Free Honour Be Damned by David Donachie

and cheerful individual, stepped into the breach. He saw the servants and the luggage taken below and escorted Mademoiselle Moulins and her male companions to the main cabin. Then, after a long talk with Germain, they worked out a satisfactory arrangement regarding who would sleep where, a matter that involved a great deal of shifting about.
    Germain was as good as his word. They were at sea before nightfall. The Syilphide ’screw had worked flat out during the remainder of the day to load the only thing the captured sloop was short on, powder to fire the cannon. Shot was less of a problem, its small calibre guns providing balls too light for the recent defence of the fortress.
    Aramon and his charge were in one half of Germain’s cabin, while de Puy had to be given a berth in the tiny wardroom. Markham, not required like the midshipmen to stand a watch, offered to shift himself to a screened off cot on the main deck. The cleric then, without protest, abrogated to himself the right to the windward side of the deck without bothering to ask for permission. The young commander put this down to ignorance, a conclusion with which Markham could not agree.
    Dinner, taken late to accommodate the guests, was a cramped affair, even with only five people around the table. Aramon’s servants and the Negro maid had been banished to the gunner’s quarters to take their meals, which had led to a long moan on ‘things not being right,’ from the man so burdened. It was,according to the warrant holder, bad enough with foreign types to contend with. But the addition of a female, and a black at that, who was ‘like to excite the hands’ was ‘coming it too high’.
    Germain, not wishing to commence his commission on a sour note, had tried being emollient first. Jocularity was second and an appeal to camaraderie third. When that failed he finally lost his temper and sent the still grumbling gunner off with a flea in his ear.
    It was in that harassed manner that he sat down to dinner. The night air was hot, enough to make anyone perspire, the scents Ghislane Moulins had applied filling the cabin air enough to disturb the men present. But Markham and Germain had the added burden of discovering that the young lady was, without her veil, a very pretty creature indeed.
    Her skin was pale olive and flawless, with just a hint of that excess of flesh that goes with female youth, the eyes large dark brown orbs. She spoke little, revealing strong white teeth under full lips, and only really employed more than two consecutive words when Aramon addressed a question directly to her, the voice made to sound more thin and nervous by her guardian’s brusque, slightly hectoring tone.
    Markham knew that any hint of gallantry on his part would be squashed, so, in that department, he left the field clear for Germain. That proved unwise. The young man proved totally incapable of even the rudiments of dalliance. When not boasting, any questions he posed to her were either rhetorical and short, or so long-winded as to be abstract in the extreme. He then launched into a long and tedious explanation of what training he had in mind for the ship’s crew, apologising in advance for the discomfort and the noise this would create. Designed to make the young lady feel relaxed, everything he attempted clearly had the opposite effect.
    De Puy evoked greater curiosity. Markham knew about women. He liked and admired them, while well aware that his interest had often led him into trouble. He would have had a lot more if he hadn’t possessed the very necessary ability to assess how other men responded to their presence. The Frenchman rarely took his eyes off the young lady. And his expression, though admiring, also carried with it that extra tinge of gloom that Markham had witnessed whenever he returned for dinner with Aramon. His position, sitting to one side of her, made it moreobvious to the observer than the subject. But her guardian must be aware of it too, even if