Frenchman's Creek

"That is good. Because I want you to take her ladyship by carriage to that spit of sand three miles this side of Coverack."

"Yes, monsieur."

"And there await my further orders."

"I understand, monsieur."

She stared at him, puzzled, and he came and stood before her, his sword in his hand. "What are you going to do?" she said.

He waited a moment before he answered, and he was not smiling any more, and his eyes were dark.

"You remember how we talked together last night by the creek?"

"Yes," she said.

"And we agreed that it was impossible for a woman to escape, except for an hour and a day?"

"Yes."

"This morning," he said, "when I was working on the ship, and William brought me the news that you were alone no longer, I realised that our make-believe was over, and the creek was our sanctuary no more. From this time forward La Mouette must sail other waters, and find different hiding-places. And although she will be free, and the men on board her free, her master will remain captive."

"What do you mean?" said Dona.

"I mean that I am bound to you, even as you are bound to me. From the very first, I knew that it would be so. When I came here, in the winter, and lay upstairs in your room, my hands behind my head, and looked at your sullen portrait on the wall, I smiled to myself, and said, 'That - and none other.' And I waited, and I did nothing, for I knew that our time would come."

"What else?" she said.

"You, too," he said, "my careless indifferent Dona, so hard, so disillusioned, playing the boy in London with your husband and his friends, you guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind."

She went to him, and put her hands over his eyes.

"All that," she said, "all that you feel, I feel. Every thought, every wish, every changing mood. But it's too late, there is nothing we can do. You have told me so already."

"I told you so last night," he said, "when we had no cares, and we were together, and the morning was many hours away. At those times a man can afford to shrug his shoulders at the future, because he holds the present in his arms, and the very cruelty of the thought adds, in some desperate fashion, to the delight of the moment. And when a man makes love, my Dona, he escapes from the burden of that love, and from himself as well."

"Yes," she said, "I know that. I have always known it. But not every woman."

"No," he said, "not every woman." He took the bracelet from his pocket and clasped it on her wrist. "And so," he went on, "when the morning came and I saw the mist on the creek, and you were gone from my side, there came also, not disillusion, but realisation. I knew that escape, for me too, was impossible. I had become like a prisoner in chains, and the dungeon was deep."

She took his hand, and laid it against her cheek.

"And all day long you worked upon your ship," she said, "and you sweated, and toiled, and said nothing, and frowned that frown of concentration I have come to understand, and then - when you had finished - what was your answer?"

He looked away from her, towards the open window.

"My answer," he said slowly, "was still the same. That you were Dona St. Columb, wife of an English baronet, and mother of two children, and I was a Frenchman, and an outlaw, a robber of your country, an enemy to your friends. If there is an answer, Dona, you must make it and not me."

He crossed to the window once more, and looked back at her over his shoulder.

"That is why I have asked William to take you to the cove near Coverack," he said, "so that you can decide what you wish to do. If I, and Pierre Blanc and the rest of us, return safely to the ship through this cordon in the wood, and hoist sail without delay, and leave with the tide, we shall be abreast of Coverack by sunrise. I will put off in a boat to have your answer. Should there be no sign of La Mouette by daylight, you will know that something has gone amiss with my plan. And Godolphin perhaps will have at last the satisfaction of hanging that hated Frenchman from the tallest tree in his park."

He smiled, and stepped out onto the terrace. "I have loved you, Dona," he said, "in almost every mood. But mostly, I think, when you threw yourself down on the deck of the Merry Fortune, in Pierre Blanc's breeches, with blood on your face, and the rain streaming down your torn shirt, and I looked at you and laughed, and a bullet whistled over your head."