Victory

Cecilia held back a wave of frustration. ‘You mean to say you haven’t been able to find an hour or two in all this time to see to your future as a writer? I really find this hard to credit in you, Nicholas.’

‘I’ve been, um, busy.’

‘This is not the way to see your book finally printed. You must make the effort and see an editor or somebody in charge and find out what has to be done. You promised me!’

‘It’s, er . . . I don’t believe I’m quite ready to – to hand over my manuscript as yet.’

She caught her breath. ‘Mr Renzi, if you find it so very difficult to accept the advice of your friends then there’s nothing more to be said – is there?’ Without waiting for a reply she stood and left the room.

Out on the street anger took hold. That he had the gall to refuse her perfectly reasonable request – her brother had told her in the strictest secrecy that Renzi had confessed to him an undying love for her, a confidence that she had since kept sacred. Was this, then, the man’s conception of the word?

She knew, too, from Kydd that it was Renzi’s plan to offer her marriage just as soon as he had in his hands the volumes that would provide him with the income to support a wife. Why then was he hesitating to conclude arrangements? A tear pricked as she hurried along to her rendezvous with Jane.

Her own feelings for Renzi were unchanged: no more upright and honourable man ever trod the earth and she felt that deep within him passions were held in check only by his formidable logic and moral strength. If they were to be married it would be . . . But he was doing everything to avoid the commitment. What did it mean?

She blinked furiously. Before too many more years she would cross that awful Rubicon – she would be thirty. How long should she be expected to wait?

A lump in her throat made her gulp. If she had been honest with herself she should have seen it long ago: Renzi was a born scholar, a gifted savant whose work the world would value. But it was transforming him. Into a hermit, a recluse. He didn’t want to see a publisher because it was part of a world he despised. And history was full of those, like Isaac Newton and others, who had retired into their private world, had never married, never cared for a woman – who were lost to love.

She had to confront it. He was slipping away from her. No amount of patient waiting would bring him back. These last years had been wasted and if she didn’t do something about it she would end up a sad and lonely figure on the fringe of someone else’s happiness.

That stark prospect was now no longer a possibility – it was certain. The truth brought tears that could not be held back. She was still a handsome and desirable woman and had every right to look forward to marriage and a settled life, children. And – and with Renzi, this was no longer in prospect.

She crushed her anguish and dried her eyes. She had to look to the future. Why, there was Captain Pakenham of the 95th – with only a very little encouragement, by this time next year she could be married into one of the foremost families in the north, chatelaine of her own estate and with a husband on an income of fifteen thousands.

He was twenty years her senior but there were others, too, younger, gayer – she would not lack for laughter and high living and would never have to open her purse with unease again. She must think long and hard about it.

She stopped. In her distraction she had gone right past the shop. Composing herself, she went back. ‘Jane, my dear. The new bonnet, which then is it to be?’

The Board of Ordnance official leaned back with a tired expression while Kydd strove to make the master shipwright understand. ‘It won’t fadge, sir! In this age, a twelve-pounder frigate? Why, it’s not to be borne! If there’s an Admiralty order as will make us an eighteen-pounder, you must comply, sir.’

Hocking sat immovable. ‘The Admiralty may order all it likes, Mr Kydd, an’ it won’t do a ha’porth o’ good. This ship can’t take ’em. I’m telling you an’ I’ll tell their lordships th’ same. I’ve done m’ tests – and there’s two good reasons why, and these I’ll tell ye.’

Kydd had seen him and his party with plumb-bobs and cryptic chalk marks deep in the hold while a single eighteen-pounder carriage gun was moved by degrees out from the centreline on the main-deck.

It seemed that with increased weight high on her decks an entity called the metacentre was being threatened by the upward advance of the centre of gravity, thereby reducing the righting arm available to L’Aurore. In graphic terms Hocking spelled it out: in anything of a blow, as the ship lay over under assault by gale or wave, she would be reluctant to return to the vertical to the extent that her stability would vanish and she could then conceivably capsize.

When the man quoted the tons-per-inch immersion figure to show that, fully loaded with thirty-two eighteens, her gun-port sill would be barely four feet above the sea it became very clear that L’Aurore would remain a twelve-pounder.

After they left Kydd was in a foul mood. The loss of the guns was bad enough but when the surgeon, Peyton, reported, he was unprepared to put up with the supercilious young man and his airs. Readily admitting he was only filling in time before a Harley Street practice, the man had the hide to loudly protest the quality of his cabin. Kydd caustically reminded him that virtually all his patients were in somewhat harder living conditions.

His signature was being constantly required now; the sniffy ship’s clerk, Erasmus Goffin, apparently saw it as his right to interrupt him at will, bearing the duly scratched-at paper back to the purser as though it were a holy relic.

It was a ray of sunshine when Calloway reported shyly. Kydd gratefully appointed him his keeper, and when two volunteers of the first class appeared he placed them in his charge – one eleven years old, the other twelve. Rated as captain’s servants, they were in effect apprentice midshipmen, gaining sea-time and instruction in the best way possible. The ruddy older one was Potts; the more pale and serious lad was Searle. Kydd reflected that the wide-eyed youngsters were now about to start on a life that, for extremes of squalor and glory, could not be equalled. They would survive or not on their own, with little but their character and courage to help them.

At last the first batch of seamen arrived. Howlett set up court with a table at the main-mast, dispassionately disposing of their fates in accordance with their declared skills, Goffin duly inscribing beside him.

Kydd watched from the half-deck. As far as he could see, his first lieutenant was swift, efficient and sound in his judgements, and progress was made. He waited until the process was complete, then walked across.

‘How goes it, Mr Howlett?’ he asked pleasantly.