One evening she and Sillitoe had supped alone, the other passengers apparently too sickened by Biscay. Even her new companion and maid, Melwyn, had crept quietly into her cot.
While they had sat listening to the sea against the hull and the muffled voices of men on deck, Sillitoe had said, "I fear you cannot remain in Malta for long. When this ship returns from Naples, you must leave with her." He had given that fleeting, wry smile again. "With me. Nobody may question my arrangements; you have no such protection. In Malta 's society, there would be talk of scandal. It could harm Sir Richard." He had looked at her very directly. "I can always offer that defence against envy and hypocrisy, things you know only too well. I can sometimes turn such hostility aside, and use it to advantage."
Not once had he mentioned Oliphant and his attempt to rape her.
She had spoken to only a few of the other passengers, but had enjoyed her daily conversations with the captain, a bluff and very experienced officer who had once served in the navy as a lieutenant. He seemed much older than the captains she had met through Richard: boys who became men in the aftermath of battle.
And there was a master's mate, whom she had seen watching her when she had been walking on the poop. Not unlike Allday, a true man of the sea; like so many sailors he had been almost too shy to speak to her.
He had served with Richard in a frigate named Tempest, and it had been like sharing a fragment of his past. Richard had told her of the ship and her cruise in the Great South Sea, when he had almost died of fever, and Valentine Keen's first love, a Tahitian girl, had fallen to the same fate.
The man had fumbled with his belt and had said, "We'm all that pleased to 'ave you aboard with us, m'lady. There's many o' th' lads who've served with Sir Richard Bolitho or knows all about him." Then he had grinned, the shyness suddenly gone. "We'll ne'er see his like again!"
She could almost hear Allday say. An' that's no error.
She could think of nothing but seeing him again: the reality of leaving so soon afterwards must not spoil it. She had agreed, they were Sillitoe's terms for this privileged passage. She had learned from one of the officers that Saladin would not have been calling at Malta but for Sillitoe's instruction. Powerful indeed…… Almost hesitantly, she thrust her arm outside the cloak and studied her wrist in the hard light. The marks were still there, like the memory of the cord tightening around her arms.
If he knew, or sensed in some way… We have no secrets. It was easy enough to say.
And she remembered Sillitoe's last words at their undisturbed supper, while the sea and the wind had boomed around them, but she had felt no fear.
He had said quietly, "I am a willing party to this, and you must be sensible of my feelings for you. But I am curious to know what drives you… what carries you in the face of everything? Sir Richard is as safe as any flag officer can be. He has a good ship, to all accounts, and a reliable squadron. Not what he has been used to. So I have to ask myself, why?"
She had answered simply, without pausing to consider it.
"Because he needs me."
Richard Bolitho stepped into Frobisher's sick-bay and hesitated, unprepared for the brightness of its interior, the white-painted bulkhead and partitions, and the shelves of bottles and jars which rattled occasionally in time with the ship's motion. A world completely apart from the rest of the ship; Lefroy's domain. It was said that he even slept down here, rather than use one of the wardroom cabins, which, built as they were only of screens, could be torn down whenever the ship cleared for action. They were only temporary; here on the orlop deck, below the waterline, a place which had never seen the light of day since Frobisher had been built at Lorient, there was an air of permanence. On deck, in that other world, which he understood, Bolitho knew the hour was close to noon, the sky almost empty of cloud. In the sick-bay, time had no measure.
Lefroy was regarding him thoughtfully, more like a country parson than ever in the curious white smock he favoured when working among the wounded.
He said, "Another has died. Sir Richard." He sighed. Two amputations. A strong man, but……" He shrugged, almost apologetically. "Miracles are hard to come by."
"Yes. Captain Tyacke told me. Fifteen killed in all. Too many."
Lefroy heard the bitterness, and wondered at it. But he said, "His name was Quintin."
"I know. He was a Manxman. I spoke with him one night when it was his trick at the wheel." He repeated, "Too many."
He glanced at the spiralling lanterns, and said, "It's no better."
Lefroy gestured to a chair. "It was most unfortunate that the musket was discharged so close to your face. It could only aggravate the original injury."
Bolitho sat and leaned back in the chair. "I would be dead but for that Royal Marine's aim, my friend!"
Lefroy was wiping his hands, but thinking of the hours which had followed the fanatical attack on the flagship. He had only served under one admiral before, and could not have imagined him visiting the orlop as Bolitho had done, to talk with the wounded, or to take a hand in a strong clasp, and watch the life ebb from a man's face.
"I shall try this patch again." The steely fingers adjusted a patch and placed it firmly over Bolitho's uninjured eye. The fingers again. Probing, stinging, another kind of ointment. He felt the heat of a lamp, so close that he could smell the wick. His eyelid was held, the eye wide open, while Lefroy said, "Look right. Look left. Up. Down."
He tried not to clench his fists, to contain the rising fear. What he had known from the beginning, when he had been unable to see the sergeant who had been right beside him. What he had been unable to accept.
Lefroy said. "Anything?" He bit his lip as Bolitho shook his head.
"Nothing. Not a glimmer."
Lefroy replaced the lantern. He had held it very close, so there could be no deception.
He untied the patch and turned away from the chair.
Bolitho looked around him. Everything the same as before; everything completely different.
He said quietly, "As you said, miracles are hard to come by."
Lefroy said, "Yes," and watched Bolitho stand again, the casual way he adjusted his coat, then touched his hip as if he expected to find his sword still there. A remarkable man, one who had been wounded several times in the service of his King and country, although he somehow doubted if the admiral would regard it in that light.
"I shall prepare something for it, Sir Richard. It should afford you no discomfort."
Bolitho glanced at his reflection in a hanging mirror. How could it be? The same face, the same eyes, the same lock of hair which hid the deep scar there.
He thought of Catherine, that night in Antigua when he had found her again. When he had stumbled in a shaft of light. Now he would not stumble; there was nothing to deceive him.
"When we return to Malta, Sir Richard… He was caught off guard as Bolitho answered, Tomorrow morning, early, if Mr. Tregidgo can be believed."
"I was going to suggest that you might visit a local doctor. I am no expert in this field."
Bolitho touched his arm and reached for the door. "See to the wounded.
I shall be all right."
On the quarterdeck once more, he stood for a few minutes staring at the dark blue water, the spray leaping over the beak head with a movement like flying fish.
Tyacke had been waiting for him, but Bolitho knew he would never admit it.
"All well, sir?"
Bolitho smiled at him, warmed by his concern. A man who had suffered so much, and had never been allowed to forget it; who had almost broken when the woman he had loved had turned away. And all I think about is what Catherine will see when she looks at me again.