained seamen to commission ships and get them to sea. His mistake is he doesn't believe we need the ships. He doesn't think we'll be at war again with Bonaparte for another five years.'
'Five years? Why not seven, or nine - or three?'
'He's attempting a complete overhaul of all the dockyards - to get rid of the theft, corruption and inefficiency which ranges from commissioners at the top to workmen at the bottom. It will take at least five years.'
'So, my dear, do you think your honeymoon in Brittany will result in Lord St Vincent changing his mind and not paying off any more ships?'
The whimsical note in her voice took the sting out of the question, and he frowned as he answered. It was a fair question and hard to answer satisfactorily. 'It's almost too late to stop him paying off ships: most are already laid up. No sooner had we arrived home in the Calypso than (as you well know) I had orders to go on round to Chatham and lay her up. That means all those men I've been collecting together for years, from the time of my first command, the Kathleen in the Mediterranean, will be turned out of the Navy the moment the Calypso is laid up.'
'And the commission and warrant officers - Southwick, Aitken and the others, yes and young Paolo - what happens to them?'
'Well, they'll join another ship if they can find a berth, but hundreds of lieutenants and masters will be after a few dozen jobs. Paolo should find another ship because my father has enough influence to arrange a midshipman's berth. There's virtually no limit on the number a ship can carry: it depends on the captain.'
She sat upright to avoid the sun dazzling her and wondered if it could possibly tan her bosom a little. Her nipples were so large and brown. Did Nicholas prefer small pink ones, she wondered again. He seemed more than satisfied with them as they were, although she realized new husbands were unlikely to be critical.
'So you lose everyone once the ship is laid up again,' she commented. 'Supposing a month later - a month after you are back in London - the Admiralty commissions the Calypso again and gives you command?'
'I can ask for the officers, and for Southwick, and if they're not employed I'd probably get them. But the men - not one, unless they heard about it and volunteered, because they'd be scattered across the country, or perhaps serving in merchant ships.'
'And if the war started again?'
'I still wouldn't get them back. They'd volunteer or be pressed and be sent to whichever ship needed men most urgently. I'd have to start all over again. My name is well enough known that volunteers would join, hoping for prize money. But - well, you saw that I knew just about everything concerning every man in the Calypso.'
'Yes, you seemed to be father confessor to men twice your age. Anyway, at least we're not at war,' she said and touched his arm. 'At least you're not away at sea and I'm not sick with worry in case you have been wounded. Killed even.'
'That's a cheerful thought for a summer's afternoon!' he protested.
'Every time I hold you in bed, I feel a scar,' she retorted. 'Like knots in a log. You've been lucky so far, the shot or sword cuts have not damaged anything vital. Why, you've done more than enough already to be able to resign your commission and just run the St Kew estate.'
'My mother has been talking to you!'
'Not really. She would like you to, and so would your father.'
'He has no faith in the Admiralty or politicians.'
'That's hardly surprising, considering what they did to him. If they hadn't made him the scapegoat so many years ago, he would probably have been First Lord now, not St Vincent.'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'Perhaps - but I wouldn't have done so well.'
'Why on earth not?'
'He would have been so determined that no one should accuse him of favouring his son that I'd probably still be a lieutenant commanding a cutter, probably on the fishery patrol off Newfoundland.'
'So although you might complain about Lord St Vincent's policies, you've done well enough, thanks to him.' Sarah was unsure why she was sticking up for St Vincent, who had always seemed taciturn, almost boorish, when she had met him.
'Thanks to his predecessor, Lord Spencer. He gave me my first chances in the early days - the chance to win my spurs, as it were.'
'So you have a honeymoon task - to get enough information to persuade the First Lord and the Cabinet to change the country's policy towards Bonaparte!'
'Not quite,' he said wryly. 'Just to convince the First Lord to keep enough ships in commission. I - we, rather - don't want war; we just want to be ready because we think it is coming.'
She buttoned up her dress. 'Come on, let's get on our way. War may be coming, but it's certain we have only a few weeks of our honeymoon left and Jean- Jacques expects us for an early supper.'
Sarah riding side-saddle brought a stop to the daily life in each village: women stood at the doors of their houses or shops, or came down the paths to the gates in response to cries from their children.
'We're probably the first foreigners they've seen since before the Revolution,' Ramage commented, keeping a tight rein on his horse, which was nervous at the
