She eyed him with feigned doubt, hand to her chin, and secretly marvelling that every time she looked at him - a man she loved so desperately and pictured almost every waking moment - his face or body revealed something new - often startling, always thrilling and sometimes frightening. His eyes, set deep under the brow, sometimes let her see into his soul; at other times they were a barrier which shut her out. The scar on his brow was a weathercock to his mood - anger tautened the skin, driving out the blood, making it a hard white line. His mouth - did he realize a slight movement of his lips made him as remote and forbidding as the moon - or so close she felt they were one? A thin face - yes, but the jawbone, like the scar, became a hard, bloodless line when anger tightened the muscles and sharpened the angles so it seemed cast in steel. It was a face a woman could only love or hate with a great passion; the face of a man to whom no one could be indifferent.

She saw he was puzzled, waiting for an answer.

'No, I like your passion as it is, even if it tears easily. But when it does want mending, I'll do it.'

'Gianna—'

'Nee-co-lass,' she mimicked the serious note, 'let's join the Governor: he insists on punctuality at meals. I'll be your seamstress this afternoon. Oh, don't look so worried - it's only the stitching!'

He grinned nervously as he sought a way to explain and then blurted out: 'No, it's not that. I can't stay.'

'Never mind, we'll do it this evening then.'

'I'll be away some time...'

She took his hand, made him sit in an armchair and curled up at his feet, her head resting against his knees.

'Tell me what happened,' she said quietly, 'and why you have to leave so soon.'

He traced with his finger the line of her eyebrows, the tiny Roman nose, the soft and moist lips and the high cheekbones, and then she reached up to take his hand and press it to her breast, as if to comfort him.

'Was it too awful, caro mio?'

'No,' he said quickly, realizing she'd misunderstood his silence. 'No, it was perfectly simple.' Briefly he described the Kathleen's capture, the way Jackson had helped him pose as an American, and their release in Cartagena. He omitted the raid on Cordoba's house and the information he discovered, and told her how they had stolen La Providenciaand sailed to Gibraltar.

'But why stay so long in Cartagena? Weeks and weeks. Surely you could have stolen a ship earlier?'

'The Spanish Fleet was there: I wanted to find out when they'd sail and where they were bound?'

She spotted the flaw before he did.

'But how could you do that without waiting for them to sail and see which way they went? They haven't sailed, have they?'

Ramage cursed his wayward tongue which was talking him into a dangerous situation: the only other person in Gibraltar who knew of Cordoba's orders was the Commissioner, who'd been emphatic that the knowledge must be kept absolutely secret. The whole of Gibraltar, he'd said bitterly, was swarming with spies and the Governor's circle of friends talked too freely.

'Well,' he said lamely, 'I found out something which will interest Sir John, but you mustn't mention it. Now - and this is absolutely secret too - I must find Sir John and tell him.'

'But, my love,' she said with quiet irony, 'all you've told me so far is that I've got to keep secret the fact you know a secret!'

'And that's quite enough for now!'

She looked up with eyes unnaturally bright with tears, but in them he saw anger as well as unhappiness.

'So even though I am the ruler of a state which has joined England as an ally, I can't be trusted with some silly little secret?'

Anger, bitterness, hurt - yes, and a touch of patrician arrogance. A few moments ago they had been as one person; now a stranger sat at his feet.

'I - well, the Commissioner gave me strict orders. Not even the Governor knows.'

'Very well,' she said coldly. 'You found out this information, so let's not talk any more of that. But why are you the messenger boy running off to find Sir John? Make the Commissioner send someone else. You deserve a rest: for months you've been risking your life - first rescuing me, then capturing La Sabina, then playing the spy at Cartagena. Why,' she added with a shiver, 'if the Spaniards had discovered you weren't an American—'

'I'd have been shot, but I wasn't. And I arrive here to find you waitiag for me! Incidentally, young lady' - he snatched the chance of changing the subject - 'why are you here and not in England?'

She shrugged her shoulders gracefully - and coldly and remotely. Her voice was flat and neutral. She was a stranger, the ruler of Volterra and, he thought, no longer a woman.

'Very well, you may change the subject. When the Apollo arrived here she had to wait two weeks. By then we heard the Kathleen had been captured. I wasn't in a hurry to go to England so I decided to stay - I was curious to know whether you were alive or dead.'

'Curious'. The word stabbed where he had no protection. Now did it help that he knew she was deeply hurt; unable to understand the demands of the service. And her pose of indifference was truly regal: even though she was sitting at his feet he felt for a moment as though their positions were reversed and he was a humble (and errant) subject kneeling before the ruler of the state of Volterra.

'And Antonio?' he asked, numbed and hardly thinking what he was saying.

'He went in the Apollo. He wanted to stay but I told him to go to London as my Minister Plenipotentiary to your King, so that he can draw up the draft for the alliance.'

It was a proud little speech but the ruler became a girl once again when he pictured Antonio as the Minister of an already enemy-occupied state of 20,000 people arguing the terms and wording of Volterra's treaty with a Britain which was already fighting the combined strength of France and Spain and for whom Volterra was simply another debit entry in an already overloaded budget.

'How could you persuade the Spanish you were an American when you were wearing that uniform?'

She was holding out a very small and rapidly withering olive branch but he reached for it eagerly.

'I was wearing a seaman's rig. I've just bought this one. A lieutenant about my size - a bit narrower across the shoulders, rather! - just had it delivered from the tailor.'

'He was kind to let you have it.'

'He wasn't really; in fact he refused, but the Commissioner ordered him to sell it to me.'

'Your Commissioner is fond of giving unpleasant orders ...'

'I'm afraid so,' Ramage said hypocritically. 'But - well, when you had to give unpleasant orders to anyone in Volterra it didn't occur to you they wouldn't be obeyed, although probably you didn't enjoy giving them ...'

'That's true, I suppose it's the same thing, really,' she admitted.

'Absolutely the same. The foundations of a navy or a state - or even a family - rests on discipline,' he said pompously.

'Except that I love you.'

There was defiance in her voice and he knew that single fact meant she'd accept neither rules nor obstacles. Fearing she'd make the Governor use his influence to have another lieutenant sent to Sir John, Ramage kissed her and bruised both their lips as the clock struck again and made them jump.

Nearly an hour gone: the Commissioner would be watching the anchorage. He stood up, helping her to her feet, and before she could say anything, kissed her hard again, then gripped her tightly so she could not look into his eyes and began talking quickly in a low, urgent voice, as though he had to compress a lifetime into the remaining minutes.

As he walked down the worn and slimy steps of Ragged Staff Wharf Ramage felt the same emptiness that almost every man experienced when going back to sea in wartime: he was leaving someone he loved, drawn away by some inner compulsion towards - well, duty was a pompous sort of word and only a tenth of it. That there'd be weeks, perhaps months, of discomfort and monotony was so certain that brief moments of danger would come as a relief, like the sharp taste in the mouth after the long diet of dreary, barely eatable salt food that drove seamen to chew tobacco. But no man had ever found anything to shew, drink, do or say that eased the ache of knowing the farewell might also be the final one. It was probably worse for the women who were left behind, never knowing whether, even as they sat with their memories, their men had been left unscathed by battle, disease or accident.