Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (20 page)

Somervile rose. ‘Come down at once when you’re dressed to meet our host. It’s a pity you did not arrive a little earlier: Emma and your lady were teaing together in the orangery – rather a useful
kala jugga,
I should have thought.’

Somervile was being frivolous, Hervey knew full well, but Somervile’s frivolity was invariably laced with substantial intent. What the substance was this time, he could not be sure: but he would have need of a
kala jugga
– a secluded place – at some moment in the party. He most certainly
hoped
he would.

‘And that dog of hers!’

‘Dog?’ said Hervey, as if this would mean some recalculation. ‘I did not know there was a dog.’

‘If you could call it that. An Italian greyhound.’

‘I think them delightful!’

‘Then you had better go to it, for it bit me.’

Hervey laughed. ‘It sensed an unadoring presence perhaps?’

‘Mm. Shall you wear regimentals this evening?’ ‘I had not thought to. Would it be remiss?’ ‘It is a private party. But our host might deem it a courtesy.’

No one seemed to be out much in regimentals in London, Hervey remarked, but the country was always a late follower of fashion. ‘Very well.’

‘No doubt it will serve your purpose, too. What female heart can withstand a red coat?’

‘Somervile, you read too many novels! And my coat is blue, not red.’

‘It is
metaphorically
red. And I was quoting from the
Edinburgh Review,
or are Whiggish journals beneath you?’ He took his copy from the pocket of his coat. ‘I at once resolved to save it for you when I saw it: “What female heart can withstand a red coat? I think this should be part of female education. As boys have the rocking horse to accustom them to ride, I would have military dolls in the nursery, to harden their hearts against officers and red coats.”’

‘Who writes such nonsense?’

‘Hervey, my dear fellow, I could have written it myself! But we know that Lady Lankester must not have had military dolls in the nursery to harden
her
heart against red coats – though I should like to know what it would take to raise that heart’s temperature above freezing!’

With some force Hervey threw back the orange (which his friend caught deftly with one hand). ‘Somervile! I wonder that you asked her to accompany you at all with so low an opinion of her.’

‘Not low, my dear Hervey, not low. Her temperature is of no concern to me.’

The acquaintance between the Somerviles and Kezia Lankester had begun firmly and happily in Calcutta, and after the death of Sir Ivo, Emma and her husband had stood not as mere friends but
in loco familiae.
Hervey understood this full well. What sense of obligation rather than true affection maintained their acquaintance now he did not know, but in truth it mattered not. That acquaintance had propelled the woman he was to ask to be his wife into circumstances that might otherwise have taken an age to contrive. The initiative was now his alone, however.

A hot bath had been drawn for him, which, after the early start and the clatter down from Hounslow, Hervey found welcome and restoring. He dressed in his levee coat, with white knee-breeches (trousers might be considered rather careless in such a place, even though Somervile had said they would be a
small
party), and descended to join his host and Lady Cockerell, and such of the small party that were assembled already.

‘I read the Bhurtpore dispatches,’ said Sir Charles Cockerell, extending a hand. ‘You captured that wretch Durjan Sal!’

‘I did, Sir Charles. He was bolting the place like a manged fox.’

‘And you saw off that desperate business the other night in Hertfordshire.’

‘I would not have called it desperate, sir: I’m afraid it was a rather feeble affair.’

Sir Charles looked doubtful. But there were other introductions to make: Lady Cockerell, considerably younger than her husband’s seventy-odd years, a woman of fashion, with an easy smile in contrast with her husband’s cold aspect and manner; there was the vicar of the parish of Sezincote, an urbane man perhaps five years older than Hervey, and his wife, the Honourable Mrs Castle.

‘Lady Lankester you know of course.’

Hervey turned. He had not seen her enter the room. She no longer wore demi-mourning, but instead a ball dress of embroidered net over cream satin, the décolleté distinct but modest. He was more taken by her appearance than he had somehow expected, and almost caught his breath. ‘Of course,’ he said, bowing.

Kezia Lankester curtsied, rather formally. ‘Major Hervey, what a pleasure to see you again.’ She smiled, but – he imagined it – perhaps rather distantly.

He sought too urgently to make reply. ‘And a great pleasure for me, Lady Lankester—’

She had turned already to the Reverend and the Honourable Mrs Castle.

But Hervey’s discomfort was soon relieved by the arrival of two local squires, one of them a baronet, both of them ten years at least his senior, together with their wives and the baronet’s daughter and her betrothed. The squires were short and stocky, the untitled one perfectly round-faced and with a good many broken blood vessels. They were by no means mere floggers of the shire bench, however, and in the course of the evening would reveal a fair breadth of thinking, not viscerally against Reform, and sympathetic (if cautiously) to Catholic Emancipation. Both had served loyally in the militia during the French wars and were interested in Hervey’s thoughts on military retrenchment. Their wives, however, would prove not so diverting, but since they seemed to prefer the company of the Reverend Mr Castle this would not trouble Hervey unduly. The betrothed daughter was, he estimated, not yet twenty. Besides a perfect complexion, some prettiness and good teeth, she had no conversation, nor little else to recommend her. What might pass momentarily as sparkle was, he discovered, mere silliness, although he would later chide himself for such a harsh judgement of one so young. Except that Henrietta had been her age when…

The fiance was a tall, spare man – Hervey thought him his side of thirty – who bowed awkwardly and found it difficult to look him in the eye. He imagined him a poor catch for the young Miss —, although it was possible that he had considerably more money than breeding (Hervey noted that his coat was unquestionably well-cut).

Then came Sir Charles’s country attorney, a gentleman, a little younger than his host and with the easy, unassuming manners of the earlier age, and an open face, an easy smile – a thoroughgoing picture of decency and common sense. And his wife was refined and equally at home. It was soon revealed that they had lost a son with the Twenty-eighth at Badajoz.

‘Might you have known him, Major Hervey?’

‘I may well have made his acquaintance, sir. Forgive me, but we were many in Spain. But Badajoz was a truly desperate affair. I do not think there were many officers in the infantry who were not wounded that night.’

The attorney maintained his enquiring smile throughout the exchange, his wife perhaps did less so, but there was no sadness, just a tender acceptance, as if it were the duty of a family such as theirs to officer the regiment which bore the county’s name, and to accept the same fate as so many others who might not have their resource or advantage. Hervey wondered if the pain had eased in the dozen years since the siege. He had no experience of a grieving parent. When his own brother had died – in very different circumstances – he had been far away, and when he had returned there had only been happiness at his own safe homecoming.

When the attorney and his wife moved on to pay their respects to the representative of the cloth, Hervey was able to stand back from things a little and observe Kezia Lankester. She was, barring the betrothed daughter, the youngest in the party, and yet her self-possession was very marked. She took her leave of Lady — with cool assurance, spoke a few words to the happy couple, rather cut the fiance when she considered their conversation was sufficient and then took up easily with her hostess. He could, perhaps, see what others meant when they spoke of a lack of warmth, but he knew at least as well as any man what the early and violent loss of a marriage partner might do; and he had no reason to presume that her love – indeed he might suppose
passion
– for the late Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ivo Lankester had been one jot less than his own had been for Henrietta.

At dinner they sat beside each other. The fashion being to dine ‘promiscuously’ – male alternating with female – there was nothing suggestive in this. Indeed, had the two unattached guests not been seated together it would have been something of a discourtesy. When Hervey had dined at Lord George Irvine’s on returning from Lisbon, Lady Lankester had sat on his left. He had spent the first twenty minutes or so talking to the wife of a member of parliament, on his right, while trying to think what he might decently say to the widow of his late commanding officer when the time came. This evening Kezia Lankester sat on his left again, but although he was no longer quite the stranger, he had cause for even more unease. He had determined on marriage and yet he had not the faintest idea what were her thoughts on remarrying, nor the remotest notion of how eligible she would consider him. He chided himself. It was absurd that he should feel thus, a man who would face the King’s enemies, yet who shrank from one of the King’s subjects –
and
a subject ten years his junior at that!

Lady Cockerell had a French chef evidently keen to display his skill. Monsieur Anton’s hors d’oeuvres – tunny and salmon canapés (cold), oysters with shrimp butter, oyster tarts, grilled oysters with herbs, cheese fritters and cheese puffs, all hot – engaged them a full half-hour, during which the untitled squire’s wife was eager for Hervey’s opinion on the prospects of her various nephews and more distant relatives who were in uniform, in which he endeavoured to oblige her while with increasing desperation trying to think how when the moment came he might open the conversation with Kezia Lankester.

The fish course came and went – a shrimp bisque, and salmon cooked in champagne – and still the untitled squire’s wife had relatives and acquaintances in red to speak of. Only when a procession of footmen brought the entrées did Hervey find himself without conversation at last, his interlocutor having been taken up by the Reverend Mr Castle in the space of a footman’s intervention between them.

Hervey was now left with nothing to distract him from the necessity of thinking of a favourable opening with the woman he intended marrying. His mind, however, was yet a bewildering blank. He watched as each magnificent entrée was brought to the table: boned quail filled with chicken mousse, ragout of pigeon with shallots and button mushrooms, braised sirloin of beef with stuffed tomatoes, stuffed mushrooms, potato croquettes, a vegetable mould and warm cucumbers in cream. Lady Cockerell’s dazzling display of culinary hospitality served only to make his quest for an apt line more difficult.

Kezia Lankester turned to him and touched his sleeve. ‘I am so glad to see you here, Major Hervey. We have had no opportunity to speak freely since India. My late husband thought very highly of you, you know.’

Hervey had to make a considerable effort to hide his relief. Her speaking thus was a gesture of much charm, without (it seemed to him) undue superiority, though perhaps with an underlying, rather distant formality. She was, he had to remind himself, ten years his junior, for all her apparent self-possession. ‘You are kind to say so, madam.’

‘No, Major Hervey,’ she replied, with something of a smile. ‘It was not meant as a kindness. Would you tell me … do you know how my late husband died?’

Hervey was not ready for this turn. He had supposed, somehow, that it had all been said in India – by the regimental major, perhaps. ‘Well … that is … yes, I do. I … indeed I saw him fall.’

Kezia Lankester now looked down at her plate. ‘I imagine he was to the fore?’

‘Oh, he was. Indeed he was. He was at the head of one of the trenches closest the walls of Bhurtpore.’ He was surprised she needed to ask.

‘And was his death … was it done quickly?’

Hervey sighed. ‘It was instant, madam.’

‘You are certain of it, Major Hervey? You do not say it just for my sake?’

Hervey shook his head. ‘I am certain of it.’

‘So he was unable to say anything by way of … last words.’

‘I am afraid not.’

He could not determine whether his reply was a comfort or the exact opposite. He wondered why she was so concerned with last words. They were rarely, in his experience, especially noble, and frequently they were entirely profane.

She seemed now to rally. ‘And how do you like your command? Poor Major Strickland: I thought him a fine man.’

Hervey was momentarily thrown off what passed for his stride by the bitter-sweet in the connection of command and his old friend’s death. ‘Well, I … command of one’s regiment, even temporarily, is the greatest satisfaction.’

‘But Lady Somervile tells me you may have the lieutenant-colonelcy proper soon.’

Hervey wished Emma had not. ‘I very much hope it may be so, Lady Lankester, but there are many formalities.’

‘And your daughter, as I recall: she is well?’

Again, the sudden turn she took broke his stride. But he had surrendered the initiative …’She is well, thank you.’ He tried to form a question by return: her own daughter—

‘And she is, as I remember, with your sister in Wiltshire?’

‘Indeed.’ He was now determined to wrest back the initiative, at least partially: ‘And you will be staying in Gloucestershire long?’

But wresting was hardly necessary, for she seemed perfectly content to surrender the initiative. Glad, even. And so the initiative remained with him for the rest of their dinner, his fluency in finding question after question quite taking him by surprise, until, after a while, there
was
no initiative but free conversation – and on matters other than the here and now, the weather or family, the subjects by which a little prior study usually served in otherwise faltering table-talk. He was even composed enough to observe her closely as they spoke. He had admired her complexion when they had dined at Lord George Irvine’s: it was fair, and she had applied a blushing stick, no doubt to relieve her mourning pallor, and he fancied she had again this evening. But soon he concluded that her face was more naturally suffused with colour, and altogether warmer than that evening in January. He found himself admiring the gentle swell of her breast, and although her lips were decidedly thinner than Kat’s – or for that matter Vaneeta’s – he began wondering, too…