Company Of Spears

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?’