Lords.'
'All those whose opinions matter, anyway,' the earl growled contentedly. 'For years your Gazette letters were the only good news they had to read. Anyway, I hear the Admiralty will be well represented.'
That was a surprise: the Admiralty's attitude towards the Patriotic Fund swords of honour presented by Lloyd's was hard to understand. It acted as though jealous because it had nothing of its own to present to deserving officers, but at the same time its view was that officers were only doing their duty and therefore needed no presentation swords. However, despite this dog-in-the-manger attitude they could not afford to offend the Committee of Lloyd's which, apart from anything else, organized the sailings of all convoys.
'Who can we expect from the Admiralty? Is Mr Secretary Marsden taking a day off from attending to the Board's affairs?'
'He might be; I don't know. But I met the new First Lord, Barham, in the House yesterday and he said he'd never met you but would be there - curious, I think. Having Lord St Vincent applauding should also satisfy you: he told me he hoped to come. Probably the only sign of praise you'll ever get from him,' the earl added. 'And Lord Nelson's just arrived in Town and tells me he will be there - with Lady Hamilton, I fear.'
'So he's back in England after that long chase . . . Well, don't be too critical of the lady,' Ramage said. 'If she inspired him at the Nile and then Copenhagen, I don't care if she has two heads and three legs . . . after all, but for him Sir John Jervis would have had a miserable defeat at Cape St Vincent, not a victory, so he wouldn't have received an earldom and a name to go with it . . .'
'I know, I know,' the earl said, 'and St Vincent knows it, too. He's tried to pay off that debt by pushing Nelson: command for the Nile, then Copenhagen . . .'
'Copenhagen?' Ramage said sarcastically, an eyebrow raised. 'Surely My Lord St Vincent guarded himself by putting that nincompoop Hyde Parker in command - and Parker's nervousness and limp hand nearly lost the day!'
'Be fair, be fair,' the earl chided. 'I know you have no very high opinion of Lord St Vincent after the battle which gained him the earldom, but at Copenhagen he knew Nelson as second-in-command would twist Hyde Parker round his little finger, if necessary - as indeed he did, and won a fantastic victory.'
'Then why not have the courage to put Nelson in complete command from the start? Hyde Parker wasted days fiddling about off Elsinore when he should have been down to the south at Copenhagen. After all those luxurious years of West Indian sun and blue seas, the dark nights and cold green seas of the Cattegat frightened him.'
. The old admiral laughed and started to fill his pipe. 'You're not going to get me into that argument again. Anyway, now St Vincent is out and Middleton is in as First Lord, created Lord Barham for the purpose, perhaps things will be different. I've known him for most of my life as Charles Middleton, and it's difficult to remember he was recently ennobled.'
'What sort of man is he?'
The earl shrugged. 'About fourteenth on the list of admirals of the white, just below Duncan and just above St Vincent. In his eighties now, but a very good organizer and clear-headed: apparently he has shaken up the Admiralty Office - it needed it. Everyone's precise task is now written down; clerks have to be at their desks by ten o'clock; even sea lords arrive earlier. Barham himself is usually at work by daybreak.'
'Sounds a welcome change,' Ramage commented. 'Those clerks for the most part are a crowd of insolent time-servers - sons of creditors, tailors' nephews, friends of cousins, and so on. '
'Ah, Lord Nelson,' the earl exclaimed, 'I nearly forgot. He's in Town from Merton for only three or four days, staying at Lady Hamilton's place in Clarges Street, and he asks that you call on him. Seeing him at Clarges Street will save you from going all the way down to Merton.'
'Did he give you any idea what he wants to see me about?' Ramage asked cautiously. 'From what the newspapers say, I should think that now he's back everyone in London wants to shake his hand and give him dinner ...'
'That's exactly why, if I were you, I'd send Raven round to Clarges Street at once to suggest a day and time.'
Sarah came into the room at that moment. 'Who lives in Clarges Street?' she asked. 'Oh yes, that wretched man Charles James Fox, if I remember rightly. I went to his house one day with father and mother. And doesn't Lord Nelson's friend have a house at the other end?'
'It's all right, you can say Lady Hamilton's name out loud - father is very broad-minded,' Ramage said teasingly.
'Who are we going to see, then, Fox or the famous lady?'
'I don't know that 'we' are going to see anyone,' Ramage said. 'Apparently Lord Nelson has asked me to call on him. Told me, through father,' Ramage corrected himself.
'Then it's 'we',' Sarah said blithely. 'I've always wanted to meet His Lordship, and who can resist meeting the famous lady? I wonder if their child is with them, Horatia.'
'She is usually referred to as His lordship's god-daughter,' Ramage said stiffly.
Sarah waved a hand airly. 'Unless you're a servant, legitimacy only matters if you're inheriting property or a title. If Lady Hamilton inspires Nelson - and clearly she does - then hurrah for England if she has a dozen such children, particularly if it produces a dozen great victories. We need a few more at this moment!'
The earl sighed and was about to chide Sarah when she sat down on a sofa and wagged a finger at him. 'Before you start disapproving of Lady Hamilton (who after all is a widow now, although admittedly she wasn't when Horatia was born), let me tell you this. If Nicholas had been unhappily married when we first met, then you might have had a Nichola in your family, with people gossiping about 'the notorious Lady Sarah'!'
The earl sighed again, and then smiled. 'Yes, I believe you, and Nichola would have been just as welcome in the family,' he admitted, 'as 'the notorious Lady Sarah'.'
'That's easy enough to say now,' Sarah said reflectively, 'but supposing ...'
The earl looked at her squarely. 'You forget Gianna, my dear. Nicholas couldn't have married her because she is a Catholic - or, to be more exact, she wouldn't have married him because he is a Protestant, and anyway she could never return to rule Volterra with a Protestant husband. But believe me, the countess and I were quite prepared for an eventuality such as you mention!'
A startled Ramage blurted: 'Were you, father?'
'Of course! For the first two or three years, anyway; then we realized that your feelings for her were changing.'
'I should hope so,' Sarah said mildly, and then asked curiously: 'But you really were quite ready for a grandchild born the wrong side of the blanket?'
'Quite ready? Well, to be perfectly honest the countess was readier than I: Nicholas can do no wrong in her eyes. But had Gianna had such child, yes, I would have accepted it. We were very fond of her, you know. Are fond of her,' he corrected himself, and all of them thought of the young Marchesa di Volterra, the lively and lovely Gianna, whose fate was still a mystery: had she been assassinated by Napoleon's men, or imprisoned?
'Well, you've no grandchildren yet,' Ramage said hastily, 'and I must write a note to Lord Nelson. How long has he been back in London?'
'Only a few days. We were all very worried when he seemed to vanish.'
Ramage nodded. 'Yes, he took a risk making for the West Indies after leaving the Mediterranean, instead of coming north - but he was right! Villeneuve had fled across the Atlantic, not made for Brest or Coruña.'
The earl lit his pipe, and as soon as it was drawing satisfactorily, asked Ramage: 'Would you have risked it?'
'I might. After all, once he sailed through the Strait from the Mediterranean, Villeneuve could only go north, to join the Spanish in Cadiz or Coruña, or to Brest, where he'd risk being blockaded, or to the West Indies. What a prize Jamaica would have been, and all those convoys captured . . . Bonaparte would have kissed him on both cheeks!'
'Well, I was talking to Radnor in the House the other day, and his son is a midshipman in Nelson's flagship. That doesn't make the lad an authority on the chase across the Atlantic and back, but he knew Nelson's feelings on board the Victory and reported them to his father, the earl.'
'And so the Earl of Radnor approves?' Sarah asked.
'He does now, though he was pretty windy at the time. As we all were.'
'Nelson's young, outspoken, just a parson's son, and he wants Society to accept his mistress. The fact is none of you are comfortable with him; you don't really trust him,' Ramage commented bitterly. 'Had that old fool Hyde Parker been in command of that fleet, you'd have all said: 'Well, Hyde Parker knows what he is doing: he spent four years in Jamaica.' But all he learned in those four years was how to get rich from prize money: Copenhagen showed that a young man with an agile mind was needed for the fighting part.'
'You seem particularly vindictive towards the worthy Sir Hyde,' the earl protested.
'I should think so!' Ramage exclaimed. 'He started off badly at Copenhagen. Given command, he stays abed with his new young wife in Great Yarmouth instead of sailing at once for Denmark with the fleet. When he gets there, he hovers off Elsinore, giving the Danes all that time to prepare the defences of Copenhagen . . . how many hundreds of seamen's lives - British and Danish - did those two delays cost?'
'You favour young admirals with young mistresses, then,' the earl observed teasingly.
'Young admirals, yes. If such a man can only have the woman he loves by defying convention and making her his mistress, well and good. Then there's a hope that when it comes to fighting battles he'll defy convention and throw those dam' Fighting Instructions overboard. As Nelson did at the Nile! Parker would never have dared to do what Nelson did at Aboukir Bay. Nor would Parker dare do at Copenhagen what Nelson did, even though it was for all intents and purposes a repeat of Nelson's tactics at the Nile. So give me a man who defies convention when necessary: he's more likely to win the battle.'
'Do you defy convention?' the earl inquired mischievously and then almost immediately waved his pipe to dismiss the remark. 'No, that's unfair: no conventions so far have governed the sort of things you've done; you -' he grinned, '- favour the bizarre rather than the unconventional!'
'Which heading do I come under - bizarre or unconventional?' Sarah inquired sweetly.
'Oh, bizarre; definitely bizarre. After all, didn't Nicholas find you in mysterious circumstances off some island near Brazil?'
'At least my father-in-law is more unconventional than Nicholas's; I'm afraid my father is rectitude personified.'
'We need a stable marquis in the family,' the earl said, eyes twinkling. 'It adds respectability to what would otherwise be a rout.'
CHAPTER THREE
