Tide of War (4 page)

“She is twenty-three. Past the first flush of youth, I believe.”

“Well, yes, but …” Should he point out that his father was fifty-six: a good ten years older than the girl's father? Perhaps not. “But, is it fair to put her through such an ordeal?”

“As marriage to myself?” Sir Michael queried mildly.

“I was thinking more of the divorce from my mother.” Another objection occurred to him. “Is it permitted to marry again—if one has been divorced?”

His father sighed. “It is not impossible. There are precedents. Though it requires an Act of Parliament in each individual case.”

“You would put it to Parliament?”

“My lord Egremont has agreed to ease the way, as it were. He is not without influence in that realm.”

Indeed he must own at least half-a-dozen boroughs, if not more. But why would he wish to marry his daughter to a man ten years older than himself, even a man with three thousand acres of Sussex downland?

Egremont, Nathan recalled, had been something of a womaniser in his youth. Still was by some accounts. And he was still unmarried. Of course. Frances—and her two brothers—were illegitimate. Nathan would never have raised this as an objection to the marriage, but he
wondered if it had some bearing on his lordship's lack of opposition to the proposal.

“Egremont has offered a very generous settlement,” his father explained. “And I will not conceal from you that Windover is very much encumbered. Indeed, I fear that if matters continue much as they are now, I might have to sell up or at least increase the mortgage to a point where it would be very difficult to carry on.”

So there he had it. It was not just Fanny Wyndham's proportions he admired.

“Do not look so dismayed,” his father rebuked him gently. “The estate is entailed. Your inheritance is secure. Indeed, I trust it will come to you in a far healthier state than it is now.”

Nathan shook his head. “It is not that, Father,” he said. “It would never be that.”

Windover was his home but he had not consciously thought of it as his inheritance. He hoped his father had a long life before him. And given the dangers of Nathan's profession it could be a lot longer than his own.

“This will always be your home, you know that. And for Alex, too, as long as you wish it.”

Nathan nodded his appreciation; this was not his greatest concern. “Have you told my mother of your intention?”

“Not yet. I wished first to inform my son.”

Nathan acknowledged this courtesy though it was small consolation for what lay ahead. Divorce cases were always notorious. They were lewdly reported in the popular journals and the court transcripts were published in vellum-bound volumes for the edification of future generations. The marital exploits of the Spencers would doubtless entertain the reading public for centuries to come and somewhere in this very library there was an account of the divorce of Sir Charles Bunbury which Nathan had read as a prurient adolescent. He could still recall the outraged, apocalyptic wording of the charge, “That Lady Sarah Bunbury being of a loose and abandoned disposition, did carry on a lewd and adulterous conversation with …”
He had forgotten precisely who was named—there seemed to be a whole list of them—but he remembered that the servants had been called upon to give evidence against her.

“I suppose you know it will take years to contrive,” he pointed out.

“I am aware of that. But once the process is in train there is no reason why we should not live as if we were married already. Indeed we have spoken of it.”

Nathan stared at him in astonishment. My God, but he was a sly old fox. And as for Fanny Wyndham … He wondered how long it was before she moved in.

There was nothing more to be said.

Nathan walked out upon the terrace and collapsed into one of the cane-bottomed planters' chairs his father had brought back from the Caribbean after the American War. The sun was slipping behind the clouds over Firle Beacon: a magnificent sunset that he was scarcely in the mood to appreciate.

Fanny Wyndham. Barely twenty-three with her child-bearing years before her and his father still a vigorous fifty-six. The place would be swarming with children.

It was not the loss of his inheritance that concerned Nathan. He had been sincere in that. It was the loss of his home. Despite his father's assurance, once Fanny Wyndham moved in it would never be the same again.

He did not know if he could face her. He doubted that she wanted to face him.

He was being childish. Petulant. A dog in the manger. If his father wished to remarry that was entirely his affair.

But he wished it was not Fanny Wyndham.

He wished it did not involve a divorce.

He wished he was back at sea.

And of course that was the answer. He must remove himself from the situation. Pointless hanging about the place with a long face. He must go back to sea. Indeed, he had a duty to do so.

As if to emphasise the point, the dying sun rose from its bloodied
shroud to touch the lion and the unicorn with the semblance of the glaze they bore on the royal standard. Save that by some trick of the light or Nathan's imagining the unicorn's horn seemed to be tinged with red. Then it was gone and the beasts were plunged in shadow.

He would write to the Admiralty to remind them of his existence—and the First Lord of his promise. And if Chatham pretended it had never been made then he would seek a lesser command.

One way or another, he would go back to sea—and the war.

L
ONDON, THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR,
as if summer had been saving herself for the last. One final demonstration of her powers before moving on, her unruly subjects subdued, stifled, sullen: dogged pedestrians plodding through a haze of heat and dust, St. Paul's an orb of burning gold above the silvered Thames and the City silent, somnolent, the great men of wealth slumped regardless at their desks and the clerks bent over theirs like melting candles dripping grease.

Nathan came up by chaise from Sussex, starting fresh at dawn, parboiled by Croydon, and was set down at the Admiralty building in Whitehall as overdone as the lobster at the gate who rolled his poached eyes at Nathan's pass as if he cared not whether he were the Angel of Death or one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse come to put the country out of its misery.

“If you will follow me, sir,” the hall porter instructed him, “his lordship awaits you in the boardroom.”

His tone, though guarded, could not disguise a note of surprise, even outrage. Access to the boardroom was a privilege normally confined to the lords of the Admiralty and those worthies as enjoyed their complete confidence, the hallowed sanctuary where grand strategies were devised for the confusion of the King's enemies, or
such of his friends and relatives it was deemed advisable to confuse in these troubled times. It was not for the entertainment of mere commanders.

Up the stairs to the first floor and across the landing to a door of polished oak, the porter contriving to knock, open and step back in what was almost a single action, leaving Nathan bewildered in a sudden blaze of light.

“Commander Peake, my lord.”

“Ah, Peake, I trust I find you well?”

“And I you, my lord.” The tall windows, directly opposite, were only partly draped against the glare and Nathan saw the room through a haze of sunshine and a galaxy of dust. It was dominated by a long table covered in green leather where two gentlemen were engaged in the study of a chart.

“Come and join us,” said the First Lord of the Admiralty, as if Nathan had merely popped his head round the door on his way to lunch. “We were just looking at a map of the Caribbean.”

John Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was in his late thirties, tall and slender with the bearing of a soldier, which was what he was, or had been, before his younger brother, William, the King's chief minister, had plucked him from the obscurity of the 86th Foot, where he had achieved the rank of captain, and made him First Lord of the Admiralty and a member of the Privy Council. He had since added to these honours a full colonelcy in the 3rd Foot Guards, a promotion apparently deemed necessary by himself, or his brother, or both, to impress the half-dozen or so serving admirals who shared with him the onerous duties of commanding His Majesty's fleets in war and who might otherwise have doubted his abilities.

“I do not believe you have met Colonel Hollis.”

An elderly gentleman, in the uniform of a colonel of marines but with more the look of a scholar about him than the military man. He peered above his spectacles with an expression that reminded Nathan of his classics master at Charterhouse during his brief period there before he joined the Navy.

After making his bow Nathan glanced briefly around the room, which he knew only by repute. The wall directly opposite was filled with a number of rolled-up charts, rather like newspapers in a coffee house. Two bell ropes hung down from the ceiling, presumably to summon servants and rear-admirals and other such underlings as should be necessary to take one of them down and unroll it upon the table. And on the wall to his left was a curious device very like a clock with a powder blue face and a single hand linked, it was said, to a weathervane on the roof so that their lordships might at any time be informed as to the direction of the wind in case they wished to set sail and cruise down Whitehall to the amazement of the populace.

“Your letter was fortuitous,” Chatham assured him with a beam that failed to put Nathan entirely at his ease. “I am mindful that the last time we met we discussed the possibility of your advancement to the rank of post captain.”

Nathan would not have called it a discussion. If his memory served him right—and he had called it to mind on no more than several hundred occasions over the intervening period—the First Lord had said, “I suppose you must have your promotion,” whereupon Nathan had been moved to thank him and been informed that, “We can probably find one of the older frigates for you if someone dies.”

“Since when I have been considering how best to reward your considerable merits,” the First Lord continued, glancing towards the colonel. “The taking of the
Vestale
in the mouth of the Seine, your heroic conduct aboard the admiral's flagship on the Glorious First of June, your secret work in France, of which Colonel Hollis has been informed, all recommend you for a posting of some eminence. Which is not so easy to contrive as some of your colleagues appear to think, even in time of war.”

“You are too kind, my lord,” murmured Nathan, wondering a little at this unexpected eulogy. Perhaps it was designed to impress the First Lord's companion, whose look of doubt had not escaped Nathan's attention when he had first entered the room.

“However, your patience is to be rewarded,” Lord Chatham assured
him. “Fortune, or I should say,
fate
has conspired to create a suitable vacancy at last and enabled me to offer you the command of one of our latest frigates, the
Unicorn,
of 32 guns, currently stationed in the Havana.”

Nathan was stunned beyond the power of speech. So much so he almost missed the import of Chatham's last statement: “Or
was
when last we heard of her.”

Stumblingly, Nathan expressed his gratitude. He remembered the way the sun had struck the stone unicorn at Windover House only two evenings since when he had been sunk in the depths of despair. He had thought it was portentous of some additional calamity but far from it. He was to have the
Unicorn.
He had read about her in the
Gazette
when she was launched, devouring every vital statistic. One of a new class of heavy frigates. Twenty-six 18-pounder long guns, six 32-pounder carronades …

But what was it the First Lord had said about her present location? His eyes focused on the map. La Habana, Cuba, the great haven of the Caribbean where the Spanish treasure ships gathered from Panama and Veracruz before sailing across the Atlantic under the heaviest escort the wealth of Spain could contrive. What was the
Unicorn
doing in the Havana? Had she been captured? Must he first take her back from her captors, cut her out from under the guns of the Spanish?

But the news had addled his brains. In this war, possibly for the first time, Spain was Britain's ally.

“Well, I would send for a libation to celebrate your promotion,” beamed Chatham, “but in the circumstances I feel it would not be appropriate.”

Here then was the catch.

“But before we come to that—there is something else about which you should be informed. Shall we be seated, gentlemen?”

Ten elegant red-upholstered chairs were arranged around the table for the ease of their lordships while they plotted the discomfort of the enemy. Nathan sat in one. He did not feel any more relaxed.

“The
Unicorn
is a new ship, as I think I mentioned. Shortly after being commissioned she was despatched to the West Indies, to reinforce the squadron under Admiral Ford at Port Royal. The admiral, hearing reports of a French frigate in the region—the
Virginie,
of 44 guns—sent the
Unicorn
to track her down. Possibly she was the only ship he could spare. Or it may have appealed to his sense of humour.”

Nathan was confused.

“The name of the French frigate was the
Virginie,
” the First Lord emphasised. “So he sent a Unicorn in pursuit of a Virgin, d'you see?”

“Ah.” Nathan smiled dutifully. He was not such a pedant as to point out that the French for virgin was
la vierge
and that
Virginie
was a girl's name, possibly bestowed in honour of the former British colony of Virginia, now part of the United States. But he reflected that, whatever Ford's reasons for his decision, it was typical of the Navy that they should send a frigate of 32 guns to engage one of 44 with no expectation that there would be any result but a British victory.