Hervey frowned again, sensing his own absurdity.
A waiter came, allowing him to change the subject.
‘Shall you take a little wine? Or spirit?’
‘I thank you, no,’ replied Fairbrother.
‘You are unwell?’
‘I am excessively well. But I should like to finish these drafts before repairing to the theatre, and I should not care to fuddle my head any more than it is presently.’
‘Well, I have no intention of fuddling mine either, but unless I take some restorative I fear I shall be of no use to Princess Lieven. Brandy and seltzer, please, Warley.’
‘I wonder if Metternich fortified himself thus.’
‘Metternich? I don’t follow.’
‘You are slow this evening. The Congress System.’
Fairbrother said it gravely; and then, with the suggestion of a smile and the arching of an eyebrow, signalled the pun.
Hervey began laughing. ‘Infamous,’ he protested; ‘but really very funny.’
Before leaving for Dover Street, the residence of the ambassador of His Imperial Majesty, Autocrat of all the Russias, to the Court of St James’s, Hervey spent a profitable half hour in the United Service’s library. His Serene Highness Prince Khristofor Andreyevich Lieven, or Count Lieven as then he was, had been first a soldier: some seventeen years Hervey’s senior, he had been with Tsar Alexander at Austerlitz and promoted lieutenant-general but two years later – not yet his thirty-third birthday (Hervey had shaken his head in some despair). Two years later, in December 1809, he had been sent to represent the Tsar at the Prussian court, and then when Bonaparte prepared to march on Moscow, and Britain and Russia became allies once more rather than enemies (if half-hearted enemies), he was appointed to London. And there he had remained ambassador, receiving the title Prince three years ago when his mother was created the first Princess of Lieven.
And yet it was the ambassadress who possessed the greater distinction among London society. Hervey knew a little of her reputation, especially as an unbending patroness of Almack’s assembly rooms (which had once turned away the Duke of Wellington himself for wearing trousers rather than breeches), but he had not before required to know more. Again the United Service’s library supplied him with notable detail: Dorothea (Darja) Christorovna Benckendorff was born on 17 December 1785, at Riga, where her father, a general of infantry, was military commandant (a branch of the family of the Markgrafschaft of Brandenburg had settled in Esthonia and entered the Russian service). General Benckendorff had taken a German wife, nevertheless, Baroness Charlotte Schilling of Cannstadt, confidante of the Princess Maria of Wirtemberg, who afterwards became the wife of Tsar Paul I. On Charlotte Benckendorff’s death in 1797 she had commended her four children to the Tsarina’s care, whence Dorothea’s bounty then flowed. Hervey had to count the years twice when he calculated that she had married at fourteen, and that her husband, though even then a major-general, was but eleven years her senior.
A few minutes after nine o’clock, therefore, he presented himself at Number 30, Dover Street, feeling himself possessed of enough information by which to judge any proposal that came his way (he considered himself to be already embarking on the commander-in-chief’s service – or even that of His Majesty himself). Prince Lieven was not at home, however, both to Hervey’s disappointment and surprise. Princess Lieven’s had been the invitation, but he had assumed this to be merely the customary form. Now he realized that it was she herself who gave the soiree, and for a moment he contemplated turning on his heel, for if the evening were to be an imitation of Almack’s, he felt insufficiently in sorts to stay. But there were already a dozen couples gathered, with more carriages queuing without, and he imagined therefore that it would be easy enough to make his introductions, take a turn about the room and then leave without offence.
He was announced in a high, almost singing voice to (as it were) the room rather than simply his hostess – ‘Colonel Hervey’ – though mispronounced, Bristol fashion, and he noticed several men in uniform, and others, glance his way, so that he did not know whether it was on account of his own reputation (the newspapers had made free with his exploits among the Zulu) or the presumption that here was a representative of that talented but tainted family.
Princess Lieven bid him welcome with a smile. And self-conscious though he had been in making his entrance, he observed that she had not done so with those immediately ahead of him. Indeed, her manner with them had appeared rather formal, as if aware of her husband’s status and her own rank. Fairbrother’s parting words, so absurdly arch, came to him: ‘Princes of such new creation are not to be excessively reverenced’. Hervey had no intention of showing excessive reverence: he would bow in the military rather than the court fashion. But the Princess’s smile threw his stride somewhat, so that he found himself returning it perhaps too appreciatively. He realized at once, and bowed quickly.
Once he was safely joined to the party in the drawing room, taking a glass of champagne, he turned to appraise her from the cover of a flank. Her manner he had already had opportunity to observe; it entirely became her reputation, and more. She was known also as a woman of striking attraction, if not of conventional beauty; and indeed he found her so, despite – perhaps even because of – her proud air. Her height and slender figure were certainly to her advantage (she might fill a dragoon’s tunic without any betrayal of her sex, her breast was so fashionably flat), and the angles of her face were made for the portraitist. She was about Kat’s age, yet appeared to him at once to be both older and younger, depending on whether he observed the mien of the ambassadress or the ringlets which fell about her swan-neck and bare shoulders, and the fringe of girlish curls. Her eyes were large and undoubtedly intelligent, and her mouth undeniably tempting. Yes, he could see that the combination of her talents and position were a priceless asset to the Tsar.
‘Colonel Hervey, good evening.’
He turned to find his recent acquaintance of the Horse Guards, Colonel Youell, in ‘the drawing room dress’ – crimson sash, white breeches and stockings – of the First Foot Guards. He returned the bow gladly. ‘I am pleased to have the opportunity to thank you for your assistance today. Captain Fairbrother told me that you showed him every consideration.’
‘It was my pleasure, Hervey, I assure you.’ He then drew him to one side. ‘You will receive your orders in writing, but we had word this evening that the Russians are to begin their new offensive sooner than we had been given to understand, and Wellington is to send a note verbale to Petersburg. That is why the frigate is stood by.’
‘Am I to have sight of the note?’
Youell seemed surprised by the question. ‘I don’t think even Lord Hill shall have sight of it.’
‘Then how am I supposed to know how to proceed?’
‘My dear Hervey, your mission is to observe the conduct of operations. It is not necessary that you are acquainted with every affair of state. It is merely the coincidence of sailing instructions that places you within a mile of the matter.’
Hervey smiled, ruefully. ‘My dear Youell, I can assure you, from considerable experience, that the moment one begins to act in such circumstances is the moment one finds one’s written orders do not extend to the actual situation that presents itself!’
Youell nodded. ‘You are right, I don’t doubt. It could surely do no harm, and quite possibly some good. Forgive me. I shall ask of the Foreign Office tomorrow – you are going there yourself, are you not?’
‘I am.’
‘But I believe they may say that it might be more expedient that you are told by the ambassador in Petersburg.’
‘Very well. I presume I am to convey this note verbale to him?’
‘No; that is the business of a King’s Messenger. Your berth on the frigate is but a chance consequence of its carrying him.’
‘I may enjoy the passage to Petersburg without undue anxiety, then?’
The smile which accompanied this did not enti
rely convince Youell that Hervey was sporting. ‘I fancy you are not one given to undue anxiety, Colonel. You forget, perhaps, that I have read at first hand your despatches from the Cape.’
Hervey nodded to acknowledge the compliment. ‘Did you, by the way, arrange this invitation?’ he asked, gesturing to the room with his glass.
‘No, I did not,’ said Youell, and with a note of curiosity. ‘I had imagined that you yourself had.’
‘Then I wonder who did. Do you know the Princess?’
‘Not well. She is inclined to be generous with her invitations: she is wont to send them to the Guards marked “three officers”, or whatever number she requires, without elaboration.’
Hervey could not resist it: ‘Perhaps she considers that you are all of a piece?’
Youell smiled. ‘Perhaps, indeed. She has been known to refer to such guests as her picket officers.’
‘You are not acquainted with her, then, from Almack’s?’
Youell smiled even broader. ‘My dear Hervey, there are not half a dozen officers in the Guards who have a voucher for Almack’s. I had one a few years ago, but no longer.’
‘How so? I can’t suppose you wore trousers rather than breeches.’
‘Because I am really not excessively fond of dancing!’
‘Ah.’ The explanation was unconvincing, but evidently all that he would receive.
‘And you?’
For an instant Hervey was caught by a memory, for Henrietta had loved Almack’s, and it had been her resolve to take him there. ‘I was once fond of dancing.’
Youell, every inch the officer of Foot Guards, caught the change of voice nevertheless, and made no reply, save to suggest they repair to the supper.
In the dining room there were tables arranged informally around the walls, and in the middle a long, dressed board with a dozen silver dishes and warmers, to which the two proceeded without ceremony. Hervey filled his plate with a veal frigize, and took a seat in a corner with his new friend, though after not many minutes they were joined in turn by three couples, the last of which – and to Hervey’s mind the most attractive – claimed a connection. ‘Our hostess suggested we might present ourselves to advantage, Colonel Hervey. Agar-Ellis,’ (he bowed) ‘and my wife, Lady Georgiana.’
‘Member for somewhere in Wiltshire,’ whispered Youell as the Agar-Ellises made their introductions to the rest of the table. ‘Whig, though descended from Marlborough on his mother’s side. Lady Georgiana’s father is the Earl of Carlisle, who broke with Wellington last year over Reform.’
Hervey nodded admiringly; it was one thing to possess such information, but quite another to render it so privately and concisely. Youell most assuredly knew his job.
The table made room for the new arrivals to sit next to Hervey, the object of their interest.
‘I am at a loss to know what advantage I can be to you, sir,’ he said, as a footman began pouring claret. ‘But I am at your service, if that may be.’
The Honourable George Agar-Ellis smiled warmly and disarmingly. The MP for Ludgershall (on the closer side of the Plain than lived Hervey’s people), was half a dozen years his junior. He possessed – to Hervey’s mind – a most pleasant, even sensitive face. Here was no martial man, but agreeable company nevertheless – of that he had no doubt. And if he were a Whig, then he did not have the air of a radical one.
‘You would do me inestimable service, Colonel, if you would take care of my young brother. He is to accompany you to the Russias.’
Hervey smiled with the realization. ‘Indeed; of course. I met your brother but two days ago. But one half of his name only was given me, which is why I did not make the connection. He was fearful eager to join my party.’
‘I know it. He dined with us last evening.’
‘He would not have known last night that we’re to leave almost at once.’
‘That will be no discomfort to him. Is the assignment especially hazardous, Colonel?’
Hervey stopped to think. It was not something he had considered. All assignments in the presence of the enemy entailed hazard – even if, in this case, he wished the ‘enemy’ (the Turk) no harm. Indeed, there was no enemy as such. ‘I think your brother will not be disappointed. He expressed a desire to see action, and he will be gratified; though he will see it at a remove.’
Lady Georgiana inclined her head, her countenance still fixed in the smile of their greeting. ‘Please do not think my husband importunate for the safety of his brother, Colonel Hervey; we are well aware that his profession is a perilous one. It is more that – if I may speak for my husband – we wish young Agar to be tutored wisely in military matters. He has none in the family with the qualification to do so.’
In its evident sweetness, Hervey was inclined to think the entreaty entirely proper, however awkwardly put. ‘I shall do my best, ma’am.’
Colonel Youell’s expression was of suppressed amusement. He decided it was time to come to his colleague’s aid. ‘How stands the House on the Irish bill today?’
Treating the enquiry as more than mere table talk, Agar-Ellis laid down his knife and fork and turned to his questioner. ‘The Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Catholic Subjects?’
Ears pricked up about the table.
To Agar-Ellis’s mind it was a most reasonably worded title, one that seemed calculated to appeal to the Englishman’s sense of justice and patriotism, and which his own enunciation had made full play of. ‘I think that the duke will succeed in the house of Peers; he already has it in the Commons. His standing among his fellows is too great, and they would not in any case risk bringing him down, for which of them could say what would then follow?’
The answer to this latter was, according to the smoking room of the United Service, a Whig government and then wholesale parliamentary reform; and which Tory peer wished to see the constituency in his pocket thus taken away? Hervey had no settled opinion on the matter of Reform. In some measure he was persuaded by his sister’s advocacy (which was indeed radical, including like suffrage for her own sex), but he had not spent half his life in uniform to throw over the ways of this land for any extreme, Jacobin notions. ‘Let us hope, therefore, that their lordships know their duty,’ he said, with just enough of a smile to make known his own loyalties with good grace.
‘If every man does his duty, Colonel Hervey, then the country will have nothing to fear.’
‘I am tempted to propose a toast to duty,’ said Youell equably.
To which all at the table were able to nod in happy agreement (leaving Hervey in no little admiration of his new friend’s facility with felicitous phrases – a talent which he himself regretted he did not possess).
There then followed some more general conversation, while duty to the other guests claimed the attention of the member for Ludgershall and his lady. Hervey found himself watching fascinated, as if he were observing the behaviour of some exotic species of the natural world. Principally was he engaged by the delight that the couple took in each other’s company – a true match of temperament and mind, and an evident intimacy that was by no means common (he supposed). It was not long before he found himself in envy of it, so that he had to force himself to break off from his observation and instead listen attentively to the wife of the Bavarian minister resident, whose husband was not present and who was being escorted by a younger man in a uniform that he could only recognize as vaguely Rhenish. Both of them spoke English, but with a strong accent, so that Hervey wished they would speak German instead.
Die Bayerin’s conversation was anyway inconsequential, and Hervey was relieved when they rose again for the board, though chiding himself that Youell would probably have been able to make more of it. He accompanied her particularly attentively therefore.
‘Kasha russkaya pod nazvaniem Gur’evskaya!’
She said it with such delight, her expression transformed, that for the moment he wondered that he had been so dull. And she pronounced the Russian with what sounded a true accen
t, and he would have asked her of it were she not intent on explaining that it was a dish that had become her favourite at the Lievens’. ‘Count Dimitri Gur’ev, one of Tsar Alexander’s ministers, confected it to celebrate the victory over Napoleon Bonaparte.’
He noted the strictly neutral style with which she chose to refer to the Great Disturber (Bavaria had been a late-come member of the Coalition), but again he chose simply to listen as she listed the ingredients and the laborious process by which it was made, though to her frustration she could not for the moment recall the English for mannaya krupa.
‘In German?’ he suggested, helpfully.
She looked at him a little surprised. ‘Grieß.’
He smiled. ‘Semolina.’
‘Semolina,’ she repeated warily. ‘Wo haben Sie Deutsch gelernt, Herr Oberst?’
He told her of his Alsatian governess. And there was more inconsequential chat, in German, as they returned to the table.
But Agar-Ellis soon reclaimed him (Lady Georgiana diverted die Bayerin). ‘Bavaria is a country I should wish to see,’ he began, in a manner that suggested a higher purpose than to walk in the Pfälzerwald. ‘I think their king admirable, a considerable patron of the arts, and of pronounced liberal disposition.’
‘I confess I know nothing of the country,’ replied Hervey a little flatly. He was minded to say that his sister was on the verge of marrying into Hanover, and that he might at some time have opportunity to see the south of the German Bund, but his inclination, even with one he found as agreeable as Agar-Ellis, was yet to keep silence.
‘Not, perhaps, productive of great art, though certainly believing in the common worth of it. Did you know the Wittelsbachs opened their collection to the people a dozen years before the Louvre? We have several studies by Altdorfer in our own collection, but nothing more.’
Hervey perceived there was something missing in his understanding. ‘You speak of your own collection?’
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