‘Lady Lankester, do you know Major Hervey?’
Lady Lankester did not so much smile as maintain the pleasant countenance she had had for her hostess. ‘We have met, Lady George, briefly, in India.’ She lowered her head, the merest bow.
Hervey was grateful for no more formal a greeting (it would have placed them back in the Calcutta drawing room). Sir Ivo’s widow looked very much as he remembered her, but in a dress of dark blue watered silk instead of widow’s lace. She was a woman of considerable, if aloof, beauty, and marked self-possession. He bowed by return. ‘I am very glad to be reacquainted, ma’am.’
Lady George laid a hand to Lady Lankester’s arm. ‘My dear, I would know your name, if you please,’ she said, in an even more maternal fashion.
Lady Lankester smiled, not full, but appreciative nevertheless. ‘It is Kezia, ma’am.’
‘Oh, how delightful! And unusual. Is it family?’
‘The Bible, Lady George.’
‘Major Hervey would be able to say precisely where,’ Lord George suggested.
‘Indeed, Major Hervey?’
Hervey smiled, almost apologetic. ‘I have sat beneath my father’s pulpit these many years, ma’am.’
‘And do you know precisely where is this singular name to be found?’
He glanced at its bearer. ‘I believe . . . in the Book of Job.’
‘Is he correct, my dear?’ asked Lady George, reflecting Hervey’s smile.
‘He is.’ Lady Lankester smiled, although not with her eyes.
Hervey supposed she was not completely out of mourning, despite the blue silk. How could she be, indeed?
He observed that she had attended to her appearance carefully, nevertheless. Her skin was fair, she had applied a blushing rouge, and her lips, though thinner than Kat’s, shone in the way that hers did. Her hair did not look as full as Kat’s, either, but he thought it might just appear so on account of its colour, which was as fair as he had seen in many a year (in Calcutta her hair had been concealed under a mourning cap).
Lady George’s interrogation was halted by the arrival of two members of parliament and their ladies, then the general officer commanding the London District and his lady, the Bishop of Oxford, the dowager Lady — (Hervey did not catch her name) and her niece, a plain-looking girl, and diffident, whom Hervey supposed he would have to sit next to at dinner. Then finally, at ten minutes past eight, came Major Benedict Strickland, acting commanding officer of the 6th Light Dragoons.
‘I am most fearfully sorry, Colonel,’ he began. ‘And Lady George. I was not let go from Windsor until past five. We fairly had to gallop for it, and there was a deuce of a fog.’
‘I am sorry the regiment’s officers are detained in the afternoon,’ replied Lord George. ‘Even on such matters.’ He turned to the general officer commanding the London District. ‘Is the date now fixed?’
‘It is: the twentieth.’
He turned back to Strickland. ‘And what duties shall the regiment have?’
‘All dismounted, Colonel, standing duty for the Guards.’
Lord George shook his head as he looked at the two members of parliament. ‘It astonishes me how rapidly that great machine we had at Waterloo has been dismantled!’
The sentiment was shared by all the males present. The dowager Lady — complained that soon there would be too few soldiers to keep the Catholics from her door (by which Hervey understood she had estate in Ireland), and now that the Duke of York was dead there would be ‘no one to gainsay the wretched Emancipators’.
Hervey said nothing, and prayed he would not be seated next to her, either.
In fact, Hervey was very agreeably placed at dinner. On his right was the wife of the Honourable and Gallant Member for North Elmham, a constituency in not too great need of reform, and she was an easy interlocutor, principally upon the subject of Greek independence, of which she seemed to know a good deal. Their conversation was without interruption until the entrées, when convention required that Hervey turn to the place on his left.
In the best part of twenty minutes, he had been unable to think how he might adequately begin. ‘Lady Lankester, may I enquire of your situation?’
He cursed himself for the ambiguity. But Lady Lankester was an intelligent woman and, as he had observed on first acquaintance, as well as again this evening, remarkably self-possessed for someone ten years his junior (as he understood from the Calcutta drawing rooms).
‘Both my daughter and I are well, Major Hervey. And for the moment we are living in Hertfordshire.’
The Lankester estate he knew to be in that county. ‘My congratulations, ma’am, on the birth of your daughter. When was it, may I enquire?’ In truth he had no interest whatsoever in the answer, but he fancied it was a safe line – except, he now realized, her condition being what it had been in Calcutta, she could not have sailed for home at once without some peril.
‘June.’
She said it with some finality, so that Hervey found himself without a sequential question or remark, and much to his dismay. However, she appeared then to make a decided effort, even turning a little towards him.
‘June: I never thought anything so hot as then, the air so heavy. And then the monsoon – such a great relief when it came. I confess I was very afraid of the fever and all the other pestilences. Not so much for myself as . . . I suppose you became used to it, Major Hervey?’
They were speaking of the weather, he observed, but she did so easily, and he enjoyed her apparent engagement. ‘I suppose we did, though the time before the monsoon tried us sorely too. The horses bore it surprisingly well. When did you return?’
‘We sailed in July, towards the middle. The sea air was most wonderfully welcome.’
Passage to and from the Indies was a subject on which Hervey felt assured. ‘You did not encounter too many storms, I trust? The worst, I think, would have passed by then.’
‘Only once, off Madagascar. For the rest we had pleasant sailing, even in the Atlantic, and very fair winds. We made a fast time, only a little over sixteen weeks.’
‘Very fast, I should say. Ours was twenty-two! But that was rather earlier in the year.’
Lady Lankester picked up her wineglass and turned from him to take a sip. ‘But I understand that you have a daughter, Major Hervey?’
He was surprised by her knowing. ‘I do, Lady Lankester, though I own she has never taken so long a cruise.’
‘She has a governess, I presume. Does she then not live with you?’
Hervey felt the merest challenge. He answered cautiously. ‘My sister is guardian, and so far, I have not thought my postings suitable for them to accompany me.’ As he said it, he realized that it might imply disapproval of her own intrepidity – the very furthest from his mind. Indeed, he had always admired the willingness of Sir Ivo’s bride to risk herself in the Indies. And he had admired her husband equally in this regard, for a man of his means and station frequently sold out of a regiment on posting abroad and paid twice the sum to take up the same appointment in one on the home establishment.