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Diana Maturin lay in her bath of ass’s milk and sulked. It was damned unfair of Louisa Wogan, after all that Diana had done for her. Had she not gone to great efforts to enliven Louisa’s wretched salon, by introducing her to Lady Jersey and the rest of fashionable society, and even making her a person of interest to the D. of C. himself? Diana had taken Louisa to be a kindred spirit, for Louisa was clever and interesting, and could be deliciously catty in French. But she had belatedly come to see that Louisa was an ungrateful cow – a snake in the grass – a dog in the manger – no doubt many other sorts of equally unpleasant creature - for she had all along been working to usurp Diana’s own friends and lovers.

In their struggle for supremacy, Diana’s great advantages were her height (two inches taller, and achieving an elegance far from the grasp of poor, squat Louisa), and her ability to think strategically. Lately, for instance, Louisa had been trying to shake her faith in a lovely velvet spencer, and to bolster a shapeless old pelisse that did nothing for Diana’s bosom. Diana, in turn, was undermining Louisa’s opera gloves, but only to lull her into a false sense of security about some perfectly horrid Mameluke sleeves that made her arms look disproportioned; this was paying dividends, for Louisa had worn the dreadful things to Almack’s last Wednesday.

Diana's great weakness, of course, was her husband, who had neither the birth nor face nor manners to impress. It reflected rather badly on her, that she had been obliged to marry such a foolish hapless drug-addled person; still, nobody had ever seen Mr Wogan at all, and he might as well be a leper, a Southcottian, or a vegetarian for all that society knew. Besides, Stephen was not without his advantages: he came with a ruined castle in Spain, which was useless, but romantic; and his small estate was now largely in trust for Diana, he having been persuaded only with difficulty to retain a modest stipend for himself.

Perhaps she might have aimed higher, but she had been very low when he proposed; very low indeed, and quite indescribably lonely. She was shut up all day with her cousin the Teapot; Sophia had threatened to whip her; an alderman had felt her arse at the Dover assembly, and no-one had taken her part. None of her Indian friends ever wrote to her now. When Stephen drove her to Brighton, it was the first genuine kindness that had been offered her for weeks. And he had listened, very gravely, to all of her little miseries; the insults and humiliations; the wretchedness of her life: she had been full of histrionics on that long sun-soaked drive.

They stopped to look at a frog-pond, and the carriage smelt of the wild thyme crushed beneath the wheels. ‘Thyme was burnt upon the altars of Venus,’ he remarked, and then he said, ‘Villiers,’ fell silent, and stared for a time at her ear.

‘Maturin,’ she said eventually, and he startled.

‘Villiers, I have no wish to insult you.’

‘Oh darling, how promising.’

He made a strange agitated gesture and said, ‘Do you wish to be married?’

‘Why, I have told you as much. I am hunting my questing beast: my mythical beast with sense, and looks, and money.’

‘Then as to the latter, I have been doing some figures.’ He took a very greasy piece of paper from his pocket, and said, ‘There is my pay of almost three hundred a year, so. I have about ten thousand pounds, which would go into the four per cents: that is another four hundred a year for you. There is the chance of prize money, to be sure, and I should have the share of perhaps one part in fifty, but I will not disguise –’

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You mean that you are the beast.’

He looked out of the window and said, ‘We are both aware of the countless objections that could be made to my person. You have been very plain that you do not want me as a lover; but Diana, if you should ever value a friend –’ He trailed off and added, ‘But I have no greater merits than your attorney, after all, and he was first in time.’

‘Be damned to that attorney. He has never gone a mile out of his way to drive me anywhere.’

‘Has he not, forsooth? Yet in the interests of honesty – for I wish to be entirely honest – this contraption is borrowed, and our handsome postillion a stranger. There it is, Villiers: if you plan to refuse me, you now have a gentlemanly pretext, and you may save yourself the distress of formulating personal remarks.’

‘Refuse you!’ she said. She felt a dreadful confusion, for she certainly could not marry him, but the thought of being obliged to refuse him was very black; she was seized with the desperate certainty that it would finally cause him to leave her, and she wished passionately that he had not brought them to such a crisis. ‘Stephen,’ she said, looking everywhere but at his anxious face, ‘Stephen, you know that I am terribly fond of you, but I am not the sort of wife you want at all. Really, you would not even offer, if you knew anything about me. We would do far better to keep on as friends.’

‘My dear, it cannot have escaped your notice that I am attached – very deeply attached.’

‘That hardly answers the point,’ she said, as though they were having a learned debate. In fact her heart was beating quite wildly, and she thought that his must be doing the same, for she could see it in his throat. She said, ‘I can’t think now. Give me a moment to think. Won’t you come and speak to me in Brighton – won’t you come tomorrow?’

‘I will,’ he said, very intently. But after a moment he cleared his throat and said, ‘Will I tell you a curious thing about the wheatear, now?’ and only prosed away gently for the next half an hour.

By the time they reached Brighton, she had recovered her composure, and was able to say quite airily, ‘Do not come before noon tomorrow, darling: I am going to be dipped, and Lady Jersey has promised to secure Miss Gunn for me. Or perhaps two o’clock would be better. We can have brandy and cards, and discuss the thing like gentlemen.’

And he found it in himself to reply, ‘Sure Dr Russell speaks highly of sea-bathing; the vital properties of sea-water, more unctuous, we are told, than the waters of Bath; less likely, if you will permit a gross allusion, to cause a griping in the belly.’

She had fully intended him to find her in the parlour at two o’clock, shuffling cards with great insouciance. However, it took much longer to make her toilet than she had anticipated, for her hair was stiff with salt, and she was obliged to pace her room a great deal, and to change her gown three times. When she finally arrived downstairs, he was peering at a potted plant, and she could see the shop label on the back of his neckcloth.

‘You have over-watered your ficus,’ he said, severely.

‘It is Lady Jersey’s ficus. Should you like some ratafia, chéri? I know that I promised you brandy, but everyone here has gone mad for the stuff, and we ought to be au courant. It is called urine d’elephant, but you must say elephant milk or the servants will give notice. Ugh, no, you are quite right – brandy, I should think. I thought it might taste like our Indian punch: so silly, really. Have you shuffled?’

‘Cut. My deal.’

‘Carte. Carte. Oh, damn. Carte. Je m’y tiens. Damn you again, sir.’

By the time she had lost ten pounds to him, she felt much more settled; settled enough to say, ‘I suppose that if I lose all my money, I shall have to marry you anyway.’

‘You have given the matter some thought?’ he said, with an obvious effort at lightness.

She put down her cards. ‘Look here, Maturin. You ought to be aware that I don’t accept favours. And since you claim to know me so well, you must know that I would not be any good as your wife: no, you needn’t protest, thank you. Very well, then: I should like to hear what you propose to get out of this arrangement.’

His pale eyes were unblinking as a snake’s. He said, ‘What do you think?’

She said, tilting her head at him, ‘There is the possession of my person, for a start.’

‘Not a necessary condition,’ he said swiftly. ‘Say rather, the pleasure of your company; your friendship, that is.’

‘Well, it must be a considerable pleasure, for I certainly have no fortune. And as for my reputation…’

‘What of it?’

She picked up the pack and said, ‘My deal, I think. There is one respect, I suppose, in which I do you no harm – nor Jack Aubrey neither. Not to mention dear Sophia… Maturin, you had better not be clearing the decks for another happy union.’

‘I most certainly am not,’ he said, almost violently. ‘Je m’y tiens.’

‘Oh, hell. The pleasure of my company, then. And the satisfaction of rescuing a fallen woman? If you know so very much about it.’

He laughed at that, and said, ‘Villiers, I doubt that you have fallen anywhere in your life. You are a person who jumps with both feet.’

‘Yes, and I intend to keep on jumping. You would not mind it?’

‘The Dear knows that I could hardly stop you from doing as you please; no, you must carry on just as before. Though naturally, were your friends indiscreet, I should be obliged to demand satisfaction.’

This made her laugh: first at the thought of this absurd little man demanding satisfaction from anyone; then at herself, for it occurred to her that she had, quite without noticing, begun to consider him as her personal property. Then she had to laugh at the whole ridiculous situation. She did not think that he would deter many aldermen, but even a nominal husband could be a useful weapon. And he would be on her side, at least. She had liked to be married to Charles: he was frequently very tiresome, but it was wonderfully pleasant to have him there; to know that he was obliged by law to always take her part.

He lifted the corners of his mouth uncertainly, and she patted his arm. ‘Oh dear, I shall have to be very discreet indeed, for I should be sorry to see you run through on my account. Very well: you shall have my company, and my discretion, and I shall have a gallant protector, and seven hundred a year, and a townhouse in Mayfair, and half a dozen Arabs –’

‘Hold hard, my dear; it is not such funds we are in just yet.’

‘I have been making do on fifty, you know, and I have heard such stories about your castle. I long to repine in your Visigothic bath. Are you going up to town today, darling? Shall you ask for the banns to be read on Sunday?’

He took the cards from her. ‘No banns in the Catholic church, joy. Besides, am I not after telling you that I am on my way to Ireland?’

‘Carte. Damn. Sweetheart, I thought that we were becoming respectable; why, we shall hardly do that if we are not lawfully wed. No, we must certainly have it in a proper church. But what do you mean, you are on your way to Ireland? You cannot be going to Ireland, when you have just become engaged to marry.’

For the first time all day, he hesitated. ‘I fear that the business is pressing, but I will be back in England by Michaelmas.’

‘By Michaelmas?’ She was aware that she was goggling, quite unattractively, at him, but she could hardly think what else to do in the face of such great nonsense. ‘Michaelmas is months away. What in God’s name could take you to Ireland for months, when I am right here in Brighton?’

He said, more firmly, ‘It is a very dismal piece of law-business, a carping quibbling pettifogging business, and brooks no possibility of delay. You know what these attorneys are: the cormorants of the commonwealth, and they will have our whole estate devoured if I am not there to restrain them.’

‘You mean that you will not even come to Mapes? To break the happy news to dear Sophia?’

‘Dear Sophia!’ He clapped his hand to his head in distress, sending his wig flying into the ficus. ‘My wits are all addled – I must write to Jack – you must lend me a small little paper, my dear.’

‘My God, you really do mean to carry on as before.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘You are an odd fish, Maturin. Je m’y tiens, by the way. There, you see, my luck has changed at last: a black king and queen, though how suspicious they look! One could wish that they were happier.’

‘Perhaps they will be, honey. Will I kiss you before I go, then?’

‘Oh, Lord!’ she said. ‘I suppose that you had better.’

And he really did go, much to her astonishment. It did not seem an auspicious beginning, and she wondered if she had been wrong to think that he would be reliable. The business was hardly worth mentioning in Brighton, since the gentleman could not be produced; he did not write to her once from Ireland, and, were it not for the fact that she was now scrupulously avoiding Jack Aubrey, and for the appalling fuss made by her aunt and Sophia, she might have begun to wonder if she had dreamt the whole affair.

It was unmitigated good news for Mrs Williams, and for Sophia, too, if the silly girl could stop blubbering and think it properly through. It would have been indelicate for Diana to spell out the reasons, which were plain enough to see, and perhaps Sophia was only jealous that she had been pipped to the post. ‘You are making your face all blotchy,’ said Diana, severely, ‘and I doubt that Captain Aubrey admires a horrible red complexion.’

‘I am only happy for you,’ wept Sophia; ‘such a dear, sweet man.’

‘Honestly, one would think that he were Christ redeeming the Magdalene,’ she complained to the Teapot, for she had beaten a temporary retreat to the relative peace of New Place.

‘He is at this very moment in Montserrat,’ said the Teapot, licking a sugar-lump.

‘Who, Christ?’ she said with interest. ‘What the devil is he doing there?’ But he only tapped his nose and looked mysterious. ‘You liked Dr Maturin, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I daresay he will find a nice madhouse for you when I move to London.’

Then Stephen was back in England, surprisingly brown and excessively vague. ‘Sure, our estate was hardly in danger: thriving, so it is. I fear our retainer may be a paranoiac; a very small barn in Sidheán na Gháire was burnt in ’98, and he has never been the same man since. But I have seen a dozen eagles – I have brought you the wool of our very own sheep –’ It was tough, and smelt of thyme.

And then the thing was done. ‘Forsaking all other,’ they said, as though they meant it; Sophia cried; it was announced in the Times. A week later he was back at sea and she was back in Canning’s bed. Sophia might have a touching faith in the healing powers of matrimony, but really a wedding changed very little, and besides, she was morally certain that he was carrying on with Jack Aubrey. He had certainly been both surprised and confused on their wedding night, when she climbed into his lap and said, ‘We must do it properly, pet, or the whole palaver will be for nothing.’

No, by far the most important change was that she now had rooms in London, in a rather old-fashioned mansion on Seamore Place; and as a married woman she was an eminently respectable hostess. Indeed, she could host for the first time since India, and she did so dearly love to host; her calendar soon filled up with card-parties and dinners, and she only wanted a billiard table to complete her happiness. Lady Jersey came to her first rout and said, ‘So clever of you, dear; so much easier to produce a crush in these little apartments’: which might well have been a compliment, for Lady Jersey loved a crush.

They really were her rooms, too, for Stephen had insisted on retaining his bachelor residence in the Savoy. ‘It is little enough space already, so it is, and the Dear knows that you would not wish to have my papers about you – my specimens, often cadavers – you would feel a sense of unhealthful crowding, of oppression.’ As a result, the existence of Dr Maturin did not impress itself upon the minds of many of her friends.

Louisa Wogan remembered, however: which was odd, for they had never had much to do with each other before. At dinner in Chelsea, she leant over the jellies and said, ‘How is your husband, dear Mrs Maturin?’

‘La, Mrs Wogan!’ said Lady Jersey. ‘Don’t you know that Mrs Maturin is a widow?’

‘Oh no, your ladyship,’ said Louisa humbly, ‘unless I am mistaken – did not she marry a naval chaplain in September? Did not you marry a naval chaplain, Mrs Maturin? Unless – oh dear! – have I…?’

‘No, no, no, he is still alive, I believe,’ said Diana. ‘But he is a naval physician, dear.’

‘A surgeon, do you mean?’

‘Naval surgeons know all about the pox,’ said Maltravers, leering over his cup. ‘Buggery and the pox.’

‘Then he ought to examine your yard,’ said Lady Jersey, with asperity. ‘’Twould be a dreadful shame if that nice baronetcy fell vacant.’

There followed a great deal of ribald joking, but all at the expense of Maltravers, Dr Maturin being of no further interest to the company. Although Mrs Wogan did say, as they made their farewells, ‘I should so like to meet Dr Maturin; I think that the Navy must be terribly thrilling. Have you ever met dear Lord Nelson? I saw him at the Despard trial, poor man: he seemed so dreadfully chagriné.’

‘I doubt you would be thrilled by Dr Maturin,’ she replied; ‘he is far more interested in birds than in sea-battles. I suppose he would not notice if Lord Nelson danced a hornpipe naked upon the deck, should there happen to be a sea-gull nearby. Well, such a charming dinner; quite worth travelling so far out of town. Bonsoir, ma chérie.’

Diana rather scorned Mrs Wogan for fawning over Lord Nelson, but she herself was not immune to the glamour of the war. She loved to see the soldiers in their handsome scarlet uniforms, and it was only her patriotic duty to dance with them when she could. She devoured the news of Lord Wellington’s doings in Spain; she had met him after Seringapatam, and he had been very gentlemanly indeed; and she spoke very fiercely to all her acquaintances about the destruction of England’s enemies. But Stephen did not like to talk about such things; he seemed to treat the war as an extended bird-watching expedition that had been arranged for his own amusement.

Canning, in contrast, was a practical man, who had put his mind to the methods of modern warfare. He had built privateers to harass the French shipping; he was clever and brave, and she liked to hear him talk tactics. He liked it when she wore her Marcillac scent; it reminded him, he said, of dark-haired Indian girls, and he spoke about bringing her to Bombay and making love to her under the mango trees. She liked that a great deal. But then he ruined it when he asked her to come with him, and she realised that he was serious.

‘Don’t be absurd, Canning,’ she said, batting his hand away. ‘I have hardly been married four months.’

‘And for four months that has been entirely beneath your notice. Where is Maturin now, exactly?’

‘That is hardly the point.’ She made to get out of bed and he took her arm.

‘Don’t be tiresome, Diana. Do you suppose that he would even notice you were gone?’

She shook herself free. ‘He would notice the scandal I left in my wake. Can’t you see that it would not be decent – not sporting – not gentlemanly?’ But he pretended not to understand.

And she never did discover where Stephen had been, for she was wholly distracted by the manner of his return: they carried him to her bandaged and bruised, with his hands and feet quite mangled. ‘He was caught in a machine,’ said Jack Aubrey, white-faced and sweating like a post-house cheese. ‘I could not get him out faster.’

‘Will he be able to work again?’ she said doubtfully, and Aubrey, looking distressed, said, ‘Perhaps – perhaps –’

‘I suppose you were distracted by a damn fool bird,’ she said to Stephen, as she fed him a posset. ‘Your lord and master ought to take better care; you are no longer his exclusive possession, you know.’

‘Goddamned possets,’ he said savagely. ‘Quacks and mountebanks, preying on fools; if you were ever my friend, you would toss them from the window.’ She brandished the spoon, and he growled at her.

Nor did his temper improve as he healed: she followed him to Bath, to soothe his fevered brow, but he was so very disagreeable an invalid that she ended up shying a decanter at his brow, and after that, by silent consent, they only met at dinner.

Perhaps that was why he did not ask her to India with him: a very cruel blow. ‘I could speak Urdu for you,’ she said, aware that this was uncomfortably close to begging. ‘I could tell you all about the native birds. I could show you a tiger, a real Bengal tiger. It is my own country, you know; I could bring you half a dozen tigers.’ She should have liked to see his face when he met his first tiger.

But it was all to no avail. She had months of moping about London, reflecting bitterly that she would have been better to go with Canning after all; would have been better to marry the attorney, who would never have gone to India without her. Stephen came back with glorious tales of bazaars, caravanserai, holy men; with piles of beautiful silks for her, and some nasty cheap silver bangles. ‘Sure I paid a child twenty rupees to buy them,’ he said, quite bewildered.

‘Well then, sweetheart, you have been cheated abominably. Honestly, I believe you would weep to see a goose go barefoot.’

The child herself he had bought for twelve rupees, another dreadful cheat, and had apprenticed to the Company’s factor as a kind of post-wallah. ‘Mr Canning was very cordial, my dear: he did us a great service, and asked to be remembered to you. A very learned gentleman. His wife was our neighbour in Sussex; I had no notion of it before.’

For a week or two they chattered like gossips: he showed her his sketches of the elephants, the Mahrattan horsemen, the tigers he saw without her, and he was so evidently entranced by it all that she was able to put aside her jealousy and share in his delight. It was like having a real husband, for once: she took him to the opera and showed him off at dinners, with dire warnings that he must speak only of suitable, decent subjects; he made a favourable impression upon the Leveson-Gowers, and won plaudits for his skill at whist. Then he left for Ireland again.

‘Such a pity that Dr Maturin is not more often in town,’ said Louisa, who had resided in Mayfair for a fortnight and could no longer countenance civilised life outside the metropolis. ‘Is he at sea again?’

Diana shifted uncomfortably: it was something of a sore spot that he was not at sea. She could not understand it at all; if she were a man, she would hardly be able to stand skulking about at home when there were glorious battles to fight. ‘Just because Jack Aubrey is on land doesn’t mean that you must be too,’ she had shouted at him as he left. ‘You are not tied to his goddamned apron-strings, you know.’

Just at this moment, she wished that he were in London, so that they could exchange strong words upon the appalling dishwater that Louisa was serving as tea. In the absence of an ally, she had to settle for saying, ‘Dear Louisa, you have made a really splendid effort: everyone knows that Americans do not understand tea in the slightest, and here you have made such a creditable attempt. What a darling service; I have always said that the old patterns are by far the prettiest. Dr Maturin is very often in town, but he is much occupied with his scientific clubs, you know; although just at this moment he is engaged with family business in Ireland.’

In fact Stephen had spent more than half of the year in Ireland, and he had refused to take her with him, or even to explain quite what he was doing there. If he had been anyone else, she would have suspected an Irish lover; but that could hardly explain it when Aubrey was so near at hand. He must certainly have been outdoors a great deal, for he always came back very brown, although Ireland was notoriously cold and damp. When she asked him about this, he only said vaguely that the Irish did not like roofs; but she was quite sure that this was stuff.

‘Is he involved in Irish politics, then?’ asked Louisa eagerly.

‘Oh, hardly. Surely you know that the Irish have quite given up on politics.’

‘Not in the least: I have some charming friends in London who are committed to Irish interests. I should so love to introduce Dr Maturin, if you think that he might condescend?’

‘Dr Maturin has not a political bone in his body,’ she said, ‘although he does very frequently condescend.’

She wondered, briefly, if Stephen really were secretly engaged in Irish affairs; it would explain why he cared so little about the war. But these things were all very well for Louisa, who was after all an American; for Stephen to intrigue with the Irish, when he was sworn to the service of the King, would be a very shocking act of duplicity, and, although he could be unforgivably negligent, she could not imagine him capable of such wickedness.

He had only once shown any sign of interest in politics, and nothing could have been more perfectly calculated to display his ignorance. He had left her a letter to give to Mrs Colonel Colpoys for the Colonel; but she had not gone to Bruton Street that evening after all, for she was caught up by a party heading for Moulsey Hurst; and the letter had been abandoned on her bureau in the rush.

He was at his most lip-curlingly contemptuous about that, stalking about her drawing-room like an offended cat. ‘Villiers, you may have little respect yourself for my correspondence, but even you will grant that it is not wise to leave private letters lying at large about the world, like old discarded handbills, or as it might be the wrappings of a haddock. It would behove you to observe greater caution; we are in a state of war, forsooth.’

‘Well, I am glad that you have finally noticed,’ she said, very stung. ‘But unless you think that I am harbouring hosts of villainous Frenchmen in my boudoir…’

‘Your lady’s maid is French, is she not?’

‘Bernard? Don’t be absurd, sweetheart; Bernard has lived in England longer than I have.’

‘Did you know that she has a brother in Norman Cross?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Has your friend Mrs Wogan called this morning?’

‘Look here, Maturin,’ she said, outraged. ‘I never thought that you, of all people, would be so very stupid. We are not at war with America, unless I am misinformed. But we are at war with Spain at this very moment; and if we are not at war with Ireland, it is only because we have already beaten them so soundly, and not for lack of their trying; and you will hardly say that I ought not to tell you anything.’

He gave her a cold and reptilian stare. ‘I should never require that you disclose to me anything if you do not wish to do so. Good day to you, madam.’ And he snatched up his letter, turned on his heel and left.

He did go to sea again: with Aubrey, of course. He would not even tell her their destination, but since everyone in town knew that it was the Cape, it was hardly skin off her nose, and he was very cross when she checked him with it. Sophie knew it, too, although Diana and Sophie were not exactly on terms. Diana’s reputation, briefly burnished by her marriage, was beginning to lose some of its lustre; a few pious stuck-up busybodies were now refusing her invitations, and word of it had somehow got back to Ashgrove.

This was hardly fair, for she had been very moderate; certainly very moderate compared to Louisa. She had only a small number of affairs, and never when Stephen was in the country; she was just as discreet as he was; and, since she was scrupulously careful to avoid pregnancies, she could not see that anyone was the worse for it. It did not seem quite fair, perhaps, that Louisa was hunting for game so much bigger than her own, but she had no wish to become notorious, only to enjoy herself; and besides, she did not believe that Louisa really had half of the lovers she claimed.

The estrangement from Ashgrove was painful, for, while London society was of course very jolly, it could begin to feel rather grey and confining. It had been a long, rainy winter, and she had hardly seen a horizon that was not broken by chimneys or clouded with smoke; what she needed was a good brisk gallop to revive her spirits, or a tearing fox-hunt to set the heart racing. Unfortunately, Ashgrove meant not only grovelling to Sophie, which might have been just about bearable, but also to Mrs Williams, which was out of the question; besides which, there were the Aubrey twins, now lusty of voice and barbarous of manner, and another baby threatened.

She said to Louisa, ‘Don’t you ever wish for a day in the country?’

Louisa looked surprised. ‘Oh, I was in Richmond Park with Mr Johnson just yesterday. Although it was terribly clammy on the water, and the boat very cramped, and I had to insist that we stop at the Star and Garter for lemonade. But we saw some very fine trees along the way. I had no idea that you admired the country, none at all, or I should have demanded to bring you along. You know how Mr Johnson loves company.’

She gritted her teeth and said, as Louisa had doubtless intended, ‘I do not believe I have met Mr Johnson.’

‘How funny! Well, I must introduce you, dear; he is from Maryland, just like me, although he has been in India this age. I am so glad that he has finally come to London; I have been begging and begging, for I know it is just the place for him. He knows ever so much about clothes, and horses, and he is quite spectacularly rich.’

‘Horses?’ said Diana.

‘Yes indeed; he has dozens of racehorses back in the States. But you ought to come with us on Monday, for we intend to ride out to Carshalton. Twelve miles each way, a charming grotto, and Mr Johnson will lend you the most beautiful horse you ever saw. Oh do, do say that you’ll come.’

Mr Johnson was staying in a smart townhouse just off Berkeley Square, with a generous stable-block behind. She came into the yard as he was leading out a fine, spirited chestnut mare by the halter, and she saw at once that he had a very good hand.

‘Oh, here she is now,’ cried Louisa, taking the mare’s bridle. ‘Just an inch taller than me, Mr Johnson, as I told you. Mrs Maturin, you are hardly late at all; you must be so eager for our little excursion. She has not been out much lately, the poor thing.’

‘Two inches, I should think,’ said Diana absently; she was eyeing up the horses, and coveting a perky little short-coupled grey who was dancing about his groom with mischief.

‘Mrs Wogan tells me that you ride well, ma’am,’ said Johnson.

‘I ride exceptionally well.’

He raised an eyebrow and looked her up and down, almost insolently. ‘Saddle Cyrus for the lady, William.’

To Diana’s delight, Cyrus was the grey: a little frisky and distractible, but she had met his kind before, and she had him firmly in hand by the time they reached Newington Butts. Louisa must have been used to the mare, which gave her no trouble. It was certainly plain that Johnson was a supreme horseman: powerful and capable on his hugely strong bay, but with a light, easy seat and a delicate hand upon the reins. Diana knew that he was watching her with approval, and she basked.

‘I understand that you have lately been in India, sir,’ she said, as they stood aside for a drover and his cattle.

‘I am in the cotton trade, ma’am; I had business to transact in Dacca and Calcutta.’

‘And what could have induced you to swap the thousand pleasures of Bengal for the miserable drear of a London spring?’

‘Buying and selling, ma’am; but I fear I must contradict you. I have hardly seen a town as splendid as London in all my travels, nor one with such fine ladies. But you are familiar with Bengal, I collect?’

They chattered about India all the way to Carshalton, Louisa quite forgotten. Johnson had been on three separate tiger shoots, and had travelled as far as Nagpur; he said modestly that he had some little business with the Raja of Berar, and had been taken to hunt antelope with snow leopards –

‘Oh, what a pretty lake!’ cried Louisa. ‘And such a tasteful little bridge. Mr Johnson, do admire this bridge with me. Don’t you find it has the most perfect proportions?’

They trotted up through the park and stopped at the grotto. Its pool was full of fat trout and fretting ducks. ‘Oh, the nasty things!’ cried Louisa, swiping at the ducks with her parasol. ‘What on earth could have them in such a flap?’

‘You have brought the wrong Maturin to tell you about ducks,’ Diana said.

‘Do you mean,’ said Johnson, ‘that you are connected to the naturalist Maturin? The same Maturin who wrote that fine monography on boobies?’

‘Oh God, that does sound like him.’

Much to her dismay, it seemed that Johnson was also a bird-lover; he spoke very eagerly of boobies as they rode south through the Oaks. Yet unlike Stephen, he was attentive to the mood of his audience, and soon turned his conversation to more congenial matters. He confessed to a small stable in the States; had visited Tattersall’s twice already; and attended the 2000 Guineas on his second day in England. She must take Cyrus out whenever she pleased; he needed an uncommon firm hand, and Mrs Maturin would be very improving for him.

By now they had climbed the high chalk and were well into the rolling Surrey uplands. Johnson stood up in his stirrups and gazed westward across the downs. ‘We are now not five miles from Epsom, I believe. Do you know the Derby race, ma’am?’

‘Know it!’ she said. ‘Dear Mr Johnson, I attend it religiously. It is positively the highlight of my calendar. Why, I won two hundred pounds on Tyrant in ’02, and I am absolutely determined to do better this year.’

‘I am a first-timer; perhaps you will do me the honour of acting as my chaperone. I intend to place my money on Wizard. I saw him take the 2000 Guineas, and I resolved that he would be my lucky English colt.’

‘Wizard!’ said Diana, with contempt. ‘Wizard is the odds-on favourite.’

‘You disapprove?’

‘Why, there is no fun at all in that. My stake is on Pope: I have always liked Grafton’s cattle, and I have a good feeling about him.’

Johnson laughed. ‘I am afraid that I must stick: I should be a poor businessman if I allowed myself to be swayed by a lady’s feelings, no matter how beautiful the lady.’ He raised his hat.

During this conversation, Louisa’s little mare had been edging closer and closer to Johnson’s bay: now both horses pinned back their ears, and the bay suddenly plunged at the mare’s neck. In a flash, Johnson had jerked his head around hard, beaten him smartly between the ears, and turned him in a tight circle to stop his prancing: an effortlessly brutal display of mastery. Diana watched him rein in the bay with a strong and competent hand, and her mouth watered.

That year’s Derby was one of the great races of Diana’s life. Salvator was leading ‘til Tattenham Corner, with Grafton’s sky-blue and Wilson’s silver silks flashing at his heels. Now Wizard was surging ahead, and Pope just behind, thundering down the straight; she was on her feet, Johnson was on his feet; Goodisson was urging Pope forward; both jockeys were lashing furiously; they were neck-and-neck for the final few paces; she was clutching her hat and shrieking.

‘Who won? Who won?’

‘Pope, by a neck!’

She had screamed herself hoarse by the end of the day; she had laid fifty pounds on Pope, and came away with a thousand; she was admired and envied on all hands, including by Prinny himself. Johnson’s carriage whirled her back to London, delirious with triumph and perhaps also a little punch. They left Louisa and Hammond on Berkeley Street, and looked at each other.

‘I am afraid Wizard was not your lucky colt in the end,’ she said, tipping her head at him.

He gave her his insolent stare again, and said, ‘On the contrary. Why don’t you come up for a drink?’

‘Well,’ she said merrily, ‘I do deserve to toast my great success.’

It all went rather well while Stephen was out of the country. Diana managed to thoroughly sideline Louisa, who was in any case preoccupied with her politicians and her poetry and her odd, ill-looking secretary. Indeed, Johnson had as good as said that she was cleverer than Louisa, and had enlisted her in his business endeavours.

‘Buying and selling, you see,’ he told her. ‘Imagine that you are gambling on commodity prices. The more you understand about the development of the war, or the ministry’s attitude to corn tariffs, the more intelligent a bet you may lay.’

‘Lord, corn prices! I hear such stuff about corn prices at Louisa’s dreadful salon. I suppose that she is too busy fluttering around and simpering to pay any attention to the conversation, but it is oh so tiresome for those of us with ears. Really, she ought to put an end to it.’

‘Anything that you could pass on, anything at all, would be of great utility to me. And there is another gap in my knowledge: I have no naval connections at all. England loses hundreds of merchant ships to the French every year, so you may see that naval affairs have a tremendous bearing on my business.’

‘I never hear about anything half so interesting at Louisa’s,’ she said. ‘My friend Mr Canning spoke about privateering all the time, but I am afraid that he is in India now. I could write, if you like; I am sure you would get on famously, and nobody knows more about merchant shipping than he.’

He frowned and said, ‘Perhaps Dr Maturin…?’

‘Oh no, he is the very last person you ought to speak to about naval affairs. But don’t worry: I shall be sure to introduce you so that you can talk about your birds. I have promised, have I not? And perhaps Captain Aubrey could tell you all about the Navy.’

This seemed to appease him, and she arranged a dinner party as soon as the men had returned to England. But Aubrey could not come: he was promised to Ashgrove to meet his new son, although the baby would certainly keep, and would in point of fact improve with the passage of time. Still, she had high hopes for the dinner, for she liked Johnson extremely, and she thought that Stephen would like him too. And she had broken things off with him while Stephen was in town, so there was no danger of any awkwardness.

She ought to have been on her guard as soon as Stephen arrived: he smelt suspiciously of laudanum, and a very liberal dusting of powder coated his wig, back and shoulders. She brushed vigorously at his coat while he shuffled through a pile of letters. ‘Now you will be polite to Mr Johnson, won’t you? Remember that he is a very important person in America and India.’

‘Just so,’ he said vaguely.

‘I wonder that you did not meet him in India. Sometimes I think that everyone has been in India lately except me.’

He turned over a page. ‘What a pity you did not marry a nabob.’

‘Will you take me to India one day?’

‘If my time were my own, joy, nothing would please me more.’

He was certainly not very attentive, but he did put his papers away when Louisa and Johnson appeared. And they made it through the turtle soup without incident: Johnson was agreeable, Stephen was not conspicuously peculiar, and there was a great deal of inconsequential talk about birds.

After Stephen had carved the beef, she said, ‘Darling, Mr Johnson does a great deal of business in India; you and he were in Calcutta at the same time in ’05, and he remembers the terribly exciting action that earnt dear Captain Aubrey so very much gold, although I don’t believe that you and I ever saw any of it.’

‘The mercantile community is in your debt, sir, for I understand that you were recently involved in the capture of the Isle de France, which has been a notorious nest of French privateers for a decade and more. I should be interested to learn whether you expect that the Navy will now seek to extirpate the Indian Ocean privateers, who have caused us all so very much difficulty.’

‘As to Mauritian privateers, I am entirely ignorant, but the birds, sir, the birds! Not only the blue-faced booby; not merely the bearded vulture, but the highly distinctive kestrel – the parakeet, the zosterops, hitherto only known to me from the pages of Buffon. My copy is not to hand, or you might peruse the fine engraving by Martinet. As for the solitaire of Rodriguez, I have a great many half-formed scribblings, but here I must beg your indulgence: they are in a terrible disordered chaos and confusion, and I should blush to present them to the company.’

‘You certainly must not present them to the company,’ she said sternly. ‘Do try the turbot, won’t you, darling?’

‘Yet – and this will astonish you – not a single frog could I find upon the island,’ he continued, ‘although I gave my very best imitation of the order.’

‘The merchants of Calcutta,’ said Johnson, looking slightly strained, ‘should be most grateful –’

‘Calcutta! Now, sir, I must ask you, as a fellow naturalist, a delicate question, and the ladies will forgive me: did ever you see the elephant engage in the act of love? For Buffon, of blessed memory, tells us that the elephant does not couple à la manière des autres animaux, but face-to-face. What stuff it is! Yet my native guides were unable to procure for me a mating pair, and –’

‘The turbot is delightful,’ Diana said menacingly.

‘Dear Dr Maturin,’ said Louisa, ‘I hear that you have spent ever so much time in Ireland. I wish that you could meet a friend of mine, Mr Coulson. He is so simpatico with Irish feeling, and he is friends with some great Irishmen now in the States: Mr Emmet, Mr Sampson, Dr McNeven – a wonderful physician; perhaps you know him? You were in Ireland in ’98, were you not?’

He said, ‘I was in Ireland, and to my infinite regret could not attend the famous concert of the Conservatoire, nor admire their valiant attempts to produce an amorous mood in the elephants of the Jardin des plantes. But my friends, ma’am, kindly sent to me a very exact description – I will look it out for you, if you wish it – I believe that Ça ira was said to have particularly excited the female.’

‘I suppose that in Dublin society –’ said Louisa.

‘If naval policy in the Indian Ocean –’ said Johnson.

‘The source of the whole error,’ pursued Stephen, tranquilly, ‘lies in a foolish heretical notion about the behemoth of the Book of Job, no doubt promulgated by that wicked tribe of Jesuits –’

Diana lifted her wine-glass, and dropped it on the floor. It made a beautiful smashing noise that stopped even Stephen in his tracks. ‘Jenkins, clean that up, and bring in the apple-tarts, please. Dr Maturin, pray assist me with my skirts; I may have some glass caught in them.’

When she had him in the staircase, she said, ‘So help me God, I will wring your scrawny little neck. You are embarrassing me in front of my friends. You are making me a laughing-stock with your goddamned pachyderms.’

‘I find your friends impertinent, Villiers,’ he said. ‘What is this poking, this prying, this ferreting around about naval policy – about my Irish friends, forsooth? I must tell you that I mislike it extremely.’

‘You can hardly blame them for attempting to converse about Ireland and the Navy. It is generally thought polite to tailor one’s conversation to the interests of one’s interlocutor, not to expound at length upon randy goddamned elephants when it is quite clear that nobody at the table wishes to hear a single goddamned word about them. I am sure that you have horribly embarrassed Mrs Wogan.’

‘The lady did not strike me as a delicate blushing miss.’

She seized him by the neckcloth and he looked up at her mulishly. ‘No more of these elephants,’ she said. ‘You will restrain your conversation to civilised topics. The beauties of spring. The plays of Jonson. Your views on modern painting. Is that understood?’

His lip curled. ‘You must permit me to take a dose, before I return to the company.’

‘Whatever it is that you need,’ she said grimly, and released her grip.

‘And Villiers, I leave on the night-mail for Portsmouth. I am promised to Ashgrove to meet Master George.’

‘I am sure you did not miss much in Calcutta,’ she said. ‘I sincerely doubt that you would have recognised the sex act when you saw it.’

Diana could not afterwards remember how they made it through pudding and port, except that they spoke at rather startling length about the building of the new Theatre Royal, and that nobody expressed any interest in staying for cards. It had been a thoroughly disastrous evening, and she only hoped that her husband’s erratic behaviour had not reflected too badly on herself.

‘Oh, you poor dear,’ said Louisa, pouring her a cup of tea. ‘This is why I left Mr Wogan in Petersburg, you know. And I daresay it is why Mrs Johnson is shut up in Baltimore.’

She was amazed to hear that there was a Mrs Johnson, but she did not let it show.

‘Dr Maturin is an interesting fellow,’ said Johnson, as they rode across Hampstead Heath. ‘I should like to know him better.’

‘He does improve with time,’ she said, spurring Cyrus up the hill. ‘I believe he is nervous around new people; so used to being closeted below decks, you know.’

‘He is evidently a man of discrimination; one need only consider his choice of wife. Mrs Maturin, could I impose upon you for a favour? A fellow in the Foreign Office has some papers to pass me, but it would not do for my rivals to see us in company. I am in need of a discreet and perspicacious courier.’

‘Oh, I should be thrilled,’ she said eagerly. ‘Do let me help you in any way I can; I certainly owe you for Cyrus.’

It was a rather amusing escapade, having a brown-paper packet thrust hurriedly at her by a gentleman in a chaise; Johnson was excessively grateful, and Diana was more than willing to do it again. The gentlemen were often very furtive, which made it feel much more exciting than it really was: as though she were having glamorous assignations, rather than fetching and carrying some tedious papers about the stock market. But men did tend to believe that their papers were very important, and many of them had positively gawped when they caught a glimpse of her face.

One fine, bright August morning, she dropped another parcel at Johnson’s, rejected the idea of calling for a chair, and took herself for a stroll in the direction of Harding Howell’s. Midway through the park, she spotted a shabby little man on his hands and knees, pouncing at something in the grass with a handkerchief. She sighed, walked up to him, and rapped him sharply on the spine with her parasol.

‘Maturin,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that you were in town.’

‘Villiers! Pray excuse me – a probable gynandromorph – now alas departed –’ He stood up, bowed, and transferred the dirt from his hands to his pale drab breeches. ‘You are flourishing, my dear, flourishing; you have been eating the good yellow butter, I doubt not. I arrived last night; attended the Society, dined at the Grapes, and have just now been calling at Seamore Place; but they told me you were not at home.’

‘As you may see,’ she said. ‘I am on my way to Pall Mall for a bonnet. Should you care to join me?’

He took her arm and they walked on. She did not like to mention the business with the papers; she had the obscure feeling that he would regard it as in some way underhand, although it was really no different from viewing a horse before betting. ‘How is the newest Aubrey?’ she said instead.

‘Hideous, red-faced, boisterous and loud.’

‘Well, I could have guessed as much.’ She jabbed him with her elbow and he made a wheezing noise that may have been laughter. ‘You will be glad to hear that Mrs Wogan has recovered from her ordeal.’

‘What things you tell me, my dear. Listen, now: I believe I dropped a letter from Jack at Seamore Place last month. Did you happen to discover it after our dinner?’

‘Oh, you are hopeless, Maturin. I am sure that you would lose your own head if it weren’t stuck on; but I heard nothing about any letter. Was it important?’

‘Not at all, not at all.’

He seemed in an affable mood, so she said, ‘Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t drink so much of that nasty laudanum. You were perfectly dreadful at dinner, and you are so much more human today. Besides, you have been a very wretched colour lately, and it is certainly because of that horrible stuff.’

He stiffened and said, ‘Do not presume, now, Villiers.’

‘It is only that we can hardly talk nicely any more. We used to talk about anything before – you know. The wedding, and such.’

‘I remain always at your service,’ he said, very stiff.

‘Why, that is just what I mean. You would never have said anything so feeble before. You would have said: to be sure, Villiers, you are a garrulous woman, you could talk for Ireland with only a damask wall-hanging for company, the Dear knows.’ But he did not laugh again. She said, ‘Do you wish we had not done it?’

‘Do you?’

‘Lord, no! I woke up this morning in my very own rooms; I stayed in bed for as long as I pleased; I took myself for a walk in the park, and now I am going to buy a bonnet. And there is nobody in the world who can stop me, all because I am married.’ He said nothing to this, so she added, ‘But perhaps you regret it.’

‘I do not,’ he said briefly.

‘Well, you have a funny way of showing it.’ She felt slightly nettled, and they walked in silence for a while.

‘You are missed at Ashgrove,’ he said eventually.

‘Oh, I doubt that very much. They must have their hands full with this puling infant and the two little savages. I suppose they would like to see me grovel, but I hardly need to, for I can ride here perfectly well. Mr Johnson has lent me a beautiful grey; I ought to take you to see him. He had a tendency to nap at first, but now we are the best of friends. Should you like to go for a ride? Mr Johnson would lend you a horse.’

‘I do not wish to ask favours from Mr Johnson,’ he said, in a very supercilious tone.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said. ‘Because you are jealous?’ He flinched and dropped her arm. ‘Jealous of his money,’ she said quickly; ‘he is dreadfully rich, you know – and all of your money is locked up in Spain – Stephen, I didn’t –’ But he was already walking swiftly away.

She stood staring after him, wondering if she should follow, but she had no wish to run like a dog at her master’s heels. Instead she said loudly, ‘Damnable rudeness!’ and continued on her way. She bought not only a bonnet but also a Chinese fan and a carriage-clock out of sheer irritation, and went to Hammond’s to complain to Louisa.

‘Mrs Wogan is not at home,’ said the footman, shutting the door.

But she could see Louisa in an upper window, quite clearly; and could see that she was tête-à-tête with Johnson; that their heads were bent over and very close together. Why did they not wish her to join them? Did they not realise that it was she? She might have thrown a stone at the window, had they been in the country, but one could not throw stones a hundred yards off Piccadilly; one would be taken up as a radical agitator.

Now Diana was brooding in her bathtub, for she had nobody left to talk to. Louisa was a viper, Johnson was a cad, and Stephen was a helpless slave to laudanum. Love was a word for silly girls and babies, but she had wanted, rather desperately, to have someone at her back, and now it was plain that she never would. It was not fair. She was very beautiful and charming and talented, certainly much more so than Louisa: why did she not have the friends she deserved?

She supposed that Stephen had loved her once; he certainly thought that he did. But that did not really matter, for when push came to shove, he would never fight for her. She had always known that he was not so dashing as Charles, who had once killed a man for insulting her, but she had once liked him – even admired him. Perhaps it was only that anyone would have come out well compared with her relations; or perhaps that hateful laudanum had ruined his silly mind. Either way, it was a thin sort of love, as weak as Louisa’s tea, and no earthly use at all.

Diana, at least, had behaved well throughout; she had been nothing but straightforward on all hands. Stephen had known what he was getting himself into, and he had been quite plain that he would not mind what he was not made to know. She had asked Johnson about Louisa, before anything began; she had said, ‘It is a damned awkward thing, you know, when these affairs ruin a friendship.’ And he had laughed and assured her that there was nothing to fear, the goddamned liar – and she had allowed him to turn her into his goddamned post-wallah!

She smacked the side of the bath with fury, and the clang was immediately answered by a thundering at the door. There was a commotion in the hall, a raised voice, and Bernard ran in looking unusually flustered. ‘A messenger from Monsieur Johnson, madam. He requests your presence most urgently at his house.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘Tell him I shall come when I am ready, and not a moment before.’

Bernard bobbed and left, and Diana got up reluctantly from the bath. She could hear more shouting downstairs, and was not wholly surprised when Bernard returned. ‘Urgency in the strongest terms, madam.’

She bristled. ‘Does he suppose that I am at his beck and call? I shall come when I am ready.’

This seemed to settle the messenger’s hash, and she settled down in peace to wash her face with strawberry-water, apply onion juice to her freckles, dab rosewater on her eyes, rub ashes into her teeth and comb oil-of-tartar through her hair. She felt warmly pleased. Johnson must have seen her on the street after all; no doubt he had tried to persuade Louisa to receive her, and was anxious to apologise for the dreadful discourtesy. Well, it would do him no harm to sweat a little; she meant to make him grovel.

More banging downstairs. When the dressing-room door creaked diffidently open, she said, ‘Send him away, Bernard,’ without looking up. She spread almond-paste on her hands, chewed a piece of clove, patted virgin’s milk into her cheeks and dusted her hair with jasmine-powder. Then she called Bernard to dress, hunted out her new bonnet, had Bernard replace the ribbon, found a matching shawl, changed her necklace, changed the shawl, put a new handkerchief in her reticule, and sent Jenkins for a chair.

On arriving at Johnson’s, she was rather annoyed to see that Louisa was there; indeed, she was hanging out of the parlour window in a most disreputable fashion. Then she realised with astonishment that Louisa was brandishing an enormous, old-fashioned flintlock pistol. ‘Where in God’s name did you get that antique?’ she said. And, with greater urgency, ‘Louisa, that thing is cocked. For God’s sake be careful; you could kill a man like that.’

‘Oh, do hurry up, Diana. Get in the house.’

The front hall was ahoo with baskets and boxes, and she looked around, very shocked. Papers had been spilt across the floor; a painting had been taken down and ripped from its frame; and a wainscoting panel had been hacked in splinters from the wall. She heard Johnson’s voice raised, and a thud; then he appeared from the library, heaving a chest. ‘Finally!’ he snapped. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

‘I was doing my lotions. Did you know that Louisa has a gun?’

‘Your fucking lotions will see all three of us hanged. You’re lucky I didn’t drag you out of there by the hair.’

‘Johnson, what the hell is going on? I think you’ve both gone mad. Are you drunk?’

‘We’re leaving.’ He dropped the chest heavily by the entrance to the kitchen-passage.

‘Leaving London?’

‘Leaving the country. Don’t give me that look: you’re coming too.’

‘I most certainly am not.’

‘It’s that or the noose; you have Wogan to thank. The Bow Street fucking Runners will be here at any minute. Wogan! Go up to the drawing-room: the range will be better. And find that fucking address-book.’

He seized Diana’s arm and drew her into the library. It was blazing hot, and a red-faced, weeping maidservant was piling letters into the roaring fire. Johnson looked quite savage; not his usual self at all.

‘Listen carefully, Diana, and bear in mind that I have no fucking time for more hysterical females today. Wogan and I are patriotic Americans, and it is our duty to keep our government informed of developments abroad that affect our national interests. The British Admiralty has discovered our activities and taken exception to them. We are leaving England before they start to ask awkward questions, and you’ll come with us if you know what’s good for you. My government is prepared to be generous in view of services rendered.’

‘You mean that you’re spies? What services rendered?’

‘Carrying papers, aiding and abetting: they have more than enough to hang you, girl. And we would rather you didn’t stay here to speak to the authorities. So you may come to the States with us, and wait there until the furore dies down.’

‘I may not. My husband –’ she said, and stopped. For what, after all, would her husband do? If Charles had heard that she were being kidnapped by Americans, he would have ridden in, guns blazing, to redeem her. Stephen, she supposed, would flap his hands in distress, drink half a pint of laudanum, and sob himself to sleep on Jack Aubrey’s shoulder.

‘Your husband,’ he mimicked. ‘The bird-watcher. Who gives a fuck what he thinks?’

‘It is a matter of discretion, which your mother ought –’

He slapped her. ‘My mother was worth a dozen of a whore like you. Say her name again and I swear you’ll choke on it.’ She snarled, and he raised his hand again. ‘Diana, I don’t have fucking time for this. I can shoot you now; or you can wait for the Brits to hang you; or you can come with us to the States. Your choice.’

He would kill her, she saw; he was entirely past reason, and she did not fully believe that he would leave her here to hang. Still, she hesitated. ‘I won’t go unless I can speak to my husband.’

‘You can post him a letter from an inn on the road. If we aren’t out of here in the next five minutes –’ He shouted up the stairs, ‘Wogan, where is my fucking address-book? We aren’t fucking leaving without my address-book.’

‘How should I know where it is, Harry?’

‘If that thing falls into the wrong fucking hands, a score of men will be hanged. And those deaths will be on your head. On your fucking head, Wogan! You can answer for that to the fucking committee!’

There was a small red morocco-bound book on the console table, half-hidden behind a battered lock-box. Diana did her best not to look at it.

From upstairs, Louisa shouted, ‘They’re here!’ and a shot shattered the air. Diana quietly took the book and slipped it into her reticule. Louisa tumbled down the stairs, her eyes bright and the muzzle of her absurd pistol smoking. ‘Did you hit him?’ said Johnson.

‘Shot his wig off. Oh Lord!’

‘Into the coach, now. Fraser! Get that fucking chest into the coach or I’ll skin you alive.’ He took Diana’s arm and pulled her roughly to the stable-yard, where a chaise was waiting with four stamping horses. ‘If that fucking address-book isn’t in one of these boxes, I’ll thrash every man Jack of them to death. In. In!’

She was shoved into the chaise, which leapt forward almost immediately; she grabbed at the strap, and glowered at the two Americans.

‘Oh, don’t give me that look, Diana,’ said Louisa. ‘We are going to get away scot-free, and you and I will have ever such a nice time in the States. Just think what an adventure it will be for you!’

‘Adventure!’ she said bitterly. ‘I am being kidnapped, and you call it an adventure!’

‘Now don’t be absurd, dear. We are doing you a very great favour, and it is only because we like you so much. Just think of all the poor fellows we have been obliged to leave behind; they are having a much worse day than you, I can promise.’

‘I believe he is going to kill me,’ she said, and was glad that her voice did not tremble.

‘If I were going to kill you, I would have done it already,’ said Johnson, who was looking behind them with a pocket-mirror.

She scoffed. ‘Tell that to the marines.’

‘He won’t kill you, Diana, truly he won’t.’

‘Diplomatic complications,’ said Johnson briefly. ‘Besides, we may require a bargaining chip. Nobody is following us, yet.’

‘You see!’ said Louisa. ‘You may come back very soon: it will only be a few months, or perhaps a year at the most; it is a matter of looking after our friends, you see. Besides, I did not think that you cared at all for politics.’

‘I care about England,’ said Diana, outraged.

‘Well, if I knew that it meant so much to you, I would never have asked you to receive Mr Coulson’s letters.’

‘Mr Coulson’s letters!’ she said, with new horror. There was one still on her dressing-table. ‘You told me that was an intrigue. And you told me that it was business – like horse-betting, you said…’

‘All buying and selling, Mrs Maturin,’ said Johnson, and he smiled like a crocodile. ‘All just buying and selling.’

They drove like the devil out of London, heading west; whipping the horses mercilessly, and changing the team every hour. Johnson would not let her out of the chaise until dusk was beginning to drop, and they had managed to cross Berkshire without incident. At the Bear in Hungerford, she was permitted to enter the parlour to eat some bread-and-butter, drink a coffee, and write her letter to Stephen.

‘If there is any mention of matters of state,’ said Johnson, cleaning the pistol, ‘it goes straight into the fire.’

She bought paper, ink and oilcloth from the innkeeper, and wrote swiftly: ‘My dear Maturin – Mrs Wogan has asked me to accompany her to America. I know it is terribly sudden, but it seems that she has been indiscreet, and time is very pressing. I cannot say when I shall be back in England, but I shall always, always think of you as my very dearest friend. I am only sorry that I cannot see you before I go, or I should beg you to forgive me for the manner of our latest parting. Do take care of yourself, and think kindly of me. You left your umbrella at Seamore Place. D.V.’

Then she wrote a second: ‘Nathan, you must send me a draft on my funds that I can present to a Boston banking-house. I have a very pressing need for absolutely as much money as I can immediately lay my hands upon. I suppose you ought to send it care of the British consul in Boston, as I have not yet an address there. I am certain that you will not fail me. Mrs D. Maturin.’

Johnson read the letters, as she had expected, but he only laughed and said, ‘I have always admired your mercenary instincts. Better in our hands than in Maturin’s, after all,’ and handed them both to the innkeeper.

‘I am trying to be practical,’ she said tightly. ‘Speaking of which, unless you stopped to pack a bourdaloue, I must use the necessary before we continue. I had not prepared myself for a long journey, of course.’

The privy was dark and stinking. Diana balanced her guttering candle on the shelf, tied the address-book in the last of her oilcloth and, kneeling on the filthy floor, wrote, with her left hand, ‘Admirality, London’: she did not put it past Johnson to search the mail-bag for her ordinary handwriting. Nor did she dare check whether the direction was legible when she emerged, but only dropped the packet quickly in the mail-bag as she passed.

‘Diana!’ roared Johnson, and she startled. But he merely said, ‘Back in the coach, now,’ and tapped his holster. He had not noticed the parcel at all. She climbed into the chaise very meekly, and was swept away towards Bristol and the sea.

Chapter Text

Stephen Maturin sank trembling into the armchair, and accepted the glass of brandy that was pressed upon him. It had been, without a doubt, the most exquisitely painful interview of his career. He had supposed the pride crushed out of him over the seven years of his marriage, but he had not reckoned on the toll that it would take to stand before a room of stony-faced officials and candidly admit to what all of his acquaintance must already have known. A good thing that they were stony-faced, to be sure, for if any had looked even slightly amused, he might well have run them through.

Again and again he had insisted, ‘Mrs Maturin's affairs are entirely separate from my own,’ assigning himself a pair of horns to save his neck. He had taken two glasses of laudanum before the appointment, and had spent much of the time wishing wholeheartedly for a third. When the thing was over, he had attempted to leave the building, but he had been ushered to Blaine’s rooms instead: ‘My dear man, you look destroyed; you cannot walk out in this state.’ And he was as biddable as a lamb, for in truth he was almost entirely numb, and everything that was said seemed to come to him from a very great distance, or perhaps through a curtain of heaviest silk.

He had realised almost immediately after his engagement the supreme difficulty of his position: the hitherto unsuspected incompatibility between intelligence work and wedlock. He had been a poor agent in Montserrat, half-dazed the whole time with thoughts of Diana; everywhere the smell of thyme, thyme, and his head as addled as a soft-boiled egg. It was only a matter of goodwill, of good fortune, that he had been returned alive, and with a halfway useful report. A good husband, it seemed, was a poor agent: irrational, distracted, disgusted by his duplicity.

And the mirror image, of course: a good agent must needs be a poor husband; but since he had not offered himself as a good husband, the paradox was easily resolved. He had given Diana all that he could – his name, his small fortune – and, these bestowed, he made himself scarce, for anything else that he could offer would not be welcomed. He was surprised that she had not reserved the possibility of an annulment, but perhaps that was against her own, passionately-defended code of honour, the contours of which he had never wholly grasped. Naturally, she had not asked for it again.

But he was content, quite content. His great fear, at first, had been that he might change her, and so he was never concerned by her lack of affection: she was not an affectionate creature; and if her movements were not designed to please him, it was because they were not designed at all. He had no more thought of possessing her than he did a wild bird; the notion, indeed, was laughable. So he consoled himself, that she did not feel any deadening sense of gratitude, of dependency, and that she continued so dashingly free and unashamed. And if he hid things from her – if he told her half-truths, and at times outright lies – it was only because secrets required discretion, and discretion would have been death to her pure, heart-moving, unstudied grace.

He kept his papers at the Grapes, therefore, far from the wandering eyes of her visitors. He had files, indeed, on a great number of her acquaintances, and knew very well who amongst them was entertained at Seamore Place. These would certainly have been the actions of a very mere scrub, had his intent been to meddle in his wife’s private affairs; in fact the knowledge was an unfortunate by-product, for his real interest was in a cadre of American radicals with influential friends in London. An unfortunate and distressing by-product, to be sure, but his intent had been quite innocent. And that, at least, was a comfort.

Nor did the knowledge touch him personally, for laudanum had robbed him of any carnal inclinations; besides which, he had spent his youth on a clutch of hopeless causes, and one more disappointment was nothing that could not be borne. Hearts such as his did not break: they were only very slowly wrung until they were poor dead shrivelled things, and, although his had been wrung very tightly of late, his regular dose had seen him through it; an admittedly large dose by any normal standards, but one carefully calibrated to his present circumstances.

The question, of course, was how closely she was embroiled in the Americans’ schemes, and whether she could be disentangled before they went too far. He did not suppose that she was deliberately playing false. She could, of course, be proud, stubborn, wilful, even cruel; she acted by her own quite mysterious lights; and she would do almost anything purely for the thrill of it: but he would have sworn that deceit and dissimulation formed no part of her character. So he delicately laid his bait, and Wogan took it. He planned to draw her out gently, gently; slowly dripping his poison; and above all leading her far from Diana.

But the Admiralty had panicked, and botched it. In their greed they had shot out a great clumsy paw, and spooked their quarry into flight. He had fancied, foolishly, that he might save her, and in fact he had ruined them both; if she had not lost all her fierce, feral joy, it was certainly lost to him forever. As he drank his laudanum and stared unseeing into the west, he could not help willing on the Sans Souci in her flight, praying that one of her passengers might find a happy shore. ‘Here’s to you, Villiers, my dear,’ he said, and raised his glass to the empty sky.

And he must swallow one more bitter pill, for he had destroyed not only his own prospects, but also, much worse, dear Jack’s and Sophie’s. Sophie wept upon his shoulder, and he knew himself to be a traitor, but the knowledge had to be dredged from a lake of deep and profound indifference.

‘Convict transportation,’ said Jack, in tones of strong displeasure, ‘on my ship. An officer of my seniority – a damned turnkey – an outrageous imposition.’

Stephen swam, with some effort, to the surface of his lake, and said, ‘My dear, I am afraid that we are being punished. Diana has gone to America with two of her friends, who are politically suspect persons. I am under a cloud at the Admiralty, and I regret that, by association – I will certainly resign. I am sure that they will give you Ajax, when they find that I am not to travel.’

A range of emotions passed swiftly over Jack’s open face. ‘You must not blame yourself, old Stephen,’ he said, with a cheer that sounded profoundly forced. ‘I daresay it is not so black as all that. No, there is every chance of a fine action, and perhaps even a prize; I am only standing on my dignity, you know: that is officers for you, ha ha. And I have heard that there are some fine birds in New South Wales; cassowaries, indeed; wombats by the cart-load: no, no, we certainly could not sail without we carried a philosopher aboard.’

Still, he would as lief have thrown the whole thing in, for the prospect of a voyage held no appeal to him at all. He wished only to be left alone, to moulder and silently mourn, to drown in the perfect and terrible memory of her kisses. But he had not resigned, against his better judgement; he had presented himself to the committee like a lamb to the slaughter; for Sophie, drawing him aside, had begged with tears in her eyes that he –

‘Maturin,’ said Blaine, in tones that suggested he had been repeating himself for some time. ‘I wished to speak to you in private – to speak about a highly confidential matter.’

Stephen examined his brandy-glass, wishing it were full of laudanum. There was a small apothecary on the way back to the Grapes; small, but well-stocked, and the tinctures of high quality. ‘Just so,’ he said eventually.

Sir Joseph frowned at him and said, ‘From time to time the Admiralty receives packages somewhat out of the ordinary run, and on these occasions Mr Gault, a worthy young man, brings the goods directly to this office. Some weeks ago we received this.’ He produced a small red book and a piece of very dirty, torn oilcloth. ‘It is Mr Henry Johnson’s London address-book. I need not tell you that it is an exceptionally valuable prize.’

‘Just so,’ said Stephen again. He did not pick up the book, nor was he invited to do so.

‘Its existence is not yet widely known; there are discussions, at the highest levels, as to how best to make use of its contents. Do you know Mr Charles Pole, of the Foreign Office? No? Well, it has certainly made interesting reading. But my dear Maturin, I did not invite you here merely to crow. We are entirely at a loss as to the identity of the sender. It came through Lombard Street – it was not hand-delivered – is it perhaps possible that Mrs Maturin…?’

Stephen picked up the ragged oilcloth. He was tempted, for a moment, to bury his face in it, to gasp for the faintest hint of lavender, roses, jasmine. But it would certainly do no good.

‘It is not her hand,’ he said shortly. ‘I should say that this was written by a servant: a near illiterate, by the looks of it. I suppose that Mr Johnson has no shortage of disaffected servants.’

‘A hand may be disguised,’ said Blaine, leaning forward in his chair. ‘You will have noticed that Admiralty is misspelt, of course.’

‘Her spelling has always been indifferent,’ said Stephen, almost to himself.

‘Well, then? Do you suppose that it is possible?’

Stephen looked down at the cloth in his twisted hands for a long time before replying. Then he said, ‘I regret that I have found no cause to trust Mrs Maturin; no cause at all.'

Chapter Text

It was Herapath who first brought Diana the news. He had taken to fetching her the Gazette on Mondays, for she liked to have the shipping intelligence, and the accounts of battles in Europe; and quite often she was so bored that she read through the whole list of prices at the back, from Alum and Beaver Pelts to Verdigris and Wine (Madeira); as well as the Notices, and the Premiums of Insurance on voyages to Great Britain, India, and the Brazils; and she would imagine that she was aboard a Swift-Sailing Schooner with Experienced Pilot on a wonderful journey to buy Madras patterns, instead of shut up in a Boston hotel with only a malodorous terrier for company.

It was her own choice to stay in Boston, as Louisa liked to remind her. When she visited, she waxed lyrical about Harry’s wonderful stables; the glorious rides they had; her dear friends the Mrs van Buren and Taft, who would like it so much if Diana could join them. ‘I wonder that you can bear it in these draughty old rooms,’ she said, raising a very superior eyebrow at the rattling windowpanes. She was wearing the most extraordinary diamond necklace, wholly absurd for a morning call, but Diana did not give her the satisfaction of admiring it. Besides, even its splendour could not wholly distract from Louisa’s yellow, puffy face (‘They hanged Mr Pole,’ Louisa said, ‘our dear friend in London. Harry will blame it on that blasted address-book.’)

No, she could not be enticed down to Maryland, not even by the wonderful stables. She had spent two weeks there, before her money came, and the thought of the place made her shiver. She had kept house slaves in India, of course, but this was rather different: there were so surprisingly many of them, for a start, creeping about the tobacco fields all the way to the horizon. And while they were a miserable cringing lot, on the whole, one did not like to see any creature so appallingly mistreated; Johnson’s horses and dogs were in beautiful condition, and the slaves’ state all the more wretched by comparison.

But it was not until she realised that half of the slaves were Johnson’s children, and the rest his father’s, and happened upon the way he was treating a girl who stole some flour, that she decided she could not stay there any longer. The place was no better than a whore-house, and it would shred the last rags of her own reputation. It made her want to weep with rage, when she thought that all of those horrible men with their vile packets of papers had supposed her to be a traitor; worse, that Stephen must think her a traitor twice over, to England and to himself. But she was not Johnson’s plaything, and she would be damned if she danced to his tune.

When they came up to Boston to fetch her banking-draft, therefore, she said very brightly to the consul, ‘You have been so kind, sir; I wish that you could recommend me a lodging-house in the city. My dear friends have been looking after me in the absence of my husband, but I ought to start paying my own way before I am reputed as a horse-leech.’

‘No need for that, Mrs Maturin,’ said Johnson, with a forced smile. ‘I will introduce you at Franchon’s, of course; one of our very finest establishments. I always take the first floor when I have business in Boston.’

In the coach, he said, ‘What the devil do you think you’re playing at?’

‘I won’t go back to Maryland,’ she said. ‘I’d rather die.’

‘Is this about that damned girl? I’m sorry you had to see that; but I’m a commercial man, Mrs Maturin. I don’t take kindly to the misappropriation of my property.’

‘It has nothing to do with the girl,’ she said. ‘What do you suppose my husband would think?’

‘God’s blood, not him again!’ said Johnson. ‘We heard enough of the goddamned fellow on the ship.’

He permitted her to take rooms at Franchon’s, on condition that three of his largest and fiercest blacks were to be stationed in a room next door; she was not to see visitors, write letters, or go out without an escort. He would visit her often, when he had business with the Secretary of State; and his friends in Boston would know at once if she broke her word. They would put it about that she was an invalid lady, who had to take meals in her room, and for whom too much company might be dangerously taxing.

Since Johnson had insisted upon Franchon’s, she was prepared to despise the place, but in fact she liked it at once. It felt like the sort of handsome, comfortable Parisian inn that she had stayed in before the war; Madame Franchon was terribly kind, and her husband was an excellent pastry-cook. Because Diana was convalescing, she was served a great deal of soup, but the soup was very good – in fact they slaughtered a turtle daily – and Madame Franchon frequently brought her little fruit tarts, coffee with cream, and dry white wines for her health.

And, after all, it was not so very difficult to pretend to be an invalid. She stayed in bed until after noon and only got up for dinner. Forbidden from society, she had no reason to change out of her night-dress, or put up her hair, and little to do but sit listlessly upon the couch and stare at the birds on the wall-paper. And she was rather afraid of the blacks: Johnson had warned her that they were very dangerous, and she did not like how they would talk together in a strange language, and fall silent and glower when she looked at them.

After a month of this, however, she decided that it was pathetic. She had never been to America before, and neither had Stephen, and a pretty flat she should look if she returned having seen no further than the hotel, and with nothing better to describe than Monsieur Franchon’s tarte aux fraises. No, she must be able to make shrewd observations and scornful witticisms, and if the circumstances were not perhaps ideal, and if Boston offered very little scope for her intelligence to work on, its population being rather smaller than that of Bath, so be it: she was not unused to making bricks without straw. She got out of bed, marched across the corridor to the blacks’ little room, and announced that they must accompany her to the shops.

She felt much better once she had a change of clothes, not to mention a piano and some scores, and Titania, the deaf and elderly terrier she had bought on a whim from a peddler. Titania was something of a disappointment, for she did not like to play games with a ball, preferring to lie and reek before the fire; but she once roused herself sufficiently to bite Johnson’s ankle, thereby winning Diana’s heart forever. Diana occasionally amused herself by throwing the ball at the waste-paper basket, or bouncing it off the chimney-breast from the far side of the room, and Madame Franchon was very understanding when she smashed a print of Ermenonville.

Besides this, Diana observed the streets below. There were delivery carts, of course, and carriages coming and going all day and night; sometimes officers on horseback; and urchins scuffling for the chance to earn pennies. A fellow in a beautiful French uniform came often on his elderly mare, stroking her greying nose in the friendliest manner when he dismounted. One morning, he appeared on a mincing new filly and Diana recoiled from the window, feeling absurdly betrayed.

She insisted upon walking, too. Every day she went out with Polly in tow, and marched all over the town. Diana liked to go down to the wharves and watch the great ships leaving, sliding from the smooth harbour like fish from a net. ‘Aren’t they very splendid?’ she said wistfully, but Polly would not look at the ships: they seemed to frighten her. On other days they climbed Beacon Hill, where there was a view of the whole town, and they could watch the stagecoaches rolling west on the post road to Connecticut. Diana would have liked to walk on the Common, where the fine ladies of Boston took the air, and the soldiers drilled, and crowds occasionally gathered to hear a mad preacher; but Polly was not permitted on the Common.

It was certainly tiresome to be tied to the woman: all the more so because she walked so slowly; it took a very long time to get anywhere at all, and they often had to turn back before they had achieved a destination. ‘Can we really not go a little faster?’ Diana said once, in exasperation.

Polly gave her a contemptuous look and said, ‘Why all this hurry? In my country, you would die.’

‘Did you live somewhere else before?’ said Diana eagerly. ‘Was it in Africa? Oh, do tell me about it, won’t you? I have never been to Africa. Were there lions?’ But Polly would say nothing more.

Anyway, the ladies of Boston were not so very fine, and their gowns were terribly provincial; either it took years for the pattern-books from Paris to make it across the ocean, or Americans all had a very vulgar taste. She herself now had a dreary Bostonian wardrobe, all of her good clothes being in London; Louisa had offered her some old French pieces, but she would be damned if she took Louisa’s cast-offs. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘they will be far too small for me. You do your best to disguise it, of course, but I am afraid that your back is not at all well-proportioned.’

When winter came to Boston, it was spiteful as a cat: slipping through her window-frame, clawing at her face. ‘How much longer?’ she said to Louisa, and Louisa said carelessly, ‘Oh, we still have a handful of fellows to get out.’ When Diana could stand it no longer, she sent to a woollen-draper for a beaver-fur muff, and it felt like giving in. Louisa, nastily, brought her a pair of knitting-needles and some horribly itchy wool, which she used to produce quantities of blankets for Titania.

Even with a muff, her fingertips were never quite warm, and she had to wipe the fog from her windows to look out. The urchins spent their time sliding on frozen puddles, and throwing snow at the gentlemen’s hats. They liked to hit Polly with snowballs, so that Diana had to negotiate hard for even the shortest of walks; it was true that Polly also had no winter coat to speak of, and her shoes were in miserable tatters. Johnson had evidently not thought to leave any money with the blacks, and, when Diana was feeling generous, she would order too much dinner and give them her leftovers.

She was no longer particularly afraid of them; they had not displayed any really savage propensities, she supposed that nobody in Boston would take their part over hers, and it was plain that they liked to be there almost less than she did. ‘If you would only allow me to escape,’ she suggested, ‘you could all go back to nice warm Maryland.’

‘I ain’t going back there,’ said Polly, with feeling. ‘Besides, Sam and me has plans to stay together.’

‘Are you married to Sam?’ she said, and to her amazement Polly ducked her head and covered her face with her hands.

On another day, Diana said idly, ‘Perhaps all four of us ought to go together. We could get on a boat and sail to the South Seas: I daresay the three of you could row like the blazes. You all have arms like butter-churners.’

‘Running never did nobody no good,’ said Polly, shuddering. ‘He always finds them, and then –’ She fell silent.

That put a stop to her talk of escape. It would certainly get back to Johnson one way or another: he had friends all over the town, and he could make the blacks talk if he wished. Diana was still quite sure that he would kill her for crossing him, however much Louisa might protest to the contrary. She remembered, very well, the girl with the stolen flour.

In February she caught a chill, and spent a miserable two weeks huddled up in bed, sweaty and shivering. The worst part was when Madame Franchon made a syrup of thyme for her cough. She had to send it away untasted: one breath of thyme, and she was back in that gently rolling carriage on the downs, the English sun warming the side of her face, and Stephen, cast in shadow, crumbs on his coat and a pinched, anxious face. Then she felt sick with the lack of him; felt an almost frenzied longing only to speak with him: for even when his silly head was stuffed up with laudanum, he was still the best company she knew.

At first, she believed Louisa when she said it would not be long; and she endured the long winter, dreaming of an English spring: disembarking in a mist of rain, rushing to the Grapes, finding Stephen there, surprised and pleased and somehow not cross with her. And she would be back in time for the 2000 Guineas – in time for the Oaks – in time for the Derby; but she was not, and she was not, and she was not.

And then came the horrible war. She never managed to wholly grasp its cause, but she understood enough to know that the Americans had behaved disgracefully, and they continued to do so in small matters and large. She was an alien enemy, obliged to report to a nasty little marshal, who wrote down her address in his book. A beautiful English frigate was burnt, and the people of Boston rejoiced for a week. They sang terrible ballads about the vain cheers of Britons and Yankee thunders roaring, and they lit a bonfire and set off fire-works while she was trying to sleep.

It was much less nice to go for walks now. She looked across the harbour at the Navy Yard, where they were building an enormous ship-of-the-line, and she shuddered to think of its heaving bulk rolling across the Atlantic. The merchantmen did not leave port; only the little fishing-boats went in and out, for somewhere out to sea were British ships, and perhaps, upon one of them, Stephen. One day a disconsolate skipper lent her his glass to see the swaying masts of the blockading squadron, as fragile as matchsticks out in the bay. ‘How dreadful!’ she said, although her heart was beating fast: she might even now be looking directly at her husband.

There were a great many British officers in Boston, hobbling about looking dazed, but naturally she did not dare speak to any of them. Johnson was up much more often now, holding dinners at the hotel with a roster of tedious men. Mr Secretary came frequently, and both Johnson and Louisa fawned over him repulsively. Diana was expected to be in attendance, in her frumpy Boston frock and her meagre string of pearls, while Louisa sat in state at the head of the table, almost buried under her glittering show of diamonds.

Diana could not disguise, of course, that she lusted after the diamonds. She had only the jewels she was wearing when she left London: the pearl necklace and her wedding-ring. They were the Nawab’s pearls, very fine, and the ring was much nicer than she knew Stephen could afford, but it was so tiresome to wear them day in and day out: she wished so greedily to be a real person again, to be beautiful and admired, and to have lovely new things.

She felt, most days, like a ghost. It was hardly as though she existed at all, with nobody to see her but the slaves and the servants. She had run out of scent, so she could not even smell herself. She examined her face carefully in the glass each morning, and was reassured by its largely unchanging presence; she walked fast on the streets to feel her heart beating; and she talked to herself incessantly, to hear the sound of her voice.

She hated being alone, but it was worse when Johnson was there. His suite of inner rooms did not open onto the corridor, but onto Diana’s drawing-room, and this meant that he must pass through every time he came in or out. He moved very quietly for such a big man, and one could never be sure when he might materialise behind one’s back, and demand one’s attention.

One afternoon, when she was practising her scales, he walked in, seized her by the wrist, and marched her through the bedrooms to a little closet at the end. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘You will write this out in French. My dear sir, I have just received from our friend the captain the papers you entrusted to him. You are not writing.’

‘You cannot make me write letters to France,’ she said, sitting on her hands. ‘I am in a state of war with France.’

He leant heavily on the desk and said, ‘Diana, I can make you do anything I please. Do you really require another demonstration of the principle?’

She wrote the letters. But since Johnson’s French was very poor, she felt bold enough to add some little slips: anything that might confound his plans, and that could be explained away by her faulty translations. She was astonished at how much he knew about political affairs in Washington, but soon his reports of Cabinet discussions were rather puzzling, and the army’s dealings in Upper Michigan were muddled beyond rescue. He seemed to forget her protests after a time, for he spoke rather freely about his views on the British and French, and he even allowed her to see him lift out the secret bottom of his desk drawer and reach for some papers inside.

But Johnson was right if he thought that he had her under his thumb, and that she could offer little resistance to the war as things stood. She would have been in a very miserable taking had not she had Herapath to distract her: for although he was American, he had not a martial bone in his body; he had not realised there was a war until he attempted to sail from England, and forgot about it again as soon as his ship slipped through the blockade.

He knocked on her door, rather tentatively, one Sunday morning; since Johnson did not knock, and Madame Franchon had never been tentative in her life, Diana went to the door with great curiosity, and opened it to reveal a cadaverous sort of gentleman with a very flustered look.

He said, ‘I beg your pardon – oh dear! – pray excuse me, ma’am. I was told to enquire – a Mrs Wogan? – but perhaps I have –’

‘Good Lord,’ she said, ‘you were Louisa’s secretary; I hardly recognised you. Mr… Helephant.’

‘Herapath.’

‘As you please. We met in Chelsea, did we not? And at that dreadful salon; so tiresome, didn’t you find? I am afraid that Louisa is out of town just now, but I am quite sure that she will be back any day.’

By now Sam had been roused from the next-door room; he lumbered across and said, ‘No visitors!’

‘Don’t be silly, he is only a friend of Mrs Wogan.’

‘No visitors,’ Sam insisted, taking Herapath’s arm and walking him down the hall. ‘The lady is sick.’

‘I shall write to Louisa!’ she called after him. ‘Do come back again soon!’

She could not, in fact, write, for she was still barred from sending letters. ‘It is a letter to Mrs Wogan,’ she said to Sam impatiently; ‘can’t you read?’ But he was unmoved. In the event, however, she was pleased to be able to break the news in person, for she could see that it was a real shock, and it was not until after dinner that Louisa could properly gather her wits.

‘Oh yes, Herapath,’ she said negligently, curled up on the couch with a glass of port. ‘He is a dear; he would never hurt a fly, and I am sure he will do just exactly as I say. No, he is perfectly safe, Harry, and besides, I should rather he were safely occupied up here than mooning about in Maryland: can you even imagine?’

So Herapath was permitted to visit her, and indeed he seemed to have little enough else to occupy him in Boston, and to be glad to have an excuse to escape his father’s house. He was really waiting for Louisa to join him, he explained, but his father would cut his allowance if he went down to Maryland himself, and besides, he thought that Louisa’s business would not detain her for long. Diana was not at all certain that he understood the situation, but she had no wish to disabuse him, for fear of losing his company.

For she was glad to have the company. With Herapath as an approved escort, more of the town opened up to her: he was a fast and nervy walker; tolerant of impulsive diversions; and permitted in areas barred to the blacks. He had no knowledge of naval affairs, and regretted that he had never heard of Dr Maturin, nor even Captain Aubrey, but he had spent a great deal of time in China, and could talk on it for hours. At first she encouraged him to speak of anything other than Louisa, thinking that this could only be good for both of them, but she had not quite reckoned with his enthusiasm for the Tang poets.

‘Herapath,’ she said, very kindly, after the first week of this, ‘pray do not read me any more of these poems. If I hear about leaves falling upon lutenists one more time, I am sure that I shall scream; why do the silly fools never play indoors? You ought to tell me something interesting about China instead. Are there tigers there? How do the ladies dress? What do they like to eat?’

He did not know very much about tigers, nor silks, more’s the pity, and he had mostly eaten rice porridge and bean curds, but once he had been given a jellyfish soaked in sweet wine, which he could describe in vivid detail. The Chinese sat on the floor to eat, just as they did in India, but they used small sticks to pick up their food. For a few days she ate her dinner on the floor, purely for the sake of amusement, but Titania was very greedy, and so it did not serve.

The next time he visited, he brought a little set of tea-cups, his opium pipe, and a pack of Chinese cards. She would not let him smoke the pipe, but she made him teach her how to play khanhoo for pennies; she was very strict about her money, for she did not want to pawn her jewels, not unless things became desperate. She would have felt naked without a necklace, certainly under Louisa’s eye, and she did not think she could bear to part with the ring. It was a reminder that someone had once, if only briefly, thought that she might be worth saving.

One damp and freezing February afternoon, Louisa wafted into Franchon’s with a sable-lined pelisse and an emerald the size of a doorknob. ‘Harry is in Maine with Mr Adams,’ she announced. ‘Leave them here, Susie.’ The huge black woman following her deposited two bottles of bourbon on the table, and Louisa draped herself across the couch. She wished to complain about Johnson: his absurd jealousies, his promises of reform, his sudden rages, his lavish gifts. ‘As if I could be bought for his mother’s old diamonds!’ she groused.

Diana thought privately that the great rivière of diamonds could have bought something rather better than Louisa – perhaps Franchon’s hotel, the rest of the street, and a coach-and-six besides – but she only patted Louisa’s arm and said, ‘Most women like diamonds, you know; it is not so disgraceful to admit it.’

By the time they had finished the first bottle of bourbon, Johnson had long been forgotten. ‘It’s too absurd,’ said Louisa, waving her glass for emphasis, ‘but I daresay that Michael is really the love of my life.’

‘Why absurd?’ said Diana. ‘He seems nice.’

‘Nice! Don’t be silly, dear. What good is nice to me? Don’t hog the bottle – haven’t you heard of the Bishop of Norwich?’

Diana uncorked the second bottle with some difficulty, and said, ‘For the love of your life, you do treat him rather badly. You have hardly seen him three times since he came.’

‘Oh, I find him quite intolerable, really. He hangs about like a sort of sad dog. But I should hate anything very bad to happen to him, and I suppose that is what love is like. The people you love are very often intolerable, don’t you think? It must be much easier with your Maturin, since you don’t give a fig for him.’

‘Don’t give a fig for him!’ said Diana indignantly. ‘Why, he is my very dearest friend.’

‘What stuff,’ said Louisa, ‘as if you could possibly be friends with a man like that. Besides, I thought that I was your dearest friend.’

‘You?’ said Diana, laughing a little madly. ‘You kidnapped me.’

‘Now, you are being hysterical again. As if you were chained up in a dungeon, when you could come and have a lovely time in Maryland whensoever you pleased. But you would rather sulk up here because you are too stubborn to enjoy yourself.’

‘Well, what would my husband think if I did?’

‘Lord, how you do harp on,’ said Louisa. ‘Perhaps you really are in love with him.’ After a moment she added, ‘Did I ever tell you what Michael wanted us to do in Chelsea? He wanted us to grow – listen, dear – he wanted us to grow beans. Can you imagine? And the funny thing – the funny thing was – that the beans all died.’

Diana, who had heard a great deal of Tang poetry by now, said, ‘Bean: is it a bean? Coming at midnight; leaving with the dawn,’ and Louisa laughed so much that she fell off the couch and lay on the floor, hiccupping.

They both felt rather dreadful on Saturday morning, and were obliged to confine themselves to buttered toast for dinner. ‘In India, the natives used to give the elephants brandy for their festivals,’ said Diana, nibbling delicately. ‘And to make them sober again, they would feed them bucket-loads of ghee – a sort of melted butter.’

Louisa blanched and said, ‘Pray do not mention brandy, dear. And I wish you would not speak so loudly.’

By Sunday, when Herapath came by, Diana felt thoroughly restored. It was bright and glassily cold outside, the grass stiff with frost and the sky a blistering blue. ‘Did you know that Mrs Wogan was in town on Saturday?’ she said, as they watched the skaters cross the pond.

‘Oh!’ said Herapath. ‘She did not send word – but then, she must have a great deal of business – and of course, she is not obliged –’

‘Herapath, I really think you would do better to forget all about her,’ Diana said. ‘She means to stay in Maryland for a long time yet, and she is not at all a nice person, you know. She has done some horrible things, truly she has. You would do oh so much better without her.’

Herapath gaped at her, apparently lost for words. Eventually he managed to splutter, ‘You are jealous of her, ma’am!’

‘Oh, don’t be absurd!’ said Diana impatiently. ‘Listen, that story I told you about my health was as much stuff. In fact I have been kidnapped by Johnson and Wogan – they are keeping me here quite against my will –’

Herapath looked very nervous. ‘You are becoming distressed – perhaps we ought to – taken unwell –’

‘I suppose that you would never believe me,’ she said, growing angry, ‘not even if you saw them kill me. I believe that you would approve of anything she did, no matter how dreadful it was.’

‘Nobody is going to kill you, Mrs Maturin – I really think that you ought to lie down –’

‘For God’s sake, how do you think she earnt those diamonds?’

‘That is an outrageous – an unforgiveable – I believe that you are ill, ma’am, and I am sorry for it, but I will not listen to base accusations –’

She saw, in despair, that it was utterly hopeless, and she submitted to being returned to her rooms. He would not think ill of Louisa, no matter what she did: to him, or to Diana, or to anyone else. And it was no good to say that he was attached, she thought fiercely, for Stephen would never be so pitiful; if he thought that she were a traitor, he would cast her aside, and he would be right to do it.

‘By the by,’ she said, as Herapath was leaving, ‘she will never care for you while you smoke that horrible opium. It is the very last thing that any woman enjoys.’

Then she went to bed, put the eiderdown over her head, and wept. Herapath had been her only friend, and he was gone; he would never come back, after all that she had said. She refused dinner. She refused a little tea. She threw a candelabrum at the door. After a time, she must have dozed, for she was woken by a shattering explosion and the crash of falling masonry very nearby; at first she thought that the world was ending, and then, with hope, that the British had arrived, but when she went to the window, she found that it was only a group of giddy French officers, who had blown up her balcony with a fire-work. She stumbled back to bed and wept again.

In the morning, things were no better: the British had not come, and she was still trapped like a mouse, with no end to her misery in sight. She was tormented for hours by the sound of cheering crowds, music and fire-works and huzzahs on the street, and she burrowed more deeply beneath her pile of blankets, hating America and the war and her own stupid self.

A hammering at the door finally roused her from the bed; supposing that it was Madame Franchon, she answered it in her night-dress, but it was Herapath, of all people, brandishing a newspaper.

‘Oh God, Herapath,’ she said, hastily pulling on her dressing-gown.

‘Mrs Maturin, have you heard the news?’ he cried, barrelling past her into the drawing-room. ‘Did not you say that your husband sails with Captain Aubrey?’

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Is he dead?’

He thrust the paper at her and she read:

‘Accounts have been received here this morning from St Salvador of the arrival at the latter port of the Constitution frigate. In an action lasting 1 hour 55 minutes on 30 December last, the Constitution took and destroyed the British frigate Java, an important ship fitted out in the completest manner for the East Indian service. The Constitution had 9 killed, 25 wounded and little or no damage to the hull; Com. Bainbridge received two wounds in the action, but is now entirely well. The Java was totally dismasted, had 60 killed and 101 wounded. Capt. Lambert died of his wounds the day after the action, and the greater part of the survivors have been landed on parole at St Salvador. The Constitution is expected next at Boston for repairs, carrying Capt. Aubrey, formerly of the ill-famed Leopard.’

‘Captain Aubrey,’ she said, ‘but what about his surgeon? Why do they not say about the surgeons? Why is Captain Aubrey not on parole in St Salvador?’

‘I am sure I could not say,’ said Herapath, wringing his hands.

‘I daresay that Stephen would like St Salvador – don’t you think they might have jaguars, or pumas? But then, he would hardly wish to be separated from Aubrey. Do you suppose they would say if anyone were coming with him? Why do they only speak of the captains? How many Britishers came through the battle? And whyever should the Leopard be ill-famed?’

‘I hardly know,’ said Herapath. ‘But the Constitution must be here soon – she cannot be far behind the news, after all. Any day now, I should imagine.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose you are right. I wonder if the news has reached Baltimore.’

Her question was answered that evening: she was watching the lamp-lighters come round with their poles when a muscular chestnut stallion clattered into the street, causing a sensation amongst the nearby mares. The rider, well-muffled, swung easily into a pool of light, and she knew from his assured manner that it was Johnson.

‘You needn’t think that either of you will be exchanged,’ he said, sipping his cognac in her drawing-room. ‘Nor Maturin, if he is with them. I believe that one of those fellows has done us a great deal of harm, and I will be delighted to question them about it, in such congenial circumstances. It is a real stroke of luck, and I intend to take advantage.’

Yet Diana could not help but hope. Aubrey was a powerful man, and not as stupid as he looked: he had got himself to Boston, after all, which none of his fellows had managed (she ignored the niggling suspicion that this might not have been terribly clever). He had no love for her, of course, but he might still help her for Stephen’s sake; if Stephen, that is, had not wholly renounced her.

She knew at once when the ship came in, not a week behind the news, for everyone in Boston took a holiday. They rushed about roaring patriotic songs, ringing church bells, collecting timber for another bonfire: all very tedious and predictable; she wondered they were not tired of it. Johnson had absolutely forbidden her to go to the wharf, but she sent Herapath to O’Reilly’s as soon as she could, to search for Aubrey amongst the paroled British officers, and to present him with a stack of American dollars. Yet he came back shaking his head – no trace of Aubrey to be found – and Johnson refused to answer her questions.

‘We are dealing with him,’ was all that he would say. ‘You will do far better to keep your distance; the association can only harm your own case.’

Franchon’s was by now full to bursting: Louisa was there, and a clatter of new Frenchmen, each more objectionable than the last. Johnson was often closed up in his rooms with a particularly tiresome specimen: a tall Burgundian with badly-dyed whiskers and a permanent sneer. She tried to listen to them through the wall with a glass, but to very little effect. Madame Franchon looked permanently harried, and the soups went into a sad decline.

It was quite by accident that Herapath found Aubrey: he had been taking soft-shelled crabs to his Aunt Putnam in Choate’s. ‘The Irish mad-house?’ said Diana, with interest: Louisa had lately complained over dinner that Choate was giving Papists a bad name (‘Oh, I am sure that it could hardly be worse,’ said Diana, comfortingly.)

‘I was not able to see him – very ill indeed – but I spoke to Dr Choate; he gave me to understand that the captain is attended by his own physician; that they came together on the ship. He promised to pass on your direction – oh!’ Diana had run to him and tightly embraced him, wiping her tears on his shoulder.

She was rather dashed to hear that Aubrey was ill, for she had been relying on him to storm her way out. But it was difficult for her to worry, for the thought of seeing Stephen was so delightful that she lay in bed that night and laughed out loud. In the morning, she made her toilet with particular care, and sat by the window all day, straining to catch sight of each face on the street, and jumping at small noises in the corridor. But Stephen did not come: not that day, nor the next. She was a fool, she told herself, huddled in bed: of course he did not mean to come; he had broken with her, after all, and would sail back to England without caring to see her.

But one evening Johnson strode into the drawing-room, slapped his gloves upon the table, and said, ‘Well, Louisa, we have been teased with the prospect for many a year, but it is finally time to discover what Mrs Maturin’s husband will think. He means to call on us for coffee tomorrow. Diana, I hope that you are far too clever to attempt any silliness; you ought to know that he is in enough trouble without your adding to it.’

She hardly slept a wink all night: she could not stop her heart beating violently, nor her mind from conjuring scenes that ranged from the affecting to the disastrous. Would he embrace her? Would Johnson kill him? Would she say something foolish that made everything worse? She fell into a confused dream in which Stephen came riding an ostrich, and upset Madame Franchon, so that she was rather relieved when, at six o’clock, she was woken by two builders hammering bricks out of her balcony. She got up, put on her best Boston morning-gown, and installed herself by the window.

This was an almost wholly futile exercise, for a thick yellow fog had descended overnight, and she could hardly see the builders, let alone the street; Java’s whole company could have paraded about for hours and she would have been none the wiser. By ten o’clock she could just about follow the sacks of bricks as they were hoisted up on ropes, and by eleven, she could recognise several of the horses waiting patiently outside Franchon’s.

She was sure that she had seen Stephen a dozen times before he stumbled, unmistakably, from a carriage, astonishingly real, in his Navy coat and grubby breeches. She stared down at him greedily. He paused for a moment to straighten his wig, look up at the hotel, and pass his hand slowly over his face, as though he were preparing for a very great ordeal.

Diana burst through the drawing-room, ignoring Johnson and Louisa’s startled cries, and darted down the corridor. Stephen was already at the bottom of the stair, his thin upturned face very drawn and unhappy, but when he saw her, he fixed on a mask of distant pleasantness and an artificial smile. She cried, ‘Maturin!’ and tripped downstairs into his arms; kissed his cheek, and whispered urgently, ‘Do not cross him: he is dangerous.’

He only said, ‘My dear, how well you look,’ and, glancing upwards, ‘Mr Johnson, good day to you.’

She said, more loudly, ‘Darling, you have come at last! I was so afraid you might not – I have been waiting for you – you are terribly wan, you know. How are you, and how is poor Aubrey?’

‘Out of danger, God be thanked. He gave himself a pneumonia in a terrible wicked ice-storm – would insist upon binding himself to the mast – very weak, very wretched for a time.’ He was talking rather quickly, and she was astonished to see that there were tears in his eyes. She did not know if they were for her, or for Aubrey, or perhaps only because of the cold.

She clutched his arm tightly as they climbed the stair, interrupting a description of Aubrey’s shattered ulna, and said, ‘Oh, Stephen, how glad I am to see you; I was so sorry, so very sorry, about Seamore Place, and all that wild dashing out of town – out of England – without even seeing you. The coffee will be here directly – I am sure you will like it; have they been feeding you good coffee? – and you must tell me how you come to be in Boston, and where you have been besides. And oh, Stephen, how is Aubrey bearing this dreadful war?’

‘Dr Maturin, what a pleasure,’ said Johnson, shaking his hand. ‘I am truly delighted to return your kind favours and play host to you here in my country. Have I not told you, ma’am, that Captain Aubrey is in fine spirits? We had a most stimulating conversation yesterday. A most interesting gentleman.’

Stephen, ushered into her drawing-room, perched upon the edge of the armchair, like a cat that had not yet resolved to stay. ‘What a charming fire you have, my dear. The very thing to ward off these rising damps.’ She could hardly believe how solid, how vivid, he was: thinner, perhaps, browner, his face more lined and wearier, and his wig looked as though it had been put through a mangle. He must have shaved himself raw in the past few hours, for his jaw was smoother than she had ever seen it. She was relieved to find no anger or, worse still, pity in his face; but then, there was no friendship there either, only a cold impersonal politeness; and if she had not seen him on the street, on the stair, she would hardly have thought him affected at all.

‘You must be so very cold in this draughty old room. Are your lodgings dreadfully cold, Doctor?’ said Louisa. ‘Mrs Maturin is so clever at knitting; I am sure she could whip up a darling blanket for poor Captain Aubrey in no time at all.’

‘Oh, there is a blanket just here,’ said Diana, seizing it from under Titania and flapping it to dislodge the dog hair. ‘Aubrey may have that; but Stephen, what you really need in this weather is a good flannel shirt. I shall send you a dozen from my woollen-draper. You are oh so pale, and it cannot be at all good for your poor fingers.’ Everyone in the room looked at Stephen’s fingers, and he twitched them irritably. ‘Come out of the draught now, sweetheart, and sit by me: that window has always been loose. I swear that someone will climb in one day, and then where shall I be?’

‘Yet as to Captain Aubrey,’ said Stephen, putting his right hand firmly over the left, ‘as his physician, sir, I must insist that he be allowed to regain his strength in peace. This visiting, this questioning, this incessant, if I may, badgering: nothing could be more perfectly calculated to impede the patient’s recovery.’

They were saved from Johnson’s reply by the unexpected arrival of Mr Secretary and his entourage; a whirl of introductions; she was torn away from Stephen by the ridiculous Frenchman with the dyed moustaches. She kept craning over his shoulder, but he would not take the hint. Stephen was with Louisa and that terrible snob Mrs Hay; they were twittering prettily at him, but she could not hear what they were saying. Now he was leaving – not even a glance at her – but, thank God, Johnson was planning a dinner-party: he would be back again tomorrow.

She felt dazed, giddy, and strangely exhausted; she permitted Pontet-Canet to speak at length to her about squab, which only obliged her to say ‘Goodness me!’ and ‘How clever of you!’ every time he paused for breath. The drawing-room was hazy with cigar smoke, loud with braying laughter; it was hours before Johnson cleared them all away.

‘Well, Louisa, how did you find the scene?’ he said, loosening his neckcloth and dropping heavily onto the couch.

Louisa yawned and said, ‘Very affecting. Just a tiny touch of the melodrama, but not, I think, overdone.’

‘Mrs Maturin has never been one to pass up the chance for a melodrama. How did you say Maturin injured his hand?’

‘Do you know, I can’t remember,’ said Diana. ‘Some sort of rope on the ship, I believe. You know how they talk about their riggings and pullings; I hardly know what half of it means.’

‘I see,’ said Johnson. He tossed back his drink and threw the glass at Abijah, who caught it neatly, quite used to such behaviour.

Johnson was certainly very interested in Stephen’s hands: he kept casting glances at them over dinner the following day. He had been to a disappointing meeting before breakfast, and was in a foul mood all afternoon. Louisa only rolled her eyes and said, ‘Lord, how he sulks like a huge great baby. But we are visiting Maine on Sunday; perhaps that will cheer him.’

Louisa was wearing the most beautiful gossamer silk in duck-egg blue; there were Valenciennes lace trimmings at her shoulders and bosom, and pearls (rather too many) across her sleeves. Because she had no taste at all, she was also wearing both the huge rivière of diamonds and a very showy yellow plume. The gown, thought Diana, must have come straight from Paris; Louisa was not doing it justice at all.

A lobster bisque, a turbot, a haunch of venison: Monsieur Franchon had pulled out the stops. Stephen was coaxed into speaking about his travels: his delightful sojourns upon an island that seemed mostly to have consisted of cabbages, the terrible loss of his preserved cabbages in a fire. The sea-battle with Constitution he remembered very ill, though he had some strong words for the rats aboard the Java, which had doubtless all drowned since; ‘the fortune of war, as a gentleman lately had cause to remind me. Still, a parcel of weasels would have done a them a power of good.’

Johnson, visibly bored by weasels, snapped his fingers for the Hermitage.

‘A capital wine, sir,’ said Stephen, holding up his glass, and sending his fish-knife and blue spectacles tumbling to the floor. ‘I thank you,’ he added to Abijah, who had rushed to pick them up.

Johnson snorted and said, ‘These creatures must make an interesting study for a naturalist such as yourself.’

‘Hardly, sir,’ said Stephen coldly; ‘I am privileged to count several African gentlemen amongst my most respected colleagues. After all, since our common ancestor was surely a Levantine, I consider myself to have been as thoroughly bleached as they are burnt, and so we meet on a plane of equality.’

‘I wonder at you, sir,’ said Johnson; ‘no intelligent observer could look at these brutes and imagine that they are anything but naturally inferior to Europeans such as ourselves.’

Stephen took a mouthful of wine with a considering look, and Diana’s heart sank. ‘I must confess that I consider talk of natural inferiority to be a very wicked heresy,’ he said, inspecting his glass. ‘Each creature has the beauty that proceeds from a perfect adaptation to its manner of life, and it is undeniable that hares, foxes and the like also grow whiter as one approaches the poles. Consider the plumage, sir, the thick and dense plumage of the gannet, the auk, the blue-footed booby, which I have been privileged to examine at length: why, it is plain to any intelligent observer that it merely serves to protect him from the frigid clasp of his native waters. So too must the thick and woolly hair of the African protect his head from the blazing sun of his native lands. Why then should we be surprised when the African flourishes in the warmer regions of this very country, while the brains of Europeans such as ourselves,’ he inclined his head, ‘so often boil up and die in the summer heat?’

Johnson gave a very forced laugh. ‘I believe that you must be misinformed, sir; I have never heard of any such case.’

‘Indeed? To a sojourner in your land, I am afraid that its unhappy effects are all too apparent. You yourself have spent some considerable time in Maryland, have you not?’

Johnson’s face turned an ugly colour, and Louisa cried, ‘Mr Johnson! I do wish that you would tell those fellows outside not to hammer while we are at dinner. It is too bad, really it is. I am sure I have not heard a word that poor Dr Maturin has been saying.’

‘They are dreadfully noisy,’ said Diana, ‘although nobody has climbed in my window as yet, so I suppose that I ought to be grateful.’ Stephen raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing.

She and Louisa chattered inanely for several minutes about the various idiocies of the labouring classes – their inability to comprehend the habits of civilised society – the corporal punishments that ought to be visited upon them as a result – following which Stephen offered another disquisition upon the blue-footed booby, and managed to knock over his wine-glass, drop his wig into the floating island, and start a small fire with a nearby candle. He flapped about haplessly while Abijah put it out; the whole time Johnson watched him with suspicion, and well he might: for Stephen, she thought, knew that he had gone too far, and was now deliberately playing the fool. She scolded him ostentatiously.

That night, as the previous night, she left her bedroom window unlatched and the shutter up. Stephen had taken the hint: he tumbled in with a cloud of dust shortly after midnight, huffing and puffing for dramatic effect. She felt a great gust of relief: that he had understood; that, even if he no longer liked or trusted her, at least they were still the same sort of person.

‘You have always been a demanding woman, Villiers,’ he said, collapsing into an elbow-chair, ‘but could you not have arranged a more convenient rendezvous; one that did not require such gymnastics, forsooth? Would you not have a pot of coffee, at least, in the place of an athlete’s laurels?’

‘I can’t ring for coffee, but I do have cigars. Oh, Stephen, I am so glad that you are here. It has been unspeakable. He won’t let me out of these rooms, you know, and I could not even send you a message. I thought that you might not come.’

He came to the foot of her bed and said, ‘Hush now, Villiers, I am afraid that your nerves are overwrought. Should you like a little piece of mutton?’ He rummaged about in his pocket. ‘Jack and I are to be exchanged in a day or so, and naturally you will come back with me as my wife.’

‘No,’ she said, clutching the eiderdown tight like a little girl. ‘No, they will not exchange you. They believe that one of you has something to do with intelligence – that you palmed some papers off on Louisa. He will not allow an exchange. Really, you cannot imagine how dangerous he is. He knows oh so much about politics and defences; he has a whole swarm of people working under him, and he has been making me write letters to the Frenchmen – but I have been putting mistakes in them, as many as I could.’

‘Listen, my dear. Does Mr Monroe visit often?’

‘Mr who?’

‘Mr Monroe – the Secretary of State.’

‘Oh, is that his name? Yes, perhaps once a week.’

‘And the Frenchmen?’

‘Pontet-Canet is here a great deal – the pompous one with the silly moustaches; did you notice him yesterday? And there is a new fellow, Dubreuil: he makes me shudder. Johnson told me he once skinned a man alive. I am glad that you were so stupid at dinner; it was the cleverest thing you could have done.’

‘Stupid?’

‘With the boobies, and the candle.’

‘Oh, naturally,’ he said, looking a little uncomfortable.

‘Sweetheart, I wish you had not upset him so. He really thinks that you and Aubrey have done him some terrible harm. I told you not to cross him, and now he might do anything – I have seen him do the most revolting things.’

He walked to the fireplace and stood there with his hands behind his back. ‘I wonder how you can bear it,’ he said.

‘It was unbearable,’ she said eagerly. ‘I knew you would understand. Down on his plantation – he wanted to make me one of his harem, you know. I could not bear it – I felt like something that had been bought.’

‘I meant the entire business; the enterprise of slavery on an industrial scale.’

‘Oh, Stephen, sometimes you are too absurd. As if I had not enough troubles of my own without worrying about Johnson’s parcel of blacks. I daresay they are large enough and ugly enough to take care of themselves.’

He gave her a very withering look. ‘Villiers, what an exceptionally foolish thing to say.’

‘Don’t,’ she said, feeling tears at her eyes, ‘please don’t; I couldn’t bear it if you were unkind to me now. Listen, Stephen, I ought to tell you, I have been here in Boston the whole time. I have not been to his horrible plantation at all, not since the very first month I arrived. I have been quite independent here, quite respectable; you need not be ashamed of me at all.’

But to her dismay, he did not seem to be interested. ‘Just so,’ he said, and she saw at once how foolish she had been. She had nothing to offer him but this wretched attempt at faithfulness; she had tried so very hard, but of course it was much too little, too late.

‘Diana,’ he said abruptly, ‘is your friend with child?’

‘Louisa? Oh God. Is she?’

‘It is at present only a conjecture.’

‘It must be Johnson’s. Lord, I wonder if Herapath knows.’

‘Mr George Herapath?’

‘No, Michael. He is in love with Louisa. Do you know his father, then?’

‘He is attempting to recruit me to his conspiracy: the most foolish hapless conspiracy since Napper Tandy’s landing, and like to end in more bloodshed, if I cannot dissuade him.’

She caught his hand as he made to leave. ‘Pray, Stephen, remember what I said. You will be careful, won’t you; so terribly careful?’

And to her surprise he bent and gently kissed her fingers and said, ‘I will, joy. I will.’

Johnson continued in a foul mood on Saturday. He roared at Diana for playing Clementi, beat Polly so badly that her cheekbone cracked, and locked Louisa’s diamonds in his desk until she could learn to behave. He was closeted with the Frenchmen for hours in his rooms, and quizzed Diana about Stephen and his knowledge of Catalonia.

‘I believe he does have a house there – a sort of romantic ruin, that is, with a marble bath and a flock of sheep. But he has not been to Spain for years and years; not since before we were married, unless it was after I left.’ This seemed to displease him, and he threw the cream jug at Titania when she barked.

Nor did his temper improve overnight: Diana woke early on Sunday to the sound of him rowing furiously with Louisa in the next room. It seemed that Joe, who carried the bags, had frozen to death in the yard, and Louisa was refusing to leave for Maine until he was replaced. In the end, they went with Sam, and with much door-slamming and shouting besides; if Louisa was in a delicate condition (and, having examined her with a critical eye, Diana thought that Stephen was probably right), it had not yet sweetened her disposition.

Diana did not envy Louisa her journey: besides the unpleasant company, the fog had come down again, so thick and damp and cold that the town whole might as well have been encrusted with dirty ice. She rang for coffee and went back to bed, tightly wrapped up in her blankets. Polly had been given laudanum for her face, and was so drunk with it that she walked into the dressing-table. Diana sent her back to bed: she could not abide the smell.

She heard, in a lazy dreamy way, the church bells ringing nine and ten, but everything this morning was muffled by the fog. Johnson and Louisa were out in it somewhere, and she was snug inside. Perhaps Stephen would come again today; they could speak for hours without Johnson to bother them. Perhaps she would say the right thing, this time, and he would understand. Outside, there was a whistle, a bang, and a high-pitched scream; someone was fooling about with a fire-work again, but for once it was all very distant, as though it were happening in another world. Silence fell, and she dozed pleasantly.

Then, much closer, a rapping – right on her window – a creaking of the shutter. Someone was coming in. She sat up, casting about for a weapon, finding only the crystal decanter; she clutched it to her breast. A deliberate tap tap tap on the glass. It was Dubreuil, she thought wildly – one of the builders – they had been looking at her –

‘Diana, quick, for the love of God.’ It was Stephen. ‘Open quick, dear Christ and all.’ She rushed to the window; he scrambled in and leapt under her blankets. ‘Get in on top of me.’

His neck was cold beneath her bare feet. ‘Nobody could call you hot-blooded, Maturin,’ she whispered, and he hissed at her like a frightened cat.

Now there were voices on the balcony: French voices. She was alarmed to recognise Pontet-Canet barking orders, nothing like his usual drawl at all. Then there was a long silence. Stephen said nothing; she could feel him shivering through her toes.

Madame Franchon at the door. Terrible to say, there was a thief in the hotel. Had Madame Maturin heard or seen anything? Madame Franchon had the keys to the inner rooms. They were searched; they were empty; a thousand apologies, madame, for disturbing. She would send up some more coffee directly. No more coffee! No, Madame Maturin was sick of the stuff. She had the head-ache; she wished to be left in peace.

Stephen came out gasping as soon as the door was closed. ‘Is your maid here? The tall one, Peg? Send her away, right away, until tomorrow.’

‘Do you mean Polly, sweetheart? Are you quite well?’ She studied him more closely. ‘Maturin, what in God’s name have you done to your head?’

‘I was escaping from Pontet-Canet and his band. They mean to kill me if they can. Will you send your maid away? We must get word to the British agent.’

‘Of course I can’t send her away, darling – Johnson would have me strung up. And we cannot send any letters either. But we are safe in here for now: Polly is half-drugged with laudanum, and Abijah is not allowed in my bedroom. Johnson has ideas about that.’

‘Is she ill? Could you send them to a physician?’

Diana was rather annoyed by this harping on about Polly, who was very much the least of her concerns. ‘Abijah won’t go. Sam might have done it.’

‘See if she will leave; I will give her Choate’s direction.’

Muttering imprecations, Diana got out of bed and padded to the next-door room, where she found Polly snoring in a wicker chair. ‘Polly,’ she said loudly, ‘should you like to see a physician? I might know a gentleman who could help you.’

‘Not without my Sam,’ said Polly, tossing her head. ‘I ain’t going nowhere without my Sam.’

‘It is only a physician,’ said Diana, but Polly was growing agitated. ‘Oh, very well.’ She went back to bed and said, ‘It is no use, darling; they won’t help themselves. And besides, she is thoroughly opium-drunk: she would hardly know how to leave if she wished to.’

‘I will write a direction for Choate,’ said Stephen. ‘And a letter to Mr Andrews, or perhaps to Jack, for we certainly must leave Boston today. Would you have such a thing as a – as a –’ He flapped his hand.

‘A pen? Stephen, are you sure that you are well?’

He sat down at her bureau and stared confusedly at the paper. She hugged her knees and watched him. It was plain that he must leave, for, if Pontet-Canet had gone so far, it meant that Johnson had lost patience with him. If Stephen left, she must leave too, or face Johnson’s wrath alone for the rest of the war. She had no idea how the thing could be done, but Stephen would know; or, at least, he would when he had recovered his wits (he had become distracted from his letter, and was prodding curiously at his ribs). And, she thought, if she were leaving, she must not go empty-handed; she must strike a final blow against Johnson while she could.

Stephen put down the pen and said, ‘Nausea is incipient; I beg you will excuse me.’

‘There is a privy off the drawing-room. Stephen, I will be back in just one moment.’

To reach Johnson’s closet, she must have the keys; and to obtain the keys, she must get into Madame Franchon’s bureau downstairs. She looked about for a pretext and seized upon a startled Titania, sweeping her up along with the heap of nasty blankets. Abijah was lounging in the corridor, picking his teeth; he straightened up when he saw her and said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I am just taking poor Titania downstairs; she is terribly ill.’

Titania growled, and Abijah, who had been bitten twice, stepped hastily away. ‘Come straight back,’ he said, returning to his teeth.

Diana marched downstairs, affecting a breezy confidence; she had just had the horrible thought that the keys might still be in Madame Franchon’s apron. On the half-landing, out of Abijah’s sight, she crouched and waited behind a bust of Montesquieu. Madame Franchon was standing bent over her bureau, scribbling in a ledger, and making stalling hand gestures at a group of French officers. Dubreuil was amongst them, laughing his nasty high-pitched laugh, and she shrank back further behind the pedestal.

Madame Franchon straightened up. ‘A table for breakfast, messieurs? Some coffee – fresh eggs – perhaps you would like the beefsteaks?’ She led them into the parlour and Diana slipped silently downstairs. Across the hall; behind the bureau; thank God, the keys were there. She stuffed them into Titania’s blankets and leant against the bureau with all the nonchalance she could muster. She thought that her heart might break through her ribcage.

‘Madame Maturin! You do not go outside by yourself, I hope? Especially in your –’ Madame Franchon made an appalled gesture at Diana’s state of undress.

‘Oh, Madame Franchon, poor Titania is ill! She has been coughing and shivering so dreadfully since this horrible fog came down. May I put her by the kitchen fire? I am terribly afraid she will catch a pneumonia.’

Madame Franchon tutted. ‘You must ask Angélique, but, you know, it is not good to coddle the dogs. I come, sir, I come! Morbleu, these officers!’ She bustled away.

Diana ran down the steps to the kitchen and unceremoniously dropped a startled Titania on the floor, keeping the keys well-muffled in the blanket as she darted back upstairs. Poor Stephen, it seemed, was still in the privy. She went at once to the door by the fireplace and made to unlock it, but to her surprise it was already open. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said, ‘I might have saved myself the trouble.’

She closed the door quietly behind her and crept through the long suite of rooms. Each of the doors was unlocked, and she wondered at Madame Franchon’s negligence; if Johnson were here, he would most certainly have thrashed her. But when she reached Johnson’s bedroom, she could hear unexpected little rustling noises inside. She wondered for a moment if there were rats, and then she opened the door and came face-to-face with her husband.

‘How did you get in here?’ she said stupidly. ‘Those doors were locked.’

‘They are open, as you see.’ He had one of Johnson’s files open and was leafing through it. ‘Go back to your room and wait there,’ he said. He had the focused look, she thought, of a drunk man acting sober.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Diana. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘What do you suppose?’ He turned over a page.

‘I suppose you are trying to steal Johnson’s papers, when you have no better knowledge of his business than Titania does. Oh, do step aside. All of the important ones are in his desk anyway.’

He raised his eyebrows, fiddled a little with the desk knobs, took out a wicked little knife from his handkerchief, and pried the lid of the desk gently open. ‘Why, Stephen!’ she said. ‘You have been hiding your light under a bushel.’

She peered eagerly into the desk, but the diamonds were not there: Johnson must have taken them to Maine. She was about to remark upon this when, at the same time, they both heard a soft squeak. It was from one of the outer rooms: someone was coming through. She snatched up Johnson’s huge phallic paperweight; Stephen took her elbow and pulled her behind the opening door. Pontet-Canet came in, holding a bunch of skeleton keys. He said, ‘Ha!’ to the open desk, and bent over to look at the papers. As soon as he turned he would see them.

Diana broke from Stephen’s grasp, leapt forward, and brought down the paperweight on Pontet-Canet’s head with all the force she could muster. He slumped onto the desk. She turned, thinking to reassure Stephen, but he was already striding past her, moving with a terrible and astonishing speed and purpose. Pontet-Canet had crumpled to the floor; Stephen bent over him with the sharp little knife and drew it swiftly across his throat. A pulsing jet of blood soaked the legs of the desk.

‘Stephen,’ she said, utterly at a loss. She had never seen him so intent: a perfectly-composed stranger. He seized Pontet-Canet by the arms and dragged him to Johnson’s privy; heaved him into the hip-bath; and began to rifle through his pockets. Diana hovered by the door. ‘Stephen?’ she said again.

‘Go back to your room,’ he said, without turning.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Certainly not.’ She went back to the desk, now painted with lashings of blood, and reached underneath as she had once seen Johnson do. There was a little catch, and the bottom of the drawer sprang up when she pressed it. She took out a thin packet of papers and put it on the desk.

‘Diana, you must go back,’ he said. ‘I will bring the papers; you need not be involved.’ He was holding Pontet-Canet’s pistol.

‘Be damned to that,’ she said.

‘Who is that?’ said Dubreuil. ‘Jean-Paul?’ In a flash Stephen had whipped around, thrust the pistol at him and fired; he was dead before she understood that he was in the room. The shot echoed for a long moment, billowing out like the smoke from the muzzle. Stephen lowered the pistol and stared at her, wide-eyed. There was no more noise. Nobody came.

‘My God,’ she said, and took a faltering step towards him. ‘You killed them – both of them. You –’

He staggered back against the wall, and dropped the pistol with a thud. He was breathing heavily, watching her the way one might watch a man-eating tiger. She took another step, and he caught his breath. She reached out, took him by the neckcloth, and said, again, ‘You killed them.’

‘Villiers,’ he said, and she kissed the corner of his mouth. He gasped and she pressed her advantage, pushing his shoulders into the wall. ‘Villiers,’ he said, ‘there are dead men, dead bodies.’ She kissed him insistently, tugging at his neckcloth. ‘There is a bedroom,’ he said, in nearly a whimper, ‘your bed is not far –’

‘Go,’ she said, pushing at him, and he made a high-pitched noise and went.

It was clever of him to insist upon the bed, she thought afterwards. She felt deliciously comfortable; nobody would bother them for hours and hours, and they could perhaps stay there until dinner if they wished, or even longer. She looked over at Stephen: he had been reduced to a hunched pile of bones, apparently wholly incapable of movement, save for the bouts of shivering that racked him occasionally. She patted his shoulder affectionately.

‘Madame Maturin?’ Someone was rapping at the door, and she resisted the urge to throw the decanter. ‘Madame Maturin, it is your visitor, Monsieur Michael.’

‘Oh God,’ she said. With a great effort of will, she summoned the energy to roll off the bed, and found her night-dress conveniently upon the floor. ‘Sweetheart, this is Herapath – my Herapath, I mean. He comes on Sundays after he sees his aunt. I am sure he will take a note for us; just let me speak with him for a moment.’

Stephen made an incomprehensible noise that she took as affirmation, so she splashed herself at the basin, drew on her dressing-gown, and went quickly to the drawing-room. Herapath was warming himself by the fireplace; Polly, back in her corner, looked to be asleep again.

‘Mrs Maturin, I do apologise – so terribly late – this dreadful fog! – the carts, you know – overturned on Cornhill.’

‘Pray sit down, Mr Herapath. I am afraid that I must tell you something rather shocking.’ Now that she was properly awake, she felt splendid: very alert and intelligent, and she could see quite clearly what she must do. ‘Should you like a drink first? No? Well, I know that you did not like it when I spoke of Louisa before, but I am afraid that I must do so again. I have reason to believe that she is pregnant, and I thought you had better be told.’

Herapath’s face crumpled, and he said, ‘I beg – I beg your pardon?’

‘Yes – expecting a baby, you know. I am afraid that she is.’

He swallowed a few times and said, in a small voice, ‘Does she wish to stay with him?’

‘I really don’t know.’ He looked so very unhappy that she felt impelled to add, ‘They have argued a great deal lately, so perhaps she does not. But don’t you see, Herapath, that this means it has finally come to a crisis? You have been oh so patient and forbearing with them, but you must make a stand against Johnson now, or you may lose her forever.’

‘What must I do?’ he said.

She cast a quick glance at Polly, and said, ‘You must help me escape first of all. You must carry a letter to Captain Aubrey at Choate’s, and then you must do exactly as he tells you. For you see, if you help me to leave, Louisa will know that you can help her too. She is afraid of him, Herapath, terribly afraid, and she does not know if you are brave enough to help her.’

He nodded and said, ‘Yes. Yes, give me your letter.’

‘You are a splendid fellow, Herapath. I cannot tell you how Louisa will admire you for it. Five minutes and you shall have your letter – do take a drink while you wait, won’t you? You look like white Stilton.’

She slipped back into the bedroom; Stephen had managed to get himself upright, and was clutching his bloody knife tightly, but he still looked somewhat bewildered, and a livid red bruise was coming in at his temple. ‘Sweetheart,’ she said, ‘did you finish your letter to Aubrey? Herapath will bring him a note if you write it for him now.’

‘The letter?’ he said, frowning.

‘Oh, do write it quickly, darling. After all, if Pontet-Canet has come after you, he might go for Aubrey next.’

‘Christ,’ said Stephen blearily, and stumbled to the bureau.

Diana was rather pleased with this plan. The more she thought about it, the more glad she was that Aubrey would come. Even one-armed, he could handle himself in a fight; had he not often won great victories against seemingly impossible odds? Well, then, the parlour of Franchon’s ought to hold no fear for him at all. Besides, she thought that Stephen would refuse to leave without him.

Stephen was having difficulty with the pen again: he could hardly close his shaking fingers around it, and it was skittering all over the page.

She said, ‘Ought I to –?’

‘I am afraid he will not know your hand.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ She doubted that Aubrey would know Stephen’s hand at this rate, but he struggled through the letter; she sealed it for him, and brought it in to Herapath. ‘You will follow Captain Aubrey’s advice, won’t you? He is a very clever man; Louisa has always said so.’

‘I did not know they had met,’ said Herapath.

‘Oh, she read all about him in the newspapers. Bon courage!’

In her bedroom, Stephen was dressing; he was very white, and trembled intermittently. ‘Wear a veil, if you have one, my dear,’ he said, ‘and pack some clothes and necessaries in a small little case. The Dear knows we must not lose a minute when Jack comes.’

She put on her riding-habit, threw a few shifts into her trunk, lost interest, and went looking for Stephen. He was in Johnson’s closet again. Dubreuil’s body was gone, but there was a great lake of blood across the floor; Stephen had put down some towels, which helped very little. She stepped daintily across them. ‘He puts fair copies of his letters on the top shelf,’ she said, pointing. ‘He writes out the drafts first, and then he encodes them and burns the originals. If there are any left half-finished, they will be on the bottom here.’

Stephen flicked through the letters and made a quick selection. ‘You do not mind betraying his confidences?’ he said, as he worked.

‘Betraying his confidences? What the devil do you mean?’ He said nothing. ‘Johnson is a very clever man,’ she said, ‘but sometimes he can be unbelievably stupid – to expect the daughter of a soldier who served the King all his life, brought up amongst soldiers, married to a soldier, to work against her own country! Even you are one of the King’s sailors, strictly speaking – although I daresay you are rather more than that, if you like to go about cutting down Frenchmen by the dozen. I had no sense of it, darling – no sense at all. I have never been more surprised in all my life.’ He still said nothing, so she added, ‘Besides, I betrayed him before we ever left England. I sent his address-book to the Admiralty, and I hope they liked to read it. I heard that Charles Pole was hanged, and I am sure it was because of me.’

At that he did look up. ‘That was you?’

‘Yes. Did you know about it?’

‘The address-book came to a colleague of mine.’

‘I hope he was not expecting drawings of birds: he would have been terribly disappointed.’

‘He was pleased with it. He could hardly have been more pleased.’

‘Good,’ she said fiercely. ‘I hope all of those dreadful men were hanged as traitors, and I hope their wives were turned out into the streets.’

He raised an eyebrow at that, but only said, ‘How did you produce such an appalling scrawl? My colleague thought that it came from an illiterate.’

‘I used my left hand – and I was in a dark privy, too. Lord, how it stank! But I didn’t want Johnson to see me.’ She laughed. ‘I really thought that he might shoot me, right in the middle of Hungerford.’

‘Doubtless you were quite correct,’ he said grimly.

On Stephen’s advice, she gave Polly another large dose of laudanum; he refused to take any himself, to her relief, though she saw him glance at the bottle several times. He continued to work through the papers in the closet; she watched him anxiously, until he tutted at her and said, ‘Do not hover, woman; to be sure you are worse than a fruit-bat. If you wish to be of use, you may write an account of your dealings with Johnson, for one is sure to be required of us as soon as we cross the border. And you may pay especial attention to his relations with France.’

Diana did her best to write this at her bureau as the pale afternoon light faded into a grey and premature dusk. It was rather difficult, for she had paid very little attention to anything said about politics; as for Johnson’s letters, she could hardly remember what he had dictated, and what she had invented from whole cloth. When it grew too dark to write, she lit the lamps herself: Polly was still quite unconscious, Abijah was no doubt gossiping with the boots, and Stephen had fallen asleep at the desk.

Just by Stephen’s hand was a velvet parcel: she opened it and found a pair of jade earrings shaped like peacocks, and a half-finished letter, addressed to her. ‘That silly fool Wogan has almost ruined me again. She has no instinctual sense for this business – no subtlety – no charm – is close to driving away my best contacts. When I think of the flair you showed in London, and compare it to her blundering idiocies – I swear that it would drive a better man to violence. Don’t you think we could come to an accommodation? I admit –’ Here the letter broke off.

‘Why, the goddamned bastard,’ she said indignantly. ‘I ought to show that to Herapath.’

She pushed it aside, took a paper for herself, and wrote: ‘Louisa, I am leaving, and you would leave too if you had any sense at all. You know perfectly well what he is like, and that he is never going to change. In fact I have it on excellent authority that he has been planning to throw you over. Herapath will look after you, and the baby as well; he is not really so wet as he seems. Dearest love and write to me in England, Diana. PS: Stop wearing Mameluke sleeves. They make your arms look deformed.’

But as the hours rolled by, her faith in Herapath waned. ‘The goddamned poltroon,’ she said, and kicked Titania’s blanket. ‘I ought never to have trusted him. Goddamned lily-livered milksop –’ She hastily retrieved the blanket from the grate before the fire spread.

It was close to midnight when Herapath re-appeared, steaming and red-faced with cold. ‘I am sorry to have been so long – French officers by the door – as drunk as lords – but in a few minutes we may go. Captain Aubrey is waiting at my father’s.’

Johnson’s rooms were dark, and she did not realise that she was walking through blood until her feet began to stick to the floor. She shook Stephen’s shoulder and said, ‘Herapath is here, darling. It is time to go. Do you have all your papers ready?’

‘Is Jack here?’

‘He is waiting at old Mr Herapath’s.’

‘Why has he not come?’

‘I am sure he is doing something important.’ Stephen looked mutinous, and she said hastily, ‘Let me give you a brandy, sweetheart; it will make you feel so much better.’

He tied up the last of his papers, leaving the peacock earrings where they lay. She reached over and took them.

‘Do those belong to you, Villiers?’

‘They might as well.’

‘Return them, if you please. Intelligence and thievery mix like oil and water.’

‘Must I?’

‘You may have his jewels, or you may destroy him utterly – as you prefer.’

‘Oh, I suppose the destroying utterly, but I do not see why we cannot manage both.’

He was properly awake now, and rather snappish about her trunk. ‘Yes, I know you said to pack it hours ago, but I have been busy since then,’ she said crossly. ‘We have not all been having ourselves little afternoon naps.’

He followed her through Johnson’s rooms, evidently with the sole purpose of continuing to carp, but when they neared her drawing-room she was obliged to clap her hand over his mouth and make frantic eyes at him: Herapath was speaking to someone. She motioned to him to stay put, and marched into the room. Abijah was there; Herapath was flitting about, casting him sideways glances like a nervous horse, and looking as though he might say something stupid any minute.

‘Abijah,’ she said imperiously, ‘Mr Herapath is hungry. Tell Angélique we want a cold collation and some coffee. And none of your cheek, or Mr Johnson will hear about it directly he returns.’ Abijah grumbled, but only for form’s sake; he plainly hoped to scrounge some supper in the kitchen.

‘For God’s sake, hold your nerve,’ she said to Herapath, who looked as though he might vomit. ‘Here is a letter for Louisa; I have told her how splendid you have been, and about all the wonderful things you have done for us.’

‘We really ought to be gone,’ said Herapath, looking anxiously at the door. ‘That black fellow could come back at any moment – or the night-porter –’

Stephen, who could not be kept down for long, said, ‘Mother of God, woman, where is your trunk? Clap it up there, Villiers: we have not all day to dither and dilly-dally; we are not on a ladies’ excursion to buy bobbins, to be sure.’ He tucked a little paper into sleeping Polly’s hand.

Diana glanced anxiously about the room. Somehow she did not like to leave it: her pianoforte was there, after all, and her couch – her dressing-table – and there was the terrible fog outside, just as thick as ever. Below the window, a man was standing by the lamp, muffled in a cape: it was Dubreuil. She recoiled as though burnt. No. Dubreuil was dead – he was lying in the privy. She giggled a little madly, and looked again. No, it was another man: he lit his pipe and walked away.

‘Oh, I know that you are in a hurry,’ she said to Stephen. ‘I suppose you have not seen Aubrey for a whole twelve hours now. But you cannot expect a woman to pack up her life at the drop of a hat. Why don’t you go ahead with Mr Herapath, and I will follow you as soon as I can?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Herapath. ‘We must all go together – it is of the very first importance.’

‘It will be easier for you without me,’ she said to Stephen. ‘He has friends – they watch me, you know. You ought to go on without me, and Herapath can come back for me later. You will be much, much safer if I wait here. After all, there is Abijah, and who knows who else might be watching –’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Stephen brutally. ‘Stuff and nonsense, my dear: not a one of us is safe in this town.’ She shook her head mutely, and he crouched down beside her. ‘I give you my sacred word of honour that your presence will do us no harm, not a bit of harm at all. Come now, acushla; it is time for us to leave.’

She did not know whether to believe him, but he held out his hand and she took it. Then they walked out together: walked straight down the staircase, past Montesquieu, past the empty bureau, through the front door and onto the street. The porter was putting out the lights in the bar, and he did not see them. Nobody stopped them. Nobody shouted as they walked away; soon the fog closed in behind them and hid them from the hotel. It was very quiet, and intensely cold: she did not think that she had felt anything so intensely for years. She was shivering violently, and she could not tell if she wanted to laugh or be sick. Ghostly figures passed them, and nobody said a word.

Herapath was striding out hurriedly, almost tripping over his feet in his haste. Stephen had to trot to keep up, clutching his parcel of papers with one hand and her hand with his other. She was already out of breath. Herapath turned from the main street into a narrow little passage: she could have touched both clammy walls if she spread out her arms. Twisting and turning, out and out, like Theseus through the labyrinth, so dark she could hardly see Herapath’s back; out into another ghostly street, crushed with fog, the lamps almost stifled.

Herapath froze. There was a shape in the distance, moving towards them; he gestured, and they pressed themselves into a doorway. She had her foot in a puddle, and a damp weed tickling the back of her neck; Stephen’s elbow was digging into her hip. The figure drew swiftly nearer; a bulky man jogging through the mist. She thought she could hear him panting. She wished she had made Stephen give her the gun; had he even remembered to pick it up? But of course – she had forgotten – he knew about guns.

The big man was hurrying, very intent: he must be Johnson’s friend. Word had got out. She could see that he had his left hand at his sword-belt, his arm twisted awkwardly across his body. Herapath said, ‘Oh!’, dropped her trunk in the gutter, and ran back the way they had come; the fog closed in around him. She gripped Stephen’s hand.

‘Jack, my dear!’ said Stephen.

‘Why, there you are, Stephen!’ said Aubrey. ‘I am hellfire glad to see you. Diana, one hates to speak ill of your friends, but how the devil did you come to be acquainted with that infernal scrub? He had the temerity to lock me in his pantry, and told me a damn-fool story about exchanging us for a wench and her child to boot.’

‘Oh, the stupid goddamned fool,’ said Diana, aghast. She had not supposed that Herapath had the capacity for treachery.

‘I was obliged to smash his window with a jelly-mould, and it was a damned tight fit to climb out, I can tell you.’

‘It is the same sad tendency to over-eat,’ said Stephen complacently. ‘I should like to know how you occupied yourself in this pantry.’

‘Why, of course I had some soft-tack to keep up my strength. I was fairly clemmed, you know, and it is no good to be sharp-set just before an action. Besides, you told me yourself that I was to eat hearty.’

Stephen pursed his lips. ‘I make no doubt that you placed an unconscionable strain upon your arm; I daresay that a shooting or a lancing pain will evidence itself within perhaps the next hour.’

‘So we have no house to go to,’ said Diana, ‘nobody to help us – no way out –’ Panic was swelling in her throat. ‘How far is it to the border? We must find horses at once. I will not be trapped in this town – I will not –’

Jack said, ‘Keep your voice down, cousin: you will have the watchmen down on us,’ and Stephen said, ‘Do not fret, my dear. Sure, Jack will have it sorted in no time at all.’

Diana looked at their silly, happy faces and despaired. She was very tired. She had abetted two murders on an empty stomach; she had left hearth and home to scamper about the streets; she had a trail of cold water trickling down her collar, and her meagre case of possessions had been dropped in Boston mud. She was shivering violently, and she was being patronised by foolish men who had not yet grasped the difficulty of their position. She balled her hands into fists and set her teeth.

‘Never mind horses,’ said Jack earnestly. ‘Any little fishing-boat will do us, when the tide reaches its full. We need only find somewhere to stow ourselves until the moon sets, and you would be amazed by the hiding-places these merchantmen have.’

It did not sound at all promising to Diana, but Stephen seemed content. And, after all, it was pleasant to give herself up and numbly follow, for she really was very tired. She dutifully trailed to the harbour; sat on a crab-pot, drowsing, while Aubrey knocked someone over the head; and allowed herself to be brought onto a ship and put into a small, tin-lined room. ‘Do you two wait in here,’ Jack said, bending himself almost double, ‘and I shall find us a vessel directly.’

‘Do find us some breakfast as well,’ she said. ‘Poor Stephen has eaten nothing all day – have you, darling?’ The room smelt of biscuits, and it was making her hungry. ‘How long until the moon sets, do you suppose?’

‘I have not the slightest notion,’ said Stephen.

‘If we left Franchon’s at midnight, it can hardly be more than six hours away. But that is a dreadfully long time to wait.’

‘It is coming half past one,’ said Stephen, peering at his watch, ‘or, as we sailors like to call it, three bells in the morning watch.’

‘Why, you damnable hypocrite – that is Pontet-Canet’s watch. What was all that Methody cant you gave me earlier about oil and water?’

He did not even have the grace to look abashed. ‘I lost my own watch to a French officer some years back; it hardly qualifies as theft in the circumstances.’

‘I am quite sure that is not the law. Besides, think of what I have lost: two years of my life, and nearly you as well.’

‘Sure, that latter was never so grievous,’ he said, yawning.

‘Don’t be silly. Do you need to sleep again, sweetheart? You have slept half the day. Give me your pistol and I shall keep watch.’

He yawned again and said, ‘What in God’s name did you tell that foolish young man?’

‘Only about Louisa. I thought it might make him help us, but I suppose I mistook him.’

‘I daresay you did,’ he said, and fell asleep on her shoulder.

Jack did not bring breakfast, in the end. He got them up quite cruelly and forced them into a horrible little fishing-boat, which tipped about violently and threatened to capsize. Stephen, not having been fed, was sulky; Diana, despite her empty stomach, was sick within five minutes; and a flock of seagulls shat on them, although the mess was soon washed off by the freezing water that sluiced constantly over the boat. Her fingers, clutching the parcel of papers, turned numb and stiff and blue; Aubrey hummed cheerfully and skipped about the deck. Stephen wiped her face with a dirty piece of sack and she tried, ineffectually, to push his hands away.

She came to her senses again in a warm little cot, dressed in a clean dry shift. She thrashed about frantically, got herself to the floor, and was about to make good her escape when a steward opened the door and said, ‘All right, my lady?’ in a pure, lilting Somerset voice. Then she burst into tears.

The steward brought her cocoa and a piece of dry biscuit, and Stephen came to sit with her. It was not quite like being on British soil, for British soil did not lurch about quite so sickeningly, nor was it so frequently riven with teeth-chattering explosions; but she could hear the men calling and laughing about the ship in their lovely British accents, and she knew that the guns were British guns, and that the sailors were armed to the teeth with British knives and blunderbusses. And even though her ears were ringing and her gut was churning and the pipes were giving her the head-ache, she managed to produce a real smile.

‘Lord, Stephen dear,’ she said, laughing a little, ‘I am just beginning to realise it. We have escaped him at last – we have run clean away!’

Chapter Text

Diana continued to cherish this fond delusion through the night and following morning. There was certainly a great deal of noise and bustle about the ship – hammerings, scrapings, drummings and the like – which she happily supposed to signify that they were well on their way nor’-east. The captain was to visit her, and she hoped that he would bring his charts, and show her that they were practically in Halifax already, or at least many miles into British waters.
 
But it was broken to her that they were not to make for Halifax at all. In fact, they were sailing directly back into Boston, the very last place on Earth she wanted to be. She had been absent from Franchon’s for two nights now; Johnson must know that she had left the town; and he would be watching the ship’s return with greedy eyes.
 
‘Will you not be pleased to see the Americans brought up with a round stern?’ said Stephen. ‘Sure, will you not be the toast of London society ever after? I daresay His Royal Highness will have you to tea at the Palace, so that you may spin him yarns about our famous sea-victory.’
 
‘I will have to tell him that I was shut up as a goddamned nuisance along with the rats, and that I spent our famous sea-victory eating a sort of nasty glue that my husband claimed was a soup.’ She looked around crossly at her dank little cell: the roof was very low, the planks were very damp, and, although it was quite dark, she could see that the floor was positively writhing with cockroaches.
 
‘Every spoonful you eat saves a foremast jack from the same dreadful fate. Pray take a little more, my dear; it will rectify the humours.’
 
‘Oh, the jacks: I suppose they are being given lashings of rum. Where is my rum? Why do they keep bringing me this miserable cocoa?’ She put down the can and said, ‘I am sure Johnson is in that ship.’
 
‘I am sure you are right.’
 
‘Listen, Stephen dear, if we are taken, you must give me up at once. He might be kind to the rest of you, if you give me up straight away.’
 
‘I will certainly be hanged at once, joy, so you need not look to me. You will be the very least of my troubles in Boston, I assure you.’ He took out his pocket-pistol and shot a rat. ‘I brought these for you. Doubtless you will be called upon for heroic nursing later, but in the meantime I should be grateful if you would keep the rats down.’
 
‘By God, Maturin, you could not have had a better thought.’ The little gun felt good and warm in her hand, and she reloaded it quite competently; she had not held a gun since her last autumn in London, but her fingers remembered the way of it. She pictured a bullet burying itself in Johnson’s broad chest, and said, ‘So I am to understudy for your parcel of weasels?’
 
‘Needs must, my dear; besides, I would warrant you may surpass them in ferocity.’
 
True to his word, he sent for her after the action: she skipped into his makeshift sick-bay and kissed his blood-spattered face. ‘Mind the bone-saw, there,’ he said gruffly. The men eyed her with mingled awe and horror, a gratifying attitude that persisted throughout the remainder of the voyage, as she cheerfully strapped down their limbs, bandaged their wounds and compelled them to drink their slime-draughts. It was charming how they struggled not to look into her bosom; one small midshipman, like to lose his arm, asked her for a kiss, but was soon constrained to apologise by the awful disapproval of his fellows.
 
She was absurdly happy. She had escaped Johnson: with any luck, he might even have been blown all to bits. They had won a great battle; she had made a splendid contribution; she had been toasted in bumpers at dinner, and her seasickness was quite cured. They were accompanied into Halifax by hundreds of little boats, full of people cheering and laughing and tossing their hats, and she had every expectation of more dinners, cheers, bumpers and laurels to come; besides which, she would finally have some time alone with Stephen: she had seen a great deal of him over the past few days, but not without his being occupied sawing legs and pulling splinters. And already there were rumours of a ball.
 
‘Just think, a ball! I am never going aboard another ship – never, ever again. I believe I shall stay in Nova Scotia forever, or perhaps ride mustangs across the Canadas, and go beaver-hunting in Rupert’s Land. Do hold still.’ She was industriously scrubbing Stephen’s face clean of blood: he was by now encrusted with so many layers that it had become black and sticky like treacle.
 
‘Upon my soul, and to think that you once spoke so warmly about the Napoleonic tyranny – about its utter destruction, and Britannia’s ruling the waves –’
 
‘Oh, I am so glad that you care about the war, Stephen: I really thought that you were only in it for the birds. However did you get so bloody? I ought to take a wire brush to you.’
 
He scowled up at her. ‘I have been practising surgery, my dear. The blood is to be expected.’
 
‘But not quite so much, darling, and never in polite company.’
 
‘Major Beck is not polite company. He is an army officer.’
 
‘Spoken like a true sailor,’ she said, and kissed the purpling bruise on his temple. ‘There now, you are almost respectable. Go and tell him all about our papers.’

She was with child to hear what they made of the papers. She was certain that they must be very important, and nothing in the world would please her more than being part of Johnson’s downfall, unless it could perhaps also be the downfall of Buonaparte. Stephen was very close-lipped about his reception, but he came back with a stack of treasury notes, three large guards, and a request that she attend on Colonel Briscoe at her earliest convenience.
 
‘Is he an intelligence officer too?’ she said, hopping as she pulled on her half-boots.
 
Stephen curled his lip. ‘Certainly not, but we must appease him regardless.’
 
‘Why the guards?’
 
‘There are several American agents in town. My dear, you must not wander about Halifax alone.’
 
‘Be damned to that,’ she said, laughing; ‘this town is stuffed to the gills with British sailors; were I an American agent, I should not put my nose out of my door for the next six months. Besides, I have not wandered about alone for years and years, and I am positively longing to do it again.’
 
Indeed, it was hard to imagine a more secure town than Halifax: the place was bristling with guns, and there were squat little towers and batteries everywhere one looked; signals were always flying, officers striding about, and redcoats drilling in the Grand Parade. Even the scolding she received from Colonel Briscoe dampened her military ardour only briefly. They had slogged across town to the barracks in something like a gale: seagulls were whirling about the wharves, and on the parade ground the Union flag was flapping fiercely at its post.
 
Briscoe glowered across his desk at her like a master with a naughty schoolboy. ‘Why were you not exchanged at the outbreak of war?’ he said, looking at a paper.
 
‘Exchanged, Colonel?’ She had not been offered a drink, which she thought was damnably rude.
 
‘Women and children under twelve years of age were to be exchanged immediately.’
 
‘I did not know that.’ She looked at Stephen, who was looking at the ceiling.

Briscoe wrote something down. ‘You resided at Franchon’s hotel, did you not?’
 
‘Yes, sir.’ She shifted: her chair was very uncomfortable, and noticeably smaller than Briscoe’s.
 
‘A frequent place of resort for the French officer class.’
 
‘Perhaps in the public rooms, sir.’
 
He harrumphed. ‘And the Secretary of State?’
 
‘He came to Mr Johnson’s dinner-parties. I suppose we must have exchanged the occasional pleasantry.’
 
More writing. Major Beck, a chinless fellow at Colonel Briscoe’s elbow, appeared to be having his own conversation with Stephen, conducted silently and solely by means of his eyebrows.
 
‘You made no attempt to approach our agents in Boston,’ said Briscoe, still writing.
 
‘I could hardly approach them when I did not know who they were.’ What could she say? That Johnson would not let her go out? But she had walked out, and nobody had stopped her. The only person who had caused her any trouble was that goddamned idiot Herapath.

Briscoe peered at a paper through his quizzing-glass. ‘It might appear to the unsympathetic observer as though you spent your time in Boston living in the lap of luxury, and consorting –’ Stephen shot to his feet. ‘An unhappy choice of word; I do beg your pardon, ma’am.’ Stephen lowered himself slowly back down. The Colonel hesitated. ‘Mingling with the enemies of the British state.’
 
Beck leant over and whispered urgently. Briscoe huffed. ‘Well, indeed. A lady alone, in a foreign land; indeed it must have been very frightening for you, ma’am.’
 
She gripped the arms of her chair. ‘I am sure that I did the best I could, Colonel. I have always tried to do my best for my country. I passed his address-book to the Admiralty in London – I interfered with his French correspondence – I always hoped for another opportunity –’
 
‘Yet you remember next to nothing of his conversation – his letters?’
 
‘Colonel, I must protest,’ said Stephen, rising again to his feet. ‘Mrs Maturin was travelling with her ladies’ companion on the outbreak of war, and quite naturally accepted the protection of a family friend in Boston. He abused her trust, misinformed her of her rights, and they disagreed most bitterly when he attempted to enlist her in the war. It was owing to Mrs Maturin that I came into possession of these highly valuable documents, which must be carried to London without delay. I should be extremely sorry if this unfortunate line of questioning continued any further.’
 
‘These documents?’ said the Colonel, raising his glass and frowning at the stack of papers in front of Beck.
 
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There is that little packet of papers: I gave that to Dr Maturin. Nobody knew about it except me.’
 
Briscoe, looking bored, found the packet and tapped out the papers. After a moment of reading his face changed entirely. ‘Is this genuine?’ he said to Beck.
 
‘Dr Maturin assures me that it is.’
 
‘Do you, sir?’ he said to Stephen.
 
‘I have no reason to doubt it; I watched Mrs Maturin extract it from Johnson’s desk myself.’
 
‘Good God. Have you read this, Beck? These are Monroe’s own papers – his plans for the defence of the Chesapeake – Tangier – yes, yes. Ha! Haha! I daresay that with these, in a short period of time, we could easily have at our mercy their capital. Hahaha! Beck, have these copied at once.’
 
‘I must insist on receiving the originals back directly,’ said Stephen; ‘as you will recall, I propose to carry them to London on the next ship available.’
 
‘Very well, very well,’ said Colonel Briscoe. ‘How I shall like to see Sherbrooke’s face! Haha!’
 
‘Odious man!’ said Diana, laughing a little as they stepped out of the barracks. ‘I believe he should have liked to call me a coward.’
 
‘The ill-mannered ignorant blackguard; had it not been for Beck, I should have asked for satisfaction.’
 
‘No, darling, you mustn’t do anything of the sort.’ She shivered, and took his arm. ‘No, you must not shoot anyone in Halifax; at any rate, certainly not before the ball.’
 
It took them some time to reach the Goat, for their momentum was arrested by a press of people carrying flags and firewood to the Great Pontack. A fifer was playing Heart of Oak from the upper window of an inn, and the crowd below had paused to sing along; a fellow in white duck trousers, hoisted upon someone’s shoulders, was cheered as he waved a beer glass with his only remaining arm.
 
Briscoe was right, she thought: she really had done very little. But it was all so terribly unfair. She would gladly have fired cannon with the best of them on the Shannon, and, had the British marched into Boston, she would have leapt from the balcony of Franchon’s with a Union flag in her hands and a knife between her teeth. But there had been hardly anything she could do until Stephen arrived. She could only take the life she was offered, and its small, safe consolations: cards with Herapath on Mondays, Monsieur Franchon’s tarts, the pale winter sun arching over the Boston rooftops.
 
A lesser woman might have turned to her husband for reassurance or absolution, but Diana was made of sterner stuff. Next time, she promised herself. Next time she would do something so spectacular that no sneering Colonel with a quizzing-glass fifteen years out of fashion would be able to do anything other than applaud and award her a medal.

‘Finally!’ she said, closing and locking the bedroom door behind them. ‘Stephen, do you realise that we have not had a moment alone together since we were in that horrible bread-bin? Hurry up and take off your coat.’ She did it for him, then bent down and kissed him hungrily. ‘Would you really have shot the Colonel for me?’ She kissed him again and began to work on his neckcloth.
 
He pushed her hands away, held her wrists for a moment, and then dropped them as though they had burnt him. ‘Diana,’ he said, ‘you need not – you have never been obliged –’
 
She slapped him. ‘Of course I am not obliged.’ He sagged back and gaped at her, quite speechless. She stepped up to him and said, ‘I am not obliged to do anything at all.’ His eyes were wide and dark, for once, staring up at her through his black lashes. If she pushed him to his knees, she thought, he would go at once, quite meekly. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you’re shaking.’
 
‘I am not,’ he said immediately.
 
‘Liar,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to do it again?’
 
In bed, he said nothing but ‘Diana – Diana, Diana, Diana,’ as though he had forgotten all other words, or did not trust himself to say them. Afterwards, he said, ‘I will go,’ and groped for his shirt.

‘Sweetheart, this is our room,’ she said, lazy and very amused. ‘It is not an assignation, you know; there is nowhere else to go.’
 
He huffed and puffed at that, but he did settle down beside her. Warm and comfortable, she fell asleep at once, and woke to find that it had become dark, and a band was playing Rule Britannia on the street. She slipped out of bed and went to the window. There was a great torchlit procession passing by, the crowds singing and laughing in the warm flickering light, and the air full of happy excitement. She felt a tingling rush of spirits through her whole body. In the bed, Stephen was mumbling and twitching: he threw out his arm; said, quite distinctly, ‘Forceps,’ and began to snore. Diana pulled on her riding-habit and jacket, opened the door quietly, and ran downstairs.
 
Outside, the air was thick with smoke. She slid into the crowd and was buffeted cheerfully along; a fellow with a basket on his head gave her a piece of codfish, and somebody else passed her a bottle of rum. In a little square, she stopped to watch a group of tars with flowers in their hats dancing a boisterous hornpipe. A pretty whore took her hand and whirled her about; she went spinning, laughing across the square, and fell in with the dancing sailors. Another bottle of rum went past, and the tars began to bellow Spanish Ladies.
 
‘Here, love, how much for a tumble?’
 
‘You can’t afford her, shit-sack.’
 
A scuffle broke out around her; she pulled herself up by the water-pump, lost her footing, and fell straight into the half-full trough. Hands plunged down to pull her out.
 
‘Stand clear – stand clear, you oaf. Can’t you see she’s a lady?’
 
‘I am so obliged to you, Mr –?’
 
‘Unwin, my lady. Let me escort you –’
 
‘Really, sir, it is not far.’
 
‘The Goat, I’ll wager.’
 
‘How did you know that?’ She pulled her arm free and tried to step around him.
 
Unwin moved back in front of her. ‘What did you tell Briscoe this morning, then?’
 
‘Who the devil are you? How dare you ask me such impertinent questions? Get away from me or I shall have you horsewhipped.’
 
‘You all right, dear?’ It was the pretty whore again. ‘Have another drink for the shock.’
 
‘This gentleman –’ she said indignantly, but Unwin had melted away.
 
‘Best get inside,’ said the whore, ‘you’ll catch your death with them wet stockings.’
 
Diana was starting to shiver, so she took another mouthful of rum and made her way back to the Goat. She had supposed that Stephen would still be asleep, but in fact he was sitting at the desk, his face in his hands.

‘Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart: I only went out to celebrate, and fell into a water-trough. I do hope these things will be dry by the morning; did I tell you I am promised to Lady Harriet, to write her cards for the ball? I really must buy another set of clothes, for I cannot keep wearing these, especially when we are moving in such exalted circles. I daresay I was very stupid about my packing, but you can scold me and give me some money tomorrow. No, no, I am going to sleep now. Don’t worry about me.’
 
Lady Harriet was very gracious about Diana’s riding-habit, which smelt rather musty after its various soakings. ‘Goodness, never mind about that. We are rather an outpost here, as you see, so there is no point standing on ceremony. I suppose that Boston was very grand in comparison.’
 
Diana thought about all of the streets she had walked down in Boston – all of the people at Johnson’s dinners – and realised to her consternation that she could not find a single witty thing to say about any of them. She made a confused, mumbling reply, but Lady Harriet had already moved on.
 
‘Should you like some Madeira?’ she was saying. ‘I know I said tea, but victory deserves something stronger, don’t you think? Now, I shall introduce you to my dress-maker; she is a very decent sort, though I am afraid nothing like a London modiste. Do you have anything for the ball? Madame Chose smuggles gowns in from Paris, but I am afraid she asks the earth; otherwise, I had some fabrics sent underneath the ordnance last month.’ She hunted out a chest and opened it. ‘Now, would you look at that: another good muslin torn. I have half a mind to write to the White House.’
 
‘The White House?’
 
‘Oh, it is only our joke; the Americans like to go through our parcels, and they are none too careful about it. I am sure they set everything ahoo on purpose, so we know that they have looked. But we get a great many of their things from prizes, so it all comes out in the wash. Do you drink brandy? We had a marvellous lot from a prize last month. I ought to give you a bottle for Dr Maturin; we are positively drowning in the stuff. It floods the market here, you know, so it seems criminal not to buy it.’
 
‘Are there a great many spies in Halifax?’ said Diana.
 
‘Dozens, I am sure. Edward always says that they have his orders before he does, but they don’t bother us. Shall we send for Madame Chose, then? And I must show you our rooms for the ball. Edward really has no idea what it means to arrange these affairs at such little notice, and I should so value your opinion; I know you were always out with my dear cousin Charlotte in London.’
 
Diana drank in the great light-filled reception room: the shining floors, the creamy walls, the breeze gently ruffling the curtains. She had forgotten that a room could be so bright and airy. ‘Oh, such a charming room!’ she said, quite sincerely. ‘Those chandeliers in the candle-light – the French windows flung open – the scent of the roses at dusk –’ She could see the rows of dancers now – turning, turning – snap! The light flashing upon epaulettes, the soft whisper of silk slippers, the gleam of diamonds –
 
‘But do not you find the walls rather plain?’ said Lady Harriet anxiously.
 
‘As to that,’ said Diana, conjuring it before her, ‘you ought to have great vases of flowers, or ewers – anything you can find – what flowers do you have in season here?’
 
‘I must ask Jeremy,’ said Lady Harriet, but, before he could be summoned, Madame Chose appeared, with a dozen of the most ravishingly beautiful gowns Diana had seen since before the war. Soon she had spread out a rainbow of deep ruby velvets, apple-blossom satins, merde d’oie muslins and delicate sprigged primroses, but Lady Harriet made straight for an imposing lute-string in imperial blue.
 
‘What a glorious colour! But dear me, no: I could hardly wear anything with so little front; it would not be decent,’ and indeed the gown hardly covered a scrap of her enormous bosom. ‘But with your blue eyes...’
 
‘I doubt that Dr Maturin could afford it,’ Diana said wistfully, ‘not with everything else I need.’
 
‘He ought to count it cheap at any price,’ Lady Harriet said frankly. ‘I am sure that Edward would, if I had a figure like yours.’
 
Rather to her surprise, Stephen came up trumps; although, once she had the gown back at the Goat, she found that she did not quite like the bodice after all. The bustline was far too low and had no drawstring, with the sorry result that her breasts looked flat. ‘And my breasts are marvellous,’ she said indignantly to the mirror. There was the clatter of a tea-tray being dropped in the hall. Well, perhaps the silly thing could be fixed with a good pair of stays.
 
‘Properly corded stays,’ she explained, ‘without I can borrow a decent necklace. My little pearl-strings will hardly do the trick with a bodice like that. Lady Harriet has emeralds as big as soup-plates, and I suppose that the Leveson-Gower woman will wear something just as spectacular.’
 
Stephen sucked on his cigar and said, ‘Who shall find a valiant wife? For her price is far above rubies.’
 
‘Well, I daresay,’ she said. ‘But rubies would be damnably nice. Do you remember Louisa’s thumping great diamonds? Those would look splendid with this gown. The big pear-shaped one in the middle was almost like a pale sapphire; he used to call it the Blue Peter: some story or other about Aurangzeb. It would look glorious with this blue. Quite wasted on Louisa, of course. Stephen, would you ever think of buying just a little drop of scent? It is so long since I had any, and I should just about kill for it.’
 
There was nothing to be done about the pearls, but they did manage to lay their hands on some decent stays and a little bottle of jasmine oil; as for the gown, it was not until she was having her hair put up, an hour before leaving, that the single word ‘Ribbon!’ sounded in her mind like a trumpet, and the Goat’s most enterprising maid was set to a bout of frantic stitching.
 
‘Stephen, this is going to be a lovely ball,’ she said, as he handed her into the carriage. ‘Do you like my lute-string?’
 
‘It becomes you very well indeed; and the black band about your thorax is a stroke of genius.’

‘Say breasts if you mean breasts, darling,’ she said cheerfully. ‘At least I need not be quite so ashamed of my pearls now. I am sure I will have the most beautiful dress of anyone; even Lady Harriet said so, and that was with the miserable old bodice that made me look flat as a pancake.’
 
‘The Dear knows that accusation could not be levelled against its successor,’ he said archly; but she did see him looking.
 
The ball was just as glorious as she had hoped. The sun had not yet gone down when they arrived at the residence, but the whole place blazed with light, and she was pleased to hear admiring words for the tumbling billows of flowers in the ball-room. ‘Mrs Maturin, I am so very obliged to you for your sense and good taste. Lady Anne, I must introduce you to my dear friend Mrs Maturin…’ Everyone was in tearing high spirits after the victory; the band played ‘God Save the King’ three times before the dancing began; and so many loyal toasts were drunk that Diana quite lost count. There were lavish quantities of orgeat, capillaire and sorbet for the dancers; cheeses, pickles, pies, jellies, and a glistening joint of gammon; and a great pile of pine-apples, for a West Indies ship had come in.
 
And it was not just the usual stuffy sorts in attendance: there were all kinds of interesting people there. She danced in a square with a sailor’s wife who had worked as a Portsmouth barmaid, and helped to pin the dress of a mulatta who claimed to have been an actress in Bermuda. Besides that, there were very many charming gentlemen, and she danced with half a dozen officers of the Shannon before she had to plead exhaustion and step out for an drink.
 
‘Whatever are you doing in the potted plants, chéri?’ she said, handing Stephen a glass of champagne through a fern. ‘Do come out and dance once I have drunk this.’
 
‘Surely you have not yet exhausted your whole coterie of admirers.’
 
‘Don’t be pawky, darling, or I shall think you don’t like to dance with me.’
 
‘I have heard that it is provincial to dance with one’s wife.’
 
‘Oh, but that was in London. I don’t believe there is anywhere in the world more provincial than Halifax. Besides, I have not been to a ball since the year eleven, so nobody can blame me if I have forgotten the rules.’
 
‘Perish the thought,’ he said, and touched their glasses through the fronds.
 
They moved through the dance: saluted, crossed, set and cast off. She knew that she was dancing very beautifully, and Stephen more than competently, and that a great many people in the room were admiring her gown. ‘Everybody seems wonderfully happy,’ she said, as they re-joined. ‘Everybody except poor Jack. There he is, standing by that pillar, looking like the Last Judgment.’ The odious Amanda Smith was practically hanging off his coat-tails, but he would only loom and glower at her and Stephen. ‘Would it cheer him if I danced with him, do you think?’
 
‘I do not,’ said Stephen firmly, so when their dance was over, she went to assist the Bermudan so-called actress, who was weeping because her husband had gone off with the Smith girl.
 
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said sternly. ‘You must only dance with somebody better, and show him. Look, here is my dear friend Mr Wallis of the Shannon. You will oblige Mrs Tisdale, won’t you, Lieutenant?’
 
Waving them off, she happened to catch the eye of a drunk and leering fellow lurking behind a drinks table. She stared back crossly until he dropped his gaze. Looking haughtily away, she was alarmed to see Stephen in his most belligerent mode, squaring up to Colonel Aldington despite hardly reaching his shoulder. She rushed over in time to hear him say, ‘– rendered valuable services to the highest levels of the British government, and her presence in Boston was no more voluntary than Captain Aubrey’s or my own. I must ask for your apology at once, sir.’
 
She snatched two ices from a passing tray and curtseyed to the men. ‘Désolée, Colonel, but I beg you will excuse my husband. It is so hot in here I believe I shall swoon. Dr Maturin has promised to take me for a turn outside; the sea air is so good for one’s bowels, you know. Oh, I faint, I faint!’ She pressed Stephen’s arm firmly under her own and steered him into the gardens.
 
The shrubbery had seemed very quiet and secluded in the daytime, but now it was positively stuffed with guests amusing themselves and each other; they also became involved in the rescue of a toad, and only managed to achieve some discretion by cutting through the greenhouse and sitting on a tree-stump. Even then, she nearly dropped her ice when a gun fired, quite nearby.
 
‘Sure, it is only a signal-gun for the harbour.’
 
‘Yes – Lady Harriet told me. They are always saluting, or practising, or celebrating or some such. It would drive me to distraction. Oh, I want so badly to be back in England, but I hate, hate, hate these horrible ships. Do not you wish that we could fly there like birds?’
 
‘I wish it every day of my life,’ he said gravely. ‘Tell me, my dear, what has happened to ruffle your spirits? For I could not believe you would take a mere soldier like the Colonel under your notice.’
 
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ she said, chewing her spoon. ‘Only there was a fellow by the ratafia table, looking at me.’
 
‘Villiers, I have said it before and I will say it again: if you will wear such –’
 
‘Not looking at me like that: fellows have been looking at me like that all evening. But I thought I had seen him before – in Boston, you know. Stephen, I wish you wouldn’t talk about the government in front of so many people. I daresay it is safe enough at a nice officers’ ball, but you hardly know who might be listening, and what if he should hear of it? Johnson, I mean.’
 
‘Whyever should he hear of it?’
 
‘The very same reason you have those great brutes trailing you all over town. You said it yourself: this whole place is riddled with American spies.’
 
‘Hardly so, my dear: there are a very few intelligence agents of no great consequence. Let us not, as it has been said, over-egg the pudding.’
 
She licked the last ice from her spoon and said, ‘How Louisa would have loved this ball. She has truly dreadful taste, but she does not deserve him. I do hope she and her silly secretary have managed to get away.’
 
‘Not to mention your attendants.’
 
‘Poor Louisa! That horrible man wanted both of us together. Can you imagine?’ She regretted it as soon as she said it – perhaps the champagne had gone to her head – but at least it was quite dark, and she could not see his face.
 
But he did not sound at all offended when he replied, ‘I suppose that, to an unsophisticated eye, you might perhaps have a similar – I said unsophisticated, Villiers.’
 
‘I am at least two inches taller,’ she said, relieved, and punched his arm again.
 
‘She is a leopard,’ he said, ‘to your tiger.’
 
‘A leopard! Good heavens, you are generous. I should have said that she is far too squat to be a leopard. Nobody so squat could ever be attractive. Now don’t sulk, darling: you are not squat at all; your limbs are very well-proportioned. But even so, she deserves better than that.’ The battery fired twice, laconically. ‘I wonder where Mr Wogan is now,’ she said. ‘I wonder if he knows what has happened to her. What do you think would have happened, Stephen, if we had never married? Would you have taken the time to call upon an old friend in Boston? I suppose it depends on how cruelly I had refused you.’
 
He said, ‘Christ, Diana, I doubt you have been paying attention,’ but he would not tell her what he meant.
 
‘Oh, bah,’ she said, eventually. ‘Come on, Stephen, or we shall miss the cotillion, and I know you should be desolated to miss the cotillion.’
 
‘The back of my hand to the cotillion,’ he said, but she could hear him smiling.
 
They did not reach the Goat until after four o’clock, and at seven he left the bed to fetch their papers from Major Beck. He redeemed himself by bringing up coffee with him, and she drank a cup resting on the pillows, watching him sort through the packets at the desk. His shirt was worn so thin that she could see the sun shine through it; she certainly must buy him a dozen new ones. For now, she watched the sloping cant of his olive-brown back and thought greedily about the way he had moved upon her, his face screwed up in concentration or pain, his stubborn refusal to meet her eyes. She could almost see the sharp knobs of his spine – He turned, saw her looking, and flinched back in confused surprise. ‘What is it?’ she said, laughing, but he only shook his head jerkily and looked away.
 
They had a jolly week in Halifax after that. She was not shy about sweeping him off to their room at all hours, under the stern and disapproving eye of Jack Aubrey; the whole business had almost the feel of an illicit affair, with poor Jack cast in the role of glowering husband. Amanda Smith contrived to overturn her dog-cart directly before him, but he barely noticed her repeated attempts to swoon upon his manly breast. Diana had no qualms about leaving a carriage pink-faced and dishevelled with a speechless husband in tow, and poor Aubrey had no eyes for anything else.
 
‘I am not certain that this enthusiasm is natural,’ said Stephen, when he had recovered his breath. ‘It may proceed from an imbalance in the humours.’
 
‘What, don’t you like it?’ she said, offended.
 
‘I married you, did I not?’ he said, which was not really an answer.
 
She had certainly never been with anyone quite as strange as him. He never asked for it, but he was plainly as eager as a green-sick virgin. He was dreadfully earnest, said ‘please’ a deal too often, and had not yet laughed, or even smiled, in bed; but then again, some men did not: Charles had often wept afterwards, which she thought a ridiculous way to get on. One morning, while Stephen was pressing kisses to her neck, she said, ‘I was just thinking of your elephants,’ whereupon he emitted a high-pitched shriek and fell out of the bed; they had laughed about that, at least. There were also several interesting pursuits of which she was sure his mind remained wholly innocent, and she looked forward to discovering how he might receive them.
 
When she was not with Stephen, she visited Lady Harriet for tea, and for well-mannered games of whist and three-card brag. In the evenings, her new Bermudan friend, Mrs Tisdale, took her to a gaming hell in an attic above a chandler’s, which smelt only a little fishy, and which served rum that had escaped the attentions of His Majesty’s port officers on its journey into Halifax. There they smoked cigars and played faro; the play was rowdy but not deep, and George the doorman, who reminded her of Sam, ejected anybody who caused real trouble. She never took Stephen's guards on these outings, for she hated the way that they loomed at her shoulder. She liked to slip about the town anonymously, as quiet as a cat.
 
One night, after winning five bob from a beadle and then losing all but eightpence, she left Mrs Tisdale at the gaming-table, and waited under the portico for George to find her a cab. It was a warm night for Halifax, and the air was alight with a misty rain. A fellow in a hooded cape stopped by her and said, ‘Evening, my lady.’ The voice was Unwin’s.
 
‘Keep away from me,’ she said sharply, and jabbed her parasol at him.
 
‘Now then, Mrs M., I did you one favour before, and I’ll do you another for nothing. You’ll be wanting to read this.’ He thrust a letter out of his cape.
 
‘How do you know me?’
 
‘The big man described you, very particular. You’ll be wanting to read his letter. You’ve been a naughty girl, Mrs M.; I hope for your sake you haven’t taken their money.’
 
‘Whose money?’ she said, thinking of faro.
 
‘The Brits.’
 
‘What the devil are you talking about?’
 
Unwin said, ‘I expect you’ll be hearing about your ship soon enough. I’ll collect your reply before you depart.’ He touched his fingers to his temple and slipped away as George returned with a hackney in tow.
 
Inside the coach, she tore the letter almost in half and held it up to the lamp. It was in Johnson’s hand, all right:
 
‘Diana – I believe you have some items that don’t belong to you. For God’s sake don’t do anything rash. I know your game. Give me time to make the arrangements, and we can come to an understanding that benefits us both. You know I can match any offer you are made – I am not an ungenerous man. For instance, I have always thought that my mother’s diamonds would suit you to a tittle. Shall we discuss in Paris? H.J.J.’
 
Stephen was out with Aubrey when she returned to the Goat: a regimental band was giving a concert at the British Tavern. She wrapped herself in a blanket and smoked through his stock of cigars. At the time, she had not understood how they had walked straight out of Franchon’s, as easy as kiss my hand. Why, she might have done it herself a year before. But of course it had been a trap: he had let them go for his own ends; he had planned it all along.
 
‘Is it awake you are, honey?’ said Stephen, dropping his coat upon the floor.
 
‘I thought I would wait up for you. Did you have a nice evening?’
 
Tolerably pleasant: a noble cod, an acceptable malmsey, a neighbour regrettably inclined to discourse upon Arminianism, followed by a fine concert, with the serpent only a very little out of tune.
 
‘Sweetheart, I suppose this is a very stupid question, but we couldn’t travel to Paris, could we, even if we wished to?’
 
He took a letter out of his pocket: her stomach dropped, but he only smiled fondly at it and said, ‘Whimsically enough, this came for me this morning.’
 
‘To address the Institut de France – Lord, Stephen! But how could you possibly go to Paris in the middle of a war?’
 
‘Oh, as for that, with the proper consent and safe-conducts, there is no difficulty. Natural philosophy does not regard this war, or any other, with very close attention, and interchange is quite usual. Humphry Davy went and addressed them on his chloride of nitrogen, for example; and he was much caressed.’
 
‘You are quite caressed enough already,’ she said severely, adding, ‘But I am sure that nobody in France has such lovely avifauna as you.’
 
He smiled at his letter again and said, ‘It is perhaps the most flattering honour I have received. But how do you come to speak of Paris, my dear?’
 
‘Oh, no reason, really. It was only something I heard in passing.’
 
She hardly slept that night. Johnson had known about it, long before she did. He must have arranged it all. She could his voice in her head: ‘I’m a commercial man, Mrs Maturin. I don’t take kindly to the misappropriation of my property.’ And Polly’s: ‘He always finds them, and then –’ She thought of Stephen, arriving happily in Paris, carrying his precious avifauna, walking blindly into a trap. She felt hot and cold all at once. She kicked off the stifling blankets, then, shivering, pulled them back on; her pillow might as well have been stuffed with glass bottles. Stephen, wax in his ears, snored gently on.
 
She dozed a little, and woke groggily to find her husband frowning at her and saying, ‘Villiers, you look ill. Is it your courses?’
 
‘I look perfectly well,’ she said angrily. ‘Go away,’ and put a pillow over her head.
 
He removed the pillow and said, ‘I have news that may cheer you, my dear; it flew out of my head last night. Captain Broke’s dispatches are to go to England directly, by the Nova Scotia and the packet, and we are to accompany the duplicate in the packet. Now this packet, we are given to understand, is not one of your lackadaisical Falmouth packets, fit only for invalids and nervous maiden aunts, but a swift-sailing sloop out of Portsmouth – Villiers, do you attend?’
 
‘Oh God,’ she said. Unwin had told her.

He peered at her again and said, ‘If you are not costive, joy, you are in a terrible brown study.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘Put on your riding-habit and meet me downstairs in,’ he checked his Breguet, ‘half an hour.’
 
When she went down, Stephen was standing in the stable-yard, holding a brace of black ponies with long white socks. She took a quick step towards them and then stopped, uncertain. ‘For me?’ she said.
 
‘My dear, I am a man of many talents, and a redoubtable expert upon the extinct avifauna of Rodriguez, but even I have not yet learnt to ride two horses at once. Permit me to introduce to you Rex and Regina.’
 
A less regal pair it was difficult to imagine: they were stout little cobs with shaggy manes, short legs and sensible faces. At that moment, however, they looked as beautiful to her as the purest desert-bred stallion in Muhammad Ali’s stables. She had not been so close to a horse, to any horse, for years. She reached out and stroked the gelding’s soft nose and said, ‘How do you do, chéri?’ He blew wetly into her face and made to eat her hat. She leant into his strong neck, smelt his warm horse smell, and wondered if she were going to weep.
 
Stephen had mounted, so she put her foot in the stirrup and swung her leg over Rex’s back. The movement came to her without conscious thought: like breathing. They came smartly out of the yard and down the street; she was posting the trot as though she had done it yesterday, and every day of her life before that. The shifting of the horse’s muscles, the flicking of his ears, were as perfectly familiar as the backs of her own hands. She felt as though she had stepped into another person’s skin: someone she had once been, and had forgotten, and had come back to in a dream.
 
The buildings trailed off. She nudged Rex into a canter, and Stephen was there by her side. The horses were matching each other footfall for footfall, hooves thudding together in soft mud. She was aware that she was grinning like a boy; she bit her cheek, but she did not seem able to stop. There was a little brook ahead, dancing with sunlight. She glanced over at Stephen; he gave her a sideways look; and the two horses rose as one over the sparkling water and splashed up the rocky bank. Then they were off again at a gallop. The world moved by, fast and faster; she felt light as air, light and lighter, as though the wind were shucking off layers of dead skin and leaving her bare and new.
 
And the harder she rode, the angrier she felt. How dare Colonel Briscoe imply that she was a coward? How dare Unwin dog her footsteps? How dare that miserable worm Johnson cost her a single hour of her sleep? She had confounded his politics; she had stolen his papers; she had hanged Charles Pole. She had led her husband to him: her husband, who shot Frenchmen without turning a hair, and whom she had always known was not as feeble as he looked. She leant into Rex’s neck. This was how she imagined Joan of Arc must have felt: galloping into battle, filled with the righteous fury of her vengeance.
 
They swiftly skirted the silvery coast. To their right was thick forest; to their left, an eager sea, running up piles of boulders and smashing softly upon their brows. Occasionally the sea-spray misted her face, or a fierce gust of wind caught tears from her eyes. The ground was soft and swampy in places, but the horses were undaunted. Enormous chunks of granite, crusted yellow with lichen or soft with damp and feathery moss, reared occasionally from the turf. They passed only fishermen’s cottages, saw only a few lonely cows; save for once, when she glimpsed an Indian woman paddling a canoe down a stream, very stately and serene, with an impassive baby tied up on her back.
 
When they finally slowed to a walk on a blustery headland, she found that she could not stop laughing. ‘Oh, Stephen, how happy I am; I think it is the happiest I have ever been.’ She swung herself down, and Rex bent his head to crop at the grass. The headland was covered in low scrub, small crookbacked trees, and a wiry yellow grass combed neatly away from the shore, as though a team of maids had got up early to do it. Running down to the sea were grey rocks of a pleasing heft and smoothness; if it had been only a little warmer, she would have longed to run over them barefoot. In the distance was a low-lying island with a thin pale tower at its head, and the sky and the sea were a clean, wind-scrubbed blue.
 
Stephen said, ‘You may see plainly, soul, that there is no one to hear, if you wish to speak your mind.’
 
‘Oh no, darling. I don’t want to spoil such a lovely ride.’

'If it is already in your head, my dear, it can hardly endamage you further to speak it.'

‘Oh, very well – but Stephen, you must remember that you promised not to meddle in my affairs.’
 
‘I did, did I?’
 
‘No, really, you must promise, chéri, or I never shall tell you a thing. The last thing I want is for all of this business to redound upon your head.’
 
He said, with a long-suffering expression, ‘I swear it by the four Gospels and the holy Cross of Cong,’ so she took Johnson’s letter from her pocket and passed it up to him. To his credit, his face did not change as he read; he only said, ‘How came you into the possession of this paper?’
 
‘A fellow passed it to me on the street last night.’
 
‘Could you describe him to Major Beck?’
 
‘Was he the nice one? Yes, then – vaguely, I should think.’
 
‘He will be grateful.’ He handed back the paper. Then he shaded his eyes with his hand, peered at a bird wheeling above them, and said, 'An albatross, to be sure.'
 
She said, with some irritation, ‘Well, are you not going to ask me what I mean to do about it?’

'About the albatross?'

'About Johnson.'
 
‘Am I not after swearing on –’
 
‘On the holy Cross of Bong: yes, I know. But listen, sweetheart, I have been thinking about it, and I believe I know just how to deal with him. Shall I tell you?’
 
‘I see that you are intent upon doing so.’
 
‘You can be very infuriating at times, you know. I am sure you are desperate to hear it. Well, I shan’t pretend that it didn’t frighten me at first, that he knew so terribly much about us – all about your lecture in Paris and everything. By the way, Stephen, do you suppose that he arranged it? Do you suppose he told the Institut to invite you?’
 
‘You have little faith in my personal merits, I find; but my dear, if you suppose that the Institut’s intentions could be swayed by such a person as Mr Johnson, you are not at all au fait with the habits of mind of the French intellectual class.’
 
‘No, that is true. I daresay the French think very little of him, for all his pretensions. But do you remember that poor idiot Herapath? I believe that he had the right idea, after all, when he tried to use us to buy back Louisa. Buying and selling is all that Johnson understands. Nothing of love, not love of one’s country nor of anything else - and nothing of hate either, I should say, except that he hates not getting what he wants. And he thinks that I am just the same as him. He thinks that I took his papers for money: that I plan to sell them to the British or the Americans, or even to the French. He could not imagine in a hundred years that I would simply give them away. That is why he has been following me: because he wants to buy them back. So I shall meet him in Paris, and sell him back his papers, and then he will leave me alone. He is generally quite fair to people, you know, unless he thinks he has been cheated.’

She was rather pleased with this way of thinking, which seemed to place a much more hopeful cast upon the whole situation, but, knowing Stephen’s character, she had not expected it to be immediately received with rapturous plaudits. He dismounted, caressed the mare as she began to graze, and said, ‘Am I permitted to make observations, or is that like to have me struck down by an avenging angel?’
 
‘It depends whether they are really observations, or only meddling in disguise.’
 
‘Well, then, murder and kidnap do not immediately strike me as the actions of a disinterested gentleman.’
 
‘Oh, I believe that was merely a miscalculation. He really did think he had bought me – with the horses and, you know, paying me a little attention. He was oh so surprised when I did not wish to stay on his horrible plantation.’
 
‘Then you are certain that he does not feel cheated? There is the abstraction of his papers, for a start, and he must guess that by now we have made a dozen copies. Why should he not suspect you of taking money from both sides?’
 
‘I daresay they know very well that if I had got any money from the British, I should have spent it already. I should be sailing to India swathed in glorious silks, not grubbing about Halifax with only one string of pearls to my name. I suppose that is why his man has been watching me: to see if I suddenly start throwing Treasury notes at Lady Harriet’s Frenchwoman. It is a good thing I did not have a new necklace for the ball, you know, for I suppose my life would not have been worth tuppence.’
 
This piece of logic seemed to displease him, and it was a moment before he said, ‘Only the one more observation, joy. I am not mentioned in this letter.’
 
‘Yes, I noticed that too. He must not realise that you were there at all. He knew that I knew about his secret drawer, and he would have seen my footprints – in the blood, you know. Did you leave any footprints?’
 
‘I did not.’
 
‘Well, there you are. He thinks that I killed the Frenchmen by myself, or perhaps that somebody helped me, but he does not realise that it was you, or he would certainly have threatened you. Well, you ought to be pleased.’
 
‘I am, for it offers us a very great advantage. He does not know that I may be able to assist you.’
 
'Now that is meddling, sweetheart. Remember your Cross with the silly name. No, I have played my cards very well indeed: the Navy has his nasty papers, and I might soon have those lovely diamonds. I could hardly have arranged it better. But do let's have another gallop; I am with child to see the next bay.'
 
As they trotted back into the town at dinner-time, she looked over at Stephen, at his sunburnt face and flyaway hair, and felt a fierce bright happiness, and a strange, startling tenderness for him. She said, ‘Thank you for my horse, Stephen.’
 
He gave her his tentative half-smile. ‘You must promise me one thing, honey: when you come into Johnson’s money, you must buy yourself a proper mount.’
 
‘Why, I hope I shall be able to draw on your reserves for that, or have you not been taking enough prizes lately?’

He frowned at her quizzically, but he did not reply, and in the rush to wash and dress for dinner, she forgot all about it.
 
*
 
Alas, there was nothing in their voyage on the packet to improve her opinion of boats. After two full days of heaving up her guts and feverishly weeping, she clutched Stephen’s dry hand and begged him to make it stop.
 
‘I have only the one draught, joy.’
 
‘Is it laudanum?’
 
‘It is.’
 
‘No, no laudanum, Stephen. Take it away.’
 
He said, sounding very tired, ‘I suppose that I have given you no reason to trust me.’
 
‘I do trust you, of course I do. But I hate that stuff; I would not take it from anyone. You saw what it did to Polly – made her so sleepy and stupid that she had no idea what was happening.’
 
‘It made her forget her pain.’
 
‘Just imagine,’ she said, gripping his hand tightly, ‘just imagine if she woke, and found that we were gone, and that only Johnson was there – like a terrible nightmare. I couldn’t bear it if that happened to me. Stephen, you must promise that you won’t leave me here with him – that you would throw me overboard first, or put a bullet in my head.’
 
‘Certainly I would,’ he said calmly, so she allowed him to dose her. They had to try several times before she could swallow it: horrible bitter stuff that burnt her raw throat.
 
She could feel him stroking her hair, and she tried to say, ‘Oh, don’t, darling – it’s so lank and horrid,’ but he was already growing misty and far-away, and she was not quite sure if she got it out before he vanished.
 
She did not remember much for a while after that. Stephen came again, perhaps in a dream, and told her about a school of right whales; later he admitted that, despite Jack Aubrey’s confident pronouncements, they were being chased into the far north by American privateers. This news did not surprise her. Whatever she had told him so confidently on their sunny little beach, she had never really believed that Johnson would let her go. She clutched at Stephen and said feverishly, ‘He would move heaven and earth to get hold of me. And my papers. I shall never escape from that dreadful man.’ In her dreams, Johnson stretched out his big hand and grasped at her throat.
 
It grew dim and hazy again for a while, and then she startled awake to the deep, heavy sound of cannon firing somewhere above her head. She gripped the blanket, wondering if she had imagined it, until another blast rolled out and a wave of angry shouting followed in its wake. So Johnson had come for her at last. She did not feel sick any more, but she did feel very foggy, and it was rather a trial to sit upright; she attempted only briefly to stand and had instead to kneel as she searched through her trunk for the riding-habit. She would be damned if he took her in a night-gown.
 
She dressed with a drunk’s single-mindedness, very intently and laboriously; her hands shook as she gave herself a sponge-bath, and she was obliged to do without stays. The shouting continued on deck, but there was no more gunfire for a long time. She sat on the locker and hummed The British Grenadiers and Britons, Strike Home! to encourage herself. If Stephen were killed before he reached her cabin, he would not be able to toss her overboard. When would he come? Before they were boarded, or after they had struck?
 
The guns broke out again, a great cacophony of them: a noise quite familiar from the Shannon, felt above all in the breastbone. When they fell silent, she could hear a furious bellowing; they must be preparing for boarders. Her mind felt a little clearer now, and she dared, as she had not before, to load the pistols. The cartridge, wad and bullet tamped down; the pan primed, the frizzen locked, the cock pulled back. The guns were lovely little things, smooth and dainty, and warm in her hands. She kept them pointed at the door, and was pleased to see that her hands no longer trembled.
 
The uproar on deck had become less urgent; in fact she could hear cheering, but whether they were the cheers of her own men or of Johnson’s, she was unable to say. He would not come down himself, she supposed. He would send one of his lieutenants: Unwin, perhaps, or even Abijah, who had never liked her. When the cabin door opened, she was quite prepared to meet a great host of horrible bruisers – but it was only Stephen, prim as a schoolma’am, saying, ‘Put those pistols down at once,’ and offering his arm so that she could come up and view the empty sea where the privateer had slipped under.
 
The rest of the voyage was chilly, but cheerful; having recovered from her seasickness, she was made much of by the crew, and, with the aid and supervision of at least a dozen anxious sailors, was permitted to climb to the maintop and admire the distant Irish coast, rising blue and hazy above the horizon. In Portsmouth, they were met with wild excitement, quite dignified personages stopping to interrogate them on the street, and she was so exhausted by dinner-time that she only watched the bonfire from the window of the East and West.
 
When she turned from the window, Stephen was watching her, the refracted firelight licking greedily over his cheekbones, and flickering in his wide pale eyes. She came towards him, and he looked up at her like a mouse entranced by a snake; still, his hands, when he touched her, were certain. He talked, that night, as he had not done before; gasped a great deal of nonsense and called her his love, before reverting to a tongue that might have been Catalan; then he would not let her go, kissed her and touched her hair very tenderly, and, still full of the fierce affection she had felt on their ride, she did not attempt to dissuade him.
 
He woke her in the morning already dressed, and with his battered portmanteau slung over his shoulder. He said, abruptly, ‘Villiers, I should not wish the pleasure of my company to wear thin. I have business in London, and then I think I must go to Ireland; I will be back in perhaps a month.’
 
‘Not this rot again, pet,’ she said, very sleepily. ‘Do ring for some coffee.’
 
‘Villiers, do you attend?’
 
She rubbed her eyes, sat up, and looked at him properly. He had the miserable pinched look that he had so often worn before she went to America, which she had supposed back then to be habitual, and which she had not quite noticed him to have lost. ‘Are you really leaving?’ she said, bewildered, and aware of a curious and rather painful sensation about her chest.
 
‘It is a family commitment.’
 
‘What sort of family commitment?’
 
‘It is to do with my cousin Kevin, who was killed at Wagram.’
 
‘May I come with you?’
 
‘You may not.’
 
‘Even though I am family?’
 
He frowned and said, ‘Do not be foolish, my dear. I will write you Nathan’s direction: you may apply to him for the key to Seamore Place. I am afraid that it has been shut up in your absence, but I make no doubt you will have it ship-shape directly.’

'I don’t want to go back to Seamore Place, Stephen. Mayn't I come to the Grapes with you?'
 
He did not answer, but leant over the table and began to write; she watched his precise, competent fingers – sensitive fingers: she had lately reduced him to whimpers by the simple expedient of taking them into her mouth – watched them form, quickly and precisely, his crabby little letters; and she wondered why she had not thought much about his fingers before.
 
‘You are always going to Ireland,’ she said. ‘Is it really Ireland, though?’
 
He stopped writing and looked at the wall. ‘This time it is Ireland.’
 
‘And before?’
 
‘Frequently Spain.’
 
‘Oh, darling! Were you there for the Spanish revolt? Did you meet Lord Wellington? Such a gentleman – and that nose!’
 
‘Oh no. No, I had only a very small and sordid part to play.’ He paused, then said, ‘Arranging for a very minor and tedious betrayal.’
 
‘It sounds terribly exciting. I do wish you would let me come with you to Ireland.’
 
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ he said, folding up the paper and handing it over with a flourish. ‘Are you not with child to be in London again? With your assembly rooms and your mantua-makers and your what-else-have-you?’
 
‘I suppose so. But Stephen, do you think that there might be spies in London? American ones, or even French?’
 
‘The danger is negligible, my dear. Our brave packet made such an extraordinarily rapid passage that nobody who might possibly have some vague notion of our identity could be in Europe for several weeks.’
 
‘I suppose so,’ she said again. ‘Even so, may I have a gun?’
 
‘You have a gun, my dear: two of them.’
 
‘So I do. For shooting rats.’
 
‘Precisely,’ he said. He bent over and kissed the top of her head, as though she were a child, and as he walked away Diana felt again the strange clutching pain about her heart.