Peto smiled. Any praise of the service brought him satisfaction, and praise of a ship of his the most intense pride. But more than that, this girl, this . . . young woman (he must make up his mind) had such self-possession as to amaze him. He had next to no experience of those of her age and sex, and when he summoned to mind those volunteers and midshipmen of the same age he had known (even, he had to admit, himself) he found the comparison unfortunate. ‘That is very gratifying, Miss Rebecca, though I must point out that we have unusually calm seas, a fair wind and some days in hand. It may not be so agreeable when we reach Greek waters.’
Rebecca sprinkled salt about her plate. ‘I should so very much like to accompany you, Captain Peto. I should so like to see my father at sea, in his true element. And my brother, Henry: he is midshipman aboard my father’s flagship.’
Peto smiled again, indulgently. ‘I think it a charming idea, Miss Rebecca. Only the threat of powder and shot rather makes it less so.’
Rebecca looked a shade affronted. ‘I should not mind that, Captain Peto!’
He sighed, inwardly. These girls – these women indeed: they had no conception of how shot transformed a deck from the most agreeable place on earth to a representation of hell. In seconds. But he could not blame her for it, nor even chide her. Besides, the matter was hardly of moment, a mere hypothetic. He would change the subject again, this time more subtly. ‘You understand, of course, that in part our engagement in the Eastern Mediterranean is not unconnected with the suppression of slavery.’
‘How so, Captain Peto?’
‘The Turks have been abducting the citizens of the Peloponnese and taking them to Egypt.’
‘I did not know that. It is perfectly dreadful.’
‘Quite. I do not understand the Turk: I have met so many fine fellows, and yet they seem capable of unspeakable barbarity. Thus are all men, perhaps, but I never saw such wanton cruelty as is with the Ottomans customary.’ (He rather forgot himself in the unaccustomed situation of having an interlocutor at his table who was not in the service.) ‘I confess I was uncertain of this venture – compelling them to leave Greece – though delighted nevertheless to have command of Prince Rupert. But if it comes to a fight I shall shed no tears for them.’ He now realized he had spoken in rather too sanguinary terms for a daughter whose father, and brother, would be in the thick of the fighting if it came. And, for that matter, he had spoken rather too freely about his own thoughts – as if Miss Rebecca Codrington, indeed, had been Miss Elizabeth Hervey. He cleared his throat.
‘More kej’ree, miss?’ asked Flowerdew, offering the bowl.
‘How do you like it, Miss Rebecca? Speak plainly,’ added Peto.
‘I like it very much, Captain Peto. Thank you, Mr Flowerdew, I will have some more,’ replied Rebecca sweetly. She helped herself to two good-size spoons full. Then her countenance turned earnest again. ‘Do you truly believe it will come to a fight with the Turks, Captain Peto?’
Peto was annoyed with himself. He had dug a hole, so to speak, and now he was going to fall into it. But he could scarcely dissemble. ‘I do,’ he answered gravely, nodding. ‘I do. But it does not follow that the fight need be . . .’ (he checked himself) ‘very bloody. Your father’s squadron is vastly stronger, and the Caliph knows full well that the Royal Navy’s habit is of unrivalled success.’
‘I am relieved to hear it is so,’ said Rebecca. And she looked, undeniably, relieved. ‘I do most sincerely wish, however, that I could see my father dismay the Turks, so that those poor people of Greece might have peace.’
‘Coffee, ma’am?’ asked Flowerdew, in no doubt now of the real status of their guest.
XII
A MARRIAGE KNOT
Hertfordshire, 2 May 1828
‘Hervey, I am ever more delighted by your English countryside,’ declared Fairbrother, looking out of the chaise window at the rippling fields of barley. ‘I did not think I should see scenes more pleasing to the eye than those from the Rochester mail, and yet in whichever direction we travel there are prospects to rival those before. And such houses!’
‘It is a green and pleasant land.’
Hervey still sounded . . . distracted, despite the conversation of several hours. Fairbrother thought he would tempt him one last time. ‘The house of your affianced’s people is, I imagine, a handsome one?’
Hervey too was gazing from the window, but not at the country. ‘It is.’
Fairbrother sighed. ‘You are still at Hounslow, I suppose.’
Hervey turned to him. ‘I should have remained with them. At least until Lord Holderness was entirely fit. You saw him: he was not himself.’
Fairbrother had indeed seen him: he looked like a spectre. ‘But the surgeon said he was recovered from the seizure, and you yourself said that the adjutant and the captains were perfectly able to carry on.’
‘So they are.’
‘And the manoeuvres were declared complete.’
So they had been. And Hervey had been as glad of it as he had been surprised. But, as the general had pronounced, the regiment had demonstrated its capability in spectacular measure, and his recognition of it was an early return to barracks. ‘Indeed.’
Fairbrother sighed again, this time audibly. ‘You know, Hervey – I will say it once more – I am at a loss to understand your thoughts in the matter. You concealed the colonel’s indisposition most effectively, and that, I acknowledge, was an admirable instinct, but if in doing so you deny yourself the laurels which are rightfully yours, and a man who is incapable, however fine a fellow he is, remains in his place – and mistake me not: Lord Holderness is the finest of men – how does that serve? How does it serve the regiment? How does it serve the King?’
It was indeed old ground over which Fairbrother picked, and Hervey was no more moved by it than before. ‘You make the case compellingly, except that you discount the injury that would be done when it were known, both inside and out, that a regiment had not remained true to its colonel. I do not wish to debate with you the theoretical limits of loyalty, my friend’ (no, indeed: there was a rawness to that particular wound still – the affair of Lord Towcester) ‘for if we do not admit it to be absolute, then there is no foundation to discipline but the lash.’
Fairbrother was momentarily distracted by the distant sight of rooks harrying a kite, which somehow seemed apt. He turned back to his friend. ‘The lash? What? See, Hervey – and then I will speak no more of it, for the time being at least: it matters only in part that you succeed in preserving Lord Holderness’s reputation with the general; there will not be a man in the regiment who is not speaking of what happened that night. And with the most decided opinions. Think on it.’
His friend turned in silence to the passing acres, and for a good while the only sound was the rumbling of the wheels.
Hervey had engaged a chaise for the journey down to St Paul’s Walden, the seat of Sir Delaval Rumsey, ninth baronet, father of Kezia, and squire of extensive acres in the rich arable between Saxon St Albans and the Templars’ Baldock. Only the Lankesters, he had heard say, rivalled the Rumseys in Hertfordshire antiquity.
‘Lady Lankester has a daughter, you say. To whom therefore did the Lankester baronetcy pass when Sir Ivo died?’
Hervey shook his head. ‘There was no male relative, I believe, so it must therefore have lapsed.’
‘Would a male child of hers then succeed to it?’
Hervey laughed. ‘I am uncertain, but I believe the answer to be no.’ In truth, he had given no thought to the fecundity of the coming marriage, even if he had thought a good deal about the actual process. A very good deal indeed.
In a quarter of an hour more, the chaise turned into the long, metalled drive of Walden Park. Hervey looked at his watch – a little before midday. He had said in his express that he was uncertain what time precisely they would arrive, but even so, the footmen were sharp about the chaise when after five minutes at a good trot it drew up at the entrance to the great Elizabethan mansio
n.
The two friends alighted, adjusting their neckcloths self-consciously. Hervey paid off the coachman and arranged refreshment for him and for the horses, then led his friend up the ten impressively wide steps to the vault-arched doorway.
Inside, the only sound was of a fortepiano, and not too distant. It stopped abruptly, and a moment or so later Lady Lankester appeared. She smiled – welcomingly enough, thought Fairbrother, but without great ardour (and he wondered again if he intruded) – and Hervey and she kissed, fleetingly.
‘How good you are come,’ said Kezia, and turning to Fairbrother, smiled warmly: ‘And this is the companion of whom you wrote so keenly.’
Hervey’s companion bowed. ‘Edward Fairbrother, Lady Lankester.’
Kezia did not curtsy, but held out her hand.
Hervey had marked, before, Kezia’s preference in her manner of greeting. Combined with such a smile as hers it was ever the more welcoming. ‘We left London betimes, but the carting traffic was savage,’ he explained. ‘We did not manage a trot before, I think, Edgware. The Romans would have been faster along Watling-street than we. You were practising just now?’
‘You know that I practise for three hours every day.’
The manner of Kezia’s reminding – almost a rebuke – told him very decidedly that he must know (truly he had no recollection of it). ‘Well,’ (he cleared his throat) ‘Fairbrother and I returned to London only yesterday. As I said in my letter, there was urgent business to be about in Wiltshire and in Hounslow. But we are here now, and delightful it is, at last.’
They sat down near a window in the morning room. A footman brought a tray, followed by another bearing a coffee pot.
Fairbrother sensed a certain stiffness, and was inclined to ascribe it to his presence. He made to rise. ‘I think perhaps I ought to see our boxes—’
‘Oh no, Mr Fairbrother,’ Kezia protested. ‘All will be attended to, I assure you. Take your ease with some coffee, and tell me how you find London. Colonel Hervey says you have not been in England before. Did you visit the Royal Academy? There is a fine exhibition there, is there not? You have seen Mr Turner’s paintings, Colonel?’
Hervey frowned. It was rather like finding his horse on the wrong leg as they turned. ‘I confess I have not, yet.’
Kezia looked dismayed.
But he would make no more apology: it was true that military business did not always require his attention when he was in London, but there were other things to be about than looking at paintings, however fine. He made to change the subject. ‘Where is Perdita?’
Kezia turned towards the fortepiano. Perdita lay curled on a chair next to the piano stool, silently eyeing him. ‘Come, Perdi,’ she said.
The little Italian greyhound slid from the chair, stretched, and stalked to her mistress’s side. She sat, without taking her eyes off the interloper.
The three talked for a quarter of an hour, of this and that, inconsequential matters, until Fairbrother rose again, managing this time to beg his leave successfully. Kezia told him that in the evening they would drive to Knebworth, to a soirée which its chatelaine, General Bulwer Lytton’s widow, was hosting. Fairbrother enquired whether he would be intruding, saying that he was perfectly content to remain at Walden: he had with him several books. To which Kezia protested that he was most welcome: Mrs Bulwer Lytton held these gatherings almost weekly during the close season, and new faces were most positively encouraged. ‘The mere mention of books, Mr Fairbrother, assures me that our hostess will find your company agreeable. The soirées are of a literary and artistic bent.’
‘Shall you sing,’ (Hervey hesitated) ‘dearest?’
Kezia rose and turned to him with an almost puzzled look. ‘If I am asked to do so, yes.’
Fairbrother bowed. ‘I am all eagerness, Lady Lankester,’ he said, smiling confidently. And he left the promised couple to each other.
Hervey put down his coffee cup and made to embrace his betrothed. Even though he had stumbled in the preliminaries, he had been studiously admiring of Kezia’s appearance. Her fair hair intrigued him more with every meeting: he had not had any proper acquaintance before with such a colour and complexion. Strange as it was, she seemed to him almost . . . foreign. More so than Isabella Delgado, or even Vaneeta. Her mouth was quite perfect: any scholar of the ideal of beauty would admit it. Nothing like as full as Kat’s, or Isabella’s, or Vaneeta’s (or Henrietta’s), but appealing to him for its very . . . he supposed, distance. Her form, a constrained grace which provoked the imagination, was powerfully pleasing, and greatly the more so for his absence these past nine months. The checked Levantine, her arms and bosom covered to throat and wrist (its being ‘morning’ still), only served to increase his admiration.
They kissed. She did not resist, though she did not give herself up to any passion. Hervey understood. It was not her sitting room; they might be disturbed at any moment. He caught Perdi eyeing him still – a reproachful eye, threatening, almost.
‘Dearest, I am so very glad to see you. There is much to speak of.’
Kezia glanced at the fortepiano.
‘Do I disturb your practice?’
She looked a shade wistful. ‘In truth you do, but it was discourteous of me to reveal it.’
Hervey shook his head, smiling apologetically. ‘Would you play for me?’
‘Play for you, Colonel Hervey?’
He frowned. ‘Is it so outrageous a suggestion? And . . . Kezia,’ (he pronounced her name – for the first time – somewhat tentatively) ‘would you dispense with the formality of that manner of address?’
Kezia raised her eyebrows. ‘What would you have me call you?’
Hervey sighed. ‘Well, I have a given name, as you.’ Few but his close family used it (and Kat).
She smiled a very little, but wryly, so that Hervey felt drawn to kiss her again – which she did not object to.
‘You are very fond of music, I know, since you told me so at Sezincote, and we have had so little opportunity to speak of it.’ She sat at the fortepiano again while Hervey resumed his place by the window. ‘Did you recognize the piece I was playing as you arrived?’
Hervey had not the slightest idea. He had declared a love of music while in something of a heady state, having heard Kezia sing at the house in which they were both staying in company with Sir Eyre and Lady Somervile. He liked music – or, as Elizabeth had often chided, he liked the noise it made, especially if it were made by men in uniform.
That evening at Sezincote, he managed to recall (though how, he could not say), Kezia had sung something – two things – by a German called Gluck.
‘Might it be by Herr Gluck?’
Kezia frowned. ‘Oh, Matthew Hervey!’
Her use of his Christian name, even so-qualified, encouraged him to return a rueful half smile. ‘Not Gluck?’
‘Do not you recognize Der Erlkönig?’ She sounded dismayed.
It was time for honesty, though he would instantly regret it. ‘I confess I never heard of him.’
‘Oh, Colonel Hervey! Erlkönig is the name of the piece I was playing. It is by Franz Schubert. You have heard of Schubert, I take it?’
Hervey sighed. ‘I was a long time in India, ma’am.’
Kezia looked at him almost studiously, and for some time. ‘Of course. Forgive me,’ she said softly.
There was nothing to forgive. And if there had been he would have done so readily. Kezia Lankester was a picture of scholarship, of a serious, high mind, the like of which he had not seen in a woman, certainly not one so young. Or so powerfully attractive. He thought to reply that Erlkönig was first a poem by Goethe, but he could not. At that moment he wished only that the nuptials were over and done with.
After a lunch of pigeon breasts, Hervey and Kezia walked in the formal gardens while Fairbrother ranged further.
‘My parents will hasten back if I send word, I do assure you,’ said Kezia.
Hervey had placed her arm in his. ‘I would not disturb
their ease. I have been to Southwold; it is very agreeable.’ Sir Delaval and Lady Rumsey had left Hertfordshire but three days before for the sea air, which Sir Delaval’s doctor prescribed twice yearly. ‘The arrangements are easily made. You are quite sure you would not wish the wedding from here . . . or Hounslow?’
‘I am quite sure. And my parents are in agreement. Quietly from my aunt’s in Hanover-square, and the wedding breakfast there afterwards. I see no occasion for greater ceremony.’
Hervey was not too strongly of a contrary opinion. He understood that, her marriage to Sir Ivo having been at Walden, she would not wish to return to that church again; and he certainly appreciated the advantages of London; but he had hoped that it might be somehow a little more . . . regimental. Lord John Howard had even suggested they might avail themselves of St James’s Palace.
‘You would not object to my non-commissioned officers attending on us, would you?’
They strolled on a while before Kezia answered. ‘I would rather they not.’
Hervey tried to put himself in her mind: would the sight of blue, and sabres, be of too painful memory?
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘are not your non-commissioned officers at the Cape still?’
She was right. The men he would have wished to stand at the door of the church were several thousand miles away. Not all of them: there was Collins for one. But if Armstrong and Wainwright could not be there . . . He cleared his throat. ‘Indeed they are. And it would be a pale imitation of a guard without them. There will be no ceremony.’ He squeezed her arm.
She made no move by return, but expressed herself grateful for his understanding. ‘And I have asked a cousin to give the address. He is a canon of St Paul’s – the cathedral, I mean.’
‘Ah.’
‘You object?’
He frowned, and sighed. ‘I have already asked someone, a family friend. He was at Oxford with my late brother.’
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