Read Online Ramage's Devil by Dudley Pope - Free Book Online

“Better than they were, I think. It depends on how the French authorities regard the mutineers from the
Murex.
Yes, and what they intend to do with the officers and the seamen who did not join the mutiny and are still on board as prisoners of war.”
    â€œWhy is all that important?”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. That’s the worst of plans. Most of the time they’re just ideas. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, you can throw an idea at a problem and it solves it. That’s how swallows make those nests of mud in odd places.”
    â€œAnd was doing that what made Captain Ramage famous in the navy for his skill and daring?”
    â€œCaptain Ramage is famous at the Admiralty for disobeying orders!”
    â€œThey do say,” Sarah said, “that being too modest is another way of bragging.”
    â€œWell, skill and daring have landed Captain Ramage with a wife in a château a few miles from Brest while his ship is at Chatham, which is only a war away.”
    â€œYou make it sound as though you’re sorry you married me.”
    He took her in his arms. “No, my dear, I’m blaming myself for not having married you sooner: then I’d be taking the
Calypso
out of the Medway and you’d be safe in London or St Kew, starting to write a passionate letter to me saying how you miss me.”
    Sarah sat up and patted her hair as there was a gentle knock at the door. Ramage realized with a guilty feeling that he had nothing to say to Gilbert. Well, maybe he could think aloud, but that seemed like cheating a man who trusted you.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S ARAH put the triangular red scarf round her head and knotted the ends under her chin. Then coquettishly she spun round a couple of times so that her heavy black skirt swirled out and up, revealing knee-length and lace-edged white cotton drawers.
    Ramage frowned and then said judiciously: “Yes, there’s a certain rustic charm, despite the revolutionary scarf. Your complexion is just right: you have the tan of a country wench who helps with the harvesting.”
    â€œYou are a beast! You know very well this is the remnants of a tropical tan!”
    â€œI do, yes,” Ramage teased, “but I was thinking of the
gendarmes
you might have to charm.”
    â€œYou don’t think my accent is adequate?”
    â€œOh yes—thanks to Gilbert’s coaching you are a true Norman from Falaise. Just remember, in case they question you, that William the Conqueror was born in the castle there, his wife was Matilda, and the Bayeux tapestry is very long!”
    She walked round him. “You don’t look right, Nicholas. That hooked nose looks far too aristocratic for you to have survived the guillotine, although I admit your hair looks untidy enough for a gardener. Those trousers! I’m so used to seeing you in breeches. Isn’t it curious how the revolutionaries associated breeches with the monarchists? Personally I should have thought trousers are much more comfortable than
culottes.
If I was a man I think my sympathies would be with the
sans-culottes.
I’d cry ‘
vive les pantalons!
To the bonfires with the
culottes!
’”
    She inspected his hands. “You have worked enough earth into the skin, my dear, but they still don’t look as if they’ve done a good day’s hoeing or digging in their entire existence. And there’s something missing … Ah, I have it! Slouch, don’t stand so upright! When you stand up stiffly peering out from under those fierce eyebrows, you look just like a naval officer dressed for a rustic
fête.
Ah, that’s better.”
    â€œNow surely I must look like the henpecked husband of a Norman shrew.”
    â€œYes,” she agreed, “why don’t you bear that in mind. Think of me as
la mégère.
With this red scarf round my head, I must say I feel the part!”
    Gilbert slipped into the room after his usual