Relentless Pursuit (25 page)

The servant took his silence for annoyance, and said almost grudgingly, “I can tell you the instant Sir Gregory is ready, sir.” He shuffled away. Maybe he had been with the old house when Montagu had bought it . . .

Adam walked slowly along a winding path, and found himself listening for the sound of a harp. He tried again to shrug it off. Like a bumbling midshipman . . . But it would not release him.

He thought about this day, his birthday. Nancy would be coming to the house. There would be a few friends, Grace Ferguson would supervise the food and wine, and would probably cry a little. And perhaps John Allday would come across from Fallowfield on the Helford River. To celebrate, or to mourn? There was only one would have made it complete.

He looked up and saw her coming towards him. She was dressed from neck to toe in pale grey, a gown so fine that it seemed to float around her body. She carried an armful of yellow roses, and he noticed that her skin had been browned by the sun, that her throat was bare, and the gown had almost slipped from one shoulder.

She had stopped on this same path, her gown catching at other flowers Adam neither saw nor recognised.

Above all, he knew she was about to turn and retrace her steps. If need be, run, to avoid the inevitable contact.

His hat was in his hand although he had not moved. He bowed his head, clumsy and awkward, words sticking in his throat, afraid that when he raised his eyes she would be gone.

“I beg your pardon. I did not wish to disturb you.” He dared to look at her. “I arrived too early, it seems.”

He saw one hand detach itself from the flowers and rise to adjust the gown across her bare shoulder. And all the while she was looking at him. Into him, with neither smile nor recognition.

Her eyes were very dark, as he remembered them. In a single glance, but it was the same. He had not recalled her hair, other than that it was also dark, almost black in the dusty sunshine. But much longer, waist-length, perhaps more.

He said, “It was good of Sir Gregory to make the time for me. My aunt . . .”

She continued along the path but then stopped again, a few feet away.

She said, “He
wanted
to do it.” She gave what might have been a shrug. “Otherwise you would not be here.”

Her voice was soft, but strong, cultured, not a local girl. Assured, as she would be when composing herself for a painting. And yet, there was something else. He heard Montagu's voice.
She was badly hurt also.
What had he been trying to say?

She said, “I must leave you, Captain Bolitho.” She lingered over his name, testing it as Montagu would assess the quality of a new canvas.

In a moment he would step aside, and she would not look back.

He said quietly, “I heard your harp when I left here before. I was very moved by it.” Unconsciously, he gestured. “In this setting it seemed so right, so perfect. Now that I have met you I understand why.”

She stared at him, defiant or angry, it was impossible to tell. She was taller than he had realised, and the gown did nothing to free his mind from that first time. The chained wrists, the painter's motionless arm, her eyes touching his for no more than a second.

But she said, “You have a way with words, Captain. With women too, I suspect. Now, if you will allow me to pass?” She looked down, startled, as two of her yellow roses fell to the ground.

He stooped to retrieve them, and saw her feet, barely covered by leather sandals, as brown as her throat and arms.

She stepped back, and almost lost her balance as her heel snared the hem of the gown.

He gripped the roses, one of the thorny stems drawing blood, but without any pain. He felt nothing. It had been her quick withdrawal which recalled it, a stark, ugly picture. The young black girl, violated, beyond anything but terror and revulsion. When he had reached out to reassure her of her safety she had responded in the same manner.

He said, “I—I am so sorry. I never meant to offend you.” There were voices now, someone laughing, a horse stamping, ready to leave. It was over. It had not even begun.

Adam stepped from the path and felt her pass him, so close that the gown touched his hand.

He looked after her, and saw that her hair was as long as he had imagined. She was probably going now to adopt a pose for another artist. Disrobed, perhaps, her lovely body open to another man's stare. What did she think about? Was it a way of avenging herself for what had happened to her? To prove she was inviolable?

If he could find that stable boy he would leave now. Before . . .

He stared at her, unable to accept that she had turned back, her face no longer calm. She reached out and seized his sleeve. “Your hand! It's bleeding!” She prised the two roses from him and laid the entire bouquet on the scorched grass at her feet.

She had produced a handkerchief from somewhere and was wrapping it around his fingers as Montagu, followed by his servant, appeared in the walled garden.

“Now then, what have we here?”

Adam saw it clearly. Anxiety, suspicion; it was far deeper than either.

She said, “Roses. My fault.” She looked directly at Adam and said, “I have seen many men of war, Captain. But only in portraits. I was unprepared.” She knelt to recover the roses, or herself.

Montagu said, “You see, Captain, your reputation precedes you!” But he was smiling, unwilling or unable to hide his relief.

“So let us begin. I've roughed out some ideas.” He beamed. “Besides, we must not detain a man on his birthday!”

He turned and called something to his servant.

She stood, very upright and composed. “I did not know, Captain.” She broke off a rose and attached it to the lapel of his coat. “To remember me by.” Then, very deliberately, she broke the other stem and placed the rose in the bosom of her gown; his blood made a bright stain on the silk. “And I shall remember you.”

He watched her walk unhurriedly along the path and out of the garden.

Montagu was waiting for him. “Come along, while the light is good.”

Adam thrust his hand into his pocket. The handkerchief was still there. Not a dream.

“I'm delighted that you remembered to bring the sword. Memories, eh?”

The same room, the same unwelcoming chair.

Adam saw the canvas for the first time. An outline. A ghost.

Montagu placed the sword carefully on his bench and made a few swift sketches.

“I would not ask you to leave the sword, this sword, with me. I think, Captain, that you will need it again soon.” Adam waited, his eyes on the tall harp. Montagu was giving himself time. Weighing the chances, like an experienced gun captain watching the first fall of shot.

He said suddenly, “I see that you are wearing the rose. Shall I keep it in the finished work?” So casually said. So important.

“I would be honoured, Sir Gregory. I mean it, more than ever now.”

Montagu nodded slowly, and rolled up one sleeve.

“I shall tell Lowenna what you said.”

He began to paint very briskly.

He had made up his mind.

Lowenna.

Adam Bolitho entered the church and closed the tall doors behind him. After the heat of the morning and his walk into Falmouth from the old house it seemed a cool haven, a refuge. He was still wondering why he had come. He felt his shirt clinging to his skin, as if he had been in haste or had some pressing reason for being here.

It was dark after the sunlight of the square, and the streets where people looked at him as he passed. Interest, curiosity or, like some of the old Jacks by the ale house, hoping to catch his eye for the price of a drink.

Perhaps he had come to clear his head, unused as he was to the awesome meal which Grace Ferguson had prepared in his honour. Duck and local lamb, fish as well; it would have satisfied
Unrivalled
's midshipmen for a year.

And John Allday had made an appearance. It must have cost him dearly to come, Adam thought. Older, heavier, shaggier, but otherwise the same. Unchanged. The first moments had been the hardest. Allday had taken his hand in both of his, and had stood in silence, holding it. Remembering, so that he had shared it, seeing it as it must have been.
The hardest part.

Allday had told him about meeting Tyacke when his ship had called here. And other names had been mentioned, faces appearing as if from the shadows.
The hardest part . . .

He walked deeper into the church, seeing the tablets and sculptures, soldiers and sailors, men who had died in battle, at sea or in some far-off land for some cause few would now remember. There were all the Bolithos, their wives too, in some cases.

He looked back through the church, at the aisle where he had given his arm to Belinda when she had married his uncle.

There were others in the church. Resting, escaping from the heat, praying, but all separate, alone with their thoughts.

He thought of the untidy studio, and Sir Gregory Montagu's sharp, assessing gaze while his brushes had moved tirelessly as if controlled by some independent force.

And the girl. He'd not seen her again, and yet, as he had ridden from the house he had felt that she was there. Watching him.

He had sensed Nancy's immediate interest when he had mentioned her, but even she knew very little. Born in Cornwall, but had moved away when still a child. As far as London, where the family had somehow become involved with Sir Gregory Montagu. Her father had been a scholar, a man of refinement, but there had been some scandal and Nancy had heard little more, except that the long-haired girl named Lowenna sometimes came to the old glebe house with Montagu, but was rarely seen anywhere else, not even in the adjoining village of Penryn.

She knew more than she was telling. Before she had left for her own house, she had taken his arm and murmured, “Don't break your heart, Adam. Not again.”

A warning, but she had not been there in the walled garden. Like stripping away a curtain of secrecy, when he had seen the girl Lowenna, her defences momentarily broken down . . . Andromeda, the captive waiting to be rescued from sacrifice.

He had paused opposite a finely crafted bust of Captain David Bolitho, who had died in
1724,
fighting pirates off the African coast. He had been the first Bolitho to carry the sword Montagu admired so much. And now
Unrivalled
would be going back there. He touched the scabbard at his thigh.
Will I be the last Bolitho to wear it?

Montagu expected him to make another visit. He was afraid of hope, afraid of hoping.

“Why, Captain, you are not wearing my rose.”

He swung round, his shoe scraping on an iron grill, and saw her sitting at the end of a pew, her face pale against something dark, even black.

He gripped the back of the pew, hardly trusting himself to speak.

“I would have walked right past you! I had no idea.” He saw her hand gripped around the polished woodwork, like some small, wary creature. “I still have it. I will
never
lose it.” He saw some faces turn towards him, disturbed, irritated. He lowered his voice. “May I ask why you are here at King Charles the Martyr?”

“I might ask the same of you, Captain. Perhaps you came to bask in the past glories of your family? Or to find peace, as I do on occasion.”

He reached out to cover her hand with his own, but it had vanished. He said, “I wanted to walk, to think.” He hesitated. “To remember.”

She looked down, her face almost hidden. “You asked for the rose to remain in the portrait? Is that so?”

He nodded, sensing her sudden uncertainty. Like panic.

He said, “It will always be there. Even when I am not.”

She shook her head and he saw her hair shine briefly in the colours from a stained glass window.

“Do not say such things.” She looked at him directly again, her eyes very dark. “And do not think of me as you first saw me. It would be better for you if we never saw one another again.”

He felt her hand close on his, slight but surprisingly strong. “Believe me, for my sake if not your own.”

The building quivered to the slow, deliberate intrusion of the great clock chiming the hour.

She stood suddenly, the contact broken. “I must leave. I am already late. Forgive me.”

She had opened the pew gate and was very close to him. Her perfume, or perhaps it was her body's scent, was almost physical.

He said, “I would wish to see you again, Lowenna.” He felt her start at the use of her name, but she did not pull away.

Instead she said quietly, “He told you.” Then, “He trusts you.”

She stepped out of the pew and he was vaguely aware of other faces turning to stare.

She said, “It is a long walk. You may ride with me.” And put a hand to her mouth, as if surprised, even shocked by her own suggestion.