A Regimental Affair (17 page)

‘Then heaven preserve us if ever we have to turn out on some alarm!’

‘Ay, just so,’ nodded Strickland solemnly. ‘I’m glad you’re come back, Hervey.’

Hervey felt the sentiment a shade awkwardly. ‘I’m glad you should say so.’

‘But I believe I must tell you I’m thinking of exchanging,’ added Strickland sheepishly.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ Hervey spoke with feeling, for though they had not served together long, they had at least shared a campaign. He wondered if he might soon have
any
kindred spirits of the old Sixth to serve with. ‘Do you have to? It won’t be easy to exchange now, unless you’re prepared to go to a regiment warned for India. A troop is hard to come by as things stand, what with disbandments and so on.’

‘I know. I’d go to India, though the climate would serve me ill. I’d exchange into the infantry even, perhaps not taking the difference either.’

This last he said almost defiantly. He must indeed be desperate, thought Hervey, for Strickland was not a rich man, and could ill afford to throw away the difference in price of a captaincy – perhaps a thousand pounds if auctioned well in Charles Street. Could anyone find his commanding officer so unbearable? He put his hand to Strickland’s arm. ‘Do you want to speak of it?’

‘No, not now – not here. When you’re come back.’

The words were so heavy that still Hervey could not break off. ‘My dear fellow . . .’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Why don’t you come down to Wiltshire with me for a few days. I’d welcome the company, and you could tell me of how things are here.’

Strickland brightened a little. ‘That is exceedingly good of you, but I’m captain of the week.’

‘Then as soon as I’m back let us dine together in the town, and you may tell me of it.’

‘Yes . . . yes; I should like that.’

When Hervey returned to Longleat, Henrietta seemed to greet him rather anxiously. ‘I had such a presentiment of your not returning,’ she said, taking his arm as they walked up the steps to the house.
‘Matthew, dearest, I do not want us to be apart again unless it is entirely necessary – not even for a night.’

The proposal was scarcely disagreeable. ‘But of course, my darling. I should not have gone to Hounslow alone had I thought for one minute the journey would not have been tedious for you.’

‘But you did not ask.’

He was puzzled. ‘Would you have agreed to come if it had been disagreeable to you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then you see why I did not ask.’

‘But Matthew, how could it ever be disagreeable to me to be with you?’

What a simple statement of love that was. A lump came to his throat. ‘My dear, I . . .’

She threw her head back, grinning mischievously. A strand of hair fell across her cheek, but she merely brushed it behind an ear. ‘Then it is resolved on. Only if I am ordered by the Horse Guards itself shall I leave you – and a direct order at that!’

Hervey smiled too, embracing her and taking the pins from her hair so that it fell about her shoulders. ‘Then when I am on manoeuvres with my troop you shall come up at night with the bat-horses.’

‘And share your bivouac?’ She giggled. ‘Would your colonel approve?’

‘He would be jealous.’

‘I could dress as one of your dragoons, then.’

Hervey smiled again. ‘If the disguise worked, then it might lead to my arrest!’

She giggled even more.

‘Besides, the dolman’s a mite too tight-fitting to be any sort of deception.’ He coloured up even as he was saying it.

She blushed too, but it was with the little tell-tale patches of red about her neck. ‘Come,’ she whispered, pulling his arm. ‘We’re not to dine for another hour.’

In the afternoon he took up the
Warminster Miscellany
to read the account of the trial and execution of the two murderers of farmer Fremantle and his maidservant. The Bow Street investigators had done their work with remarkable despatch, it seemed. They
had arrived at Longleat two days after the wedding, and within five more had made their arrests. Not on Warminster Common, as everyone had expected, but in a next-door parish, albeit across the county boundary. And this fact made for alarm in Horningsham, for it was much easier to live with the notion that an outlaw from the common had done this vile thing than a couple of roughs from a village not unlike theirs. Nevertheless, it was some consolation to know that justice would always be served, for this must be a great deterrent to further crime, albeit at the expense of bringing investigators from London.

Hervey had been much taken with the Bow Street men. Lord Bath had asked him if he would see to things while he himself went up to parliament for the estimates, and so each day, of a morning, the detectors would give him a summary of the evidence they had gathered the previous day and tell him of their next intentions. He did not suppose he had met two more intelligent men – in the most practical sense of that quality. The senior of the two had been twenty years in the King’s service, an artificer of sappers and miners. His assistant, by contrast, had for a long time been a bookkeeper with the Lunatic Asylum Protector Insurance Company. Their methods were meticulous, ingenious and complementary, their hours long. Nor did they make the mistake of thinking they were dealing with bumpkins because they were beyond the sound of Bow bells. But one thing had impressed Hervey greatly: from the outset the detectors had had complete confidence that they would bring the perpetrators to justice, and doubtless this had conveyed itself to all whom they interviewed, speeding the ultimate detection.

When this had been accomplished, the three of them had enjoyed a good dinner at The Bell in Warminster (which boasted the best double mutton chops in the county), before the Bow Street men had taken the afternoon stage for Andover, and thence the post back to London. As Hervey now read the account of the hanging, he thought himself lucky that he had had pressing business at Hounslow after all, for the companion gallows at the top of Arn Hill, and two young men scarcely out of their teens brought by their own wickedness to so violent an end, would have been a heavy sight, even with the knowledge of the awful butchery of the farmer and his maid. For he knew there were men in the
Sixth who might, in other circumstances, be capable of such a thing. And he would for certain have had to be there, not least to be a support for his father who, with the Vicar of Warminster, had had to officiate on the scaffold. ‘A vast multitude of spectators,’ the
Miscellany
said there had been. And the Wiltshire Yeomanry had been out to keep order, just as the regulars had been with Cashman – another man who for sure would have been kept from the gallows had he still been in the King’s service. In any event, the Bow Street men were the toast of the
Miscellany
– ‘the heroes of the multitude’, said the paper.

He was deeply absorbed with
The Times
when Henrietta joined him. ‘What engages you, my love?’ she asked brightly, leaning over him from behind to kiss his forehead.

‘Nothing agreeable, I’m afraid,’ he sighed.

‘Tell me of it.’

‘Well, habeas corpus is still suspended, and Lord Sidmouth is castigated for the way he is dealing with the agitation over reform. They accuse him of using spies too freely, and agents provocateurs.’

Henrietta looked troubled, rather in the way she had when he had returned from Hounslow. ‘It alarms me sometimes. I might tell you there have been nights here when I have lain awake expecting the house to be attacked, when the slightest noise has made me fear for my life.’

Her tone chilled him. He stood up and took hold of her. ‘My dear, such things don’t come like that. We should have word well before.’

She seemed prepared to believe his assurance for the time being. ‘In any case, I have no cause for fear now you are with me.’

It had been the briefest of departures from her habitually carefree manner, but it registered with her husband nonetheless. Hers was the vulnerability of a world suddenly not impregnable. Like as not, in her years in the shelter of the Longleat acres she had never seen anything more violent than a carter’s whip to a horse, or heard a curse stronger than a blade’s dealt a bad hand at cards. But why then should she seem so fearful? He knew little of her childhood before Longleat, of course, but he hardly supposed it had been an unhappy one.

‘We’re putting the improver to Jessye again today.’ He tried to
give the change of subject as uncontrived an air as possible. ‘The stud groom thinks it should be well this time.’ Jessye had failed to come into foal a month ago, but the stud groom had said he doubted she was truly in season. ‘He’s got her a teaser this time.’

Henrietta was smiling again. ‘Do
I
tease you still, Matthew?’

‘Ay,’ he grinned, ‘but different from how you did!’

They kissed, but the door opened and a footman informed him that Private Johnson had Jessye ready for the stallion.

‘You had better go to your other love,’ sighed Henrietta, refastening the buttons on his coat.

‘Have you seen the improvement stallion?’ he asked, as he made to leave. ‘He is quite magnificent.’

‘No. May I come with you?’

‘Of course. He’s one of the handsomest things you’ll ever see. He has a coat like polished ebony. There’s something in a stallion that—’

He was going to tell her there was something in a stallion which there wasn’t in a gelding. ‘Yes, Matthew,’ she interrupted, frowning. ‘I believe I can understand that much!’

He did not redden this time.

Johnson led Jessye in hand to the big yard used for the coverings. Straw was spread deep and for a moment the mare looked as though she had a mind to roll, but he managed to keep her up, and stood close to quieten her. The stud groom brought the stallion directly, and with scarcely a hand needed to help, the big horse went to her.

Hervey had left Henrietta at the saddle room, expecting her to return to the house. He didn’t know she watched from a window; not until he went back afterwards and found her waiting for him. She looked him full in the face – an admiring look, a look that said she understood him a little more. ‘What a thing is nature,’ she said. It was a distinctly reverent statement, but also determined. Nature’s blush suffused her own face, and she took his hand and led him from the room.

Later they rode out together, up past the hanger towards the picket post and around Arn Hill. Hervey thought he could do this for ever, and said so. Henrietta thought he could not, and said so too. Indeed, she
hoped
he could not, ‘For I did not choose to marry
a squire!’ But for the moment, though, there was nothing that either of them would rather do than ride to the downs. There was something about two horses in a landscape. Two was a number like no other. Three, four, ten, twenty, or even one: it was all much the same. But two was different, for it spoke of intimacy. They rode for a full half-mile without saying anything, content to let nature speak: a sky with scarcely a cloud, the downs without the hand of man. And now they were joined by swallows – two dozen or more. They dived and turned and soared all about them, swooping so close and low as to seem certain to collide with the horses’ legs, though neither Hervey’s grey nor Henrietta’s little bay mare took the slightest notice.

‘I have never seen the like,’ said Henrietta. ‘Never seen them fly so. They are enchanting. Why do they accompany us do you think?’

‘Perhaps they just like it.’

‘Oh, I hope that is so, Matthew,’ she said, smiling and looking about her. ‘I should like to think that a bird is as capable of taking such simple pleasure. I have never looked down at a swallow before, only up. They are so beautiful! I should much rather we stay watching them than go to Lady Hore’s tonight.’

She had once told him that a day without a party was not worth recording in her journal. What a change this was. Or had she simply concealed this side hereto? ‘Do you see how they spread their fork-tails as they turn?’ He gestured with his whip. ‘It must help them veer so acutely.’

‘And they have flown all the way from Africa! It is almost too much to believe. So far that . . .
You
have not been to Africa, have you, Matthew?’

‘No, not
to
Africa. Around Africa. I saw its shores once or twice, but very distantly.’

‘I should like to see Africa,’ said Henrietta, still watching the swallows with a look of semi-wonder.

At no time had she ever expressed, within his hearing, any desire to travel beyond Italy or St Petersburg. He had even had his doubts, in Paris two summers ago, that she could be persuaded to come with him to India. He made no reply.

She watched the swallows for a full five minutes without a sound. Then she sighed very contentedly and turned to him. ‘I am
so very, very happy with you, Matthew. I hardly know myself. I see things I have never seen before.’

‘And I, too,’ he assured her. ‘I do not believe that I truly knew what life was before now – before daring to
admit
that I loved you, that is, for I believe I have loved you a very long time.’

She smiled at him reassuringly. She knew what trials had attended that declaration. They rode on a while longer in happy silence. ‘But Matthew, there is one thing I have been meaning to ask. The morning after our wedding – why did Daniel Coates wish to see you so urgently?’