Her eyes caught Adam’s looking at her. They were deep blue, the same colour as the sapphire in the Neptune sword. Adam knew he should look away, that he was staring rudely – but he could not stop. Nor, it seemed, could she. She held his gaze like a long-lost friend she had not expected to see again. Had they met before? That was impossible: he would never have forgotten such a face.

  The fan had stopped moving. Her mouth opened, lips glistening with wine, as if she were about to say something.

  ‘Your father?’

  Adam blinked. He’d been so intent on the girl, he had not realised his neighbour was trying to make conversation.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your father? He is recovering?’

  The man who spoke wore a full captain’s uniform, with the twin epaulettes that denoted three years’ seniority. He’d introduced himself at the start of the meal, though Adam hadn’t been paying attention. Was his name Verrier? He had a high forehead and a long nose, which he seemed always to be looking down even when he was trying to be agreeable.

  All Adam wished for at that instant was another look at the girl. But when he managed a glance, she had turned away and was deep in conversation with Talbot.

  ‘My father is mending tolerably well,’ Adam allowed.

  It was probably the twentieth time he had answered the question that evening: every officer in the room was concerned for Rob’s health.

  ‘I heard he had suffered a fit of apoplexy. That he had been left a cripple.’

  ‘My father is a strong man,’ said Adam tightly. ‘Remember that we would not be dining in this castle tonight if he had not taken a bullet in the operation to capture it, so let us honour his triumph.’

  Verrier stiffened. ‘You misread me, sir. I have always considered Sir Robert the greatest sea captain of our age. Saving Lord Nelson, of course.’

  ‘I would say “before Nelson”.’

  ‘No doubt you would.’ Verrier gave a condescending laugh. ‘It must have been most advantageous, growing up as Sir Robert Courtney’s son. Preferment and opportunities that humbler men could only dream of.’

  ‘In my experience, it meant there was always someone trying to knock me off my perch,’ said Adam. This also was a conversation he had had before, with jealous officers who noted his age, his rank and his surname, and drew spiteful conclusions. He nodded to Verrier’s pair of epaulettes. ‘Which ship do you command?’

  ‘The Diamond.’

  Adam could not hide a twinge of jealousy. The Diamond was the finest frigate in the fleet. Fast, manoeuvrable and well armed, she was the sort of ship every young captain dreamed of: a ticket to action, prize money and glory. Adam had watched her longingly at anchor in the harbour.

  ‘Then evidently you have not been held back by your lack of breeding. I mean to say, family connections,’ he added, enjoying seeing the colour rise in Verrier’s ice-cold cheeks.

  ‘You will soon find that naval life is a great deal harder when the admiral is not your father. You know Admiral Bolt arrives to take command of the fleet?’

  Adam was caught off guard. ‘But the convoy was commanded by a commodore. I presumed . . .’

  Verrier looked down the full length of his nose. ‘Admiral Bolt was delayed two days when we called in at Rio de Janeiro. He will be here on the morrow, or perhaps the day after.’ He tossed back the rest of his wine. ‘It must be a great relief to you, now that you are aware of the new arrangements, that your father will be able to return to England to continue his convalescence.’

  He saw Adam’s discomfort and gave a cruel smile, though he did not guess the real reason. The new admiral might order Adam anywhere in the Indian Ocean – or even back to England. Without Rob’s authority, he would not have the freedom to seek out the men who had murdered his family.

  As soon as the meal ended, the ladies retired to the drawing room while the men remained behind for confidential talk and cigars. Adam found Talbot and introduced himself.

  ‘Courtney?’ Talbot scratched his nose. ‘Not the gallant admiral, surely? You are too young.’

  ‘His son.’

  Talbot pumped his hand. He was a large man, with a firm handshake.

  ‘Damn pleased to meet you, sir. I have followed your exploits in the Naval Gazette. The apple does not fall far from the tree, eh? But I have heard your father has been wounded?’

  He was impossible not to like, full of good cheer and warmth. The only blemish, which Adam had not seen until now, was a livid scar which ran down one cheek from Talbot’s ear to his chin. The beard covered it, but the fair hair was too sparse to hide it completely.

  How did you get that? Adam wondered.

  ‘My father was wounded twice,’ said Adam. ‘He took a musket ball in his ribs during the landing at Losperd’s Bay. Later, he suffered a fit of apoplexy when he returned to his childhood home at Nativity Bay.’ Adam locked his eyes on Talbot’s, watching for any sign of recognition. ‘I believe you have visited our family there before.’

  Talbot’s eyes looked anxiously about the room. Sweat beaded on his brow. He lowered his voice.

  ‘Not so loud, I beg you. My calls at Fort Auspice were strictly a private affair, on my own account. I would not want my masters in Leadenhall Street to gain a contrary impression.’

  In other words, you were trading for your own profit and do not want the East India Company to know about it, thought Adam.

  ‘Did you know my grandfather?’

  ‘Indeed. And his family. His granddaughter, Mary, was quite a beauty. Half my officers were swooning like lovestruck loons the last time we departed.’

  He was so jovial, it was impossible to believe he could have witnessed the horror at Fort Auspice.

  ‘So my family were well when you left them?

  ‘Of course – why should they not have been?’

  Adam leaned in closer. ‘When we paid a visit two weeks ago, the house was in ruins. All my family were dead.’

  Talbot stared at him. His hand crept to his cheek, scratching at the scar, which was throbbing red.

  ‘That is a tragedy. I . . .’ He was at a loss for words. ‘Was it a fever?’

  ‘They had been attacked and murdered.’

  ‘But by whom? Natives?’

  ‘From the evidence we found, it looked to be the work of European arms.’

  Adam extracted the page he had torn from the ledger.

  ‘This was my grandfather’s logbook. As you can see, your ship was the last to call at Nativity Bay before the attack.’

  Talbot took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  ‘Dear God,’ he murmured. ‘If only we had known. If we had stayed longer, perhaps we might have done some good.’

  ‘Was there anything that struck you as suspicious. Anything that might identify the men who did this?’

  ‘It was years ago.’

  ‘Could I see your logbook from that period? There might be something, however small, that would give me a clue.’

  ‘Alas, our logbooks are deposited in Leadenhall Street at the end of each voyage.’ Talbot drained his glass of brandy and summoned a footman for another. ‘Wait. Now I recall. There was a French privateer, the Requin.’

  ‘“The Shark”,’ Adam translated.

  ‘Aptly named. Every merchantman in the Indian Ocean feared her bite. She was prowling the waters south of Madagascar at that time. We’d sighted her, but a gale blew up and we made our escape. We put in at Nativity Bay, to lie low for a few days.’

  Talbot took out his snuffbox and offered it to Adam. Adam stared. He was not interested in the snuff, but the box transfixed him. It was made of blue enamel, trimmed with gold leaf, and decorated with pouncing tigers in vivid colour.

  Talbot took a pinch of snuff and gave a sneeze that rattled the crystal in the chandeliers.

  ‘For my nerves, you understand. If it was our going to Nativity Bay that led the Requin to your family, I would never forgive myself.’

  ‘Where did you get that snuffbox?’ Adam asked.

  Talbot looked surprised. ‘In India. A gift from the Maharajah of Holkar.’

  ‘I found a dagger at Fort Auspice, very similar. A jewelled hilt in the form of a tiger. Was that yours?’

  Talbot’s eyes were watery from the snuff.

  ‘I have never owned such a dagger. And with the Requin in the vicinity, you may be sure that I would not have dropped it if I had.’

  It was probably a coincidence, Adam decided. The tiger was a common motif, and every ship that called at Fort Auspice would have called in India. The dagger could have been left by anyone.

  ‘Did my grandfather have any inkling that the French were nearby?’

  Talbot shrugged. ‘It was so long ago, I cannot rightly recall. I am certain I must have mentioned the reason for our coming. You know your grandfather – he was a vigilant man.’

  ‘That was his reputation,’ Adam agreed.

  He knew that was why Rob had run away to sea at the age of seventeen – to escape his father’s stifling caution. Adam couldn’t judge him for that, yet now it filled him with sadness.

  ‘If the Requin was such a notorious privateer, my grandfather would surely have been on his guard,’ he mused.

  ‘Indeed he should have been,’ said a voice from over Adam’s shoulder.

  Adam turned, to see Captain Verrier, the man he’d been next to at dinner, looking down his long nose. He must have been eavesdropping on their conversation.

  ‘You know the Requin?’

  ‘I confess I do not.’ Adam spoke sharply, angry that they had been overheard.

  ‘The most notorious ship east of the Cape. Her captain, Jean Lesaut, is an utter villain. He has captured or sunk more than forty of our ships.’

  Adam said nothing. He was remembering the writing at Fort Auspice, covered by creepers but still livid like a scar on the wall. J’aura mon revanche: I will have my revenge. He remembered the question he had asked – Is there a Frenchman with a grudge against the Courtneys? – and Angus’s reply: Every Froggie that ever sailed the high seas, for a start. Leastways, every one that ever crossed swords with Sir Robert Courtney.

  He had not heard his father mention Lesaut. So far as Adam knew, they had never fought. But the man might have had a brother in the navy, or a cousin – someone who had come off worst against Rob. Who knew how far a man might carry a grudge?

  Verrier was looking at Adam, waiting for him to respond to something.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Captain Verrier was recounting Lesaut’s history,’ Talbot explained. ‘Apparently he was the son of a nobleman who ran away to sea. After the revolution, the Jacobins in Paris took against his aristocratic lineage and sent a group of commissioners to arrest him in Marseilles.’

  Verrier took up the story. ‘The commissioners assumed that the crew would support the revolution. They did not reckon on the men’s loyalty to their captain. Lesaut allowed the commissioners on to his ship, but as soon as they were aboard his men fell upon them. All were butchered – save one. Lesaut sent the survivor back to Paris with a warning, and an offer.’

  ‘The warning was that the same fate would befall any man who came to take his ship,’ said Talbot. ‘The offer was that if they left him his ship and his rank, he would serve the revolution as loyally as he had served old King Louis.’

  ‘Needless to say, they accepted the offer,’ said Verrier drily.

  Adam had little interest in history. All he wanted to know was, ‘Where can I find Lesaut?’

  Verrier looked surprised. ‘His ship is based in Île de France.’

  There was a chart of the Indian Ocean on the wall. Verrier pointed to the island, a tiny speck several hundred miles east of Madagascar. The chart had belonged to the Dutch East India Company, and it still showed the island’s former Dutch name: Mauritius.

  ‘I thought we kept a blockade of Île de France.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Verrier grimaced. ‘I myself have spent months on that station. But Lesaut has the Devil’s own luck. He slips in and out of that harbour like a rat.’

  ‘I would not have waited for him to come out,’ said Adam. ‘I would have fought my way into that harbour and taken his ship from under him.’

  ‘Indeed, I am sure you would.’ Verrier’s cheeks flushed a pale rose. ‘Your reputation for intemperance and recklessness is almost as great as your father’s.’

  ‘The harbour at Port Louis is quite impregnable,’ Talbot put in, trying to defuse the tension. ‘The narrow approach is guarded by a battery on one side, and a citadel on the other. Even if you managed to force the entrance, you would never get out again.’

  ‘I am not afraid of danger,’ Adam retorted. ‘I will find Lesaut wherever he is.’

  ‘Ha.’ Verrier’s voice was touched with scorn. ‘It does not take great heroics to find him. Ten to one, if you venture into the Indian Ocean he will find you. You know what he does to the crews he captures? He brands them with the letter L. That is their warning. If they are ever impertinent enough to be caught fighting him a second time, and he sees that mark, he cuts off their hands and throws the men in the ocean. It is very hard to swim without hands,’ he added.

  That gave Adam pause. Risking his life, even his ship, he would do without thinking. But risking his crew was a different proposition. It was a lesson his father had drummed into him from his earliest days: The mightiest ship is only wood and cordage without the men who sail her.

  There was no alternative.

  ‘If you will forgive me,’ Adam excused himself, ‘I must return to my ship.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Talbot, rising to his feet along with every other man in the room. ‘It is time to join the ladies.’

  The doors to the drawing room had been thrown open. Among the stately womenfolk of Cape Town, the girl with the peacock fan stood out like a hummingbird among a flock of hens. Adam looked at her, but her eyes had already found him.

  She held back in the doorway, playing with her fan, so that she dropped behind the main group of ladies who had come to greet the gentlemen. Then, hurrying to catch up, she seemed to trip on the smooth floorboards just as Adam was passing. He put out his arm and caught her easily, cushioning her against his chest. She clung on for a moment to regain her balance.

  ‘I am so clumsy,’ she exclaimed. ‘The ground seems to wobble beneath me. Perhaps it is the heat. Or the wine,’ she added, with a grin.

  ‘Sea legs,’ said Adam. ‘It shows you are a true sailor.’

  He held her hand as she straightened. He could feel the room’s attention on them, but he didn’t care.

  ‘Adam Courtney,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘Lizzie March.’

  He let go of her hand. She looked as if she was waiting for him to speak, and indeed there were a thousand things he wanted to say – but the need to get back to his father weighed on him. With a new admiral coming, they had no time to lose.

  His duty was to his family.

  ‘I was just departing.’

  She looked crestfallen. ‘So soon?’ She stepped away, putting up her fan like a shield between them. ‘I am sorry we did not have more time for conversation.’

  ‘The loss is mine,’ Adam replied, and though the words were formulaic, he felt it more keenly than he had any right to – the sense of being pulled out of a dream he did not want to end.

  He went down the stairs without looking back.

  You are a fool, he told himself angrily.

  She was a pretty girl, and he had been weeks at sea: that was all. His duty was to avenge his family; nothing else mattered. What sort of a son was he, having his head turned by frivolity at a moment like this?

  As he walked out of the castle gates into the warm night, he could not resist one last look up at the windows. If he had been able to see behind the coloured glass, glowing with the light and laughter inside, he might have seen a face returning his wistful gaze.

  *

  He went straight to his father’s room and relayed in detail what he had learned from the evening. The news kindled sparks of the old fire in Rob’s eyes.

  ‘I have heard of this privateer Lesaut, though I do not recall crossing swords with him. A dangerous man.’

  ‘He will be hard to find, in the expanse of oceans,’ Adam cautioned.

  For all his bravado with Verrier the night before, he did not have any illusions about the scale of his task.

  ‘If you want to hunt a shark, go where the fish are. He will be lurking near the trade routes to India.’

  ‘Agreed. But my Valiant is too small to take on Lesaut in battle. And your successor, Admiral Bolt, is due any hour.’

  ‘Then there is no time to lose. While I am still admiral of this fleet, I can dispose my ships as I will.’ Rob nodded to his bureau. ‘Fetch me a pen and paper.’

  Adam obeyed his father’s request.

  ‘Write this. I, Admiral Sir Robert Courtney, Vice Admiral of the Red, etc., do order Captain Adam Courtney to assume command of His Majesty’s Ship Diamond, to patrol the waters of the Indian Ocean, and to do everything in his power to bring to battle the notorious French privateer Requin.’

  He paused. Adam had not written a word.

  ‘Did I not make myself clear?’

  ‘The Diamond . . .’ Adam looked bewildered. ‘But she is under Captain Verrier.’

  ‘I am giving her to you. I will assign Verrier a new command. Write it,’ he ordered, seeing Adam was still motionless.

  Adam started writing. Conflicting emotions fought within him. It was the ship of his dreams, but in circumstances out of a nightmare.

  When Adam had finished, Rob took the pen. He scrawled his name at the bottom of the order, then affixed his seal. He settled into his pillows, the light fading from his eye.