‘Would you excuse me, Colonel? I must needs speak with Lady Katherine before we go into dinner.’
But in this he was thwarted, for Kat was in conversation with the duke himself, and as soon as dinner was announced she took the great man’s arm and went with him to the dining room. Hervey cursed his luck, for Kat was to sit at the duke’s right; there could scarcely be a better opportunity to press his case.
The carriage hove away into the broad street that was Piccadilly. Hervey pulled down the blind, sank back in the seat, and turned to Kat. ‘Well, I declare I am truly grateful for your asking me, but I confess I was not much diverted by dinner. The soup was lukewarm and the meat tough. The wine, I grant you, was excellent.’
Kat giggled. ‘The food is always abominable. The duke made a sort of mix of his, and then ate very sparingly. I think I managed much more than did he.’
‘I wonder he doesn’t have himself a French chef. He must have had one in Paris.’
‘He had a French chef at Apsley House, Matthew. But the poor man grew tired of sending up menus and having them returned with “pudding and tart” scrawled across the bottom.’
Hervey chortled.
‘How were your table companions by the way? I did not know them.’
‘Not, I fear to say, very engaging. I had on my right a Lady Westing, whose husband’s acquaintance with the duke seemed only slight; hers too. She had little conversation save for her family and the charms of Huntingdonshire, neither of which I am drawn to by her advocacy.’
‘Poor Matthew!’ said Kat, as if he were a little boy hurt, and taking up his hand. ‘And I saw you in conversation with the dowager Lady Drax. Her hearing is quite gone, and her breath very ill.’
Hervey raised his eyebrows, signifying concurrence. ‘I did catch a little of the conversation opposite me, those two peers from the North Country much exercised by the machine-breaking. But I have to say that for the most part there was little of substance or entertainment anywhere within hearing.’
‘Except towards the end when the duke held the floor?’ suggested Kat. ‘I thought he spoke most instructively of his time in St Petersburg. How agreeable seemed the place in spite of the extreme weather, and how engaging the company. He told me earlier that it was quite as good as any time he had spent in Paris. And did he not say he had been well pleased with his discussions with the new tsar?’
‘But he would not be drawn on details,’ said Hervey, shrugging. ‘Scarce surprising I suppose.’
‘He told me there was some distance yet to run before a protocol with the French would be concluded.’
Hervey brightened. ‘Did he indeed? Colonel Warde says there will be no Greek adventure.’
Kat said nothing for a few moments, then: ‘He told me, very confidentially, that the business in Portugal troubled him, but that he was not inclined to believe the Spanish would cross the border, for their army is in a parlous state. He says that Mr Canning is all for sending troops, but he thinks that salting a few English officers in the Portuguese army, as had been the case when he was in the Peninsula, would suffice. He spoke of a small mission being sent there soon; being got up this very moment indeed.’
Hervey cursed himself again. If only he had been able to prime her! Merely the suggestion of his name when the duke himself raised the subject; no need even for flattery!
‘What is the matter, Matthew? You are very dull,’ said Kat, as the chariot picked up speed after the queue for the gates at the corner of Hyde Park.
‘I backed the wrong horse.’
‘How so?’
‘There is quite evidently to be no adventure in Greece.’
Kat nodded. ‘No, that much is apparently so, at least for the time being. But there is to be something in Portugal, is there not?’
Hervey turned to her. ‘Scarcely something, Kat. The mission’s only half a dozen officers. And they, the duke told you, are being assembled this very evening.’
Kat raised her eyebrows and inclined her head, as if to say that it was the way of things.
Hervey groaned, but inaudibly, for the wheels were now growling on the macadam.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Nothing. An opportunity for service missed, that is all.’
‘Ah, so you would wish to go with these officers to Lisbon next week?’
‘Next week is it? Of course I should! And I may say I would count not many men better suited, for I had a good hackney all about the Peninsula those five years and more.’
Kat turned her head from him to gaze absently through the chariot’s front window. ‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘That is what the duke said.’
Hervey turned his whole body to her. ‘The duke said I was suited?’
She looked at him again, this time feigning bemusement. ‘Oh, most assuredly.’
‘But what occasion had he to do so? I—’
‘The occasion, Matthew, was my pressing your cause!’
Hervey hardly knew what to say. Kat’s initiative both impressed and surprised him.
‘He will send word to the Horse Guards tomorrow to say he would greatly appreciate it if the Duke of York included your name.’
Hervey kissed her, with intense gratitude.
*
‘You will take some chocolate with me, Matthew?’ said Kat, as the chariot drew up to the house in Holland Park twenty minutes later.
The hour was not so late, and the dormitory at the United Service Club did not beckon appealingly. In any case, Hervey was quickened by Kat’s endeavours on his behalf. Neither had they had much opportunity for conversation during the evening, except accompanied by the noise of their drive. ‘With great pleasure,’ he said, squeezing her hand again.
There was a good fire in Kat’s sitting room. Hervey settled in a low settee after helping himself to brandy and soda which a footman brought with the chocolate. The surroundings were agreeable, the company too; he had no inclination to leave early, save that the carriage waited.
Kat sat next to him. For a quarter of an hour they spoke of this or that at dinner, nothing consequential. Then Hervey made as if to rise. ‘Kat, I do not think I should detain your men any longer. They will have the best part of two hours out, I think.’
‘Not so much as that, I’m sure. But see, why detain them at all? Why do not you stay here tonight, and then we may take our exercise together tomorrow morning towards the river? I have a new gelding I’d have you try, a youngster.’
Hervey sensed that the intimacy of the past weeks had reached a point. ‘Kat—’
‘I can send for your clothes tomorrow, when it is daylight. Any necessaries we can provide here.’
She rose and tugged at the bell pull beside the chimneypiece. The footman returned.
‘Major Hervey will stay the night. Have his things brought here tomorrow from his club, if you will.’
‘Very good, m’lady.’
They talked for another quarter of an hour before Kat rang once more.
‘We will retire now, Martin. And I think I will take breakfast a little later than usual – at ten.’
‘Very good, m’lady. The fire in Major Hervey’s room is lighted now. Do you wish me to attend until Major Hervey’s valet comes tomorrow, m’lady?’
Kat did not seek her guest’s opinion. ‘Yes, thank you, Martin. But only if Major Hervey rings. And please inform Susan she may retire also. It is growing late, and I can manage quite well myself tonight. I will call for her tomorrow when I wake.’
The footman bowed, and then to Hervey, before opening both doors and standing to one side.
‘Well, Matthew,’ said Kat, rising.
Hervey placed his glass down.
‘You will like your room. It has a very pleasing prospect.’ She walked towards the doors. ‘I will show Major Hervey his room, Martin. You may put out the candles now.’
The footman bowed again as they passed.
Up the stairs – broad, blue-gold carpeted, well lit by mirrored sconces – Kat st
opped by a big yellow-painted door on the south side. ‘Matthew, this is my bedchamber.’
Hervey had no inclination to go on to his own. Kat very evidently wanted him, and he was in want of female affection. He missed his bibi as much as anything for the comfort of loving arms clasping him tight; Kat, without doubt, would embrace him thus. For the rest . . .
‘Matthew?’
He took her shoulders in his hands, bent forward and kissed her full but gently, wanting to know her response.
It was instant and unequivocal. Kat was a practised, if infrequent lover, and she meant to show him. She had waited seven years for his embrace, though scarcely chastely, and she believed that patience should be rewarded; that great patience, indeed, should be amply rewarded.
CHAPTER THREE
LEAVE TAKING
Hounslow, ten days later
The commanding officer’s weekly muster was to be his last. After duties, Lieutenant-Colonel Eustace Joynson would put on plain clothes and drive in his tilbury out of barracks for good. Frances Joynson had left Hounslow some days before to stay with an aunt in London, and her father was looking forward to a fortnight or so in his own company on the best chalk stream in Hampshire, which, he had said often of late, was to be his boon companion in his remaining years.
It was, as a rule, a sad day when an officer relinquished command, even of a troop. Dragoons were, as other soldiers, wary of change, for change, even if it promised improvement, brought more work and a degree of uncertainty which could unsettle their strenuous but familiar routine. It had been the best part of ten years, too, since there had been an orderly farewell. Lord George Irvine, an absentee in his last years in command, though an honourable one, had given a grand party – a banquet indeed – for all ranks, and had been cheered on his way heartily. His successor, the Earl of Towcester, had slid out of his quarters with reptilian venom on hearing he was to face court martial. And the estimable officer who had replaced him, Sir Ivo Lankester, they had buried with regimental honours and many a tear before the captured fortress of Bhurtpore.
Eustace Joynson had given no parties. His bent was not that way, and neither, in truth, could his pocket bear it nearly so easily as Lord George Irvine’s. But he had made a present of pipe and tobacco to every man, and deposited a fair sum with the sutler in the wet canteen so that each man might drink his health when he was gone. To the serjeants’ mess he had given a handsome long-case clock, and to the officers’ mess a painting of his beloved mare, the Sixth’s first casualty at Bhurtpore. And last night he had dined, quietly, with the officers, withdrawing long before midnight. ‘There are one or two things in the regimental accounts I would attend to before signing them,’ he had said, to concealed smiles, for his attention to administrative detail had been proverbial, a thing that most of the regiment’s blades abhorred in public though admired in private.
Certainly it was admired elsewhere in the Sixth. Joynson did not know it, but the meanest dragoon had heard of the major’s – of late the lieutenant-colonel’s – slaving attention to their welfare, albeit closeted with ledgers rather than abroad with bonhomie. Colonel Joynson was, in the parlance of the canteen, ‘a good ’un’.
The regiment was mustered in parade dress this morning. The officers wore white buckskins and hessians instead of workaday overalls, and their chargers were turned out in shabraques instead of sheepskins. There were four hundred men on parade, of whom three hundred and more were mounted. The Sixth were not yet returned to their old custom – A and C Troops bay, B black, D light brown and E chestnut; that would take a year or so yet to accomplish. But they rode good-looking troopers, the hussar regiment they had replaced evidently having taken care – and spent money – on purchase of their remounts. The late-autumn sun glinted on sabres and farriers’ axes, and the old music of the bits and curb chains took over as the band fell silent. It was a special moment, and there was scarcely a man that did not feel it.
The regimental serjeant-major’s big gelding, its coat shining like jet, began pawing the metalled square. Mr Hairsine merely flexed his rein hand and the horse stood still, head up. Then he touched his spurs to the gelding’s flanks and trotted out from behind the ranks and up to the adjutant. The latter, primed, reined round to a flank to give the RSM full face to the commanding officer, a wholly unorthodox evolution that immediately presaged ‘an event’.
‘Sir,’ began Mr Hairsine, ‘the non-commissioned officers and other ranks of His Majesty’s Sixth Light Dragoons are desirous to mark this day with an expression of their esteem, sir. May I have your leave to carry on, sir, please?’
Eustace Joynson, wholly taken aback, simply nodded.
‘Private Adcock!’ bellowed the RSM.
‘Sir!’
The dragoon, riding a liver chestnut mare which seemed reluctant at first to leave her fellows, trotted out of the ranks and up to the RSM’s side. He alone on parade that day wore any decoration. And Joynson knew at once what was afoot, for Adcock was the longest-serving private man, with whom he shared the Sixth’s silver Peninsular medal (it would be two decades more before the government would see fit to honour those left with its own).
‘Colonel, sir,’ began Private Adcock, sword still at the carry. ‘The non-commissioned officers and men, being of appreciation, respectfully ask you to accept these tokens, sir.’
Adcock pressed his mare forward, having to repeat the leg aids, for she was as nervous of her new-found prominence as was Adcock himself. He halted in front of the lieutenant-colonel, sheathed his sabre, saluted (other ranks never paid compliments with the sword), deftly unfastened his cross-belt pouch and took out a small leather pocket. He pressed forward two lengths more to close the space that remained, and handed Joynson the token of esteem.
The lieutenant-colonel opened it and found a gold hunter watch.
‘There is a sentiment on the inside, Colonel, sir.’
Joynson opened the cover: In Gratitude. And he saw the maker’s name too – George Prior, London – which spoke of the depth of that sentiment.
Three lusty cheers broke the sudden silence.
Joynson knew he must say some words in reply, carrying to the whole parade as had Private Adcock’s, though it was so alien to his temperament that he doubted his capacity to do so.
However, the RSM knew his colonel almost as well as Joynson knew himself. Mr Hairsine now turned his head and nodded to the bandmaster on the other side of the square. Herr Hamper raised his baton, up came the instruments to the bandsmen’s mouths, and on the downstroke they began ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.
The adjutant and the RSM closed to Joynson’s side and led him off in a final review of the ranks. Through moisture-laden eyes the lieutenant-colonel saw many a face that brought back memories, painful as a rule but now no more than a dull ache; and the occasional one that induced a recollection of something happier. He nodded frequently, by way of appreciation at so singular a gesture as this, and even managed what passed as a smile for the odd sweat. And all the time the band played ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’.
When he reached the end of the left-flank troop, Joynson turned to make the speech he dreaded, but the Sixth’s last compliment was to spare him from the ordeal, and the band played on. Joynson nodded, smiling, at last recognizing the stratagem, then saluted and reined about to ride off parade accompanied solely by his trumpeter.
*
An hour later Hervey went to Joynson’s quarters. Little remained there, for the carters had been coming and going since early the day before. ‘I’ve come to add my gratitude too, Eustace,’ he said. Colonel was too formal an address at this moment; Eustace he had reserved these past years for only the rarest occasions of intimacy, usually to accompany some reassurance or insistence.
‘I wish Bella might have seen that,’ said Joynson, from an upright chair and deep in thought. ‘And Frances for that matter. Perhaps it would . . .’
Hervey waited, but in vain. When it became clear that Joynson was no
t going to finish his sentence he spoke instead. ‘I’m sure she will hear of it. It was a most handsome thing. And not in the least degree unwarranted, if I may say.’
Joynson shook his head. ‘Whoever would have thought it. Sent home from the Peninsula in disgrace, too.’
‘You were never in disgrace!’
Joynson smiled, wryly. ‘Not even Slade was sent home!’
‘Stop it, Eustace. We each have our ups and downs. A man might rest properly on his laurels for ever after a sending-off like this morning’s.’
He smiled again, more convincingly this time. ‘Ay, you’re right I’m sure. The river won’t be so melancholy a place after all.’
‘I should think not too!’ Hervey pulled close another chair and sat down.
‘Have you made your arrangements for Lisbon then?’ asked Joynson brightly, but with a look of some bemusement.
‘Yes. I leave next week. I shall take my groom and coverman, no more.’
‘What do you make of it all?’
‘It’s difficult to say. The duke, by all accounts, is opposed to any adventure.’
‘Quite right too. A knife fight between the dons is naught for us to be mixing with. It’s a dispute between who in the same family is to rule Portugal, that’s all. It can hardly disturb the peace of this realm. I don’t hold with Canning’s grand ideas.’
‘The Spanish are backing Dom Miguel. It may come to war. And the French would intervene too, likely as not. How would that be good for the prosperity of the realm? And is there not a treaty which obliges us to come to Portugal’s defence?’
‘Blackwood’s says that is a moot point when it is civil war. And there’ll be trouble here too, for the Tories are for Miguel and the Whigs for Pedro.’
Hervey shrugged. ‘If Portugal’s where is the sound of the guns, Eustace, then I can’t see as I have any choice. And by the time I arrive there, I assume the government will know which side we are to support! In any case, how else am I to find preferment, unless I go and court cream at the Horse Guards?’
Joynson looked at him archly.
Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War Page 5