Ramage's Devil

'I feel dirty from the top of my head to the tips of my toes,' she said, hanging her coat on a hook and beginning to unbutton her dress.

Ramage sank back on the bed, wishing there was an armchair. 'I am weary too. So I shall sit here and watch you undress and then watch you wash yourself from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. It is one of the greatest joys of being your husband. I'm sorry I'm too weary to undress you.'

She slid the dress down and stepped out of it as once again Ramage marvelled at how natural and beautiful she looked in the coarse underwear lent her by Louis' wife. Next she undid the white ribbon - carefully-sewn strips of linen, in fact - of the shift, which was like a long apron, and unwound it.

She smiled at him and watched his eyes as she unbuttoned the bodice and slowly took it off, revealing her breasts in a movement which stopped Ramage's breath for several moments. The breasts seemed to have a life of their own; the nipples, high and large, were dark, like seductive eyes.

Still looking at him, she slid down the frilled knickers and stood naked without embarrassment. Standing naked before your husband for his inspection, she seemed to be saying, was the natural end to a day's journey into the enemy's camp.

'You approve?'

She knew he did but wanted reassuring.

'The left breast... is it not a fraction lower than the right?'

A look of alarm spread across her face as she hurried to the dressing table. The large looking glass originally fitting into the frame was missing and the only one available was the small handheld glass from her travelling bag.

She held it at arm's length, twisting and turning, peering first at one breast and then the other. Then she held the glass to the side, trying to line up the nipples. Finally she put the mirror down in exasperation.

'I can't see them properly!'

Hard put to keep a straight face, Ramage said: 'As you walked, it seemed to me it is actually the right one that's lower. Come over here and let me take a look.'

Then she realized he was teasing. 'Are you too tired to undress yourself?' she whispered.

Ramage nodded. 'I shall have to rely on my wife.'

Gilbert went into Brest the next day to make arrangements with Auguste and returned to say that both the fisherman and his brother would be ready and had begun collecting weapons. So far they had six pistols and shot, two blunderbusses, three heavy daggers, a cavalry sabre and two cutlasses. When Ramage marvelled at such a collection, Gilbert had grinned. The authorities in Paris lacked popularity in Brittany, he said, so that when a drunken soldier flopped asleep into a ditch or a cavalryman riding alone was thrown from his horse and found unconscious, they were usually returned to their barracks alive but always unarmed. Occasional raids on armouries, sudden and unexpected affairs, meant that many of those not entirely in favour of the First Consul's régime had weapons hidden among the beams of old barns or concealed in sacks of grain.

On the second day, while Ramage and Sarah roamed through the great house admiring the architecture and feeling guilty at envying Jean-Jacques because of his present situation, Louis went into Brest. There was no need to take unnecessary risks and arouse suspicions, Ramage had decided, and Louis and his wife passing through the barrières once a week would seem normal enough while Gilbert passing along the road alone in the gig once a day might start a gendarme asking questions.

Many of the rooms of the château were completely bare, stripped by looter's of furniture, carpets, hangings, curtains, and occasionally complete doors. Damaged ceilings showed where chandeliers had been torn down; some staircases lacked banisters.

Yet the house, although almost empty, maintained its dignity. It had none of the delicacy and fine tracery, carefully balanced winds and imposing approaches of many of the châteaux of the Loire and Dordogne. It was four-square, and not concealing its origins - a defended home of the counts of Rennes. The battlements of thick stone were crenellated so that men with crossbows and later muskets could hide behind them and fire down on attackers; the enormous (and original) front door, studded with iron bolts that would blunt and deflect an attacker's axe, was so massive that a much smaller door had been built more recently to one side.

Ramage was staring out of a window, one of scores and now grimy, with paint lifting from the frame in a discreet warning that rot was at work beneath, when Sarah took his arm and said quietly: 'Where are you now?'

He gave a start, and then smiled without turning. 'I was thinking that it's the top of the springs tonight.'

She sighed and shook her head. 'Springs and neaps - I know they're something to do with the moon and the tide, but...'

'A sailor's wife and you don't understand the tides!'

'A sailor's wife who admits she doesn't understand, and expects her all-wise and adoring husband to explain.'

'The sun and the moon both pull the sea. When they are in line, both on one side of the earth or on opposite sides, they pull most and that's when we get the highest high tides, and the lowest low. They are called spring tides. They coincide with the new moon (the moon on the same side of the earth as the sun) and the full (when on the opposite side). When the sun or moon are at right-angles to each other in relation to the earth their pull is weakest and we get the smaller tides which are weaker and called neaps. So the springs are the highest and strongest around new and full moon, and the neaps are the smallest and weakest at first and third quarters.'

'Nothing to do with the seasons then - spring, summer and so on?'

'Nothing at all. It is a full moon tonight so there are spring tides. The highest in terms of sea level but also the strongest in terms of current. When the tide starts to ebb, it will flow out very strongly through the Gullet.'

'And that is important?'

'It would be if you were fishing from a small boat. Why, if you lost an oar you could drift to America!'

'Make sure you take plenty of bait,' she said. 'Am I such a stupid woman that I can't be told what you are planning?'

'I'd tell you if I knew. I'd talk it over if I thought you could help me get an idea. The fact is that L'Espoir sails for Cayenne with Jean-Jacques today or tomorrow and here I am, walking through his empty house, helpless and hopeless.'

'My dear, how can you expect to rescue one man from a frigate?'

Ramage shrugged. 'My men in the Kathleen, the Triton and the Calypso in the past did what people reckoned impossible, and we did it only because to others it was impossible.'

'But your men - the splendid Southwick, and Aitken, Jackson and Stafford: dozens of them - are all in Chatham on board the Calypso. You are' - she gave a wry smile - 'in France on your honeymoon, hunted by the French.'

'Not all the French; only Bonaparte's men.'

'About one in ten thousand are not Bonaparte's men. You won't collect a very big army in Brittany to overthrow him.'

'No,' he admitted. 'But I need very few. I agree we can't save Jean-Jacques, so we have to save ourselves: you and me, Gilbert and Louis (and his wife if she wants to come) and now Auguste and his brother. Five men and one, perhaps two women.'

'We are a long way from England. There always seems to be bad weather in the entrance to the Channel. Why don't we travel overland towards Calais? We'd have only twenty miles or so to row or sail to England, compared with - what, a hundred and fifty to Plymouth?'

Ramage turned and pulled her towards him, and kissed her gently. 'My dear, you are right in one respect: it is a much shorter sea crossing from Calais. But that's what makes it dangerous. The French expect escapers to try to cross there. Every rowing boat is chained up at night. There are big rewards offered - big enough to overcome most scruples. Brest is so far away from England that the French are more casual in the way they guard boats.'