'If they knew who we had on board, the English would be bound to chase us. An – er – friend of the Corsican! It would be too good to miss!'

Jason's fist crashed down on the table, making the cutlery jump.

'There is no reason why they should know, and in that case we should fight! We have guns and, praise God, we know how to use them! Any other objections, Doctor?'

Leighton leaned back in his chair and spread his hands pacifically. His smile broadened, but smiles were not becoming to that sallow face.

'No, by no means. Although it's possible the men might have. Already there are murmurs that two women on board will bring bad luck.'

Jason did look up at this and his eyes blazed on the rash speaker. Marianne saw the veins swell in his temples but he kept a rein on his temper. His voice, when he spoke, was icy cold.

'The men will have to learn who is master on board this ship. You, too, Leighton. Toby, you may bring the coffee now.'

The fragrant brew was served and drunk in dead silence. Toby, for all his bulk, flitted round the table with the airy efficiency of a domesticated elf. No one uttered another word and Marianne was on the verge of tears. She felt miserably that everything on board this ship, which had meant so much to her, rejected her. Jason had not wanted to bring her, Leighton hated her and she had not even the satisfaction of knowing why, and now the crew looked on her as a Jonah! She curled her cold fingers round the thin china cup to get a little warmth from it. Then she swallowed the hot coffee at a gulp, and rose.

'Pray excuse me,' she said, in a voice whose trembling she could not control. 'I should like to return to my cabin.'

'One moment,' Jason said, rising also. The others followed suit. He glanced round at them and said curtly: 'Do not leave yet, gentlemen. Toby will bring rum and cigars. I shall escort the Princess.'

Before Marianne, still unable to believe her good fortune, could utter a sound, he had picked up her cloak and placed it round her bare shoulders. Then he opened the door for her and stood aside to let her go first. They were absorbed into the summer night.

It was dark blue and full of stars. They glittered softly and because the surface of the sea was pricked with little phosphorescent wavelets it seemed as if the ship were sailing through the starry sky. The deck was in darkness but men were gathered on the forecastle, squatting on the deck or standing, leaning on the rail, listening while one of their number sang. The man's voice, slightly nasal but agreeably pitched, reached easily to the man and woman moving slowly down the short flight of steps.

Marianne held her breath, her heart pounding. She did not know why Jason had suddenly felt the need to be private with her but hope welled up tremblingly inside her and she dared not be the first to speak for fear of breaking the spell. She walked slowly ahead of him, oh, so very slowly, with her head a little bent, wishing that the deck was ten miles long. At last, Jason spoke.

'Marianne!'

She stopped at once but without turning. She waited, paralysed with hope now that he had used her name once more.

'I wanted to tell you… that on my ship you are quite safe. While I am in command, you need have no fears, either of the English or of my own men. Forget what Leighton said. It is unimportant.'

'He hates me. Is that, too, unimportant?'

'He does not hate you. Not you specifically, I mean. He feels the same way about all women. He dislikes and resents them, not altogether without reason. His mother did not care for him and the girl he loved and was to have married left him for another. Since that time, he has fallen back on a general detestation.'

Marianne nodded and turned, slowly, to look at Jason. He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, as though he did not know what to do with them, staring out to sea.

'Why did you bring him?' she asked. 'When you knew what this voyage was to be? You were coming for me and yet, on your own admission, you brought with you a man who hates everything to do with women.'

'Because…' Jason seemed to hesitate for a moment before going on, in something of a hurry: 'He was not to make the whole voyage with us. It had been agreed that on the way home I was to set him down at a place arranged between us. You must remember that Constantinople was not then included in our plans,' he added, with a touch of bitterness that betrayed his hurt.

Marianne was stabbed by it to her very soul. Her own gaze went sadly to the sea, where it fled in ripples of blue and silver away from the side of the ship.

'Forgive me,' she murmured. 'Duty and gratitude can be heavy burdens to carry, but that is no reason to disown them. I wish with all my heart it could have been different for us. I'd dreamed for so long of this voyage, wherever it took us. For me, it was not the end that mattered but being together.'

In an instant, he was close to her, pressed hard against her. She could feel his hot breath on her neck as he implored her, with a passion near to desperation:

'It's not too late. The course we are on is still – our course. It's not until we're through the straits that we must choose… Oh, Marianne, Marianne, how can you be so cruel to us both! If you would only…'

His hands were touching her. Weakly she shut her eyes and relaxed against him, aware to the point of agony of the moment's closeness.

'Am I the one who is cruel? Did I offer you an impossible choice? You thought it only a whim, some kind of attempt to keep alive a past that is gone, a past I don't even want…'

'Then prove it, my love! Let me take you away from all this. I love you to death and you, of all people, know it! You made that dinner hell for me. I've never seen you look so lovely… I'm only a man! Can't we forget the rest of the world?'

Forget? It was such a beautiful word and how Marianne longed to be able to utter it with the same conviction as Jason. A nasty, insidious little inward voice would keep whispering that the forgetfulness was to be all on her side. Was he going to wipe the slate clean of all his own past memories? But the present moment was too precious and Marianne did not want to lose it yet. Perhaps, after all, Jason was going to give way? She wriggled round in the circle of his arms and brushed his lips briefly with her own.

'Can't we forget as easily on the way to Constantinople as on a course for America?' she murmured, kissing him. 'Don't torture me. You know I have to go… but I need you so! Help me!'

There was a little silence, momentary but complete. Then, all at once, Jason's arms fell.

'No,' he said.

He stepped back. Between the two bodies which, a moment before, had been touching, ready to melt together into the same fusion of joy, the curtain of refusal and incomprehension had dropped coldly into place once more, the captain's tall figure bowed sharply, outlined against the blue vault above.

'Forgive me for asking you,' he said icily. 'This is your cabin. Allow me to wish you a good night.'

He had turned away, he was going further perhaps now than before, just because of love's weakness which had made him cry out in his distress. Pride, that terrible, unapproachable masculine pride, was uppermost once more. As the virile figure vanished into the night, Marianne cried after him:

'Your love is nothing but lust and obstinacy! But I'll always love you, whether you like it or not… in my own way, because it's the only way I know! You liked it well enough before… It's you who cast me off.'

That went home. He checked, fractionally, as though he would have turned back, then he stiffened and went on towards the after-cabin where, safe from feminine wiles, those other men, his brothers, waited for him.

Left alone, Marianne turned towards her own cabin. She was about to open the door when she had the odd feeling that someone was watching her. She swung round abruptly and as she did so a dark shadow detached itself from the foremast and slipped away forward. It was silhouetted for an instant, lithe and dark, against the yellow glow of the prow lantern. Marianne knew, from the supple way he moved, that it was Kaleb and the knowledge annoyed her a little. Apart from the fact that she had other things on her mind just then than the fate of the black people of America, she could not at that moment see the runaway slave as anything other than a source of discord between Jason and herself.

The door banged to behind her and she hurried to the haven of her bed to mull over in solitude possible ways of defeating Jason's obstinacy. Whatever else had happened, that evening she had won a victory, but she strongly doubted whether Jason would grant her the opportunity of winning any more. Instinct told her that he would probably avoid her like the plague. It might perhaps be wise to deprive him of that satisfaction by keeping out of his sight for a while, even if only to give him time to start asking himself a few questions?

The Sea Witch sailed on through the night, regardless of the hopes and fears she carried with her, while on the forecastle the sailors continued their singing.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Corfu Frigates

On the morning of the eighth day at sea, as they were approaching the coast of Corfu, a vessel appeared out of the sun, bearing down on the brig under her full spread of canvas, a tall white pyramid to eastward which was signalled by the masthead look-out with a hail:

'Sail on the port bow!'

From the poop deck, Jason Beaufort's voice spoke like an echo: 'Let her come. Steady as she goes.'

'An English frigate,' Jolival announced. He had a telescope to his eye and was studying the approaching vessel. 'I can see the red ensign at her peak. Looks as though she means business, too.'

Marianne, standing by him at the port rail, hugged her big cashmere shawl about her and shivered. There was something new and disturbing in the air. Pipes shrilled all around her, calling all hands on deck. Jason, standing beside the helmsman, was watching the Englishman. There was tension in every line of his body, a tension reflected in the crew, both on deck and aloft.

'Are we in the Straits of Otranto already?' Marianne asked.

'Yes. That Englishman must be out of Lissa. But he turned up very promptly… almost as if he was expecting us.'

'Expecting us? But why?'

Jolival shrugged helplessly. Jason had given an order to O'Flaherty who responded with a loud 'Aye aye, sir!' and clattered down the steps calling men to him. In a moment, weapons were being taken from chests and handed out among the sailors as they filed quickly past the first-officer, selecting swords, cutlasses, pistols, dirks or musketoons according to their abilities and preferences. Within the space of a very few seconds, the brig had been cleared for action.

'Are we really going to fight?' Marianne whispered anxiously.

'So it seems. Look, the Englishman has put a shot across our bows.'

A puff of white smoke had come from the long black hull banded with yellow, and was followed by a dull report.

'Hoist our colours!' Jason yelled. 'Show them we're neutral. The damned fool's coming straight at us.'

'A battle!' Marianne exclaimed softly, more to herself than to Jolival. 'That's all we needed! Maybe the men are right and I do bring bad luck.'

'Don't talk rubbish,' growled the vicomte. 'We all knew this might happen and the men have never looked on a fight as a disaster. This is a privateer, don't forget.'

But the thought lingered uncomfortably. For a week now, not a day had passed without some incident or accident to the ship. The vessel seemed to be fated. It had begun with half the starboard watch going down with some form of food poisoning, of unknown origin, and lying groaning in their hammocks for twenty-four hours. Then, a man slipped on the main deck, when the ship pitched suddenly, and split his head open. The next day, two of the seamen came to blows over some trivial matter and had to be put in irons. Finally, only last night, fire had broken out in the galley and, although it had been put out very quickly, Nathan had narrowly escaped being burnt alive. On the rare occasions when she left her cabin for a breath of air, she would look the other way if she caught sight of John Leighton's pale face and the mocking challenge in his eyes. Once already, she had seen the boatswain, an olive-skinned Spaniard with the pride of a hidalgo and the grossness of a drunken monk, extend the back of his hand with two fingers towards her in the traditional gesture to ward off the evil eye.