Clapping her hands, as if to signal a change in the topic of conversation, Gianna asked Ramage: 'And you - how did you fare at the hands of milord St Vincent?'

'We sail again as soon as the dockyard finishes the refit.'

'Back to the Mediterranean? That would be fortunate.'

The Earl interrupted to save Ramage from the risk of provoking an angry outburst from Gianna. She was clearly on the verge of one of her 'imperious' moods.

'His orders are marked "Secret" so we can't ask him. All I've been able to worm out of him is that it will be a long commission - six months or more.'

'There you are!' she said. 'You were expecting to be half paid!'

'Put on halfpay,' Ramage gently corrected. 'Yes, obviously the size of the Navy will be cut, and I expected...'

'Why would the government cut the size of the Navy if Bonaparte is not to be trusted?' she demanded.

'Because politicians are fools and optimists,' the Earl said contemptuously. 'They want to cut taxes to have everyone cheering and voting for them. They do not have to fight and die to correct their mistakes.'

'You can take Paolo with you?' she asked Ramage.

'Yes, of course - but whether or not he will want to come when he hears of your plan ...'

'He has no choice; I say he stays with you.'

Ramage shrugged his shoulders: he found it impossible to be gracious, understanding or patient with a woman who deliberately handed herself over to Bonaparte as a hostage.

'I have to go down to Chatham tomorrow. Do you have any messages for him?'

'Will he have any leave before I go?'

'That depends when you go.'

'Next week,' she said. 'I shall be leaving London next Wednesday morning. I am travelling to Paris with the Herveys: I met Lady Hervey at Lord Hawkesbury's office this morning and she invited me to join them - they have room in their carriages.'

Later that afternoon Ramage was sitting in his own room on the first floor, glancing at the latest edition of Steele's Naval Chronologist. He looked out at the plane trees, and like calendars recording the passage of autumn, they were losing their leaves. The bark of the trunks reminded him of a beggar with some vile disease.

So she was returning to Volterra, but he was puzzled and troubled by his own thoughts and feelings or, rather, by the contradictions in them which had been emerging over the last year or two and he was now being forced to examine.

How should the love between a man and a woman develop? It was something about which he knew very little, because Gianna was his first real love. Since those early months (years, he corrected himself, the period between being a junior lieutenant and a junior post captain), the original blazing love had cooled slightly. Cooled? Well, changed, both in his actual feelings for her and in his eventual realization that they could never marry. Had that realization eaten into that love, silently like rust or old age?

Could love really continue and develop when both people knew it would never reach the final stage of marriage? Neither he nor Gianna had talked about it; rather each of them (he was guessing her thoughts) had felt the pressures mounting. First there had been religion, and it seemed obvious that a woman accustomed to her own way in everything, as only the ruler of a nation could insist on it, would not accept that one of the oldest Protestant earldoms in the kingdom could never become Catholic by marriage.

Nor did she ever consider that, even if marriage was possible, the people of Volterra would never accept their ruler back if she had married a Protestant foreigner while in exile. That the foreigner had rescued her from Bonaparte, that his family had given her shelter, that her heir served in the Royal Navy under him - no, the man was a straniero and a Protestant; and that would be enough. Gianna had mentioned that he could perhaps be appointed the British ambassador, but he wondered if she had considered whether either of them really wanted a lover-and-mistress relationship.

Did the 'deep love' still exist? Love, yes; enough to make him want to bend iron bars with the frustration of failing to persuade her not to go to Volterra. In the old days he would kidnap her rather than let her go. Now he was apprehensive, but as though she was a favourite sister.

Guilt came into it, of course. The story of their romance was well known; the reception the Calypsos had given Gianna was proof of that. Ramage felt he had been urged on by what was expected of him - but with no opportunity of holding up a hand and explaining the difficulties: of religion and of the feelings of Gianna's own subjects.

He often felt that Paolo, young as he was, understood that he was in effect on a treadmill; as though instinctively Paolo had known there was no way round the twin barriers of religion and nationalism.

He sighed and watched a sudden gust of wind send more leaves tumbling down. Duty was forcing Gianna to return to Volterra and abandon the man she loved; duty had forced him to accept that he could never marry her because their son would have to be raised as a Catholic, which meant that when he inherited . . . Duty, noblesse oblige, was armoured against Cupid's darts.

Although his head was buzzing and his nose was painful because of the strong smell of paint, Ramage was glad to be back on board the Calypso, and through the sternlights he could see the houses of Chatham beginning to move round as the frigate swung at the turn of the tide. The misery of dry docking was over; the copper sheathing had been replaced; the only work remaining to be done by the dockyard was building some extra cabins forward of the gunroom. They would be insubstantial structures, merely large boxes with sides made of battens and canvas.

More cabins meant more men on board, and once again he looked gloomily at the latest letter from the Admiralty. 'I am directed by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty', Nepean had written in the time-honoured opening phrase, 'to direct you to prepare for the reception on board the vessel you command of the people listed in the margin ... and who will accompany you on the voyage for which you have already received secret orders.

'Their Lordships further direct me to enjoin upon you the need for secrecy and none of the individuals named in the margin know the details of the service upon which you are engaged. The circumstances under which such details may be imparted are described in your sealed orders.'

The list comprised seven men, each name followed by a description of his function. The first read, 'The Rev. Percival Stokes, chaplain', and was the reason for Ramage's irritation. No ship smaller than a ship of the line was compelled to have a chaplain - unless one volunteered. There were captains whose religious beliefs bordered on fanaticism and who had the ship's company praying twice daily. Most captains were like Ramage, respecting the fact that a man's religious beliefs were his own affair and limiting the enforced observance to Divine service on Sundays.

Chaplains were not at this stage of the war - at the moment, he corrected himself - very popular among either captains or ships' companies. Some were splendid fellows who, in a ship of the line, kept the six or seven hundred men cheerful and were a help to the captain and officers responsible for their welfare. Others stayed remote from the men, regarding the wardroom and the quarterdeck as the limit of their perambulations. The third type were members of what Ramage always called 'the pursed lips party': narrow-minded and self-righteous, regarding a ship of war solely as a floating house of God which they controlled, they were usually the centre of intrigue and complaint. Either they found a fanatical captain who listened to their every word, or else he ignored them and they whined at the most senior of the lieutenants who cared to listen.