Secret Harbor by Barbara Cartland

the porthole turning her hair to gold.
    Because it had been so early in the morning she had not brought a hat or a sunshade, and she felt somehow it was right for her to be sitting in this tiny room talking to a man who was more attractive than any man she had seen in London.
    “Why do you call yourself Beaufort?” she enquired when the silence seemed somehow embarrassing.
    “Because it is my name,” he answered, “the name by which I was Christened, and it does seem an appropriate sobriquet, since I cannot use my other name.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it would be unseemly. My ancestors would turn in their graves, and also one day I hope to go back to where I belong.”
    “You cannot go to France,” Grania said quickly, remembering the Revolution.
    “I am aware of that,” he said, “but that is not where I really belong—at least not since I was very young.”
    “Then where? Or is that a question I should not ask?”
    “Shall I say that when we are together like this we can ask any questions of each other?” the Frenchman said. “And because I am honoured that you should be interested, I will tell you that I come from Martinique, where I had a plantation, and my real name is de Vence—Beaufort de Vence.”
    “It is a very attractive name.”
    “There have been Comtes de Vence in France for centuries,” the Frenchman said. “They are part of the history of that country.”
    “Are you a Comte ?”
    “As my father is dead I am head of the family.”
    “But your home is in Martinique.”
    “It was!”
    Grania looked at him puzzled, then she gave a little cry.
    “You are a refugee! The British took Martinique last year!”
    “Exactly!” the Comte said. “I should undoubtedly have died if I had not escaped just before they seized my plantation.”
    “So that was why you became a pirate!”
    “That is why I became a pirate, and I shall remain a pirate until the British are driven out, which they will be eventually, and I can regain my possessions.”
    Grania gave a little sigh.
    “There is always so much fighting in these islands, and the loss of life is terrible.”
    “I thought that myself,” the Comte replied, “but at least for the moment I am as safe here as I am likely to be anywhere.”
    Grania did not speak.
    She was thinking that if he was safe she on the contrary, was in the greatest danger—danger from the revolutionaries, and more frightening still, danger from Roderick Maigrin.

Chapter Three
     
    W hen Grania looked around the cabin she saw, as she thought she might have expected, that there were a great number of books.
    The cases had been skilfully inserted into the panelling and although they did not have a glass front, there was a bar which held them in place so that they would not fall out when the ship rolled at sea.
    The Comte followed the direction of her eyes and said with a smile:
    “I feel you are also a reader.”
    “I had to learn about the world from books before I went to London,” Grania replied, “and then, just when I was going to step into a world I had read about in the School-Room, I had to come back here.”
    “Perhaps you would have found that world, which is to some women very glittering and glamorous, disappointing.”
    “Why should you think that?”
    “Because I have a feeling, and I do not think I am wrong,” the Comte replied, “that you are seeking something deeper and more important than can be found on the surface of a Social life that relies on tinkling laughter and the clinking of glasses.”
    Grania looked at him in surprise.
    “Perhaps you are right,” she said, “but Mama always made it sound so exciting that I looked forward to making my debut, and to meeting people who now remain only names to me in the newspapers and the history books.”
    “Then you will not feel disillusioned by reality.”
    Grania raised her eye-brows.
    “Is that what you have been?”
    “Not really,” he admitted, “and I am, I suppose, fortunate in that