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Inside the ship’s dining room, chandeliers cast soft pools of light over the white-clad tables, the sparkling wineglasses, the gleaming silver, and the black bow ties of the attentive serving staff. Amanda, whose head still aches from her curious accident, picks uneasily at her Fillet of Sole Véronique. She gazes down at the fish called Veronica which once, she presumes, swam happily in the sea of love, and sighs.

There is much to look forward to. A tempting array of desserts, served by waiters from a groaning trolley. And after that, champagne; followed by dancing on the ship’s poop, high above the dark but luminous waves.

Gazing around her, Amanda sees that Mrs Papadopoulos is sitting at the Captain’s table. She is wearing diamond earrings and a tiara, and is eating her dinner with evident relish.

Luke Tarrant is nowhere to be seen. His absence, however, is an ache that fills Amanda’s heart with a fierce and inexplicable longing.

Suddenly Amanda notices that there is an elderly woman seated at one end of the Captain’s table. How oddly her unpretentious grey suit and plain necklace of pearl contrast with the glittering jewellery and costumes of the other guests!

As Amanda watches her, she lays down her knife and fork, brings her napkin delicately to her lips, and begins to rise.

Amanda’s heart beats with a sudden intensity. Surely she has not imagined it! Surely the silvery-haired woman looked in her direction and beckoned to her! Ignoring the startled eyes of the other diners, Amanda leaps from her seat. ‘How rude I must seem!’ she thinks to herself as she dodges the waiter with the dessert trolley. But there will be time later to explain. For the moment all that matters is that she reach the mysterious woman before she disappears again!

But by the time Amanda has pushed her way to the Captain’s table, the grey-suited woman has disappeared. All that is left to show she ever existed is a crumpled napkin, lying carelessly on the table beside an unused wineglass.

The napkin! Impulsively, Amanda seizes it, ignoring Mrs Papadopoulos’s astonished expression. There is writing on the napkin. Amanda recognises a familiar, sloping hand.

She will read it alone, in private. Right now, though, she must follow the mysterious dinner guest.

Thrusting the napkin deep into the pocket of her evening jacket, Amanda runs towards the companionway that leads from the dining room page 29 to the outer deck. As she emerges onto the starlit deck, the cool air of evening surrounds her. A moment later she collides violently with the man who is waiting for her in the shadows.

A man whose broad shoulders strain the fabric of his white cocktail jacket, whose hands are thrust carelessly into the pockets of his well-cut trousers, while his dark eyebrows carry the promise of thunder …

He grasps her by the shoulders, so firmly that she could not move if she tried. His voice is harsh and sarcastic. ‘Another precipitous exit, I see,’ he says coldly.

Amanda wishes that her voice were less tremulous. The words ‘W-what do you want?’ spill out of her like tiny, terrified gasps of air, dissolving on contact with the solid chill of his icy demeanour.

‘All this typing, Amanda,’ he is saying, and she has never heard a voice so charged with menace. Oh, he is like a venomous snake, coiled and waiting to strike!

‘All this typing, and not so much as a single kiss …’

His mouth clamps itself onto hers.

She struggles, but is unprepared for the wave of desire that sweeps her like a drenching, foaming wave, leaving her week, trembling, exhausted, waiting for the next breaker …

‘Oh, Luke,’ she moans.

All around the ship, a storm is brewing. There is tension in the wind. The sea tosses its foaming heads, imperious, commanding. Unnoticed, the shadow of an elderly woman with an upright posture and soft, silvery hair, flits past them down the passageway and vanishes into the darkness at the end.

Soon, the storm will be upon us.