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Kat wore a dark blue day dress, tight-bodiced and full-sleeved, with a yellow muslin tucker – Hervey’s favourite colours. She was a year or so past forty, he understood, but she was undeniably (this afternoon especially) one of the handsomest women in London.

‘I hear you are the King’s new favourite,’ she began, playfully.

Hervey screwed up his face. ‘What is the game?’

She smiled. ‘I heard that you humbugged the Guards at Windsor.’

Hervey looked uneasy. ‘Where did you hear? From whom?’

Kat raised an eyebrow. ‘From Captain Darbishire.’

‘Mm. Captain Darbishire.’ He sounded faintly vexed.

‘Poor Hol’ness. Such an agreeable man.’

Hervey sat up a little, as if to distance himself. ‘Kat, you did not summon me to relay tattle.’

Matthew,’ she said, sounding hurt. ‘Be not unkind!’

He sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took her hand. ‘It has been the very devil of a time. And yesterday Howard told me the depositions from two senior officers at Waltham Abbey do not augur well.’

‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, brightening. ‘It is that of which I have good news. Sir Peregrine is not to be president of the inquiry.’

‘What? But only the other day—’

‘I made it quite plain to him that it would require his presence here wholly unreasonably, and that we would not be able to spend August in Alderney . . . or Sark, or wherever it is, if he were to preside. I told him, too, that it was all Harry Palmerston’s doing, and that the commander-in-chief disapproved of it, and no good could come of it – that Lord Hill might even be minded to recall him from the Channel Islands.’

Hervey was wholly taken aback, quite overcome with admiration, indeed; for Kat’s imaginative use of ‘fact’ was masterly. ‘Kat, I—’

She lowered her eyes, modestly.

His relief was prodigious. He kissed her.

She smiled, happy to have made him content.

He put his arms around her, and kissed her more.

She rose, left the sitting room for a minute or so, and returned looking uncommonly demure. ‘I must leave for Apsley House at eight. I have dismissed the servants for the afternoon.’ She held out a hand. ‘Come.’

After breakfast the following morning, while Fairbrother took a hackney cab to Mill Hill (where he had an appointment to meet with Mr Wilberforce, who lived there quietly in retirement, but active yet in his interest in the fortunes of the West India slaves), Hervey took to his feet for Berkeley Square, where (he could not bear to put a name to the man) Major-Baron Heinrici kept a house. Fairbrother had offered to abandon his interview, though it was one he had looked to keenly, for he would have liked to see Elizabeth again. And not merely for the pleasure of spirited company: he knew very well that his friend was in ill humour at the prospect of their meeting this morning, disapproving still of his sister’s proposed course, and especially her accompanying to St James’s a man to whom she was most unofficially attached; and he believed that his attendance might do something to ameliorate matters. But Hervey had prevailed upon him: it was unhappy family business to which he would not wish to expose an outsider, even one whose friendship he valued so much.

When he arrived at No. 27, Berkeley Square, he trusted that it was at an hour when Heinrici would not be at home, having sent word to Elizabeth the evening before that he would call on her. His sister received him warmly, happily indeed, yet with just the suggestion of unease that derived from knowing her brother’s disapproval. She showed him into a small sitting room and asked Major Heinrici’s man to have coffee brought to them. She did it so sweetly, and Heinrici’s man was so pleased to be obliging (evidence, he rued, of his sister’s being entirely at home with her lamentable decision) that Hervey had to remind himself not to be beguiled into complicity.

‘A handsome house,’ he said, with a note of accusation.

Elizabeth ignored the note. ‘It is, is it not? Major Heinrici, I find, has the most felicitous taste.’

That did not sound entirely like his sister. There was a note of irreverence, of defiance even. He would not mince his words (what point did it serve?): ‘And you are resolved on this . . . course?’

A footman brought coffee. ‘Schönen Dank, Hartmut. Und eine Bissen Kuchen, vielleicht?

Hervey’s expression was now undisguised: he had never known her possess a word of German. ‘You have wasted no time in that regard, I see.’

But again Elizabeth would not give battle: if her brother wanted to test her defences, he was going to have to do so more resolutely than mere tilting. ‘Indeed I have. All Major Heinrici’s servants speak the most excellent English, but I have a mind that they like to hear me try at least.’

‘So you see a good deal of them, then?’

‘Daily – when I am permitted by my obligations at Horningsham, and the workhouse.’

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Все книги серии Matthew Hervey

Company Of Spears
Company Of Spears

The eighth novel in the acclaimed and bestselling series finds Hervey on his way to South Africa where he is preparing to form a new body of cavalry, the Cape Mounted Rifles.All looks set fair for Major Matthew Hervey: news of a handsome legacy should allow him to purchase command of his beloved regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons. He is resolved to marry, and rather to his surprise, the object of his affections — the widow of the late Sir Ivo Lankester — has readily consented. But he has reckoned without the opportunism of a fellow officer with ready cash to hand; and before too long, he is on the lookout for a new posting. However, Hervey has always been well-served by old and loyal friends, and Eyre Somervile comes to his aid with the means of promotion: there is need of a man to help reorganize the local forces at the Cape Colony, and in particular to form a new body of horse.At the Cape, Hervey is at once thrown into frontier skirmishes with the Xhosa and Bushmen, but it is Eyre Somervile's instruction to range deep across the frontier, into the territory of the Zulus, that is his greatest test. Accompanied by the charming, cultured, but dissipated Edward Fairbrother, a black captain from the disbanded Royal African Corps and bastard son of a Jamaican planter, he makes contact with the legendary King Shaka, and thereafter warns Somervile of the danger that the expanding Zulu nation poses to the Cape Colony.The climax of the novel is the battle of Umtata River (August 1828), in which Hervey has to fight as he has never fought before, and in so doing saves the life of the nephew of one of the Duke of Wellington's closest friends.

Allan Mallinson

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