Nelson readjusted his eyeshade and the movement seemed to signal a change in the topic. "Well, I shall see you at the Royal Exchange tomorrow, when you receive your sword. As I told the Master of Lloyd's Coffee House last week, you ought to have had a dozen swords by now. Let's rejoin the ladies."

As the carriage clattered back along Clarges Street and then swung right into Piccadilly on its way to Palace Street, Sarah said: "I'm proud of you, darling. Lord Nelson thinks you are one of the best frigate captains in the Service, and Lady Hamilton says you are certainly the most handsome!"

Ramage grinned and took Sarah's hand. "That makes you the luckiest wife in London - or in Clarges Street, anyway! What did you think of His Lordship?"

"The biggest contradiction I've ever met!"

Ramage's forehead wrinkled. "How so?"

"Well, he has an irritating nasal voice, he's obsessed with his health, he's obsessed with Lady Hamilton and wants everyone to accept her, he's so confident of himself he seems a braggart, he has a quick tongue and isn't afraid to use it, he's physically insignificant . . ."

"Yet ..."

"Exactly, yet! He's also one of the most fascinating men I've ever met. He can't help his voice - and one forgets it because of what he has to say. Yes, he's obsessed with his health, but he's been wounded so many times, and losing his right arm and being almost blind in one eye must give him a sense of frustration - in a lesser man it could almost destroy him.

"Lady Hamilton? Well, she's obsessed with him too, but she's thoughtful, understanding, and I for one don't care that she was once Emma Hart, Sir William's nephew's mistress: I'd be pleased to have her among my friends, and clearly she is His Lordship's inspiration.

"He has enormous confidence in himself because he knows what he wants and how to do it - that makes him unique among our admirals at the moment. Your father is about the only other one I can think of. Look what a mess Howe made at the Glorious First of June, and that indecisive fool Mann, and as for Lord St Vincent at his (I mean yours and Lord Nelson's) battle . . .

"What else was there? Oh, yes - the quick tongue. That must upset a lot of the slow-witted and tongue-tied admirals, but I've noticed one thing: a quick tongue usually goes with a quick wit, and a quick wit with a quick brain. Which means that for once we've got the right man commanding the fleet which may have to fight the Combined Fleets of France and Spain. Just think, it might have been St Vincent, or Lord Howe, or - it terrifies me to think of it."

"You must be one of the few wives who could sit with the full Board of Admiralty and make them sit up and listen!"

"Lady Hamilton says more or less the same thing as me."

"Yes, but she says it out of a blind faith in Lord Nelson," Ramage said. "You at least have worked it all out for yourself."

"The devil take logic," Sarah said unexpectedly, "at a time like this, when Bonaparte - his fleet, anyway - could defeat this country in an afternoon, I trust to what I feel in my heart. The Board of Admiralty would laugh at that, and with their crystal-clear logic they almost invariably pick the wrong man. Sir Hyde Parker for command at Copenhagen, for example."

Ramage leaned over and kissed her. "I agree with every word. Anyway, St Vincent, not the Board, chose Parker. And remember, I'm not a member of the Board!"

"You will be one day, so remember what I've just said."

The sword from the Lloyd's Patriotic Fund, presented to him on its behalf by Sir Josiah Hobart, the Lord Mayor (hot and perspiring in his splendid but heavy robes of office), was a superb example of the sword cutler's art. Back in Palace Street after the presentation, when his father and Sarah examined it with him, they were amused to find that it was made by Mr Prater, of Charing Cross, who always made their swords.

"The first sword I ever bought you - your midshipman's dirk, rather," the earl said, "cost twenty-five guineas, and the first real sword forty guineas. Soon after that I stopped buying you new swords because you made a habit of losing them on the decks of French ships!"

"Yes, so now I use an ordinary cutlass if we have to board," Ramage said. "But I must admit my present dress sword looks shabby; the brasswork on the scabbard corrodes. This will look smarter when I call on admirals - you can't beat gold fittings!"

Sarah lifted the heavy curved blade, decorated in blue and gold, holding the white ivory grip and gilt hilt. "What is this?" she asked, pointing out the stub sticking out at right-angles opposite the knuckle-guard.

"That's called the guillon. You can see it's designed as a Roman fasces."

"And this?" she indicated the hilt running upwards from the guillon.

"That's the backpiece. It represents the skin and head of a lion, as you can see."

"And this?"

"The knuckle-guard - stops the other fellow's sword sliding down the blade and lopping off your hand. It's shaped like Hercules' club, with a snake twisted round it."

She gave the sword back to Ramage. "It's magnificent," she commented and then sighed. "You know, I sat through that enormous dinner and was polite to Lord Barham on one side and Lord St Vincent on the other, but I still don't really know what Lloyd's Patriotic Fund is or who Lloyd's are. Neither the past nor the present First Lord seemed to know much about them, either."

"Well, I do know," the earl said, "so I'll tell you. In James II's time a worthy fellow called Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house in Lombard Street, and there men of business connected with ships and the sea tended to congregate. They met in Lloyd's place to gossip and exchange information. Edward Lloyd always knew which ships had arrived, which ships were for sale, and so on. And if you own a ship or propose shipping a cargo somewhere, you need insurance, so it wasn't long before shipowners, shippers and insurance brokers were congregating there, arranging voyages.

"The original Edward Lloyd died but the coffee house remained the centre for shipping folk, and of course one of the most important things they wanted - whether they were owners, shippers or underwriters - was news: news of whether their ships and cargoes had arrived safely in the West Indies, sailed from Gravesend, or been wrecked off Dungeness. A shipowner was also interested in how much a rival sold a ship for, while shippers needed to know the latest price for carrying a hundred tons of molasses from Jamaica or a hundred pipes of port from the Peninsula. And the underwriters, of course, were involved in providing insurance cover for all of it.

"So in 1743 the coffee house started publishing a newspaper - little more than a broadsheet, really - which it called Lloyd's List, giving just the sort of news its customers wanted. Eventually - bearing in mind the need to guard against shipping fraud and the necessity of accurate news - a committee was formed to run the place, and a few years later the whole thing moved to the Royal Exchange, where it still is. The Committee chose the subscribers (whom it now called 'members', for reasons best known to itself) and when the war started it began cooperating with the Admiralty and shipowners in arranging convoys, and that sort of thing.

"When a ship's captain misbehaves in a convoy -" the earl looked at his son and smiled, "- not an unknown occurrence, as you know, my dear Sarah, the Board complains to the Committee of Lloyd's who, in theory, chide the owner of the ship, who disciplines his captain. The Board suspects, though, that the Committee tears up the letters."

"Swords," Sarah reminded him. "Who pays for the swords?"

"Ah yes. A couple of years ago Lloyd's set up a Patriotic Fund intended to help the Navy's wounded and reward the brave. It was an immediate success, I remember: the East India Company and the Bank of England each gave £5,000, while the City of London came up with £2,500. Several of the theatres gave gala performances, with the night's takings going to the Fund."