Tide of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    â€œThis 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?”
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œI suppose you know it will take years to contrive,” he pointed out.
    â€œI 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 bloodiedshroud 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.

CHAPTER 2
The Tide of 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,