Warrior

Hervey was finding the easy acceptance a shade disconcerting. 'And the Eighty-first?'

She smiled indulgently again. 'I cannot know the reputation of every regiment of the army. Where are they stationed?'

'Canada.'

'Canada?' She mis-keyed, and looked vexed with herself. 'I cannot be expected to go with you to Canada!'

His mouth fell open. If she had gone to India with her late husband, what possible objection could there be to Canada?

'Are you inclined to accept the command?' she asked, taking up the exercises again, speaking in an indifferent manner, not that of wife to husband.

He put a hand to her shoulder. 'I am not strongly minded to, no; and your disapproval reinforces me in that position.'

She stopped playing, momentarily. 'I thank you for consulting me in the matter.'

'The fact is, my love, I may not get a better offer. It is without purchase too. Lord Hol'ness shows no sign of selling out, and when he does, the price may be too high. John Howard told me the Seventeenth went for twenty-five thousand!'

'To whom? Who would pay such a sum just to sit in front of five hundred other men on horses?'

Hervey was rather put out by this dismissal of the honour of command, even though he supposed she spoke with irony. 'Lord Bingham.'

'Oh, then that explains it. George Bingham will merely rack-rent his miserable tenants in Mayo all the more.'

Hervey frowned again. 'I don't know George Bingham in that particular – or, indeed, any – except that he is to go to the Russians meanwhile. Lord Hill wishes me to take his place when he goes to his regiment.'

Kezia increased the dynamics of her exercises as if to underscore her disapproval. 'I know George Bingham perfectly well enough. He is not a cultivated man.'

Hervey could not see the relevance of what he had no reason to doubt was a perfectly apt judgement of Lord Bingham's character to the price of the Seventeenth; but he was intrigued that his wife should claim an acquaintance with their new commanding officer. 'How old would you say he was exactly?'

'He is my age, perhaps a little more. He attended the balls in the year I was out.'

Hervey cursed silently for being inclined to dislike a man he had never met. He had no knowledge of Bingham save that he was too young to have seen service in the French war, and to his almost certain knowledge had not been to India. 'But the Cape, my love: we must needs take passage by the month's end.'

Kezia stopped playing, her hands poised above the keyboard, her face all astonishment. 'We? Matthew, I cannot possibly go by the month's end. You know I am to play at the benefit concerts. It is quite impossible!'

Hervey was likewise dismayed. 'But I cannot leave you here. I cannot return to the Cape without my wife!'

Kezia laid her hands in her lap, and turned her head to him with a pleasant countenance despite the evident disagreeability of the subject. 'Matthew, you yourself have said that Eyre Somervile wishes you to return forthwith. Manifestly he has urgent need of you, and I do not suppose that he has need of you at his office, do you? I have no desire to sit at Cape-town while you and he hunt tiger or whatever it is that you do. And then Lord Hill wishes you to go to the Turks or the Russians, so we would not be at the Cape for more than six months, in which case, where is the sense in my undertaking two voyages and enduring the intervening months of separation? And would you wish it, too, for your daughter and for mine?'

Hervey pulled a chair nearer to the piano and sat down, taking her hand. 'But we should be making those voyages together, and the work that Somervile has in mind would not, I'm sure, take me from Cape-town for all the months in between. Besides, if I am to replace Bingham in the Levant I shall be gone a further six months or more, and it will scarcely be possible for you to accompany me then.'

Kezia withdrew her hand. 'Matthew, all that matters not, for as I have said already, I am beholden to my aunt.'

Hervey shook his head in disbelief.

'Matthew, you of all people must know the calls of duty.'

He was about to say 'yes, but duty of substance' when he thought better of it. Perhaps it was expedient to leave the matter, for the moment. It was early, they had not breakfasted, and he had interrupted her practice.

V

A HUNTHounslow, afternoon, the same day

Hervey gathered up the reins as the commanding officer came on parade. He turned in the little finger of his right hand as far as he could and saluted, hoping that Lord Holderness would not notice that the seam of his glove had unaccountably split. In the scheme of things it was not perhaps of the greatest moment: a broken stitch even on a piece of saddlery was not unknown, but it suggested less than the sharpest eye for maintenance. And Hervey knew his eye had been elsewhere than on such things these past weeks (neither had Johnson been given opportunity for the usual making and mending). But if Lord Holderness noticed, he did not show it. He returned the salute cheerily, without greeting (they had taken lunch together in the mess), and Hervey closed to his side, his borrowed mare whickering her own salutation to the colonel's charger.

It was an unexpected as well as a pleasant diversion. He had gone to Hounslow in the morning to place the details of Caithlin Armstrong's funeral in the hands of the adjutant, and Lord Holderness had asked him to ride out with him in the afternoon. 'I hope you will both be able to dine with us at Heston before you sail,' he said as they passed the sentries presenting arms at the barrack gates (he and Lady Holderness had taken the lease on Heston House, a mile or so away).

'A pleasure, Colonel,' replied Hervey, adding with something of a smile, 'though persuading Kezia to leave her pianoforte is not easy at present. She has several benefit concerts.' He could not help thinking how eagerly Kat would have accepted.

Lord Holderness nodded, and smiled indulgently. 'A prodigious talent, I understand.'

They rode on in silence, accompanied by a trumpeter, an orderly and the picket officer, who had all reined in, respectfully, to allow the colonel and the senior major to converse in private.

The sun shone, but it was not too hot a day. Blackbirds were still singing – mellow, fluting song despite the hour; swifts in great numbers screamed this way and that; and, high above, a red kite circled effortlessly. Hervey watched as suddenly a crow flew up at it. A nest to guard, perhaps? But he had only ever observed a kite pick at carrion; he did not think it hunted like the hawk or the buzzard. Did the crow not know one bird from another? Or did it suppose that the kite might forget itself? He recalled the service of the vultures at the Cape, how Fairbrother had detected the movement of the Zulu by observing their flight. How he missed Fairbrother's easy company now. He wondered how he was enjoying Devon, and the relicts of his family there.

Lord Holderness shifted his left leg forward and began tightening the girth on his hunting saddle. 'Now, we have made no mention of it – the Eighty-first. What is your inclination?'

Hervey tried to keep one eye on the kite, which evaded its impertinent assailant by leisurely flexions of its deep-forked tail. He had, of course, intended telling Lord Holderness of the offer of the Eighty-first, this afternoon possibly, for he had not supposed he knew of it.