Company Of Spears

My dearest Sister,I do not think that anything you might have written me could have given such cause for pleasure. I am delighted for you to the very depths of my being, for you know I owe you more than I could ever repay, and can now at least rejoice that a man I so fervently admire shall bring you happiness where I have for so long stood in its way. And if I give a very imperfect account of those feelings of joy here, it is solely on account of the expressman’s attending and my knowing the urgency in which my reply is held by you.But Fortune favours us greatly, my dear Elizabeth, for not only are you to be married, but I also. Lady Lankester – Kezia Lankester – widow of Sir Ivo, has accepted my own offer. She has a daughter, not yet one year old, and I believe Georgiana will therefore be as completely happy in this as can I. I do not know when the marriage shall take place, for much depends on a commission abroad, which Eyre Somervile has asked me to undertake with him…

He wrote a few more lines, largely repeating his joy at Elizabeth’s news and assuring her that his own arrangements stood in perfect accord with her own, then laid down his pen with considerable relief. It was a letter he had found strangely difficult to compose, and not merely for knowing the expressman waited. At a stroke Elizabeth’s news removed a burden of guilt he had begun to feel was intolerable. Besides her own happiness, therefore, he had much to be thankful for, which in no small measure served as balm to the wound of Lord George’s letter. How often he and his brother officers had spoken – and with black humour – of the fortunes of war; yet here the fortunes of peace were no less outrageous. In the space of but a few minutes his family circumstances were radically recast, and his military horizons transferred from Hounslow Heath to the wide Karoo. He would be lieutenant-colonel, at least, albeit in another uniform, and he had the satisfaction of seeing Hairsine on the brink of commissioning and Armstrong stepping into his shoes. These were mixed fortunes indeed. And, he had to remind himself, they were still to be safely decided. He must waste no time in thinking what might have been: he had to fashion the details of what now remained as his fortune.

XII

AN UNDERSTANDING

That evening

‘Major Hervey, m’lady.’

Hervey entered the drawing room like a man arraigned before a court martial. He saw Kat rise, and the smile light her face as if she were a delighted child.

Lady Katherine Greville was but a month or so from her forty-third birthday. Hervey did not know her age precisely. Indeed there were very few clues to her seniority, and he would never have supposed it had not Sir Peregrine Greville himself been a man of – to his mind – advanced years, silvery and bald, paunchy and ponderous (though a kind man by all accounts); and had not Kat, too, from time to time hinted at worldly knowledge that came with a certain maturity. It did not trouble him in the least to know she was older than he. Most assuredly not when she appeared as she did now, for her looks and her figure would have made a woman half her age envious. But there lay something of a problem, for although Kezia Lankester was not exactly half Kat’s age, she was undoubtedly close to it. He would not, of course, tell Kat this – why would there be need? – but she might suspect; she would certainly question him; she might even discover for herself.

‘Matthew, at last you are come!’ She embraced him unselfconsciously, even before the footman was able to close the doors of her sitting room. ‘Have you dined? Shall you stay? Where have you been?’

Hervey found himself unable to answer any of her questions with candour. ‘We have had much to do in Hounslow,’ he tried.

‘Indeed? You have always found the drive here and back an easy one,’ she said, raising her eyebrows just enough to convey her meaning.

Hervey cleared his throat. ‘I—’