To no avail.

  The court-martial went into its second day.

  Growing more and more desperate, Gwyneth fired off another letter to Lord Simms. She obtained a copy of the navy's Articles of War and brought them to her solicitor, hoping, with no success, that together they could find a loophole. She wrote to members of Parliament, to the prime minister, to the lords of the Admiralty, to everyone of power and influence she knew.

  No one could help her — and the court-martial continued.

  On the third day she went to London and pleaded with as many of those individuals as she could gain appointments with.

  On the fourth day she garbed herself most splendidly and sought an audience with the prince regent, who promptly granted her request and then sat listening to her story with amused patience, all the while discreetly ogling her bosom, making sexual innuendos with his eyes, and letting his gaze rove up and down her trim frame. The ogling continued, as did the amused grin, until Gwyneth finally brought out her heavy guns, the one thing on which she was banking to save Damon: the fact that the Black Wolf had struck the prison hulk while Lord Morninghall wasn't even in Portsmouth, but at home in the Cotswolds, gravely injured and near death.

  The Regent stared at her for a moment, then kneaded his fleshy chin before promising to give the matter what thought it merited, cutting her audience short with a faint excuse about having a hundred other matters to attend to before teatime.

  And Gwyneth felt her hopes running out.

  On the sixth day the trial ended, and the thirteen captains and admirals who served on the court-martial came to a unanimous decision that was immediately confirmed by the Admiralty in London:

  Lord Morninghall had been found guilty of the crimes with which he was charged, and was sentenced to die. Execution would be carried out at dawn the following morning by a firing squad of ten Royal Marines.

  And Bolton, cruel in victory, allowed him no final visitors.

  Not even his wife.

  That evening, after Gwyneth watched the sun sink in a bloody ball into the western sky, after the shadows in her room deepened and finally succumbed to the darkness, she got down on her knees beside her bed. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she prayed with all her heart that God would help her plight, and in those last, desperate hours before dawn He did.

  God came in the form of Reverend Peter Milford.

  ~~~~

  "Lord Morninghall? If you'll come with me, please."

  The night still lay heavily outside the great gallery of the wardroom, but the mist was not as black as it had been the previous hour, and Damon knew that dawn was on its way.

  He had not slept at all this night, but then he supposed that his body somehow knew that it would soon sleep the eternal rest, and was trying to snatch what few hours of life remained to it, even if those hours had been long, reflective, and tortured. Raking his hair back with his fingers, he sat up, wide awake and resigned to his fate. Simon Wordsworth, the young lieutenant who had been given the duty of being his so-called "gaoler," stood quietly and patiently in the shadows. Around him the other lieutenants still slumbered, their rasping snores and sleepy grunts disturbing the quiet of the large cabin.

  "It will soon be time, sir," Wordsworth whispered. "I thought you would like a wash and a shave, uh, beforehand," he finished lamely.

  "And some breakfast too, I hope?" Damon added, with a little smile he hoped would ease the poor lieutenant's distress.

  "Of course, sir. If you'll come with me . . ."

  Damon followed the junior officer out of the wardroom. Two armed marines awaited them outside, quickly taking up the rear of their small procession. To Damon's surprise he found his stride felt sure and confident, his heart firm, his head clear. He thought of God and wondered at the thought, until he rationalized that most men who were this close to death probably did the same. Strangely, his impending death brought him no fear. He envisioned the neat row of ten Royal Marines, all dressed in scarlet uniforms with white belts crossing their chests, their boots shining, their faces expressionless, their muskets stiffly at their sides; he could imagine the marine drummer, could imagine someone coughing, could almost hear the commands: "Ready!" — the muskets all jerking up as one — "Aim!" — all training on his body —

  "Fire!"

  It would be quick and violent and, with ten bullets ripping into his heart at once, painless. He had a vision of his body jerking and convulsing before finally falling dead to the deck, his chest nothing but a ravaged, gory hole, his eyes staring and his mouth open in a soundless scream.

  And still he felt no fear, nothing but a strange, resigned calm.

  Perhaps this was God's way of making these last hours easier. Perhaps the attacks of senseless panic he'd had up until so recently had prepared him for the real thing. Perhaps . . .

  Who knows, he thought as Wordsworth showed him into a small cabin, where a young servant waited beneath a hanging lantern. On a bench was a plate of food, a bowl, and a pitcher. Wordsworth turned to Damon and nodded, and Damon plunged his hands into the cool water, splashing it over his face and into his hair as the marines waited stiffly outside. He was keenly aware of every sensation, knowing it would be the last time he'd ever experience them; the slippery coolness of the water, the play of light over the bowl and the shadows his head cast across it, the light scent of the soap, the feel of the deck beneath his shoes. He toweled his face and hair and sat down on the bench. The servant boy immediately lathered his face and neck and began to shave him.

  Through the cabin's open gunport he could see the dark, clinging mist lightening to charcoal as dawn approached. He glanced at Wordsworth as the boy pulled the razor over his cheek. The lieutenant's hands were clasped tightly behind his back, and he was rocking back and forth, obviously very ill at ease.

  He did not meet Damon's gaze.

  The lieutenant's distress only brought home the reality of what was happening. Damon shut his eyes and instead of thinking about it, concentrated on the simple pleasure of the razor moving over his skin. He thought of Gwyneth, as he had done for most of the past, endless night, and he thanked God who had sought to comfort him in this, his final hour, that she would not have to see his bloody end.

  All too soon the shave was finished, the breakfast was eaten, and Lieutenant Wordsworth and the two armed marines were escorting Damon out of the cabin, up through a hatch, and out onto the deck, still bathed in early-morning mist, where a contingent of six armed marines waited silently near the launch that would be swung out and over the side.

  A mild offshore wind, ripe with the scent of the mudflats, stirred the heavy mists and ruffled Damon's shirt. Above, lines hummed and the admiral's pennant gave a single, half-hearted crack. Somewhere off in the mists to starboard came the splash of oars as a fisherman headed out to sea to ply his nets.

  "Ready, sir?"

  Damon nodded. Moments later, he was sitting in the launch, Lieutenant Wordsworth and the escort of armed marines flanking him on all sides.

  "Gonna be a fine day," one of the oarsmen said tactlessly as the breeze pushed through the mists and made the sea ripple against the launch's hull. Wordsworth shot the sailor a severe look, and shame-faced, the man looked away.

  Slowly the launch moved away from the flagship in a swirl of bubbly foam. Damon kept his gaze straight ahead and did not look back. He could well imagine Bolton standing in his cabin, a satisfied smile on his face, watching. Or perhaps Bolton wanted to savor his final act of revenge in person, and already awaited him at the place of execution.

  The wash of water beneath the hull became louder as the launch gained speed. The mist clung, sticky and damp, to skin and hair, but the breeze was already beginning to make short work of it, scattering the thick grey skeins and pushing them out toward the sea.

  Wordsworth leaned over into Damon's ear. "The sentence will be carried out aboard Athena," he said quietly. "You — you understand."

  Of course, Damon thought. Bolton would not have wanted blood and guts fouling the deck of his precious flagship.

  "That is, unless there is a royal reprieve," Wordsworth added, lamely. "If one should come, it will be revealed during those moments just before the command to fire is given."

  "Aye, they'll want to make ye suffer, first," grunted one of the seamen, leaning into his oar.

  "I do not entertain any false hopes," Damon said softly. He bestowed an earnest look upon the lieutenant. "And neither should you."

  Biting his lip, the young officer looked away, deeply troubled.

  The mist was thinning now, and through it the shore appeared in patches, with long, gray-brown docks stretching like stiff fingers out toward them. Off to larboard the hull of a '74 made a seemingly insurmountable wall, its wet wales glinting in the virgin light, its gun ports all open to catch the morning breeze, its anchor chain disappearing into the gray sea. Was it Athena? No. The launch kept moving, a speedy knife through the sleepy harbor, the water rushing against its bows, the oars rising and falling with perfect dripping precision.

  Damon looked wistfully at the nearby shore and at the many brick buildings, all fuzzy in the mist. He thought of Gwyneth out there, somewhere. He hoped Rhiannon was with her. He hoped.. . .

  That she would be all right.

  Already the world was awakening. On the shore ahead he could see movement: fishermen loading their nets into weather-beaten craft, a group of seamen stumbling along the beach, still reeling from a night of hard drinking, and there, just ahead, a hoy, one of those dockyard sailing boats that brought stores around the harbor. Its mast stuck up like a pencil into the thinning fog; the tide and current were causing it to jerk and pull against its mooring line, which slackened and snapped taut with every rise and fall of the sea beneath it.

  Coming up out of the mist off the starboard bow was the hull of the warship Athena.

  "Lay on your oars!"

  The rush of water beneath the launch lessened in pitch as the boat crew brought their oars up and feathered them, letting the craft's momentum carry her forward.

  It'll be quick, Damon reminded himself, refusing to let the sudden prickles of fear show in his impassive face. He could feel the eyes of the boat crew and the marines on him, no doubt consigning to memory every detail of his face and form so they could someday tell their grandchildren about him, and how they had accompanied the Black Wolf across the harbor to his death. No doubt some were morbidly envisioning what he was going to look like as a corpse, or thinking about the unlikely events that had led him to this inglorious end. Perhaps some of them pitied him, while others secretly admired him. Either way he knew that none of them envied him, and were already seeing him as a dead man.

  "Bring her right up there, to the main chains!"

  As the boat crew struggled to maneuver the unwieldy launch, Damon calmly looked up. High above on the quarterdeck of the mighty '74, he could already see the smartly turned-out captain, a portly, balding man surrounded by two lieutenants. Nearby, their scarlet-and-white chests just visible as they moved about the deck, were the Royal Marines; Damon wondered which of them would be in the lineup to execute him. He found the sight vaguely disturbing, and as the launch closed toward the huge hull he looked away, back toward the shore.

  And saw that the hoy, its sail raised, had broken loose from its mooring and was heading straight toward them.

  No one else saw it, of course. The escort of armed marines and Lieutenant Wordsworth were watching the boat crew, and the boat crew was busy trying to maneuver the launch into position. The officers and marines on the deck high above were engaged in conversation or running about preparing the deck for the grim scene that was soon to come. Only the Marquess of Morninghall saw the hoy coming straight on, slanting strangely, purposefully across the pull of tide and current, and only he saw the lumpy figures crouched in its hull beneath a tarp.

  And I thought I didn't have friends . . .

  With lordly calm and a perfect absence of expression, he raised his head and gazed out to sea.

  Just as one of the officers on Athena's deck above saw the onrushing hazard.

  "Mind the boat!"

  Too late.

  Damon threw himself out of the launch just as the hoy slammed into it with all the force of a battering ram. He heard the grinding, splintering crash, the surprised screams of marines and oarsmen alike as the launch capsized, spilling them all into the sea. But that was all he heard, because in the next moment the sea closed over his own head and he was swimming underwater with fierce, mighty strokes toward the hoy's retreating stern as though his life depended on it.

  And well it did.

  He heard the muffled pop of muskets from the warship, their bullets sprinkling the water all around; he heard violent splashing as the occupants of the late launch, most of whom could not swim, thrashed about in panic. Above was the oblong underside of the hoy's hull, swirling with bubbles and confusion and wreckage, and then it was moving swiftly away, its crew returning the fire of those aboard the warship as it fled toward the open sea.

  Still underwater, Damon struck out after it.

  A rope trailed over the side, leaving a streaming V in the watery gray-white ceiling above his head, and without breaking the surface he caught it, knotted it once around his wrist, and let himself be carried along behind the hoy. Air had never been so precious and he fought to stay conscious, his lungs beginning to constrict, the blood beating in his ears, his brain —

  Hold on, damn it, hold on!

  His vision went speckly, and his teeth clenched against an involuntary inhalation.

  No more.

  The air burst from his lungs, and with all his strength he hauled himself to the surface, breaking it only long enough to catch a gulp of air before letting himself be yanked back down beneath the slapping waves. But that brief moment had provided him with a sure glimpse of his rescuers: Orla, a musket braced against her shoulder as she returned the fire of Athena's men; Nathan Ashton, trimming the sail with desperate speed; and Connor at the tiller, maneuvering the boat so the sail could best catch the rising wind. Damon shut his eyes and held tightly to the rope, arms outstretched before him, the cold water streaming past and around his body like the current of a spring river. The hoy was moving fast, dragging him along with it, and as he broke the surface for air a second time, he looked over his shoulder and saw the flashes of musket fire from Athena, the cutter dropping from her stern to begin pursuit, and heard the enraged shouts of those who had been denied their bloody spectacle.

  No sooner had he dropped below the slapping surface once more when his rescuers were hauling on his rope with violent tugs. As they wrestled him up and into the hoy, his body limp and dripping, the breath roaring through his starved lungs in great, sucking gasps, he saw that a helpful God had already blown the mists back in over the warship, and that their hoy was well on its way out into the Solent.

  Orla, pretty, daring, piratical Orla whom Peter so loved, turned to him with a grin on her spritely face. "Please get down there beneath the tarp, my lord. We'd like to keep you safe and hidden until we can get you back to Kestrel, where Reverend Milford and your wife await you." Then, just before throwing the tarp over Damon, she snatched up her musket and pointed it aft, her wild, exultant laughter ringing over the waves.

  "Would you look at that!"

  Everyone in the little boat turned. The mists had parted behind them, but only long enough for them to see the confusion in the water that surrounded the now-distant Athena. Sailors were diving into the churning sea, men were shouting back and forth, and the cutter was not in pursuit, but moving about, plucking people out of the water.

  "Fools!" Connor cried, laughing. "They're obviously searching for the drowned body of the Marquess of Morninghall!"

  And then the fog closed over the fading scene once more, and the little hoy was alone in the mists, heading further and further into the Solent.

  "There she is," Connor said, his voice soft with emotion, and as Nathan pulled the tarp off Damon so that he too could see, a reverent hush fell over them all.

  Even the Marquess of Morninghall's eyes filled with moisture.

  For there, her rail awash, her sails catching the first light of dawn, and her long, plunging bowsprit trained on them like a compass, was the schooner Kestrel.

  Epilogue

  It hadn't changed.

  Just as it had for centuries, Morninghall Abbey stood atop its emerald green throne, commanding a sweeping, unbroken view of the magnificent Cotswolds that surrounded it. When its lord and lady had left, the poppies had been strewn everywhere in wild abandon; now they were long gone, apples lay on the ground around the trees, and the wheat had been harvested, leaving the fields shorn and bleached. Blackberries were fat on the vines that climbed the walls of yellow stone, the wild grasses were heavy and bent, and there was a decided crispness in the air, a tense expectancy.

  For the lord of Morninghall was finally coming home.

  The schooner Kestrel had caught up to Sir Graham's mighty flagship Orion on her journey back to the West Indies, and as brother and sister had fought over ownership of the little ship, the admiral had calmly welcomed Lord and Lady Morninghall into his cabin. Ignoring the fierce battle raging just outside, and treating his guests to a bottle of his finest port, he'd read them the news a fast-sailing messenger had brought him not seven hours before: the Prince Regent had granted a reprieve to the Marquess of Morninghall, only to have the lord snatched right out from under the guns of the warship on which he'd been sentenced to die.

  As darkness fell an hour later, Connor — who'd won a blind eye from Sir Graham and grudging, albeit temporary, ownership of the schooner from his sister — was heading triumphantly off to the east, and the massive, hundred-gun warship Orion was coming about, setting a course back to England.