“Over the drop, a luminous pond lay below them like a pale magic lantern. It was as if the moon had plummeted into the water and smashed open. Engulfed in darkness, with only a scatter of stars abov...”

“Maria didnt fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.”

“A flock of small birds took off from the wall of the fort. They moved like a length of dark silk caught by the breeze as they headed out to sea. Behind them, the sky was the colour of forget-me-not...”

“He noticed that he felt calmer now she was here, still in that grey dress with her dowdy hat, the air around her redolent with orchid oil. Perhaps all women in England had this effect. Perhaps they...”

“A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his minds eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a wo...”

“There was something indomitable about Maria like Britannia. Hed heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterw...”

“She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside ports were places of freedom.”

“She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.”

“We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.”