"Well, as long as you have faith in your surgeon," Tewtin said grudgingly. "But I would be most distressed if the Prince of Wales .. . most distressed," he repeated, without elaborating.

Ramage thought of his men on board the prizes and then decided not to mention them. Southwick would be retrieving the men as soon as the prizes had been cleared by the quarantine authorities. It would be better to leave Rear-Admiral Tewtin to sleep on the thought that he had two extra frigates if he wanted them, and to reflect on why he should not delay a friend of the Prince of Wales.

"I have a number of other Royalists on board, sir," Ramage said and, noting the gleam in Tewtin's eye, hurriedly added: "They are very frightened that Bonaparte will take reprisals against their families in France, so they are very anxious that their names be kept secret. You will appreciate that they do not want to be invited to any receptions. In fact, I rather fear the Count will expect to hear our sailing date when I return on board."

"But you have to water and provision, surely?" Tewtin said. "And the prizes - buying them in: I have to have them surveyed and valued ... it all takes time."

"Indeed, sir," Ramage said soothingly, knowing that having Tewtin on board to meet the Count in a day or so would work wonders, it would give the admiral something to tell his wife about in his next letter home.

Tewtin suddenly snapped his fingers and shook his head, as though irritated with himself. "There's a letter for you from the Admiralty - from Lord St Vincent, I believe." He waved a hand at Newick. "Fetch it - you should have reminded me."

Again Ramage felt the strange chill. It was not a change in orders, telling him to take the Calypso or the Count to, say, Jamaica instead of England, because Their Lordships had no idea that Jean-Jacques had been rescued. There were (he finally forced himself to face the fact) no letters waiting for him from Sarah when he had expected a couple of dozen at least: she would have written every day, even if only writing letters like a diary, but she would have posted several. Lord St Vincent would certainly have sent a message telling her that a Post Office packet left for Barbados on regular dates and would carry any letters she had ready.

"Sir," Newick said, and Ramage realized he had been repeating the word several times as he held out a packet with the familiar Admiralty seal.

"Thank you," Ramage said automatically and picked up the canvas pouch. He dropped the packet into the pouch and took out his report of proceedings, handing it to Tewtin.

The rear-admiral saw it was a lengthy document and realized it was bound to take several pages to reduce to writing the story which Ramage had paraphrased.

"Very well, my boy, I will read this and we'll have the prizes surveyed and valued as soon as possible. You'll soon be on your way," he added jovially. "You to return to your new wife; the Count to call on the Prince of Wales. Although I haven't read your report yet, it does seem to me you have done an outstanding job. Off you go, then, and do assure the Count he would be very welcome and I will get passages for the other French Royalists in the next convoy for England."

The Queen's boat taking Ramage back to the Calypso seemed to go so slowly that to him the seamen might have been ancients rowing through molasses. He climbed on board, nodded to Aitken who, as first lieutenant, was waiting at the entryport to greet him, and went straight down to his cabin. The canvas pouch seemed to be weighing a hundredweight by now; Lord St Vincent's letter appeared in his imagination as a harbinger of some nameless evil he could not imagine.

He tossed the pouch on his desk and sat down at the chair. Steady, he told himself, it's only a packet. Probably just a private letter from St Vincent with a message for the Count from the Prince of Wales, or perhaps some advice on how to deal with it all (the Earl would have to assume that Ramage had been successful). And judging from the thickness of the packet, there were fresh orders, too. Nor would that be unusual. He had been sent across the Atlantic on the orders of Admiral Clinton, commanding the Channel Fleet, but it had all been a highly irregular proceeding because of the emergency. With the Prince of Wales now involved, it would be quite normal for the Admiralty to take control again. Which is what the letter must be about. And, he asked himself, what was he getting so depressed about? Just break the seal and read the stylized wording, hallowed by tradition ... He reached for the paper-knife and slid it under the seal. Slowly he unfolded the cover. Inside was one sealed letter marked "Personal and Private", and another which was clearly orders.

"My dear Ramage," the letter began (a glance at the signature showed it was from the First Lord), "regard this letter as relaying a rumour, not necessarily fact, but I feel it my duty to keep you informed about such a delicate matter. As you know. Admiral Clinton sent back to England the Murex brig which you so skilfully cut out of Brest, and she was bringing home Lady Ramage and the former captain of the Calypso."

And that, Ramage noted, was a very discreet way of describing that drunken scoundrel, and he could imagine the Earl then wondering how to describe Sarah. The First Lord knew Ramage did not use his title in the service, but Sarah was titled both as the daughter of the Marquis and as the wife of an earl's son who bore one of his father's titles.

Ramage suddenly jerked himself out of the reverie: Earl St Vincent, a man who could make sword steel look like putty, was not a man who ordinarily relayed rumours.

"The Murex brig was due in Spithead two weeks ago. She has not yet arrived. The weather has been good with a brisk southwester blowing - and a messenger was sent to Plymouth with orders that I should be notified the moment she arrives. All the other southern ports have been similarly instructed.

"Thus it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that at the time the messenger leaves for Falmouth with this letter in tonight's pouch, we have no news. I have talked with your father and with the Marquis, and while both agree with me that there are many possible reasons why the Murex should not have arrived, ranging from dismasting to taking a prize and having to shepherd her in, we all felt that you should be informed, which I have now done, and remain your obedient servant, St Vincent."

Sarah was, at best, a prisoner of the French. At worst she had been killed or drowned when the brig was captured or sunk by bad weather or a French ship of war or privateer. A brief honeymoon and, because of some mutinous scoundrels and a drunken young post-captain, she was dead. Killed because she had been witless enough to fall in love with Nicholas Ramage.

The cabin darkened and shrank round him: his body tightened as an uncontrollable spasm drove out every thought except the one that he had dreaded - Sarah was dead. He was alone, and had lost the love he had begun to despair of ever finding. Yes, he had earlier loved Gianna, but that had eventually only served as a yardstick by which he could measure the depth of his love for Sarah. He began to curse the injustice of it: many couples had twenty, thirty and even more years of marriage before one or other of them went over the standing part of the foresheet. But he and Sarah had been together, as man and wife, for how long - a month? They had known each other for a few months. The stark, blinding unfairness of it all. Why Sarah? Why hadn't a roundshot cut him in half instead? This thought calmed him down. Lord St Vincent was not saying that she was dead: only that she was dead or a prisoner, and given the usual ratio of casualties in an action, the odds were ninety-eight to one that she had been taken prisoner.

How a crowd of French privateersmen would treat a woman prisoner sent another muscle-tightening spasm of rage through his body, but to have her alive. . .Then he felt himself calming slightly: it was impossible to imagine Sarah dead. Yet surely all lovers must feel their partners were immortal: bereavement was what happened to other couples.