Hervey 06 - Rumours Of War (6 page)

‘It is strange to think of him in his grave, is it not?’ said Kat, tapping one of the emperor’s knees with her fan. ‘He had not so very many years over the duke, I believe.’

‘They were born in the same year.’

‘Indeed? And yet I could not imagine the duke portrayed thus. So athletic a form,’ she said, with a mischievous grin, which for an instant made her face the schoolgirl’s.

‘I think he could stand comparison,’ replied Hervey loyally, but taking up Kat’s little game. ‘I imagine that Harriette Wilson is complimentary in that respect?’

Kat raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly, as if weighing the proposition seriously. ‘I believe that is so. But not as much as was Lady Hester Stanhope of Sir John Moore. If she is to be believed he—’

‘I think we should go up,’ insisted Hervey.

‘Very well,’ said Kat, tapping his arm with her fan and smiling as if pleased with herself. ‘But Sir John Moore was the duke’s rival, was he not?’

They began to ascend the spiral.

‘Only in matters of command, I believe,’ said Hervey, concentrating on keeping his spurs apart; ascending a staircase such as this was almost as perilous as coming down.

‘Sir John was a very fine figure of a man by all accounts though. Did you ever meet him, Matthew?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘What manner, exactly?’

‘I was at Corunna when he died.’

‘Indeed? You were with Moore at Corunna? You have never told me that!’

‘I was a mint-new cornet.’

Kat seemed to be calculating. ‘How old were you? A baby!’

Hervey smiled. They had reached the top of the stairs, and he gave Kat’s invitation card to a footman. ‘Brevet-Major Hervey,’ he added.

‘Well?’ she insisted, shaking his arm playfully.

‘Seventeen.’

Her eyes widened.

‘Rising eighteen.’

‘I am a-tremble at the thought. You shall tell me all about it, and soon!’

‘Lady Katherine Greville and Brevet-Major Hervey,’ announced the master of ceremonies.

The duke, undoubtedly fuller-faced, and wearing plain clothes this evening instead of, as last time, the levee dress of the Royal Horse Guards of which he was colonel, smiled broadly. He bowed and took Kat’s hand to kiss it. And then, to her escort, he returned the brisk military bow and held out his hand. ‘I am very glad to see you again, Hervey. I have only lately read the Bhurtpore despatches. Smart work. Smart work indeed.’

Smart work –
the exact same words the duke had used after the little affair at Toulouse, when first Hervey had been presented to him. But that was all of twelve years ago. The duke’s hair had whitened rather since, and his own was perhaps not so full about the temples as then. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied, his voice lowered, though not as much as once it would have been.

There were no other guests waiting to be announced, so the duke had more inclination than usual to make conversation. ‘And what do you do now?’

‘I am with my regiment at Hounslow, sir.’

‘And that pleases you?’

‘With my regiment, yes of course, sir. At Hounslow, no.’

Kat saw something of an opening, albeit small. ‘I dare say you will order the regiment to duty somewhere erelong, though, Duke?’ she tried, mindful of her escort’s thoughts.

‘It is not for me to give such orders, Lady Katherine.’ The duke smiled indulgently. ‘And I cannot think that the Duke of York would have occasion to either. A little retrenchment is what we have need of most at present. Except, perhaps, to preserve the peace at home.’

The opinion surprised Hervey, though it did not disappoint Kat.

‘Sir Fulke and Lady West.’

The announcement gave Kat the opportunity to take her escort by the arm, curtsy to her host and walk on to the drawing room.

Hervey thought the place little changed, if at all; in contrast with the duke’s appearance. It was not just the plain clothes – he had worn a blue coat at Waterloo after all; the Duke of Wellington was a member of the cabinet. It was confidently assumed that he would be commander-in-chief after the Duke of York. But there were some who spoke of him as a successor to Lord Liverpool himself, for Mr Canning was by no means universally trusted, and liked even less. The duke’s patronage would be stronger than ever, though Hervey wondered if the man were not now in too exalted a position to trouble about the fortunes of a captain of light dragoons, no matter how persuasive Kat’s charms.

‘Major Hervey?’

He turned. As ever with the Rifles, the rank was difficult to make out at first sight. The man was about the duke’s age, his face more weather-beaten, but otherwise it was little altered.

Hervey bowed. ‘Colonel Warde, good evening.’

The duke’s secretary bowed by return.

‘You know Lady Katherine Greville of course,’ said Hervey, certain of it indeed, for it had been the colonel who had effected their introduction on the first occasion.

Colonel Warde bowed again, a little lower. ‘Lady Katherine, it is always a pleasure.’

‘I will leave you to speak with each other for a moment,’ Kat replied, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I see Lady Jervoise, and I would have words with her.’

An awkward silence followed her exit. There was in Colonel Warde’s manner something disapproving. Hervey thought it must be due to his association with Kat, though there was no improper tendency, necessarily, in one officer escorting the wife of another whose husband was detained elsewhere by duty. However, he knew too that he had on the previous occasion declined Colonel Warde’s invitation – on the duke’s behalf no less – to a temporary position enquiring into the events at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, where the yeomanry and some regular cavalry had roughly handled an assembly. The affair had since been of great moment to the government, but at the time he was charged with the arrangements for the regiment’s shipping to India, and flattering though the duke’s confidence was, he had been wholly unable to break with his regimental priority. He doubted he could ever decline such an invitation again though.

‘Are you much detained by events in Greece, Colonel?’ he tried.

Colonel Warde surprised him by his candour in reply. ‘Greece? No. The duke sees no occasion for the intervention of our land forces. Indeed, he is very much opposed to any entanglement there.’

It was not what Hervey had wanted to hear. ‘And Portugal?’

Colonel Warde hesitated but an instant. ‘The duke is of the same mind in the question of Portugal. What do you know of matters there?’

‘Only a very little.’

‘Mr Canning is all for meddling, but the duke believes that no good can come of it.’

Hervey measured his response. ‘Shall we send no one to help then? I thought we had obligations to the Portuguese?’

‘Oh, we shall have to send someone sooner or later. The ambassador in Lisbon desires that officers be sent to lend counsel at once. But the duke is opposed to any intervention. And I believe the Duke of York holds to that view too.’

Hervey considered this ripe news indeed, despite the two dukes’ apparent reluctance. Mr Canning held sway in the government at present, and his views would surely prevail with Lord Liverpool and the King? And if there was to be no landing in Greece, then this Lisbon mission sounded just the thing.

‘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.’