there was time (which there surely was not?) they could not devastate the country again, for every man they turned out of his home would at once become a Miguelista.
No, the plan as conceived in Norris’s mind could not serve. But for the time being he would have to remain silent.
Dinner was a muted affair, only Colonel Norris seeming to have appetite for speech, expounding at length on his plans to emulate the Duke of Wellington’s feat of arms. The majors held their peace. Even the engineers were persuaded that to survey only fixed defences was not prudent, but Norris in full flow was not to be contradicted. Mr Forbes, the charge, said little. He was not a military man, neither did he appear to have any particular intelligence of the state of the country outside the capital, although he had certainly seen the formidable natural and man-made defences at Torres Vedras, Wellington’s great stratagem.
The party broke up a little before ten-thirty, leaving Hervey to hurry back to Reeves’s, where he changed into a plain coat, and then engaged a calash to take him to Lady Katherine Greville’s lodgings in the Rua dos Condes.
It was no very great distance, but the streets were narrow and the night dark. A dozen years ago he would scarcely have noticed; Warminster, the nearest place of any consequence to where he was raised, would have looked much the same, for the rate-payers there had no desire to light the way to the ale houses for the town roughs. But he had lived long in India, where lanterns and fires burned all night, tended by the chowkidars; and lately he had been an habitue of London, where gas – not even oil – lit the streets from dusk till dawn. In the summer, he recalled, Lisbon would be full of promenaders at this hour taking the cooler air, exchanging formal greetings, or else flirtations, with the females who occupied the ubiquitous balconies. But now the streets were deserted.
He arrived at Kat’s lodgings at a quarter to midnight. The house was shuttered, but there was a torch burning at the door. He paid the coachman and dismissed him, then pulled the bell handle. Almost at once there was the noise of bolts being drawn, and a lady’s maid whom Hervey recognized from Holland Park opened the door just wide enough to admit him.
‘Her ladyship is in the drawing room, sir,’ she said cautiously, even furtively.
The doors of the drawing room were half open. Hervey saw Kat standing by the fire, her back to him, looking in the mirror above the chimneypiece.
‘You come most carefully upon your hour, Matthew.’
Hervey could not recall being precise as to any hour in his note. ‘I came at once, Kat. As soon as I was able.’
She turned, and smiled. ‘I’m sure you did, Matthew. Are you not happy to see me?’
She wore a dress that flattered her, fairly too, and the candlelight played wonderfully with her eyes. Whatever his earlier misgivings, he returned her smile in full measure and took her in his arms.
‘Oh yes, Matthew; I perceive you are indeed happy to see me. How much more expressive is your body than your pen!’
He had not intended that his pen should be expressive. But that was earlier.
Later, as they lay in her bed, the moon lighting the room where candles and fire did not, Hervey’s former doubts returned. And he found he could not conceal them. ‘Kat, what have you told people you are about here?’
‘People, Matthew?’ She stretched her arms above her head.
Her breasts distracted him for an instant. ‘Your friends, acquaintances – you must have told them you were coming here. And . . . your husband.’
She let her hands drop noisily to the counterpane, palms down. ‘I tell them what I please! Why should they know anything of my affairs?’
Hervey lay on his side, looking at the mass of hair on Kat’s pillow. ‘Kat, I. . .’ But he could not complete his sentence.
‘What ails you, Matthew?’
He hesitated. ‘Nothing ails me, Kat.’
‘Do I hazard your position here? You will not forget, will you, that your appointment is my doing?’
Hervey bridled. ‘
But before he could say another word her lips subdued him.
When at length she took them from his, she was smiling. ‘If you must know, I am to winter in Madeira with my husband’s people. And it is perfectly reasonable that I should sail from here. In any case, Mrs Forbes and I have a slight acquaintance.’
Hervey sighed. Her story was plausible. He put a hand to her hair and ran his fingers through it. They renewed their embrace, this time without the urgency of the first. In an hour they fell asleep, Kat content and unmindful of the morning. Hervey was content too, but his head lay less easy, for reveille was at seven – and on the other side of the city.
CHAPTER NINE
FORTIFICATION
‘Major Cope’s compliments, sir, and would tha join ’im before dinner?’
Private Johnson put the last piece of coal on the fire. He had eked out the meagre supply all afternoon, determined to have a glow of some sort to welcome back his principal on so wet a day. At least it had stopped smoking.
Hervey was dressed and at his writing table. He had bathed as soon as he and the others had returned from Torres Vedras, intent on having his letters go by the steam packet leaving the following morning.
‘Did his man give any reason?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very well. In a quarter of an hour.’
There was a letter addressed to Georgiana on the table, and another to his father. He took out a clean sheet of paper, and dipped his pen in the ink.
