Unconquered (2 page)

The American nodded. “I am off to Prussia and then St. Petersburg in a few days. Neither Frederick Wilhelm nor Tzar Alexander is an enthusiastic ally of Napoleon’s. I will see if my message of possible Anglo-American cooperation can undermine those alliances further. You have to admire the Corsican though. He’s whipped all of Europe into almost one piece.”

“Yes, an arrow aimed at England’s heart,” replied Lord Palmerston with savage hatred in his voice. “If he overcomes us, Yankee, he’ll quickly be across the seas and after you.”

Jared Dunham laughed, but the sound was more harsh than mirthful. “I am more well-aware than you, sir, that Napoleon sold us his Louisiana territories because he very much needed the gold America paid him in order to pay his troops. He could also not afford to garrison such a vast area peopled mostly with English-speaking Americans, and wild red Indians. Even the French-speaking Creoles of New Orleans are more American than French. They are, after all, the relatives of the
Ancient Regime
wiped out by the revolution that helped to bring Napoleon to power. I know that if the emperor thought he could have both American gold and American territory he would take them. He cannot though, and he would do well to remember the outcome of America’s war with England.”

“Damn me, if you’re not direct and to the point, sir!”

“A distinctly American trait, m’lord.”

“By God, Yankee, I like you!” replied Lord Palmerston. “I suspect we will do quite well together. You have already done quite well for a colonial,” he chuckled, leaning forward and refilling his guest’s glass from the decanter at his elbow. “I must congratulate you on your election to White’s. It is quite a first for
them. Not only an American, but one who earns his own keep! I am surprised the walls didn’t come crashing down.”

“Yes,” Jared smiled now. He liked Lord Palmerston’s sense of humor. “I understand that I am one of the very few Americans ever admitted to that sacred grove.”

Palmerston laughed. “True, Yankee, but you realize, of course, that a true gentleman’s riches are supposed to just be there. No matter that too many of our
gentlemen
are badly debt-ridden, and quite to let in the pockets, they remain nonetheless unsullied by work. You must have powerful friends, Yankee.”

“If I am now a member of White’s it is because you wanted it so, m’lord, so let us not fence with one another, and my name is Jared, not ‘Yankee.’ ”

“And I am Henry, Jared. If our mission is to succeed you must associate with the right people here in London. It would be odd indeed if we were seen together without some obvious, harmless connection. Your cousin, Sir Richard of Dunham Hall, was a good starting point, and then there is your eventual inheritance from the current lord of Wyndsong Manor.”

“And, of course,” remarked Jared wryly, “my very full purse.”

“Noted reverently by the mamas of every fledging making her debut this season,” chuckled Lord Palmerston.

“Good God, no! I am afraid I shall be a great disappointment to the mamas, Henry. I enjoy the bachelor life too much to settle down yet. A skillful divertissement, yes, but a wife? No, thank you!”

“I understand your cousin, Lord Thomas, is lately arrived from America with his wife and two daughters. Have you called on them yet? I hear one of his girls is pure perfection, and already settling the gentlemen of the ton to poetry.”

“I only know Thomas Dunham,” replied Jared. “I have never even been to Wyndsong Manor Island, nor have I met his family. I believe he has twin daughters, but I know nothing of them, and I have no time right now for giggling debutantes.” He drained his glass, and abruptly changed the subject. “I’m after timbermasts in the Baltic. I assume England can use some.”

“Lord yes! Napoleon may be superior to us on the land right now, but England still controls the seas. Unfortunately the only decent timbermasts in quantity come from the Baltic area.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Henry.”

“Will you be back in England afterwards?”

“No. I’ll go directly home from Russia. You see I am expected to be a visible patriot also, and so as soon as I get home I must take my Baltimore clipper out on patrol. I remove impressed American seamen from English ships.”

“Do you indeed?” drawled Lord Palmerston.

“I do,” and Jared Dunham laughed. “Sometimes I wonder if the whole world has not gone mad, Henry. Here I am working as an undercover agent for my government in cooperation with your government, and then upon finishing my mission here in Europe I shall hurry home to do battle with the British navy. You don’t think that slightly mad?”

Henry Temple was forced to join his American guest in genuine laughter. “You certainly have a more unique viewpoint than I do, Jared. It is all madness, but that is due to Napoleon, and his insatiable desire to be emperor of the world. Once we have destroyed him all will be well again between us. You wait and see, my Yankee friend. Wait and see!”

The two men soon took leave of one another. Lord Palmerston slipped first from the private room in White’s Club where they had been meeting, and Jared Dunham departed minutes later.

As he rode in his carriage, Jared felt along the velvet seat for the flat jeweler’s case he had tossed inside earlier that evening. It contained a diamond bracelet of the first quality, his going-away present to Gillian. He knew she would be disappointed, for she was expecting a great deal more than a bracelet. She was expecting something he could not give her.

Gillian expected a declaration of his intentions once she was widowed, an event that seemed imminent, but he had no intention of marrying—at least not yet and certainly not Gillian. Gillian Abbott had slept with half the fashionable and unfashionable bucks in London, and she assumed he didn’t know it. He would enjoy her favors this one last time, proffer his gift, and bid her farewell, explaining that he must return to America. The diamond bracelet should soothe her. He had no illusions about why Gillian Abbott wanted to marry him. Jared Dunham was a wealthy man.

He might never have been, had it not been for the foresight of his maternal grandmother. Sarah Lightbody loved all her grandchildren,
but realized objectively that only one of them, Jared, had the need for her wealth.

Her daughter Elizabeth had three children, and although she loved them equally, her stern husband, John Dunham—a pious hypocrite if Sarah Lightbody had ever seen one—was always singling out his younger son, Jared, for abuse.

At first Sarah Lightbody had not understood the reasons for her son-in-law’s behavior. It bordered on the cruel. Jared was a handsome boy. Indeed, he and Jonathan, his elder brother, were identical in looks. Jared was well mannered, and highly intelligent, yet if the two boys were caught misbehaving it was always Jared who was blamed and beaten, Jonathan let off with a warning. Jared was criticized for the very things Jonathan was praised for. And then one day, Sarah Lightbody suddenly realized the reason. There could be only one Dunham heir, and John thought that if he could break Jared’s spirit he would protect Jonathan’s inheritance and position. Then, when Jonathan took over the Dunham shipyards, he would have an obedient and underpaid clerk in Jared.

Fortunately, the brothers’ ambitions were not similar. Jonathan had the Dunhams’ love of shipbuilding, and was a skillful, inventive ship designer. Jared, however, was a merchant-adventurer like his Lightbody relations. He found that making money was the supreme game. He enjoyed pitting his wily mind against odds and winning. His instincts were excellent and he never seemed to lose.

Because Sarah Lightbody’s home and heart were always available to Jared, she was the one to whom he turned. The one who was always honored with his confidences and his dreams. In his youth he had never complained of his father’s unfair treatment, bearing all stoically, even when his grandmother was tempted to take a poker to her coldhearted son-in-law’s head. Sarah had never understood her daughter’s love for the man.

When Sarah Lightbody was close to death she made a will. Then she called Jared to her side, and told him what she had done. He had been astounded, then grateful, and had made no foolish protestations. She could see his subtle mind already working on his inheritance.

“Invest and reinvest, as I’ve taught you,” she said to him.
“Keep an ace or two up your sleeve, boy, and remember to always have a rainy-day fund.”

He nodded. “I’ll never leave myself short, Gram. You know, of course, that
he’ll
try and get his hands on your money. I’m not yet twenty-one.”

“You will be in a few months, boy, and until then your uncle and my lawyers will help you keep him at bay. Hold your ground, Jared. He’ll cry disaster, but I know for a fact that the Dunham shipyards have never been in better shape. Don’t let him fool you. My fortune is meant to free you from him.”

“He wants me to marry Chastity Brewster,” said Jared.

“She’s not right for you, boy! You’ll need a creature of fire to hold your interest. Tell me, what do you want to do right now?”

“Travel. Study. I want to go to Europe. I want to see what they want in the way of American goods, and what they have to offer us in return. I want to learn something about the Far East. I think there’s a helluva trade to be had from China, and you can bet that the English will be there first if there is.”

“Aye,” the old woman said, her eyes misting with dreams there was no time to fulfill. “There’s a great age coming for this country, and damnation! I wish I were going to be here for it!”

She had died peacefully in her sleep several weeks later, and when the news of his inheritance was made known, Jared’s father tried to claim the fortune for his shipyards.

“You’re underage,” he said coldly, ignoring the fact that his son’s coming of age was but a few weeks away. “Therefore it is up to me to administer your money. What could you possibly know of investment? You would squander it.”

“And just how do you plan to administer my money?” demanded Jared just as coldly.

Jonathan stood back, seeing the clash coming.

“I don’t have to answer the questions of a stripling,” was John Dunham’s icy reply.

“Not one penny, Father,” pronounced his son. “I will not give you so much as a pennypiece for your yards. It’s mine,
all
mine. Besides, you don’t need it.”

“You are a Dunham!” thundered John. “The shipyards are our life!”

“
Not mine!
My ambitions lie elsewhere, and thanks to Grandmother
Lightbody’s generosity I can now be my own man—free of your damned shipyards, and free of you! Touch one cent of my inheritance and I’ll burn your shipyards down around your ears!”

“And I’ll help him,” Jonathan spoke up, astonishing his father.

John Dunham’s face puffed up like a blowfish, and he grew beet-red.

“We don’t need Jared’s money, Father,” said Jonathan, soothing the older man. “Look at it from my point of view. If you invest his money in the family business then we are beholden to him, and I do not want that. You have my baby son, John, after me, as heir. Let Jared go his own way.”

Jared won, and immediately following his twenty-first birthday, he sailed for Europe.

He stayed several years, first studying at Cambridge, and then getting polish in London. He was never idle. He made discreet investments, reaped his profits, and then reinvested. He had an uncanny knack, and his London friends nicknamed him the Golden Yankee. It was a sport among the bon ton to try and find out where Jared Dunham was placing his next investment so they might place their money where he did. He traveled in the best circles, and though pursued at every turn, enjoyed his freedom and remained single. He bought himself an elegant townhouse on a small, fashionable square near Greene Park which was furnished in excellent taste and staffed with a core of well-trained servants. For the next several years Jared Dunham then traveled back and forth between America and England, despite the problems between the two countries, and France. When he was not in residence in London the house was managed by his very competent secretary, Roger Bramwell, a former American naval officer.

Jared’s first return to Plymouth, Massachusetts, found the peoples of New England in an uproar over the Louisiana Purchase. Though a Federalist like his father and brother, Jared Dunham didn’t believe as they did that expansion west would subordinate New England’s commercial interests to the agricultural South. Rather he saw a greater market for his goods. What bothered the politicians and bankers, he believed, was the definite possibility of losing their political superiority and clout; and this was, of course, a serious consideration.

The peoples of the East were different from their southern and western counterparts. The owner of a vast plantation scarcely held the same views or had the same interests as a Massachusetts merchant prince; but then
his
views were also quite different from those of a fur trapping mountain man. Jared saw no serious conflict, although other Federalists did.

In Europe war had again broken out. England constantly agitated in St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin against the French emperor, trying to persuade Tzar Alexander, Emperor Francis, and King Frederick Wilhelm to join in a common alliance against Bonaparte.

None of these leaders would listen, hoping perhaps that if they remained neutral, the French would not deign to notice them, and go away. Besides, the French army seemed unbeatable although Britain still dominated the seas, a fact that rankled Bonaparte. Still, mid-Europe was controlled mostly from the land and not the seas, so the English were of little help.

When England successfully withstood the combined French and Spanish navies at the Battle of Trafalgar, Napoleon next resorted to an economic war against his greatest enemy. From Berlin he issued a decree ordering the seizure of all British goods in his and his allies’ territory and forbidding English ships entry from his and all allied ports. Napoleon believed that France could produce all the goods previously supplied by England; and the continent’s supplies of non-European articles would be delivered by neutral nations, primarily the United States.