dark shade somewhere between blue and green. It reminded him of the color of ducks’ tails. It suited her pale skin and almost black hair, with its wing of white at the brow. He had not realized it before, but she was beautiful. There was an inner peace in her face which made it remarkable. It was a face he could look at without growing tired of it, or feeling as if he had learned every expression and could predict its next light or shadow.
He swallowed. “Good morning, Mrs. Underhill. How may I help you?”
A smile flickered across her face and vanished. She obviously felt some awkwardness about the matter, whatever it was, and disliked having to broach it with him.
“Please sit down,” he offered, indicating the large chair near his desk.
“Thank you.” She glanced around his office, noticing the ship’s sextant on the shelf and looking quickly at the titles of the books. “I’m sorry. I should not waste your time, Mr. Cornwallis.” She brought her attention back to him. “I think perhaps I was foolish to have come and disturbed you. It is a personal matter, not official. But I felt that we left a most unfortunate impression upon you the evening you came to dinner. The Bishop …” She gave his title rather than calling him “my husband,” as he would have expected. He noticed the hesitation. “The Bishop was deeply distressed about the whole incident,” she went on quickly. “And fearful that the wider repercussions could damage so many people, I think he may have seemed less concerned with Ramsay Parmenter’s own … welfare … than he really is.”
She was obviously finding it extremely difficult to talk, and studying her face, her shadowed eyes avoiding his, he felt that she was as deeply offended by the bishop’s behavior as he was himself. Only for her it was also a profound shame, because she could not dissociate herself from it without disloyalty. She had come here now to try to improve her husband’s image in Cornwallis’s eyes, and she must hate doing it and feel a terrible inner anger at the necessity. Did she wish to tell him her true emotion, but honor forbade her?
“I understand,” he said into the awkward silence. “He has many considerations beyond the purely personal. All men with great responsibility have.” He smiled, keeping his eyes very steadily on hers. “I have commanded a ship myself, and no matter what my feelings towards any individual member of the crew, what like or dislike, what pity or respect, the ship itself always had to come first or we should all perish. They are hard decisions to make, and not always thought fair by others.” He did not think those rules applied to Bishop Underhill. His “ship” was a moral one, fighting the elements of cowardice and dishonor, not of wood and canvas struggling against the ocean’s power. Cornwallis’s commission had included safeguarding the lives of his men. Underhill’s was to safeguard their souls.
But he could say none of this to her. She must know it as well as he … at least—looking at her, the awkwardness of her hands knotted together in her lap, the way her eyes avoided his—he believed she did, and he did not wish to remind her.
“We must all make whatever decisions we feel to be the best in difficult circumstances,” he went on. “It is easier to judge others than to be in that position oneself. Please do not feel I misunderstand.”
She looked up at him quickly. Was she aware that he was trying to be kind rather than honest? He was unused to women. He had only the vaguest idea how they thought, what they believed or felt. Perhaps she saw right through him and despised him for it? That possibility was startlingly unpleasant.
She smiled at him. “I think you are being very generous, Mr. Cornwallis, and I am grateful to you for that.” She glanced around the room. “Were you at sea for long?”
“A little over thirty years,” he replied, still looking at her.
“You must miss it.”
“Yes …” The answer came instantly and with a depth which he had not expected. He smiled self-consciously. “In some ways it was a great deal simpler. I am afraid I am not used to politics. Pitt tries to keep instructing me in the nature of intrigue and the possibilities of diplomacy—and more often the impossibilities.”
“I don’t suppose there has to be much diplomacy at sea,” she said thoughtfully, looking