The Rose Garden

Holding in my disappointment, I crossed to the windows and focused my gaze on the black ship that had given me those few unsettling moments. ‘Is that ship a free-trader, too?’

Daniel leant on the edge of his desk. ‘No. She is, by her colours, a French naval frigate.’ He seemed unconcerned.

‘She’s a much bigger ship than the Sally.’

His practised eye measured the looming black hull. ‘Ay, she’ll be close on 400 tons, and has 32 guns to our 8, and she’ll be carrying at least ten men for every one of ours.’

I said, ‘That’s hardly reassuring.’

‘On the contrary, for that description fits in every way that of the ship I have been sent to meet.’

So this wasn’t an ordinary smuggling run, then. ‘You’re supposed to be meeting another ship here?’

‘My instructions were to that effect.’ Daniel tipped his head slightly as though trying to get a clear view of the French ship’s rigging. ‘Though I must confess they did not name the ship in question.’

The scenery of my own view through the windows at the stern began to slip a little sideways as the Sally caught the wind and started slowly nosing out along the grey line of the shore. We glided once again into the French ship’s shadow.

Daniel must have sensed my nervousness. He said, ‘This is no place for us to make an introduction, with so many watching eyes. It will be better if we seek a quieter stretch of coastline where we can heave to and see what they intend.’

Looking at that line of gilded gun ports I fought back my own misgivings. ‘Yes, of course.’

He wasn’t fooled. ‘Are you now wishing you had stayed back at Trelowarth?’

‘No.’ That came out too quickly. I said it again, ‘No, I’m glad I came.’

He didn’t comment on that, and his silence made me turn self-consciously to find he was still leaning on his desk, arms folded, watching me with thoughtful eyes. I asked him, ‘What?’

He seemed to think a moment longer, then he said, ‘You will not wound me, Eva, if you speak the truth. I would have honesty between us.’

‘I am being honest.’

He didn’t argue that. He only straightened from the desk and crossed to stand beside me, looking out the windows while the steadily retreating shadow of the black French frigate brightened into grey waves that broke hard upon the rocky shore to spray their mist and hide the rise of greening cliffs behind. ‘It has a wild beauty all its own, the Breton coast,’ he said, ‘but I would doubt it could compare with India.’

My turn for silence. I thought he had missed that small slip I had made back when Fergal had noticed the tag in my T-shirt that said ‘Made in India’, and I’d been thinking of the time I’d spent there with Katrina, and he’d watched my face …

‘You have been there,’ said Daniel. He spoke the words surely, a statement of fact.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And where else have you travelled?’

I scrolled through the list in my memory. ‘A lot of places.’

‘Is it that you think my mind so limited and narrow that I will not comprehend the truth? Is that why you conceal it?’

‘No, I—’

Daniel turned his head. His eyes met mine. ‘There is no map for this, no ordered rules of conduct, so we must invent them as we stumble through, and I would argue that the first rule must be honesty.’

I wasn’t all that sure what he was wanting me to answer. My expression must have shown that, for he gave a tight-lipped sigh and looked away again.

‘You are glad that you came,’ he said. ‘You, who have seen and done things I can scarcely imagine; you, who have freedoms in your time the women of mine cannot contemplate. Doubtless you thought that this voyage would be an adventure, and yet you have spent this day shut in a cabin alone and in fear for your life, and you say you are glad that you came. You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I do not believe you.’

I understood him then. ‘All right.’ I took a breath. ‘I didn’t like being left behind when you all went ashore. I didn’t expect it.’

His gaze swung back to mine. ‘And I apologise. I should not have assumed that you would know you could not join us.’ I could see him thinking further. ‘You do understand the reasons?’

‘Yes.’

‘It would not have been safe.’

‘I know. I really do, it’s just …’ I paused, and tried to put it into words. ‘You talk of travelling. Well, even in my own time there are countries where a woman has to live with limitations. She can’t get an education, or go out of doors unless her husband lets her, but that’s not the way I live. And when you’re used to certain freedoms, it’s just very hard to lose them.’

I wasn’t thinking, when I threw that last bit in, that Daniel would have first-hand knowledge from his time in Newgate prison of how losing freedom felt, until he told me slowly, ‘I assure you, Eva, I do have a high regard for liberty.’

‘I know you do.’

‘And whatever custom may decree in public, in my family every woman has been free to speak her mind.’

‘Behind closed doors.’

He smiled and said, ‘I’ve found that there are many things more safely done behind closed doors than in the public view, by men as well as women.’ Then, more serious, ‘Do you think I am free to say exactly what I please, and when? In truth you’d be mistaken. If I stated my opinion of the current state of politics, I’d soon be clapped in irons for treason.’