Relentless Pursuit Read Free

the renegade Spaniard, Martinez. He had deliberately misinterpreted their admiral’s signal to remain on station and leave the pursuit to a smaller frigate which had been outgunned and outsailed from the start, and they had saved the merchantman Aranmore, which had been carrying important passengers. He glanced at the companion ladder and remembered Bolitho holding the woman’s hand, kissing it. They could have been quite alone.
    Galbraith began to pace the deck, his hands clasped behind him. Was it that as well? Had she reminded him yet again of the girl he had hoped to marry, and had lost when he had put his brief command first?
    He thought too of Bolitho’s reluctance to become close to anyone in his new command. He had lost a frigate, Anemone, fighting a more powerful American ship, had been taken prisoner and had escaped. It was as if he had found it impossible since then to reach out, to accept, and to trust.
    And there was yet another side to the man, a stark contrast. Cristie had told Galbraith about the day when he had openly disagreed with his captain. For Cristie it was a thing almost unheard of. Galbraith’s raiding party had been amongst little-known islands, and the master had advised that it was unsafe to take Unrivalled through a channel which was virtually uncharted, and which might rip out the ship’s keel. A captain’s total responsibility . . .
    Cristie had confided after the successful recovery of the raiding party, “Fair mad he was. I’ll roast in hell before I leave Galbraith to die in their hands, he said. I don’t go much for praying, but I tell you, I nearly did that time!”
    And when they had stood together in the church at Falmouth, the first time Unrivalled had dropped anchor there. The church full of people, the streets also, and total silence for the man who had died at sea, the captain’s famous uncle, Sir Richard Bolitho.
    Lady Catherine Somervell had been there with them. So beautiful, so alone despite the crowds. Where was she now? What would become of her? The woman who had defied society and had been Sir Richard’s lover and inspiration, and had won the heart of the country.
    The deck moved slightly, and he saw the ship in his thoughts as clearly as he had this morning. A thoroughbred. Like the carved inscription beneath her figurehead. Second to None.
    Unrivalled was eager to move. The first and perhaps the last of her kind: in the yard where she had been laid down, built and launched, Galbraith had seen her only sister ship. The same fine lines, the pride of any craftsman. But abandoned. Unfinished. Dead.
    He stared along the deck, at the two lines of eighteen-pounders, their tackles and breechings taut and neat, and recalled Massie, who had been the next senior in the wardroom. A flag officer’s son and a gunnery man to his fingertips, not one you would ever know. Quiet and self-contained even on the day he had been killed, shot down as he had rallied his people.
    He had been replaced here in Plymouth by Lieutenant George Varlo, a complete contrast. Lively, talkative, and in his mid-twenties, he must have had some influence; every appointment now was like pure gold. Galbraith had decided that he would bide his time with Varlo. He almost smiled. Maybe he had got that from the captain.
    He turned in his pacing as the noon gun echoed mournfully across the water and the watching veterans. Even without the large, old-fashioned watch he had always carried, Captain Bolitho would be right on time.
    He heard Midshipman Sandell’s sharp, petulant voice, berating one of the new men. They were over fifty hands short of approved complement. Petty tyrants like Sandell would be no loss at all.
    â€œGig’s in sight!” That was Bellairs, the third lieutenant, who had been the senior midshipman when Unrivalled had commissioned. It would be a challenge to him, Galbraith thought. Some of the old Jacks would recall him as just another