But who was this man? Yorke was curious, but searching his memory he could not remember seeing her with any particularly outstanding married man. In the last two or three years, she had said. Well, he had not been away very often, so who the devil could it be? He knew of only one man he'd care to have as a brother-in- law. Anyway, he would have to go and make his peace with her.
She had been badly upset when she saw the Kingsnorth plantation and the old house as they had passed the northwestern corner of Barbados: she had wept when he told her what he could remember of Ned Yorke, their great-great-great-great-uncle, who had been driven from his estate by Cromwell's Roundheads, and she had wanted to know more - with what seemed to him to be a fierce longing - of the French woman who had escaped with him to become his wife and their distant aunt. That was the trouble, sailing the turbulent islands, be they British, French, Danish. Swedish or Dutch: there were too many Yorke family memories entwined in their violent history. In fact, what few people seemed to realize was that the history of the West Indies was simply the combined history of settler families, be they English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, French, Danish, Swedish . . . yes, and Spanish and Portuguese, of course; the other half of the coin, as it were.
At that moment the door of the saloon opened and Alexis, now dry-eyed, came in and said briefly: 'I'm sorry; I made a fool of myself.'
He wanted to ask her about the man, but he knew her too well: he was sure her tears were at least partly caused by vexation with herself for having said so much.
'Let's go up on deck,' he said. 'It's going to be a glorious sunset, and we can watch Nicholas chasing up anyone starting to dawdle.'
'His ship is so far astern it's impossible to see her - will she stay there the whole voyage?'
'No, probably not. The escorts usually shift about according to the wind direction. The Calypso will probably always stay to windward - as you can see, we have a quartering wind, but as it hauls round I expect you'll find the Calypso closer to us.'
'We might invite him to dinner - on a calm day, of course.'
'Indeed, we shall. And he'll invite us back, and you'll see what it's like for a young lady to be controlling her skirts while she's being hoisted on board one of the King's ships.'
'Hoisted? What, like a bullock, slung over a strop?'
'No, no! The Royal Navy are very polite where women are concerned. Instead of the strap under the belly they use for a bullock, they lower a small seat, like the one for a child's swing. You climb into it and settle your skirts and arrange a brave smile on your face, and they hoist you right up into the air out of the boat on to the deck, where - if you are beautiful or important enough - the captain and all the officers are waiting to salute you and kiss your hand. A glimpse of an ankle as you alight from the chair and they are your slaves for - well, until the next beautiful ankle comes on board, which is unlikely to be within the next five years if they're on a foreign station!'
'Why don't we have such a chair in the Emerald?'
'We probably have, but we usually have the gangway rigged. You'd sooner walk up a gangway, I know.'
She smiled. 'It depends on the naval officers,' she said.
A few moments later she asked: 'What shall we have for dinner?'
Yorke looked puzzled. 'When?'
'Oh wake up. Why, when we have Captain Ramage for dinner.'
'We'll have to invite some of his officers as well, so we'll kill a sheep.'
She had already produced a tiny notebook from a pocket in her dress. 'Whom shall we invite, apart from Captain Ramage?'
'For Heaven's sake call him Nicholas. It's embarrassing when you are so formal with my best friend!'
'But I've only just met him,' she protested. 'He's not my best friend!'
'If anything happened to me, you'd find he was,' Yorke said quietly.
'Well,' she said cheerfully, 'he's good company, so why not stay alive and let's all be friends. Now, who else are we inviting - that delightful Mr Southwick, for one.'
'And the nephew - Paolo Orsini. He is a nice lad and I know Nicholas is very fond of him.'
'He speaks excellent English. Who is he exactly? Is he really related to Captain Ramage - to Nicholas?'
'Dear me, that's a bit of a long story. Once upon a time,' he said, dropping his voice as though beginning a fairy story, 'there was a handsome young lieutenant in the Royal Navy who landed from an open boat on the coast of Tuscany and rescued a beautiful young marchesa from under the very feet of Bonaparte's cavalry.'
Alexis nodded. 'That sounds a very romantic story - but I'm sure it doesn't finish there, does it? All proper fairy stories have a happy ending.'
'We don't know yet if this one has: it's still happening. Anyway, Nicholas rescued her with some of his men, fellows like Jackson and Stafford, who came on board the other day with the lieutenant who brought a message.'
'Then what happened? Didn't I hear that she came back to England? I seem to remember her family were old friends of the Ramages - or perhaps her mother was.'
'Yes, her mother. The Marchesa is the ruler of Volterra, so you can see Bonaparte was angry that she slipped through his fingers.'
'Sidney, come on!' Alexis said firmly, 'you can't leave the story there.'
'Well, that's more or less all there is to it. Everyone thought Gianna and Nicholas would get married - until they realized the religious problems, she being Catholic.'
'Were they in love?' Alexis asked casually.
'Blessed if I know. He didn't talk about her much when we were together in that Post Office packet - yet she was waiting for him when we arrived in Lisbon.'
'But he eventually married someone else ...'
'Yes, very recently.'
'But why is the story of the Marchesa unfinished?'
'Well, it seems she was very anxious to get back to her people in Volterra. It's not a large country but as soon as Bonaparte signed the Treaty of Amiens she decided to go back.'
'She trusted that dreadful man?'
'Don't forget that most of the British government did, too. Addington and his half-witted friends thought they had pulled off a great coup, whereas they were falling into Bonaparte's trap. But with the Marchesa, I think it was a sense of duty.'
'Why didn't Captain Ramage dissuade her?'
Yorke stifled a smile: the 'Nicholas' quickly reverted to a formal 'Captain Ramage' when Alexis disapproved of something. 'He told me that he and his parents spent days trying to warn her that she might fall into the hands of Bonaparte's secret police.'
'Yet she went ...'
'Yes, and during the Peace the Admiralty sent Nicholas with the Calypso on a long surveying voyage down to Brazil, and there he met his wife.'
'She is Brazilian?'
'No,' Yorke explained patiently. 'I'm not sure of the details - damnation, I've only had time to speak to him a couple of times. Her ship was captured and he rescued her and her parents.'
'He seems to make a habit of rescuing beautiful damsels in distress.'
'Yes, doesn't he,' Yorke said, ignoring the sarcasm. 'Very lucky for the damsels, wouldn't you say? Saved the Marchesa from Bonaparte's assassins, and Sarah (that's his wife) from a crowd of half-breed pirates.'
'All right, all right,' she said, 'I was just being catty. If he wasn't married I'd sit on a rock and imitate a Siren ...'
'But the Sirens lured poor sailors to their doom,' Yorke protested.
'So they did,' Alexis said drily and with a straight face.
CHAPTER SIX
Shortly after dawn next morning Ramage stood at the forward end of the quarterdeck staring into the greyness, although his thoughts were several thousands of miles away. He heard the traditional hail from the lookouts on deck at six different positions round the ship, 'See a grey goose at a mile' - the signal for a couple of men to go aloft, one to the foremasthead and the other to the mainmast, and watch the horizon.
Because Admiral Clinton would be continuing a tight blockade of Brest, and there had been no frigate flying into Barbados with a warning that the French Mediterranean fleet had left Toulon and broken through the Gut into the Atlantic, the Royal Navy for the time being could take one thing for granted: that the chances were that any squadron or fleet of ships they sighted would be friendly, although single ships could be privateers.
Anyway, the Calypso's eyes could now see a good deal further and almost every minute, as the sun, although still hidden, came up the eastern side of the earth heading for the horizon, the circle of visibility widened. After spending a moonless night unable to see more than a couple of hundred yards (the advantage of a tropical night was the clarity of the stars, which made their own light) the lookouts would soon be able to see to the horizon; from a height of eye of one hundred feet, they could see a distance of ten miles, and a ship beyond that would be visible the moment the tips of her masts began to rise over the far side of the horizon.
The officer of the deck, the small and red-haired third lieutenant Kenton, whose heavily freckled face was continually peeling because of the sun, came up to Ramage and formally reported that the lookouts were aloft.
Kenton waited for the next step in the routine by which one of the King's ships greeted a new day at sea in wartime. At the moment, every one of the Calypso's 12-pounder guns and six carronades were ready to fire: the ship was at general quarters, the way every King's ship met the dawn at sea, ready to defend herself or attack.
Ramage took one last look round the horizon (almost a formality, since Kenton's telescope would have spotted even a distant gull perched on a bottle).
'Very well, stand down from general quarters.' Kenton saluted and then turned away, grasping the japanned speaking trumpet. The son of a half-pay captain, he
