Джулиан Стоквин - Persephone

Ahead, near the big square, she saw a Union flag above something that looked like a Customs hall. It was besieged by a restless crowd, wailing and shrilly demanding. A detachment of soldiers barred the entrance. Drawing near, she saw that there was no way she could get through. Then she spotted two men in the entrance between the soldiers, one arguing with the crowd and the other standing impassive behind. Both were unmistakably seamen.

‘That man ahoy!’ she called loudly, her patrician authority cutting through the din. ‘Yes, you, sir!’ she added, seeing the larger man’s face turn in surprise to her.

Hesitating, he shouldered his way through to her. ‘Ma’am?’ he said, taking off his black japanned hat.

‘I desire you take me to the officer in charge of this rendezvous.’

Pausing for only a moment, he said, ‘Yes, ma’am. This way, if y’ please.’ He turned and bullied his way through the crush; she kept close behind him.

The hall was nearly as full, in lines waiting their turn. They glared at her as she was hustled through to the front, then to an inner office with grimy windows.

She saw several figures sitting inside and another standing in a respectful manner.

‘I’ll tell him ye’re here, m’ lady.’

The standing figure turned and came out. It was a woman of years and she was weeping brokenly.

Taking his cue, the sailor leaned inside. ‘A lady t’ see ye, Captain.’

‘Tell her she waits in the queue like the others, damn it,’ came back an irritable bark, a voice that was tired but somehow familiar.

She pushed past and entered the room. Faces looked up from their writing in surprise – and there in the centre was a man in plain, well-cut clothes. The firmly incised lines in his handsome face gave it an edge of hardness and strength born of experience.

In a wash of feeling she recognised him immediately. Thomas Kydd, late commander of a brig-sloop … and the man who, those years ago, had spurned her for a country maid. And if the newspapers were to be believed, he was now a famous frigate captain and knight of the realm.

‘Sir, shall I ask her to leave?’ Dillon offered hesitantly.

Kydd’s expression was unreadable. ‘No, the lady is known to me,’ he said, in a low voice.

Then, as if recollecting himself, he rose to his feet. ‘A pleasure to see you again, Miss Lockwood.’ He made to take her hand but she did not offer it and he fell back on a stiff bow. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

The voice was husky, and maturity had given it a potent masculine resonance that in any other circumstance would have been unsettling. But it brought back unwanted memories, poignant and bitter. She fought a rising tide of feeling, annoyed at being taken off balance by him of all men. ‘I would have thought it self-evident why I’m here, Sir Thomas,’ she replied coldly. ‘A passage back to England would satisfy.’

Kydd resumed his seat. ‘We will require your details,’ he stated formally.

Dillon came in: ‘Full name, madam.’

‘Belay that,’ Kydd muttered. ‘I’ll give you a steer later.’

It pierced her, the bluff navalese remembered from those far-off days.

Dillon continued, from his sheet, ‘Then what is the number of your party?’

‘Myself alone.’ It came out almost rudely and she instantly regretted it.

Kydd looked up abruptly. ‘No servants? That is to say, you have no maidservant – or husband?’

‘For reasons that need not concern you, I repeat I am not accompanied, Sir Thomas.’ She was back in control. It had been the shock of seeing him while unprepared.

‘Your address in Lisbon?’ Dillon asked politely. ‘Which is to say, where you’ll wish to be advised when the transport is due to sail.’

She gave the details of the pousada . ‘Am I then to understand there is no difficulty with a berth?’ she asked neutrally.

‘How’s the numbers in Álvares Pereira , Dillon?’ Kydd snapped.

‘All berths taken. Passage in the hold only remains.’

‘Can’t we …?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well. Miss Lockwood, there is no passenger berth available. Do you have objection to sleeping in the hold?’

‘Do know that I’m never a martyr to seasickness. Provided it allows me a safe return to England I care not, sir.’

Kydd looked as if he was about to say something but evidently thought better of it.

‘Sir, those Portuguee transports are no place for a gentlewoman,’ Dillon reproved.

‘What are you saying?’ Kydd snapped.

‘Why, surely the least we should do is offer her a berth in Tyger , sir.’

Kydd stiffened. ‘There’s no room in the frigate.’

‘Perhaps your great cabin would answer, sir.’

Persephone Lockwood intervened tartly: ‘I will not inconvenience the captain, Mr Dillon. Your Portuguee will suffice.’ The last thing she wanted was to be in close quarters with a defensive and graceless Kydd.

‘Sir.’

‘What is it now?’

‘It may appear offensive to Admiral Montagu and others should we refuse passage to a lady in peril. After all, Lord Nelson himself did—’

‘I know what Lord Nelson did,’ Kydd muttered.

‘Really, there is no need for this fuss. I shall go home in the transport.’

‘And, sir, she need not board until we’re released from station to return,’ Dillon persisted.

‘Very well,’ Kydd said heavily. ‘She shall have my great cabin. Do you have much baggage, Miss Lockwood?’

‘Not as who should say,’ she retorted.

‘Then kindly stay within hail of this address. When I have sailing orders I shall send word and expect you to be ready to depart immediately. Do you understand me?’

‘Perfectly, Sir Thomas,’ she answered icily. ‘Good day to you.’

The big sailor escorted her back through the crowd and she was on her own again.

Chapter 7

As Persephone Lockwood walked up the hill to the pousada , she was flooded with memories of the awkward but transparently decent and modest sailor of humble origin, awed by his entry into even the provincial society of Devon. His uncomplicated strength of character, so different from that of others, had reached out to her, while his direct manner and resourceful handling of her ambitious mother had warmed her to him, not to mention the sheer physicality of his presence.

There had not been an engagement but an understanding was quickly forming when, shockingly, he had called on her to withdraw his affections. It had been a bitter blow that had upset her more than she had been willing to admit, and in the desolate months that had followed she had tried to make sense of Kydd’s choice of a rustic maid.

Hers had been a privileged upbringing. Well educated and connected, society was hers by right. Kydd, on the other hand, was from another place, gauche and ill-at-ease in polite company. That had not troubled her but must have intimidated him. His chance encounter with a simple country girl must have held its attractions.

In the end she had accepted what had happened and her mother had busied herself conjuring young men of birth and varying levels of desirability. Persephone was only in her twenties and her beauty had attracted numerous admirers. She had turned them all down. No doubt a man to whom she could give her heart would eventually enter her life, but until he did she would never let any man affect her so.

To recover her spirits and to escape the pressure of her mother, she’d travelled to Scotland on the pretext of a painting expedition. Taken by the appeal of Romanticism, she’d sought out the sublime in nature that had inspired the new wave of artists, and found it in the wild glens of the wind-torn craggy Highlands, the monstrous seething seas, which ceaselessly battered noble headlands, and secret moss-encrusted rivulets where stillness lay all around.