Buckingham smiled. ‘No need. We will always be travelling, you and I, John. I will always need you at my side. People will talk, but people always talk. You will serve me in my chamber again as you have done on this voyage. Nothing will part us.’

John kneeled on the bed and reached for Buckingham. The two men embraced, Buckingham’s curly hair tickled John’s cheek, his neck. He slipped his hand down into the warmth of his lord’s body and felt the hardness of his desire rising to greet his touch.

‘You want me,’ John whispered.

‘Very much.’

John straightened up. ‘I had feared that this was not going to last,’ he confided. ‘That this was part of the madness of these days. The defeat and the grief. I had feared that when we came into port I would be forgotten.’

Buckingham shook his head.

‘I could not bear to be without you, not now.’ John felt strange, speaking of his feelings after years of self-imposed silence. He felt strangely freed, as if at last he could lay claim to a strange land inside his own head, an inner Virginia.

‘You will not be without me,’ the lord said easily. He threw back the covers and John felt his breath catch at the sight of the perfect body. The shoulders broad, the legs long, the thatch of dark hair and the rising penis, the smooth white skin of his belly and chest and the tumble of dark curls.

John laughed at himself. ‘I am as besotted as a girl! I am breathless at the very sight of you.’

Buckingham smiled and then pulled on his linen shirt. ‘My John,’ he said. ‘Love no-one but me.’

‘I swear it.’

‘I mean it.’ Buckingham paused. ‘I won’t have a rival. Not wife nor child nor another man, not even your gardens.’

John shook his head. ‘Of course there is no-one but you,’ he said. ‘You were my master before, but after this you have me heart and soul.’

Buckingham pulled on his scarlet hose and red breeches slashed with gold. He turned his back absentmindedly and John tied the scarlet leather laces for him, relishing the intimacy, the casual touch.

‘You are my talisman,’ Buckingham said, speaking half to himself. ‘You were Cecil’s man and now you are mine. He died without failure or dishonour and so must I. And today I shall know if the king forgives me for failing him.’

‘You didn’t fail,’ John said. ‘You did all he set you to do. Others failed, and the Navy failed to supply you. But you were faultless in courage and honour.’

Buckingham leaned back against him, feeling John’s warm solid body behind him, and briefly closed his eyes. John put his arms around the younger man’s body, relishing the hardness of his chest and the contrasting softness of his curly hair.