Company Of Spears

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.’