Read Online Invasion by Julian Stockwin - Free Book Online

elements of polish such as an acquaintance with the classics, musical accomplishments and, remembering Cecilia’s exasperated comments, gentlemanly speech.
    Was that so hard? If he was to achieve a credible finish then, with his other advantages, he could pass for one of them. Of course, there was the difficulty of his origins, his family, but was this not the way the great families of the day must have started? Northern iron-masters, Liverpool shipping lords, rising merchants of the City of London were all now laying down estates and being honoured in a modern world that was making way for men who were reaching the heights by their own efforts.
    Damn it! He would be one of them and take his place among them by right. And if it took the hoisting in of a few ancient tomes and working on his conversation, so be it. He would meet his future squarely and seize any opportunity with both hands.
    Suddenly impatient, he began to walk back quickly, letting his thoughts race. Above all, he had the means to see it through: if he was right about his prospects, then the sooner he was equipping himself for his destiny the better. It was going to happen. There would be a new Thomas Kydd.
    Feeling surged. But did that mean he was turning his back on Guildford, the place of his birth, that until now he had called home? No. He would put this world gently but firmly to one side. It was just that it was no longer the centre of his universe.
    He hurried along the last few yards to the school-house gate, lightness of spirit urging him onward. “Good mornin’, Ma,” he said happily. “Y’ say Mrs. Bawkins is entertainin’ this afternoon?”
    Teazer was delayed in her refit. A humble brig-sloop had no claim to priority in a dockyard that was at full stretch keeping the vital blockading ships-of-the-line at sea and she was left for long periods in forlorn disarray, her crew in receiving hulks and her officers bored.
    Kydd lost no time in taking rooms ashore. Not for him the noisy intimacy of the Blue Posts at Portsmouth Point, he could now afford to stay where officers of rank were to be found, at the George in Penny Street. And there he began the process of refinement.
    It was vexing that Renzi was in London, out of reach for advice, but on the other hand this was Kydd’s own initiative and he would see it through. He went first to the largest bookshop; the assistant had been studiously blank-faced as he asked for suggestions as to what primers gentlemen found most answered in a classical education.
    He left with a clutch of books and hurried back. The Greek grammar was hopelessly obtuse and required him to learn by rote the squiggly characters of the alphabet before ever he could start. It could wait for later. The other looked more promising; an inter-linear copy of Caesar’s commentaries on the campaign in Gaul, the Latin on one line, English on another. At least it was about the manly pursuit of war, not the fantastical monsters and gods of antique Greece.
    â€œOmnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est . . .” Did he really have to get his head round all this? Or could he learn some of the more pithy sayings and casually drop them into the dinner-table conversation to the pleased surprise of all? That sounded much the better idea.
    In the matter of polite discourse there could be no hesitation. He would be damned as of the lower orders by his own words just as soon as he opened his mouth in company. Since the days of Cecilia’s patient efforts on his speech, he had slipped back into his comfortable old ways.
    No, this required an all-out effort—and he must apply himself to it this time. Resolved, he gave it careful thought. This was not to be learned casually with others or from books, he needed professional assistance. In the Portsmouth Commercial Directory he found what he was looking for.
    â€œMr. Augustus DeLisle?” he asked politely, at the door of a smart Portsea terrace