Hervey put down his pen. He would have to finish later; Major Cope was waiting for him, and they were due at the residence in half an hour. He would have to add something by way of enjoining Lord John Howard to discretion, of course, without suggesting that so experienced a staff officer would otherwise act without it, though he recognized that in asking him to alert the authorities to the danger, he set a difficult task in this respect.
He was already looking forward to dinner with some apprehension. Kat had presented herself to the Forbeses, and secured an invitation, and he felt sure there would be some awkwardness occasioned by it since his relations with Colonel Norris were becoming distinctly strained. He fastened the bib of his tunic, picked up his cloak and forage cap, and went to the Rifles major’s rooms.
‘It’s deuced cold. Have some of that punch,’ said Cope as Hervey entered, standing in front of the fire and indicating an earthenware jug on a side table. ‘I don’t recall it so cold the last time.’
‘Perhaps we were more active,’ said Hervey, helping himself liberally. ‘I felt myself more useful, that’s to be sure.’
‘Indeed. The very reason I believe we should speak.’
‘Oh?’
‘Look, Hervey, you and I know this plan of Norris’s is half baked. Griffith and Mostyn know too, but they’re engineers; they’re bound to get on with surveying those deuced lines. We have got to get ourselves engaged on something other than fortification.’
‘Believe me, I’ve been of that conclusion for days,’ said Hervey, his eyebrows raised in a gesture of disdain. ‘It is easier said than done, though. Norris flatly refuses, as well you know. I’ve contemplated speaking with Forbes, but how do you think he might help? He’s not even true master of his own embassy.’
‘I heard Beresford was to come,’ said Cope, confidentially.
‘Beresford?’ Hervey was surprised. ‘I doubt that will be universally welcome. I have it that he’s regarded with great jealousy by many of the senior officers here.’
‘May be,’ said Cope, throwing the remains of a small cigar into the fire. ‘But there’d be none of this nonsense about fortification if he were to take command again.’
That was certainly true, thought Hervey. But Marshal Beresford, who had reorganized the Portuguese army from top to bottom in Wellington’s time, and who spoke the language well, had no reputation for tact. ‘So you think we should do some preliminary work on Lord Beresford’s behalf?’
‘I do. And I believe we should take the opportunity this evening to alert Forbes to it. He is a sensible man. He may already have wind of it indeed.’
Hervey sighed. ‘What a merry party we shall be.’
They walked to the Forbeses. The Rua do Sacramento was but a short distance, and with two torch-bearers it was an easy enough business. The residence itself, a large
In fact, Kat had been making the party aware of her regard for him. She did it without the least suggestion of impropriety, and with the single-minded intention of increasing her protege’s standing in the company. She intended approaching the charge d’affaires on the subject of a more extensive reconnaissance, to be undertaken by an officer whom the Duke of Wellington himself evidently held in high esteem. At table, too, she sparkled as if she had been at Apsley House itself, having a word for everything and everybody in a manner that quite possessed the general, dazzled the engineer majors, quickened Major Cope noticeably, and delighted her hostess and Mr Forbes. Even Colonel Norris, Kat noted, sitting opposite and slightly to one side, was charmed. So charmed indeed, that after dinner she considered changing her stratagem.
Hervey had no idea that Kat had any particular object in dining with the Forbeses other than as prelude to a night they would spend together in the Rua dos Condes. But pillow talk with Kat was not the same as it had been with his bibi; she did not consider herself a mere receptory of confidences. Kat’s instinct and pleasure was to use her influence, and to exploit any honest weakness to increase it. When Hervey had told her, three afternoons before, of his frustration with Colonel Norris’s intentions, she had perfectly naturally resolved to help as best she could, for not only did she wish to press her beau’s case for its own sake (she did not consider for a moment that he might be in the wrong, for that was not her concern), she was especially anxious to be useful, being sensible still of his uncertainty in her being in Lisbon at all.
Kat’s intention had been to engage the charge’s sympathy. But she perceived, now, that Colonel Norris was the better object, and she imagined that only a modest degree of flattery (and hint of her husband’s gratitude) would be required to succeed. So, after she and Mrs Forbes were joined by the rest of the party in the drawing room, for a full quarter of an hour she pressed her attentions exclusively on the officer commanding the special military mission to Portugal.
Kat was disappointed, however. And not solely for her beau; she could not recall so pallid a response to her attractions in all her life. She began to wonder how manly Colonel Norris was. He had been so much the chanticleer at dinner (she would confess she had encouraged him), speaking interminably of his fortifications at Torres Vedras. But all he could do, and just as Hervey had told her, was imitate the Duke of Wellington. Yet he had not a fraction of the duke’s masculine resolution; and certainly not his vigorous appeal.
And so she turned her attention instead to Mr Forbes, conscious that she had already let valuable time slip through her hands. But she had observed him carefully at dinner: he was a measured man, seemingly modest, reasonable, and intelligent; he would not easily succumb to blandishments. They had not previously met, but Mrs Forbes had once danced at Athleague House, and her husband must know of it since he had made a point of telling Kat how much he had admired her father’s staunchness in refusing to proclaim his country in the troubles of 1798. ‘A most humane and wise man he must have been, Lady Katherine,’ the charge had said at dinner.
Kat thought it her best opening. She knew next to nothing of what he spoke, but she recognized an independent and enquiring mind when she met one. She steered their conversation back to Ireland, thus giving herself the air of a person of wider consequence and the charge an opportunity for the same. Then, when she judged the moment to be the most felicitous, she played her cards.
‘Mr Forbes,’ she began confidentially, glancing deliberately over her shoulder to where Colonel Norris stood taking coffee with the Portuguese general. ‘Might I have a word with you about the military mission here?’
The charge looked surprised, but he recognized a woman with an ear to the influential drawing rooms of London as well as Dublin, and he was too practised a diplomatist to be fastidious.
They drew aside further, and then Kat began her cautionary words. ‘Mr Forbes, are you entirely convinced that what Colonel Norris is proposing would serve both parties best?’
The charge looked puzzled. ‘
‘I mean England and Portugal.’ She had not wanted to say the words at first in case it appeared she over- reached herself.
The charge was silent for the moment. Kat had risked all, even if she had worked assiduously to prepare her
