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still fighting the San Nicolás, but the issue had been largely decided.”
    “I see,” Jervis said. “So I am to understand that you assumed command long after the battle had commenced and shortly before it concluded.”
    Charles swallowed hard and said, “Yes, sir.”
    “The Argonaut was dismasted, with no wheel, and generally sinking when you came onto the quarterdeck. Is that true?”
    “Very nearly,” Charles said. “We still had our mizzen—at least for a few moments.”
    “Yes,” Jervis showed a small smile. “The San Josef ’s appearance must have come as rather a nasty shock. My question is, why didn’t you strike?”
    “It hadn’t occurred to me, sir,” Charles answered slowly. “I’m not saying that I’m some kind of hero who would go down with his ship against overwhelming odds. I mean that I hardly had enough time to consider it. Besides, after the mizzenmast fell I had no flag to strike and nowhere to strike it from. If the San Josef had fired a second broadside into us, I might have found something, though.”
    Jervis nodded slowly. “That’s the correct answer. I’ll have no officers thoughtlessly throwing their crews’ lives away for some foolish gesture.” Charles didn’t think he was expected to reply to this, so he said nothing.
    Jervis sat silently for a moment, absently fingering a paper on the desk in front of him. Finally he glanced down at it, then looked up at Charles. The steady, unblinking gaze made Charles want to squirm, but he held himself rigid.
    “What are you, an American subject, doing in the King’s Navy?” Jervis asked unexpectedly.
    “I’m not an American,” Charles answered quickly. “I am English. My family lives in Cheshire.”
    “It says here,” Jervis held up the page and Charles could see it was a leaf from the Argonaut ’s muster book, “that you were born in Philadelphia.”
    “Yes, sir. That’s true; I was born in the colonies. My father had a tea-importing business there. But I was born before the rebellion. After the troubles began, when I was about five, he moved us back to the family estate in Cheshire. I’ve lived most of my life there, sir, when not at sea, that is.”
    “I see,” Jervis answered, his expression softening. “That’s entirely different. A loyal Tory family. We can have no Jonathans, cousins or otherwise, as officers in the king’s service. A dastardly ungrateful lot, those Americans.”
    Charles sat uneasily, knowing that he had left his admiral less than fully informed. It was true that his father left Pennsylvania for Cheshire with his American-born wife and their children after the beginning of the Revolution. But not because he was a true-blue Englishman; in fact, he had been actively sympathetic to the rebel cause, as was his wife. He had left only because his own father had written asking him to, owing to the unexpected death of the eldest brother in a riding accident. Charles’s father, the second son, was needed to manage and eventually inherit the Edgemont family estate.
    “Both Nelson and Collingwood,” Jervis continued, “have put it to me in the strongest terms that I raise you in rank to commander because of their misperceptions of your role in the battle.”
    “Yes, sir, I know,” Charles said, coming quickly back to the present. “Both of them visited the Argonaut. I tried to tell them I’d done nothing exceptional, but they insisted.” His heart sank. He knew full well that a number of lieutenants would be promoted to commander or even captain following the Battle of St. Vincent. There were promotions after every successful fleet action. Now it appeared he had talked himself out of his.
    “Quite,” Jervis said drily. “Lieutenant Edgemont, I am going to promote you to commander, provisionally of course. The Admiralty will have to confirm it, but they can hardly refuse.”
    Charles sat stock-still. “Thank you sir, I—”
    “Don’t thank me, son,” Jervis cut him off. “I’m doing