Ramage and the Renegades

She smiled with her eyes. 'We are making progress from our first meeting!'

Quite involuntarily Ramage glanced down at her bosom: the scene of the first meeting, he thought to himself, is now modestly covered. He looked up to find her blushing slightly. Her eyes flickered down to his left hand, as though she had momentarily lost control of them, and he knew she was thinking the same, and the memory was not as displeasing as it might have been.

Stafford came round with a napkin-covered basket of hot rolls. 'Bit 'ard, sir and madam,' he apologized, 'but they're yesterday's bake, 'otted up. No time to make fresh this morning.'

'Thank you, Stafford,' she said with a smile that made Ramage feel unreasonably jealous of the Cockney, who went on to the other tables.

'You know Stafford?'

'Oh yes - remember, we were all slaving away in the galley: Jackson, Rossi and Stafford. They're very proud of themselves, too.'

'Oh? In what way?'

'They were boasting that they had served with you longer than any of the others in the Calypso. They were telling Mrs Donaldson and me how they helped you rescue Midshipman Orsini's - is she his aunt, the Marchesa di Volterra?'

'Yes, aunt,' he said, his voice as neutral as he could manage.

'I had the impression she was much younger. And very beautiful.'

'She is young. Only a few years older than Paolo.'

'And he is her heir?'

'At present, yes.'

'You mean, if she doesn't marry and have a son of her own.'

'Yes,' he said. 'A son or daughter. If she dies childless.'

'Is that likely?'

'She left England recently to return to Volterra, so I don't know what she's doing.'

'Travelling through France? Isn't that dangerous? I wouldn't have thought Bonaparte...'

'We tried to warn her.'

'But noblesse oblige.' It was a comment, an acknowledgement rather than a judgement.

'Noblesse hardly obliges you to put your head in a noose,' he said sourly.

'Perhaps the Marchesa knows her own people best.'

'No, she has yet to learn Non ogni giorno e festa.'

'My Italian is sketchy but from Latin, "Not every day is a festa"?'

'Yes, now try, Non ogni fiore fa buon odore.'

'Hmm . . . "Not every flower makes a good odour"?'

' "Not every flower smells sweet" - yes, it's impossible to make direct translations, but she trusts Bonaparte's treaty.'

'Your Italian sounds fluent.'

Was she changing the subject from Gianna? 'It should be: I was brought up there as a child.'

'And you love the country.'

'Yes, that helps, too. But my French and Spanish are good enough, although at the moment they are not my favourite peoples.'

A sudden smell of hot food made him turn, and he saw his three seamen placing covered dishes on the sideboard. Jackson came over and whispered to Ramage, who spoke to Sarah. She nodded. 'We always do help ourselves. It all smells delicious.'

Rossi came up the companionway to the halfdeck holding several shirts in one hand. He saluted Ramage and said: 'For the "guards", sir. I took the brightest the prisoners were wearing, so they'll be seen from the Lynx.'

Ramage gestured to the five Calypsos who would be pretending to be guards while exercising the hostages, 'I hope they're watching from the Lynx, so that your acting won't be wasted. And by the way: you are supposed to beprivateersmen. Don't hit any of the "hostages" but don't behave in a friendly fashion either. Keep two or three yards away from them.'

He tried to remember the wording of Bowen's report on the days he had spent watching the Earl of Dodsworth. Eight women walking the deck for half an hour, followed by eight men for half an hour. They used the after companionway. The guards had cutlasses and Bowen presumed pistols, though they were too far away for him to see.

The sun was high over the island now and beginning to heat up the deck. Ramage could see half a dozen tropic birds soaring over the northern headland and the shadows were shortening on the western side of the hills. The Earl of Dodsworth's decks had not been scrubbed for many days, and her captain would be shocked if he could see the stains where the guards had been swilling rum and spitting tobacco juice. He went down the companionway and called for the women to go on deck.

He could see that to an onlooker everything was normal in the Calypso: the two boats used by the surveyors were anchored off the beach and he had watched the men, tiny ants in the distance, start their long climb into the hills. The boat making the soundings was slowly crossing the bay, stopping every few yards for a man to heave the lead. The bosun would be commanding Martin and Paolo's boat today, dressed up in officer's breeches, coat and hat. Some time this morning the boat would, apparently by chance, pass close to the Earl of Dodsworth, in case there were messages to be passed.

Sarah was as good as her word, calling instructions to the Calypsos. 'One of you should spit over the side - well, not exactly spit. . . they delighted in trying to embarrass us.'

'Spurgeon,' Ramage called. 'Relieve yourself at the larboard entryport.'

'Well, sir... I... er, well, I don't think I can, sir, I just went a'fore the ladies...'

'Pretend,' Ramage growled.

After a few minutes, Sarah walked past where Ramage was waiting in the lee of the halfdeck. 'As soon as we spread out, the guards would get excited and make us bunch up together.'

Riley had heard her words and began shouting: 'Come on, you women! Keep together; this ain't a parade to church, yer know!'

'Perfect,' Sarah said. 'That's just the sort of thing they used to say.'

Jackson suddenly called urgently: 'There's a boat leaving the Lynx!'

It had to happen, Ramage thought bitterly, pulling off his uniform jacket. A man in a white shirt could be a guard because the bulwarks hid his breeches. He stared at the Lynx through the gunports, using a telescope he had found in the binnacle drawer. Four men at the oars, a couple of men sitting in the sternsheets. Not Tomás, nor Hart. Nor was the boat in any rush: whatever she was doing and wherever she was going, it was something routine. If she came to the Earl of Dodsworth ...

With the exception of the Marchioness, who was sitting in a chair right aft, the women were in a bunch, Sarah being closest to him. She had very quickly worked out a way of talking to him.

'Er, Captain...'

He turned, lowering the telescope.

'Yes, "Miss for now"?'

'Lady Sarah, actually, Captain...' Ramage recognized the querulous voice of Mrs Donaldson, a big-boned woman who was the wife of the owner of jute factories in Madras. 'Her father is a marquis, you know.'

'Forgive me, Lady Sarah,' Ramage said, and from the impatient shake of the head knew he had not added to his knowledge of her. As Lady Sarah she could be the unmarried daughter of the Marquis, but if she had married someone without a title, she would still be Lady Sarah. Only if she had married someone with a title of his own could she have become 'Lady Blank'. But. . . the devil take it, he could not even remember the Rockleys' family name!

'Is the boat coming here?' demanded Mrs Donaldson.

'To us or the Commerce. I can't tell yet because the Commerce is almost between us and the privateer.'

'The hostages in the Commerce - your men have not rescued them yet?'

'The Commerce has no passengers, as far as we can make out.'

'What happens if the boat comes here?'

'If the men come on board, then we have lost the game.'

'Why? How ridiculous! There can only be a dozen men in that boat!'

'Half a dozen,' he could not resist correcting her, particularly since the number had no relevance.

'Well, you have two dozen! You can easily capture them,' Mrs Donaldson declared. 'Why, we women could deal with them!'