He gently took her face in both hands and turned it to him and kissed her as before, slightly increasing the light pressure of his full sensuous mouth until he felt a tenuous response. It was delicious and he wanted more. He hadn’t meant to mark Ameline’s neck, to leave evidence of their tender, innocent passion. It horrified him. It was so inappropriate on this girl’s slim white neck. He had decided he would never attempt to seduce her, he liked her too much to take advantage of her. Ameline was blissfully happy. He knew she found their meetings exciting and romantic. Was she hoping things would develop in some way?

They had been tender, special moments, those last ones in the little cove, nothing like he had expected or experienced before. Bartholomew could not get them out of his mind and he wondered deep in his heart how he would feel when that quiet, well-bred young lady could meet him no longer. They had arranged to meet one more time before she left to return to Tolwithrick.

‘You got someone coming to see ’ee, boy,’ Matthew called out as Bartholomew bent his long legs to apply the first stroke of pitch to the bottom of the lugger. ‘’Tes a lady.’

‘What!’ he exclaimed, banging his shoulder on the hull of the boat as he sprang up and splashing pitch on the pebbly ground. He was shocked to think Ameline had actually come down into the fishing village to see him. It wasn’t her, however. Dropping the brush and rubbing his hands on his breeches he walked rapidly to meet Kerensa.

‘Have you come to see Mother again?’ he asked, full of curiosity, then glancing at the other fishermen dotted around them, ‘Or someone else?’

‘No, it’s you I want to speak to, Bartholomew,’ Kerensa informed him. ‘Can we go somewhere?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Bartholomew was quietly delighted. He was always pleased to be in Kerensa’s company and he felt important to be singled out for a private discussion with her. The ordinary folk of the parish had long stopped thinking of Kerensa as ‘the little maid from Trelynne Cove’; they held her in as much esteem as they would a lady of genteel birth.

They drew aside from the curious fishermen and walked over the crunching pebbles of the beach with a stinging salty wind straining at their faces.

Kerensa looked at him critically. Because he so much resembled Oliver she felt even angrier over her suspicions that he’d been dallying with Ameline. She went straight in on the attack, her voice like sharded glass. ‘Have you been down to Trelynne Cove of late?’

He frowned, he was puzzled but became immediately defensive. ‘Yes, you said it was all right. Have I done something wrong?’

‘Yes, I rather think you have. Have you met a young lady there? A young lady staying at the manor house, Miss Ameline Beswetherick?’