Portugal, is there not?’
Hervey turned to her. ‘Scarcely
Kat raised her eyebrows and inclined her head, as if to say that it was the way of things.
Hervey groaned, but inaudibly, for the wheels were now growling on the macadam.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Nothing. An opportunity for service missed, that is all.’
‘Ah, so you would wish to go with these officers to Lisbon next week?’
‘Next week is it? Of course I should! And I may say I would count not many men better suited, for I had a good hackney all about the Peninsula those five years and more.’
Kat turned her head from him to gaze absently through the chariot’s front window. ‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘That is what the duke said.’
Hervey turned his whole body to her. ‘The duke said I was suited?’
She looked at him again, this time feigning bemusement. ‘Oh, most assuredly.’
‘But what occasion had he to do so? I—’
‘The occasion, Matthew, was my pressing your cause!’
Hervey hardly knew what to say. Kat’s initiative both impressed and surprised him.
‘He will send word to the Horse Guards tomorrow to say he would greatly appreciate it if the Duke of York included your name.’
Hervey kissed her, with intense gratitude.
*
‘You will take some chocolate with me, Matthew?’ said Kat, as the chariot drew up to the house in Holland Park twenty minutes later.
The hour was not so late, and the dormitory at the United Service Club did not beckon appealingly. In any case, Hervey was quickened by Kat’s endeavours on his behalf. Neither had they had much opportunity for conversation during the evening, except accompanied by the noise of their drive. ‘With great pleasure,’ he said, squeezing her hand again.
There was a good fire in Kat’s sitting room. Hervey settled in a low settee after helping himself to brandy and soda which a footman brought with the chocolate. The surroundings were agreeable, the company too; he had no inclination to leave early, save that the carriage waited.
Kat sat next to him. For a quarter of an hour they spoke of this or that at dinner, nothing consequential. Then Hervey made as if to rise. ‘Kat, I do not think I should detain your men any longer. They will have the best part of two hours out, I think.’
‘Not so much as that, I’m sure. But see, why detain them at all? Why do not you stay here tonight, and then we may take our exercise together tomorrow morning towards the river? I have a new gelding I’d have you try, a youngster.’
Hervey sensed that the intimacy of the past weeks had reached a point. ‘Kat—’
‘I can send for your clothes tomorrow, when it is daylight. Any necessaries we can provide here.’
She rose and tugged at the bell pull beside the chimneypiece. The footman returned.
‘Major Hervey will stay the night. Have his things brought here tomorrow from his club, if you will.’
‘Very good, m’lady.’
They talked for another quarter of an hour before Kat rang once more.
‘We will retire now, Martin. And I think I will take breakfast a little later than usual – at ten.’
‘Very good, m’lady. The fire in Major Hervey’s room is lighted now. Do you wish me to attend until Major Hervey’s valet comes tomorrow, m’lady?’
Kat did not seek her guest’s opinion. ‘Yes, thank you, Martin. But only if Major Hervey rings. And please inform Susan she may retire also. It is growing late, and I can manage quite well myself tonight. I will call for her tomorrow when I wake.’
The footman bowed, and then to Hervey, before opening both doors and standing to one side.
‘Well, Matthew,’ said Kat, rising.
Hervey placed his glass down.
‘You will like your room. It has a very pleasing prospect.’ She walked towards the doors. ‘I will show Major Hervey his room, Martin. You may put out the candles now.’
The footman bowed again as they passed.
Up the stairs – broad, blue-gold carpeted, well lit by mirrored sconces – Kat stopped by a big yellow-painted door on the south side. ‘Matthew, this is my bedchamber.’
Hervey had no inclination to go on to his own. Kat very evidently wanted him, and he was in want of female affection. He missed his bibi as much as anything for the comfort of loving arms clasping him tight; Kat, without doubt, would embrace him thus. For the rest . . .
‘Matthew?’
He took her shoulders in his hands, bent forward and kissed her full but gently, wanting to know her response.
It was instant and unequivocal. Kat was a practised, if infrequent lover, and she meant to show him. She had waited seven years for his embrace, though scarcely chastely, and she believed that patience should be rewarded; that great patience, indeed, should be amply rewarded.
CHAPTER THREE
LEAVE TAKING
The commanding officer’s weekly muster was to be his last. After duties, Lieutenant-Colonel Eustace Joynson would put on plain clothes and drive in his tilbury out of barracks for good. Frances Joynson had left Hounslow some days before to stay with an aunt in London, and her father was looking forward to a fortnight or so in his own company on the best chalk stream in Hampshire, which, he had said often of late, was to be his boon companion in his remaining years.
It was, as a rule, a sad day when an officer relinquished command, even of a troop. Dragoons were, as other soldiers, wary of change, for change, even if it promised improvement, brought more work and a degree of uncertainty which could unsettle their strenuous but familiar routine. It had been the best part of ten years, too, since there had been an orderly farewell. Lord George Irvine, an absentee in his last years in command, though an honourable one, had given a grand party – a banquet indeed – for all ranks, and had been cheered on his way heartily. His successor, the Earl of Towcester, had slid out of his quarters with reptilian venom on hearing he was to face court martial. And the estimable officer who had replaced him, Sir Ivo Lankester, they had buried with regimental honours and many a tear before the captured fortress of Bhurtpore.
Eustace Joynson had given no parties. His bent was not that way, and neither, in truth, could his pocket bear it nearly so easily as Lord George Irvine’s. But he had made a present of pipe and tobacco to every man, and deposited a fair sum with the sutler in the wet canteen so that each man might drink his health when he was gone. To the serjeants’ mess he had given a handsome long-case clock, and to the officers’ mess a painting of his beloved mare, the Sixth’s first casualty at Bhurtpore. And last night he had dined, quietly, with the officers, withdrawing long before midnight. ‘There are one or two things in the regimental accounts I would attend to before signing them,’ he had said, to concealed smiles, for his attention to administrative detail had been proverbial, a thing that most of the regiment’s blades abhorred in public though admired in private.
Certainly it was admired elsewhere in the Sixth. Joynson did not know it, but the meanest dragoon had heard of the major’s – of late the lieutenant-colonel’s – slaving attention to their welfare, albeit closeted with ledgers rather than abroad with bonhomie. Colonel Joynson was, in the parlance of the canteen, ‘a good ’un’.
