Breaking the Line by David Donachie

Scotsman’s manner to enthuse him.
    He would have been even angrier if he had been aware of Keith’s thoughts which were, ‘There you are, my laddie. For all your baubles and your dukedom, your self-importance and your Jacobin notions of how to handle a fleet, it is I who rule here.’
    What Keith said was, ‘My wife is with me aboard Queen Charlotte. She would be mortified if you failed to dine with us tonight.’

5
    Nelson returned to the news that Sir William Hamilton had been recalled, that a new ambassador had been appointed and was on his way by frigate from England. This despatch cast gloom over the shared villa, intensified by the February weather and the dour presence of Lord Keith and his equally staid wife.
    Sir William felt he had been swindled, never having asked to be retired. He had requested some leave, and failing that the Foreign Office could dispose of his post, but that was not the same thing at all. In his view it was a design to secure a plum post for Sir Arthur Paget, heir to the Earl of Uxbridge.
    ‘Yet the notion has its attractions, Nelson,’ said Sir William, when his friend had ceased commiserating. ‘It will be of some comfort to treat and deal with people who have only one face instead of several. I have to say these Neapolitans have worn me down with their manoeuvres.’
    ‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Emma, when she and Nelson were alone. ‘I have become accustomed to life here.’
    Home frightened Emma. It was no place of mists and mellow fruitfulness to her but a cold locale that spoke of standards more duplicitous than she had ever encountered in Naples or Palermo.
    Nelson had told her many times that one day he, too, would be recalled, indeed he had asked for that on several occasions when the burden of the tasks that faced him grew too wearisome. He was at the disposal of the Admiralty, and no commanding officer was left in place for ever. In London there would be any number of rear admirals pursuing his post and they could not all be denied indefinitely. But when he wondered aloud what was to become of them, Emma had made him concentrate on the delights of thepresent. And Nelson had not the heart to insist they discuss the matter since it made her so miserable. Now she talked of being in England just long enough for Sir William to see to his affairs, his Welsh estates, collect the money owed to him by the Government, sell his remaining virtu, before they could return.
    Sir William was no more insistent than Nelson that Emma look at the realities, but it would be impossible for his successor to feel secure if he was still in the Kingdom: Paget would see him as an alternative source of influence, and what he would make of Emma’s friendship with the Queen did not bear thinking about. He would also struggle, without Government support, to maintain the style in which they had lived. Certainly they would be comfortable, but to a woman who had become accustomed to grand living and to being at the centre of affairs, that might appear as a comedown.
    Maria Carolina refused to accept that her, ‘dear Sir William,’ should go home, and sent a messenger to London to request that he be reinstated. When Nelson sailed with Keith to look at the situation in Malta, matters were still at a stand.
     
    The two admirals arrived off Malta to be greeted by the intelligence that the garrison of Valetta, close to capitulation, could only hope for succour from a convoy of supply ships that had already left Toulon. The sole capital ship escorting it was Le Généraux, one of the two line-of-battle ships that had escaped from the Nile. Guillaume Tell was locked up in Valetta harbour, snug under the guns of Fort Ricasoli, but rotting at its moorings and a prime target for a cutting-out expedition to every captain who could see her.
    If there were two ships that Nelson longed to see with a British ensign above their colours, they were Guillaume Tell and Le Généraux, because they had fled Aboukir