On the path down to the shore, she offered him her hand, and he took it. They walked in silence. When they emerged onto the sand, the tide was ebbing, the sun suddenly bright. Fiona stopped, holding onto Andrew's hand so that he naturally turned towards her.
"I am so glad you are here on this difficult day, Andrew. I do not know what you must think of us. I do not want you to think of me as hysterical, or disordered. Ordinarily I love this place. But today it seems as if... in every closet, there is a different skeleton. I am so glad you are here."
"The child is Lucy's?"
"Yes," said Fiona. "Let us walk along the shore."
She turned, and led him south westward. The sand was smooth.
"I collect that she was with child by one of your brothers when she left here?"
"Yes," said Fiona. "By Frederick. My family treated her dreadfully."
"You mean, in turning her away?" asked Andrew, puzzled.
"No," said Fiona. "Well yes, but that was the least of our offence. Lucy is... she's a cousin. On my mother's side of the family, but... well, it's complicated. But her family was not wealthy, and she was orphaned. My parents offered her a role here as our governess -- for she was very well educated, her father having been a man of great learning -- even though she was only a year older than Georgina."
"I see," said Andrew; although one heard in his tone that he did not.
"I was quite young when she came -- only eight. When one is young one observes the things adults do without understanding, and then, as one grows a little older, one begins to construct explanations..."
She looked up at him. "I should not tell you this. I've never told anyone this."
They walked on in silence. Andrew broke it.
"The servants think you lay with me last night."
"Yes," she said. "My mother thought that, also."
There was a silence. Fiona bent to pick up a feather.
"It is my own fault," she said. "I prepared the bothy for you. Myself. It... had been neglected these past two years. Since my father was last here. It... I took some days over it."
"Yes," said Andrew.
"I wanted it to be ready for you."
"Yes," said Andrew. A little burn ran out across the sand; he helped her across it.
"Do you recall -- I asked in my last letter -- about language?"
"I recall," said Andrew.
"I did not plan to come to you in the night," she said. "No, hush! I did not plan to come to you in the night. I dreamed of coming to you in the night, many times. Always quite naked. I could dream that, because... one is not responsible for one's dreams, do you see?"
"I'm not certain," said Andrew.
"To plan a thing is to have intention. One is responsible for it."
"Yes," Andrew agreed.
"I believe that if a woman came to you quite naked in the night, you would know how to treat her."
"How would such a woman wish to be treated, Fiona?"
"I cannot say, Corsair! You must know that I cannot say. But... it is why it is important that it should be you. That a lady should come to."
"I am not certain I understand."
"When I was a child - when father was home - he used now and then to examine us on our lessons. If our answers displeased him, afterwards he would take Lucy into his study and chastise her. Afterwards she would go to her room for the rest of the day. I know she cried."
She let go his hand, and turned to look out over the water; he too stopped, behind her.
"My father never hit me. Sometimes when I displeased him I would have to go into the study and he would lecture me sternly."
She was shaking slightly. He reached out his hand and put it on her right shoulder; her left came up and covered it, and then, feeling the gauze, withdrew.
"There is a different sound when someone is spanked on bare flesh to when someone is spanked over clothing," said Fiona. "Henrietta and Georgina would listen at the door. Afterwards they would go off by themselves, and giggle. Sometimes Henrietta would deliberately give father wrong answers."
"In order that Lucy should be punished?"
"Yes," said Fiona. She started to walk on. After a few paces she held out a hand to him.
They crossed a patch of exposed rock, and came onto another bay.
"Why," said Andrew. "Surely that is Artemis' Arrow?"
A steam yacht lay drawn out of the water on balks of timber, and propped; her paint was flaked and pealing in places, but she was lean and elegant. Beyond her stood a stone boathouse.
"Why yes, she is," said Fiona. "But how is it that you know her?"
Andrew led more briskly. "We built her not long after my father bought the yard in Dumbarton," he said. "I was thirteen, and found her fascinating - I was probably a pest to the men, but they were very tolerant."
"You are that Smith?"
"I am. And, wait, at the launching there were three girls, and the smallest, in a white dress, stood with the owner's wife to break the bottle that christened her. That was you?"
Fiona laughed. "But this is so curious! Indeed it was." A wicked grin crossed her face. "It would be better that we not tell Mother!"
Andrew stared up at the dry planking, cracks opneing up along the caulking. "It is sad to see her so uncared for," he said.
"Yes," said Fiona. "So many things have fallen into disrepair in these melancholy years. We have no skipper for her now - no boatman at all, although the easiest way to travel from here is by boat."
She tugged at him. "Come, let us move on. It makes me sad to be here."
They passed the boathouse, and soon came into another shallow bay. Fiona walked down the strand until the waves were running up to her boots.
"This is where we - my sisters and I, and Lucy of course - used to come to swim. It is not overlooked, and... at this time of the year the water is warm. Sometimes we used to swim by moonlight.
"That sounds most romantic," said Andrew.
"More than romantic, Corsair. Sensuous. We were used to swim naked. And sometimes in late summer there would be tiny animacules in the water, which glow with phosphorescence when you swim among them."
"I've seen that," said Andrew, "off Arran. But I have not swum in it."
They walked on a few strides. Fiona stopped suddenly, as though she had made up her mind. She looked at him directly.
"There was a woman," she said, "with whom you shared no common language."
"Yes," he said, "there was."
There was an expectant silence.
"I have not, I think, so much experience of your sex as you suppose," he said. "But in Petrograd, two... nearly three years ago... I told you of the Baltic expedition?"
"You did."
"Things had become very bad. War is brutal, dreadful. I shall not tell you... but we had orders to evacuate the submarines to Helsinki, for Petrograd was thought too dangerous. As we were leaving a Russian gentleman - I'm certain, an aristocrat, although I did not hear his name - begged the skipper of one of our support vessels to take some of his family aboard.
"In Helsinki, we were found quarters, and of course we had supplies. About a fortnight after we had arrived, I met one of the Russian women in the street. A young woman. I recognised her. She wanted to say something to me, but I knew no Russian and she no English or French. After a little I surmised that she was hungry. I could not take her into the mess, so I took her to my room, sat her at my desk, and made signs that I would bring food. When I returned from the mess with a tray, she was naked."
"And you knew what to do."
"I did."
"This was on the submarine?"
He laughed.
"No! No, of course not. My dear Miss Campbell -- Fiona -- you can have no idea how small and cramped the quarters are on a submarine, even for the commander -- and I was then only the first officer. No, to lie with a woman in a submarine cot would... well, I imagine that it might be done, but it would be by no means easy. No, this was in my quarters on shore."
"But you knew what to do... and took pleasure of her?"
"Indeed. Surprising pleasure, on that first occasion."
"There were... No, I may not ask. And I have heard... She took pleasure as well?"
"We had no common language. But it seemed to me that she did. And she returned - several times, over some weeks."
"No more, pray. I have learned what I needed. Tell me, was it indeed easier that you had no language?"
"I had not thought of this until you asked in your letter, but I do think that it was. She disposed herself so as to indicate to me that she was..."
"Eager?"
"This is hard to say..."
"Yes," said Fiona. "Let us go a little into the trees, the sun is become strong."
They walked up from the beach into a wood of mixed birch and hazel.
"When I was twelve," said Fiona, "there was a day when... I had always tried to find the answer that... I did always try to find the answer that would please my father. But on this day I failed. My sisters said that I should listen at the door, for it was my fault. He spanked her thirty times; the sound is different on bare skin. Afterwards there were other sounds. She moaned, and he grunted, as though they were on a see-saw. I was frightened. I ran away."
Andrew said nothing, but squeezed her hand gently.
"Afterwards," she went on, "not long afterwards, Lucy had to go away to a sanatorium for a few weeks. When she returned she was... most unhappy. I believed it to be my fault."
"You think that she gave birth to a child?"
Fiona shook her head. "She was not large. I believe that an abortion was procured."
"At your father's request?"
"It is too late to say that this is under seal of the confessional, is it not, Commander?"
"Dear girl, I shall in all things respect your confidence."
"Then no, I am very nearly certain it was at my mother's insistence. As I have told you, it seems that in every closet there is another skeleton."
She paused, and went on in quite another tone. "These are melancholy thoughts. I had not thought the conversation would go this way, and yet... It is a relief to be unburdened of it. I am not often melancholy, my Corsair. It is not my habit. Come, let us return through the wood."
-----
Fiona led with confidence through the wood, picking wildflowers by the bye, making up a little posy, talking knowledgeably about the flora and fauna of the surroundings. The trees here were mainly oak, knarled and twisted and hung with mosses and lichens. They came to a small glade, where water trickled down the face of an outcrop of exposed rock.
"Corsair, my mother will not give her permission that I travel with you."
"No," said Andrew. "I would nevertheless counsel that you may be in danger here."
"Yes," said Fiona meeting his eyes directly, "but that is not the urgent matter. This is. We have this afternoon, and we have tonight. I may not make plans. You may. I may not act. You may. I cannot ask. You need not."
She unpinned her braid from round her head, and, turning away from him, let it hang down her back the way that he had said he liked.
"I need not," said Andrew. It wasn't precisely a question.
"Rhubarb," said Fiona, facing resolutely away. She unbuttoned her jacket, folded it carefully, and laid it on a boulder. Under it she wore a thin silk blouse; and under that, nothing.
