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admiral.’
    â€˜No, as a . . .’
    â€˜Go-between.’
    â€˜Perhaps.’
    â€˜Perhaps, Sir Henry,’ Faulker said, interrupting and sitting back in his own chair, ‘you are grown blind but what I wear instead of my wig is a pair of horns: she has cuckolded me, sir. And since she has done so with His Highness, I am unmanned, humiliated and made to feel my own insignificance. It is not, I assure you, a feeling that I much like. Were our royal wastrel here in person I should be tempted to run him through and thereby perhaps do us all, and England most of all, a great favour. No doubt they could find a royal bastard to fill the breach, but I think the pretensions of the House of Stuart would not translate into England again. Indeed, I am not certain there is the slightest chance of His Highness succeeding in this regard which makes me incline to your own plan.’
    Mainwaring leaned forward. ‘You are of like mind?’ he asked.
    Faulkner sighed and nodded. ‘Who is going to stay loyal to a prince who cuckolds his most devoted servants? The son is no better than the father; true the method is different, but the infirmity of morality is identical.’
    â€˜Aye.’
    Faulkner looked at the older man. ‘You are weakening in your resolve?’
    Mainwaring shook his head. ‘No, though I admit the contemplation of the effort necessary exhausts me. They will suspect us, Kit.’
    â€˜Of course. Tell me, what did she ask you to say to me?’
    â€˜Mmm? Oh, to point out that she admitted the betrayal, but it was no worse than your betrayal of your wife and, in point of detail, a good deal less.’
    Faulkner rose, went to a sideboard and lifted a decanter and two glasses from the fiddles. He filled them and passed one to Mainwaring. ‘She admits to playing with his prick and no doubt he toyed with her cunny. ’Tis a technicality . . .’
    â€˜If it is true, though, your abandonment will drive her the more to his bed.’
    â€˜If she has not been there already.’
    â€˜But . . .’
    Faulkner held up his hand. ‘Lay it aside, Sir Henry. I can no longer trust her. As for my wife, it is nothing like, and she knows it. I was fond of Judith but knew not a great passion for her such as Katherine aroused in me. Do you know of what I speak, Sir Henry?’
    Mainwaring shrugged. ‘I have not been a man greatly favoured by women,’ he said. ‘My career, such as it was, was too volatile.’
    Faulkner smiled. ‘But you are not unknown to women, Sir Henry, I know that. You are not a man like our late King, for example.’
    â€˜God, no!’ Mainwaring broke off to take wine, after which he stared for a few moments into the middle distance, leaving Faulkner to contemplate a career that had led Mainwaring from Oxford University by way of military service to piracy and from piracy to the office of Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber and confidant of the Duke of Buckingham. He had then become first a captain and then an admiral in the King’s Royal Navy, besides holding the Mastership of the seafaring Fraternity of the Brethren of Trinity House.
    â€˜I took my pleasure when I required it,’ Mainwaring resumed, his tone gently reminiscent, ‘for which there are women willing enough, but as to wilting love, no, it never troubled me.’
    â€˜I,’ put in Faulkner, ‘had not the disposition to engage with whores.’
    Mainwaring laughed. ‘Oh, they need not be whores, at least not always, though a seaman must resort to any port in a storm.’
    â€˜Sometimes the port has its own attractions,’ Faulkner responded, ‘and the voyage ill fits one for a wanton.’
    â€˜No, you did well by Judith,’ Mainwaring said, stirring himself. ‘And you doubtless will again if we throw ourselves upon the mercy of the Parliament.’
    â€˜I doubt that, if I know the lady’s character,’