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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 he 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