Antonia Forest fans

It's about fifteen years, the gap, isn't it? I can see it, but not with Nicola straight out of school or anything. I envisage both of them knocking around the world for a while, and meeting again perhaps after Nicola gets her first sea command (having bumped the timeline along to allow her to become a full RN officer, which rather does for Robert's war service). It's very unclear whether he's still sailing out of St-Anne's after his father dies just because of the spy problem, and what he's likely to do next.