She said quietly, "I have always loved roses. When you took me to see your sister's garden I knew we should have more of them."
He caressed her shoulder, still barely able to believe that he was here, that he had come ashore only an hour ago. All the weeks and the months remembering their time together, her courage and endurance before and after the loss of the Golden Plover, when he himself had doubted that they would survive the misery and suffering of an open boat, with the sharks never far away,
A small housemaid hurried past with some linen and looked at Bolitho with astonishment.
"Why, welcome home, Sir Richard! Tes a real joy to see you! "
He smiled. "I relish being here, my girl." He saw the servant dart a quick glance at Catherine who was still wearing the old coat, and the riding skirt splashed with dew and marked by the dust of the cliff track.
He asked quietly, "Have they treated you well, Kate?"
"They have been more than kind. Bryan Ferguson has been a tower of strength."
"He told me just now when you were sending for coffee that you have put him to shame in the estate office." He squeezed her. "I am so proud of you."
She looked across the sloping garden to the low wall and beyond, where the sea's edge shone above the hillside like water in a dam.
"The letters that were waiting for you…" She faced him, her fine eyes suddenly anxious. "Richard there will be time for us?"
He said, "They will not even know I am back until Adam sends his despatch on the telegraph from Portsmouth. But nothing has been explained about my recall nor will it be, I suspect, until I visit the Admiralty."
He searched her face, trying to dispel her fear that they would soon be parted like the last time. "One thing is certain: Lord Godschale has quit the Admiralty. We shall doubtless have an explanation for that before long! "
She seemed satisfied, and with her hand through his arm they walked out into the garden. It was very hot, and the wind seemed to have fallen away to a mere breeze. He wondered if Adam would be able to claw his way out of the harbour.
He asked, "What news of Miles Vincent? You wrote to me that he had been pressed by the Ipswich."
She frowned. "Roxby wrote to the port admiral when he discovered what had happened. The admiral was going to send a despatch to Ipswich 's captain to explain the mistake…" She looked at him with surprise as Bolitho said, "Being pressed into the service he abused with his cruelty and arrogance might do him good! That petty little tyrant needs a lesson, and feeling the justice of the lower deck instead of the gunroom might reap some reward, but I doubt it! "
She paused to shade her eyes. "I am sorry Adam could not accompany you here."
The mood left her and she twisted round in his arms and gave him her radiant smile.
"But I lie! I wanted to share you with no one. Oh, dearest of men you came as I knew you would, and you look so well! "
They walked on in silence until she asked quietly, "How is your eye?"
He tried to dismiss it. "Nothing changes, Kate. And sometimes it reminds me of everything we have done… that we are so much luckier than those brave ones who will never know a woman's embrace, or smell a new dawn in the hills of Cornwall."
"I hear people in the yard, Richard." Her sudden frown faded as she heard Allday's deep laugh.
Bolitho smiled. "My oak. He stayed behind with Yovell to supervise the landing of some chests, and that splendid wine cooler you gave to me. I would not lose it like the other one." He spoke calmly but his eyes were faraway.
"It was a brave fight, Kate. We lost some good men that day." Again the tired shrug. "But for Captain Rathcullen's initiative I fear things would have gone very much against us."
She nodded, remembering the intensity on young Stephen Jenour's face when he had visited her, as Richard had requested he should.
"And Thomas Herrick failed you again, in spite of all the danger, and what you had once been to one another…"
He stared at the sea and felt his left eye smart slightly. "Yes.
But we won, and now they say that but for our victory our main forces would have had to fall back from Martinique."
"But for you, Richard! You must never forget what you have done for your navy, your country."
He lowered his head and gently kissed her neck. "My tiger."
"Be certain of it! "
Ferguson 's wife Grace, the housekeeper, came out to them and stood beaming with a tray of coffee. "I believed you would like it out here, m'lady."
She said, "Yes, that was thoughtful. The house seems extra busy today."
She reached out suddenly and gripped his hand. "Too many people, Richard. Demanding to see you, to ask for things, to wish you well. It is difficult to be alone even in our own house." Then she looked at him, a pulse beating quickly in her neck. "I have ached for you, wanted you in every way you dare to use me." She shook her head so that some of her loosely pinned hair fell across her face. "Is that so wicked?"
He took her hand tightly. "There is a small cove."
She raised her eyes to his.
"Our special place?" She studied him until her breathing became steadier. "Now?"
Ferguson found his wife by the stone table in the garden. She was looking at the coffee, which was untouched.
He said, "I heard horses…" He saw her expression and sat down at the table. "Pity to waste it." He reached out with his one arm and squeezed his wife's waist. It was hard to remember her as the thin, sickly girl she had been when Bolitho's press gang had caught him and Allday with some others.
"They've gone to find one another again." She touched his hair, her thoughts, like his, drifting, remembering.
Even down in the town they looked at her ladyship differently now. Once she had been the whore Sir Richard Bolitho had abandoned his wife for, who would turn any man's head with her beauty and her proud defiance. There would always be dislike and contempt from some, but the awe at what she had done and endured aboard the ill-fated Golden Plover and the squalor and the fight for survival she had shared with the others in that open boat had changed almost everything.
It was said that she had cut down one of the mutineers with her own Spanish comb when Bolitho's plan to retake the vessel had misfired.
Some women had tried to imagine what it would be like to share a small boat with the good and the bad, the desperate and the lustful when everything else seemed lost. The men watched her pass and imagined themselves alone with the vice-admiral's woman.
Grace Ferguson came out of her dreaming with a start. "It'll be lamb for tonight, Bryan." She was in charge once more. "And some of that Frenchie wine they both seem to like."
He looked at her with amusement. " Champagne, they call it, my dear."
As she made to hurry away to begin her preparations she paused and hugged him.
"I'll tell you one thing. They can be no happier than we've been in spite of all th' devils that plagued us!"
Ferguson stared after her. Even now, she could still surprise him.
2. A Very Honourable Man
Bryan Ferguson reined his little trap to a halt and watched his friend as he stared down the lane towards the inn. The Stag's Head was pleasantly situated in the tiny hamlet of Fallowfield on the Helford River. It was almost dusk, but on this balmy June evening he could still see the glint of a stretch of the river through a rank of tall trees, and the air was alive with late birdsong and the buzz of insects.
John Allday was wearing his best blue jacket with the special gilt buttons Bolitho had given him. Each button bore the Bolitho crest, and Allday had been bursting with pride at the gesture: one of the family, as he had described himself many times.