This note contains spoilers for the book.

Seventeenth in the Lord Ramage novels. That makes it the next-to-last.

Back in the Mediterranean, Ramage helps Italian villagers stand off a raid by Saracen pirates, who are taking basically all the young men and women from all the villages up the coast. Then the admiral orders him to go raid their base and free the slaves.

As a last-moment surprise, the Admiral springs the VIP passenger he is to take to Gibralter on him -- and it's the Marchessa, not dead after all (she hadn't been heard from since she went back to Volterra during the peace of Amiens).