Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War

by Allan Mallinson

  Vaneeta. Theirs had been an unusually long association for Bengal, and one that had brought him far fuller satisfaction than such unions were contracted to bring. Vaneeta had been so much more than his ‘sleeping-dictionary’, for she had possessed intelligence as well as beauty, and considerable grace, so that she was by no means out of water in the company of the other officers, as indeed befitted the high caste of her mother’s line. If only Calcutta were what it had been thirty years before, the place of Warren Hastings and the easy familiarity between the races, he would have been able to consort with her openly instead of having to set her up in some hole-in-the-wall haveli and visit her like . . .

  But Vaneeta was now his past, as India with all its other delights – and dangers – was. He had rarely felt so low as when they had parted, she sobbing so much that he thought she would faint, or worse. But he had left her a rich woman by the country’s standards, making over his jagirs in Chintal to her. And he had had Emma Lucie promise to keep watch on her for as long as she was able, and to take whatever measures were necessary, in his name, should there be the slightest sign of indigency.

  ‘Matthew?’

  Lady Katherine’s insistence, and her hand on his, recalled him to the present.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kat, I was—’

  ‘Some miles away.’

  He smiled. ‘Many miles away. But I’m here now. Forgive my inattention.’

  ‘Well, you said you had need of my support. I imagine that your thoughts were so engaged.’

  How easy it was to let her form his excuse for him. Absolute integrity demanded that he correct her; but time was running on. ‘Kat, I have to get myself appointed to something – something active. I can’t stay indefinitely at Hounslow.’

  It was not what she wanted to hear, though it was half expected. Her hand was still on his, affectionate, supportive. She squeezed as she spoke. ‘Why do you not simply purchase your promotion, and be content with the increase in responsibility? I’m loath to see you go away so soon after returning.’

  He put his hand on hers by return. ‘Kat, it’s not as easy as that. There are no vacancies in the regiment, and I couldn’t bear to buy in elsewhere.’

  ‘And what does your colonel say? He’s a good man by your accounts. Can he not arrange things for you?’

  He smiled as he squeezed her hand. ‘He is a good man, but so are there many, and he has no influence. In any case, he is selling out.’

  Kat started slightly. ‘Then why should you not be the lieutenant-colonel? You are a major.’

  Hervey smiled again. ‘Ten years ago it might have been possible, but the rules are enforced so much the stricter now. My brevet carries no seniority against any with a regimental majority. Besides which, I could never afford the price. Fifteen thousand is what they’re saying.’

  Kat was silent for the moment, as if taken aback by the amount. She squeezed his hand firmly. ‘I may lend you it,’ she said, decidedly.

  Hervey was overcome by several emotions at one and the same time. First was an astonished gratitude for such reckless generosity, then an equal sense of being touched that it was bestowed on him, then an excitement at the prospect of advancement, and finally dismay as the actuarial implications began to dawn. He lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘Kat, that is so wonderfully kind. But it is out of the question. It just could not stand.’

  Kat looked disappointed, but was not inclined to question him. Instead she clasped her free hand to his arm and pulled herself closer. ‘The offer will remain, Matthew. But whatever else you want me to do you had better say. What is it that can actively engage you to advantage, and which I might have some part in effecting?’

  Hervey leaned back so that his head rested on the padded seat, almost touching hers. ‘There’s something bound to happen in Greece – the duke’s mission to St Petersburg, and talk of secret treaties. I believe we shall be in some sort of alliance with the tsar against the sultan before very long, perhaps with the French too, and there will be opportunity for distinction in such an adventure.’

  Kat sat forward and looked straight at him. ‘There will be opportunity for oblivion indeed! What can possess you to think in such terms after the tribulations and dangers you have known these past two years?’

  Hervey returned her look, half bemused. ‘Kat, I am a soldier; fighting is my business – my livelihood, no less.’

  ‘Hah! What irony there is in those words, Matthew.’

  He squeezed her hand.

  ‘So you wish me to speak with the duke?’

  It was precisely what he wanted, yet it seemed so indecent a proposition . . .

  ‘Come, Matthew. There is no cause for coyness.’ Kat shook his arm as if to revive a sleepy child. ‘The duke takes evident satisfaction in pleasing me with little things. I cannot suppose that in his lofty scheme of affairs the favouring of an officer is so very great a thing.’

  ‘No,’ said Hervey, swallowing hard. That it should come to this – the charms of a married woman, the flattery of an older man for the benefit of a younger one: how recondite a system it was. He would not be defeated by it though. He had disregarded it for many a year, and what had that profited him? No, he would master the game. But it would be to worthy ends. He wanted rank not for its own sake but because with rank he could accomplish what he knew was right. That was what placed him apart from General Slade, and Lord Towcester (still the old wound ached), and knaves of their like; and for that matter old fools such as Sir Peregrine, who by their indolence and complacency were often as not the cause of brave men’s deaths as much as any witless but courageous officer.

  ‘He is a little out of sorts, though, the duke; not quite as susceptible to entreaties as he may once have been.’

  There was a degree of mystery, no doubt deliberate, in Kat’s remark.

  ‘And why should that be?’ asked Hervey, happy to be intrigued.

  ‘Harriette Wilson.’

  ‘Harriette Wilson? How—’ He had heard that the memoirs of (how to describe Harriette Wilson?) this most beguiling courtesan were making many a man run scared; but hardly the duke? Anyway, had he not told the blackmailing publisher to do his worst and go to hell? ‘What does she say of him?’

  Kat took a little volume from the door pocket.

  Hervey frowned, but sportively. ‘Don’t tell me you are reading her tittle-tattle.’

  ‘I am. And I am spellbound of it too. You would not believe what she writes.’ Kat began leafing through it until finding her mark. ‘Hear what she says—’

  ‘Kat, it would be insupportable! We are about to dine with him!’

  ‘Just so, Matthew, and it is as well to know what the duke must know we all know.’

  Hervey shook his head in mild despair.

  Kat began to read:

  It was in summer, one sultry evening, that the duke ordered his coachman to set him down at the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly, whence he sallied forth, on foot, to No. 2 or 3, in Berkeley Street, and rapt hastily at the door, which was immediately opened by the tawdry, well-rouged housekeeper of Mrs Porter, who, with a significant nod of recognition, led him into her mistress’s boudoir, and then hurried away, simpering, to acquaint the good Mrs Porter with the arrival of one of her oldest customers.

  The carriage jolted twice as the nearside wheels caught a pothole, making the light inside flicker and Kat lose her place.

  ‘I have it again now: “Mrs Porter, on entering her boudoir, bowed low; but she had bowed lower still to His Grace, who had paid but shabbily for the last bonne fortune she had contrived to procure him.” ’

  ‘Kat, I really—’

  ‘ “Is it not charming weather?” said Mrs Porter, by way of managing business with something like decency. “There is a beautiful girl just come out,” said His Grace, without answering her question; “a very fine creature; they call her Harriette, and—” ’

  ‘Kat, enough! Let us imagine the memoirs are full of it, and be done.’

  Kat closed th
e book, and smiled. ‘Indeed they are. So you may see that, for all the duke’s bold words to his blackmailer-publisher, he has some cause for discretion at the present.’

  They arrived at Apsley House at five minutes past nine. The lateness of the dinner hour did not suit the duke, who preferred to dine modestly between seven and eight, and to retire by eleven. However, in these uncertain times, while parliament stood prorogued, it was Lord Liverpool’s practice to hold meetings of his cabinet in the early evening.

  ‘You will find the house little changed,’ said Kat as they pulled up at the porticoed entrance to the yard. ‘Although the duke has noble plans for it.’

  ‘I am glad of it,’ said Hervey, pushing the box spurs back into his patent boots in readiness to alight. ‘I thought its appearance too mean when first I saw it.’ He had no pretensions in this, neither did it flow from hero-worship; the face of the Duke of Wellington’s townhouse was to him a measure of the nation’s very esteem to the army as a whole.

  ‘You will find the duke altered in appearance, though,’ added Kat, as Hervey stepped down from the chariot and held out a hand to her. ‘Quite fat and fresh he is since his sojourn in St Petersburg.’

  Hervey took her words to be exaggeration.

  There was no band playing in the yard this evening, unlike that first occasion, but as before there were non-commissioned officers of the Grenadier Guards augmenting the footmen, and aides-decamp in attendance, although the scale of affairs seemed much reduced from before, and there were not nearly so many carriages.

  ‘We shall be about twenty, the duke said. A good number; we shall all be able to hear him.’ There was no hint of irony in Kat’s voice.

  And Hervey was pleased at the prospect of hearing him, for besides the pleasant courtesy of escorting Kat, his especial interest in accepting her invitation was not merely to show himself but to learn whatever intelligence there was that might assist his design for advancement.

  They made their way into the entrance hall, as drably painted as before, he noted, though lit as brilliantly, then handed their cloaks to a footman, and Hervey his card, and made their way to the spiral staircase which would take them to the principal floor. At its foot they paused to cast an eye over the towering statue of the nude Bonaparte which had been their first occasion for words that evening seven years ago.

  ‘It is strange to think of him in his grave, is it not?’ said Kat, tapping one of the emperor’s knees with her fan. ‘He had not so very many years over the duke, I believe.’

  ‘They were born in the same year.’

  ‘Indeed? And yet I could not imagine the duke portrayed thus. So athletic a form,’ she said, with a mischievous grin, which for an instant made her face the schoolgirl’s.

  ‘I think he could stand comparison,’ replied Hervey loyally, but taking up Kat’s little game. ‘I imagine that Harriette Wilson is complimentary in that respect?’

  Kat raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly, as if weighing the proposition seriously. ‘I believe that is so. But not as much as was Lady Hester Stanhope of Sir John Moore. If she is to be believed he—’

  ‘I think we should go up,’ insisted Hervey.

  ‘Very well,’ said Kat, tapping his arm with her fan and smiling as if pleased with herself. ‘But Sir John Moore was the duke’s rival, was he not?’

  They began to ascend the spiral.

  ‘Only in matters of command, I believe,’ said Hervey, concentrating on keeping his spurs apart; ascending a staircase such as this was almost as perilous as coming down.

  ‘Sir John was a very fine figure of a man by all accounts though. Did you ever meet him, Matthew?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What manner, exactly?’

  ‘I was at Corunna when he died.’

  ‘Indeed? You were with Moore at Corunna? You have never told me that!’

  ‘I was a mint-new cornet.’

  Kat seemed to be calculating. ‘How old were you? A baby!’

  Hervey smiled. They had reached the top of the stairs, and he gave Kat’s invitation card to a footman. ‘Brevet-Major Hervey,’ he added.

  ‘Well?’ she insisted, shaking his arm playfully.

  ‘Seventeen.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Rising eighteen.’

  ‘I am a-tremble at the thought. You shall tell me all about it, and soon!’

  ‘Lady Katherine Greville and Brevet-Major Hervey,’ announced the master of ceremonies.

  The duke, undoubtedly fuller-faced, and wearing plain clothes this evening instead of, as last time, the levee dress of the Royal Horse Guards of which he was colonel, smiled broadly. He bowed and took Kat’s hand to kiss it. And then, to her escort, he returned the brisk military bow and held out his hand. ‘I am very glad to see you again, Hervey. I have only lately read the Bhurtpore despatches. Smart work. Smart work indeed.’

  Smart work – the exact same words the duke had used after the little affair at Toulouse, when first Hervey had been presented to him. But that was all of twelve years ago. The duke’s hair had whitened rather since, and his own was perhaps not so full about the temples as then. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied, his voice lowered, though not as much as once it would have been.

  There were no other guests waiting to be announced, so the duke had more inclination than usual to make conversation. ‘And what do you do now?’

  ‘I am with my regiment at Hounslow, sir.’

  ‘And that pleases you?’

  ‘With my regiment, yes of course, sir. At Hounslow, no.’

  Kat saw something of an opening, albeit small. ‘I dare say you will order the regiment to duty somewhere erelong, though, Duke?’ she tried, mindful of her escort’s thoughts.

  ‘It is not for me to give such orders, Lady Katherine.’ The duke smiled indulgently. ‘And I cannot think that the Duke of York would have occasion to either. A little retrenchment is what we have need of most at present. Except, perhaps, to preserve the peace at home.’

  The opinion surprised Hervey, though it did not disappoint Kat.

  ‘Sir Fulke and Lady West.’

  The announcement gave Kat the opportunity to take her escort by the arm, curtsy to her host and walk on to the drawing room.

  Hervey thought the place little changed, if at all; in contrast with the duke’s appearance. It was not just the plain clothes – he had worn a blue coat at Waterloo after all; the Duke of Wellington was a member of the cabinet. It was confidently assumed that he would be commander-in-chief after the Duke of York. But there were some who spoke of him as a successor to Lord Liverpool himself, for Mr Canning was by no means universally trusted, and liked even less. The duke’s patronage would be stronger than ever, though Hervey wondered if the man were not now in too exalted a position to trouble about the fortunes of a captain of light dragoons, no matter how persuasive Kat’s charms.

  ‘Major Hervey?’

  He turned. As ever with the Rifles, the rank was difficult to make out at first sight. The man was about the duke’s age, his face more weather-beaten, but otherwise it was little altered.

  Hervey bowed. ‘Colonel Warde, good evening.’

  The duke’s secretary bowed by return.

  ‘You know Lady Katherine Greville of course,’ said Hervey, certain of it indeed, for it had been the colonel who had effected their introduction on the first occasion.

  Colonel Warde bowed again, a little lower. ‘Lady Katherine, it is always a pleasure.’

  ‘I will leave you to speak with each other for a moment,’ Kat replied, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I see Lady Jervoise, and I would have words with her.’

  An awkward silence followed her exit. There was in Colonel Warde’s manner something disapproving. Hervey thought it must be due to his association with Kat, though there was no improper tendency, necessarily, in one officer escorting the wife of another whose husband was detained elsewhere by duty. However, he knew too that he had on the previous occasion declined C
olonel Warde’s invitation – on the duke’s behalf no less – to a temporary position enquiring into the events at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, where the yeomanry and some regular cavalry had roughly handled an assembly. The affair had since been of great moment to the government, but at the time he was charged with the arrangements for the regiment’s shipping to India, and flattering though the duke’s confidence was, he had been wholly unable to break with his regimental priority. He doubted he could ever decline such an invitation again though.

  ‘Are you much detained by events in Greece, Colonel?’ he tried.

  Colonel Warde surprised him by his candour in reply. ‘Greece? No. The duke sees no occasion for the intervention of our land forces. Indeed, he is very much opposed to any entanglement there.’

  It was not what Hervey had wanted to hear. ‘And Portugal?’

  Colonel Warde hesitated but an instant. ‘The duke is of the same mind in the question of Portugal. What do you know of matters there?’

  ‘Only a very little.’

  ‘Mr Canning is all for meddling, but the duke believes that no good can come of it.’

  Hervey measured his response. ‘Shall we send no one to help then? I thought we had obligations to the Portuguese?’

  ‘Oh, we shall have to send someone sooner or later. The ambassador in Lisbon desires that officers be sent to lend counsel at once. But the duke is opposed to any intervention. And I believe the Duke of York holds to that view too.’

  Hervey considered this ripe news indeed, despite the two dukes’ apparent reluctance. Mr Canning held sway in the government at present, and his views would surely prevail with Lord Liverpool and the King? And if there was to be no landing in Greece, then this Lisbon mission sounded just the thing.