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treated him with kindness since the day he joined this ship.

    Entering the main cabin, Emily was annoyed to see the clerk, Cornelius Gherson, sitting at her husband’s table, a place which had been expressly forbidden him on her request. Immediately he stood and began to gather his papers, favouring her, as he always did, with a condescending smile that made her flesh creep.
    â€˜Forgive me, Mrs Barclay, I did not expect you back so soon.’
    â€˜Then you have lost your sense of time, sir, for I generally return at around this hour.’
    The smile remained, seeming, if anything, more patronising. ‘Then I plead the interests of your husband as excuse, ma’am.’
    â€˜Where is Shenton?’ she demanded.
    Gherson seemed mildly surprised by the question, but his answer was pat. ‘At the markets, Mrs Barclay.’
    â€˜At this hour?’
    â€˜It is when the best bargains are to be had. Traders generally lower the prices when they wish to shift their wares instead of taking them home.’
    She wanted to point out that what would be left, in a town under siege, would hardly be worth having, and she also suspected there was more to the steward’s absence. If there was she could neither ask nor demandto be told; Gherson worked for her husband, not her.
    He was by the door when he said, ‘If I may say so, Mrs Barclay, I wonder if you are doing too much. You look fatigued.’
    â€˜I am perfectly well, Gherson.’
    â€˜Thanks, no doubt, to a robust constitution.’
    He was gone before she could snap at him, and that was just as well; the atmosphere in the cabin was generally cold enough without her making it more so. Suddenly Gherson was there again, holding a folded letter.
    â€˜I forgot, Mrs Barclay, this note came from Admiral Parker.’
    â€˜Parker?’ she replied, flustered.
    â€˜Yes. The messenger made sure I understood it was to be given to you personally.’
    Emily looked at the seal as soon as it was in her hand, then at him, and there was on his face a smile of a different kind, which brought to her mind the word ‘smug’. The soft whistling sound that came from beyond the cabin door as he shut it behind him did nothing to reassure her, and she looked at the seal with close attention until she was satisfied it was intact.

    In the cramped, tiny cabin in which he was supposed to work, Cornelius Gherson fingered the palette knife with which, once heated over tallow, he had opened that note. He had not imparted the other bit of the messenger’s information, and he had been made immensely curiousafter hearing that the admiral had penned the note in his own hand, which implied a deep secret.
    Opening letters not addressed to him had been a skill early acquired; Cornelius Gherson had always felt from his first days in service the need to know what was going on in the life of his employer and Ralph Barclay was no different. That it had got him tossed off London Bridge by one fellow for whom he had worked, who took great exception to being both cuckolded and robbed, to end up pressed as a seaman, did nothing to dent old habits, for that memory was buried under the thick carapace of his narcissism.
    How could he use what he had read? Would it be better to tell the captain of his wife’s betrayal, or could he use it on her? He had harboured a desire to seduce Emily Barclay on first sight, and had tried charming her – she was after all a beautiful woman married to a much older man, a dour bugger – while he was acknowledged by all to be a handsome fellow who had enjoyed great success with the ladies. He was still smarting from the callous way he had been rebuffed, so much so that his abiding thought was retribution. Yet the idea of bedding her had not died; could he gain the same end by a little judicious blackmail? Who knew how far she might go to keep such a thing secret?

    Emily read Parker’s note with increasing gloom; it was one