The Victory Read Online Free PDF

shan't be left on the beach, never fear.'
    ‘ I don't know how any of them dares to point a finger,' she said indignantly. ‘As if they were above reproach! Why, I dare say if one enquired —'
    ‘ Precisely so — if one enquired. Their Lordships don't like officers to be involved in public scandals. That's where Nelson goes wrong — he and his Emma do make such a noise about their love! If they would but sin quietly, no-one at the Admiralty would care two straws. And you and I, until last year, were discreet enough. It's only since I came to live here that we have become the object of gossip.'
    ‘ They can't bear openness and honesty, that's what it is. Hypocrisy and show is all they care about.' She looked at him anxiously, her face a little pale. 'Perhaps you ought to have a place of your own again, like before, when you had rooms in Ebury Street. If you lived apart from me, perhaps the scandal would die down, and you would get your ship.'
    ‘ My love,' he said tenderly, 'you refine too much on it. We only became a scandal because the Season was so quiet. As soon as war is declared, everyone will have too much to talk about to be interested in us. I shall have my ship, don't worry. And ...' He hesitated.
    ‘Yes?’
    He lifted her hand to his lips again. ‘Only this — that since war must come, and I must go away from you, for God knows how long, I had rather be with you, properly with you, for every moment I can.' He smiled faintly. 'I must be the only red-blooded man in England at this moment who is actually glad Addington has kept the peace so long.’
    Lucy bit her lip, and understanding much of what she felt, he released her hand to consult his pocket-watch, and stood up with a lighter smile. ‘I had better let Docwra back in, or you won't be dressed in time for your visitors. Is this what you are to wear?' He touched a lilac-coloured muslin which was lying over the back of a chair. 'You'll look charmingly, as Always.’
    He bowed, and had his hand to the door knob when Lucy called him.
    ‘Weston!’
    He turned back enquiringly, and watched as she struggled to find words for what she felt too deeply for speech. 'I have been so happy this past year,' she said at last, awkwardly. 'Thank you for it.’
    He had no answer for her, could only bow again, and leave.

    *
    Captain Haworth was the first to lift the great knocker on the front door. He arrived with naval promptness exactly at noon, and, as a family connection, took the liberty of advising Hicks to save his legs. 'I can find my own way up. I know her lady ship is expecting me to call, because I told Captain Weston so this morning.’
    George Haworth had astonished the fashionable world ten years ago by marrying Lucy's older sister Mary, who had been famed as one of the three most beautiful women in England, and who had turned down so many offers for her hand, even from such eligible partis as the Earl of Tonbridge, that everyone had decided she meant to go a maiden to her grave. Why she should have accepted Haworth's offer, when he had neither fame, fortune, rank, nor even particularly distinguished looks, was something that no-one in the ton could determine.
    The fact of the matter, as Lucy could have told anyone who was interested, was that Mary fell in love with the obscure and shabby sea-captain the very instant she saw him, and had lived in blissful happiness with him until she died of childbed fever on board the Africa off the Egyptian coast five years ago. Lucy could perfectly well understand it. She liked George Haworth very well; he reminded her of her father.
    ‘ Congratulations, Captain, on your appointment,' she greeted him. 'You must be pleased it is the Africa. Do you know where you are bound?'
    ‘ I'm meant for the Channel Fleet,' Haworth said, 'but not for a few weeks yet. Africa's only just out of dry-dock. They'll be warping her up to Spithead tomorrow, and as soon as I join her I have to take her out for sea trials.'
    ‘ I told Lucy