Dudley Pope: Ramage's Devil

'This must be the nearest point in France to Canada and America,' Sarah said.

He shook his head. 'Almost, but Pointe de Corsen is the most westerly.' He pointed northward along the coast. 'Look, it's over there, about five miles, beyond Le Conquet. Hundreds, indeed thousands of English seamen know it because it's a good mark when you're working your way through the Chenal du Four, keeping inside of Ushant and all those shoals

He fell silent, looking westward, until finally Sarah touched his cheek. 'Where are you now?'

He gave a sheepish laugh. 'Running the Calypso into Brest with a southwest wind. Earlier I was beating in against a northeaster, with all the forts firing at me. I was scared stiff of getting in irons and drifting ashore.'

'Southwick wouldn't let you do that,' she said teasing.

Like Ramage, she remembered the Calypso's white-haired old master with affection. She said: 'I wonder what he's doing now?'

He shook his head as if trying to drive away the thought. 'By now he and the Calypso's officers and men will probably have the ship ready to be paid off at Chatham.'

'What does "paid off" really mean? I thought it was the ship, but it sounds like the men.'

It was hard for him to avoid giving a bitter answer. 'Officially it means removing all the Calypso's guns, sails, provisions, cordage and shot (the powder will have been taken off and put in barges on the Thames before she went into the Medway), and then the ship, empty except for a boatkeeper or two, will be left at anchor, or on a mooring. They may take the copper sheathing off the hull.'

'Why "may"?' she asked, curious.

'Well, you know the underwater part of the hull of a ship is covered with copper sheathing to keep out the teredo worm, which bores into the wood. Now some peculiar action goes on between the metals so that the ironwork of things like the rudder gets eaten away. Not only that, but after a year or so the copper starts to dissolve as well, particularly at the bow: it just gets thinner. So when a ship is laid up she is usually first dry-docked and the sheathing is taken off.'

'You still haven't explained "may" - and there's a strange look on your face!'

He sighed and turned back to look at her. 'Well, you know my views on this peace treaty we've signed with Bonaparte, and that neither my father nor I - nor most of our friends - believe Bonaparte truly wants peace. As a result of the Treaty, he's already had more than a year to restock his arsenals and from the Baltic get supplies of mast timber and cordage which we had cut off for years by blockading places like Brest. So now he's busy refitting his fleet: new sails, masts, yards. New ships, too. Now - or very soon - he'll be ready to start the war again.'

'Yet all the French we've met in the past weeks seem happy with the peace,' Sarah protested.

'We've only talked to two types - innkeepers, who smile readily enough as they take our money, and the monarchists who've returned to France from exile and have been trying to get back some of their possessions. They have to believe that Bonaparte really wants a permanent peace; otherwise they're admitting to themselves that they'll soon be exiles in England once again - only this time probably for the rest of their lives.'

'You keep on saying Bonaparte will start the war again, my darling, but what proof is there? After all, the ministers in London aren't fools!'

'Aren't they? Have you met Addington or any of his Cabinet? And Lord Whitworth, the British minister in Paris, can't have looked out of the Embassy window - or else they're ignoring his dispatches in London.'

'The British government might be stupid and the French innkeepers greedy, but that hardly proves Bonaparte is going to war again!'

'Perhaps not, but we'll know for sure when we ride back through the port of Brest. Will the sight of men o' war being refitted in large numbers convince you?'

'Nicholas, why did you propose Brittany for the last part of our honeymoon?' she asked suspiciously.

'Don't you like it?' He was suddenly anxious, the picture of a nervous bridegroom anxious for his bride's comfort. 'The weather is fine. Not much choice of food, I admit, but the inns are not full of our countrymen - they go directly to Paris!'

'You haven't answered my question!'

Her eyes, green flecked with gold, were not angry; they did not warn that she felt cheated or duped. It was obvious she would accept it if he gave the real reason. Only evasions or half-truths would upset her, although good food was rarely spoiled by being served on fine china. He leaned over and kissed her. 'I have another wife,' he confessed solemnly. 'I married you bigamously.'

She undid the top two buttons of her dress, recently collected from a French dressmaker using materials Sarah had brought with her from England. 'The sun has some warmth in it, if you wait long enough, but not enough to tan. Yes,' she said matter of factly, 'I knew about that when you first proposed. Anyway, your mother warned me. In fact she used almost the same words. She said what a shock it had been for her as a new bride when she realized that her husband had another wife. She was very relieved that I already knew about you and your first bride, the Navy.'

'Well, we met under unusual circumstances.'

She blushed as he reached over and undid the next two buttons of her dress, pulling back the soft material so that he could see her breasts.

'Bonaparte has done one thing for us - the French fashions help lovers,' he said, and kissed a nipple, touching it with his tongue so it stiffened.

It was strange, she reflected, that you held your husband naked in bed; you even walked round the bedroom naked in front of him, and it all seemed quite natural. Yet out here in the sunshine, lying on the grass with bare breasts, she felt shy, as though this was the first time that Nicholas had unfastened a button. But how right he was about French fashions! Unlike in London, bare arms in the drawing rooms were commonplace here and very few French women of fashion bothered with corsets, although those sensitive of their plumpness wore narrow stays. And the flimsy materials! Often they were almost transparent, and most respectable women wore petticoats, but she had seen several women who passed for respectable wearing dresses that revealed their whole body when they stood against the light, and it was quite extraordinary how often they found themselves in front of a window. Still, anything was welcome that freed women from the constriction of corsets: why should women have to live as though squeezed in a wine press for the sake of fashion? Nevertheless, she pictured some women she knew and imagined them freed of corsets: it would be like slitting the side of a sack of corn!

She felt her breasts hardening as he pretended to inspect her nipples for the first time, commenting on their colour and size. Did he really like large nipples?

'Very well,' she said, concentrating with great effort, 'so the Navy is your first wife and you are honeymooning in Brittany with your second on secret business. What business?'

'It's no secret,' he protested. 'Our passeports are in order: the French authorities admitted us - welcomed, almost - to the country, enchanted that we are on our honeymoon, so if I happen to be able to count up the number and type of ships being fitted out in Brest, and perhaps La Rochelle and L'Orient... well, that would be only the natural curiosity of a couple interested in ships and the sea. After all, you have only just completed a voyage to India and back, and you love looking at ships - don't you?'

'Of course, dearest,' she said with a smile. 'And having closely inspected my breasts, taken my virginity, counted the ships and returned to London at the end of your honeymoon, what do you report to whom - and why? Surely the Admiralty must know what is going on in the French ports?'