the state of the sky would make any difference to his interview, but he judged that to broach the matter any earlier would not go in his favour. Norris was a man of regularity in his daily routine, as well as in imagination.
‘Did Lady Katherine have anything to say?’
‘No. Only that they were playing whist ’alf t’night.’
‘She said nothing more?’
‘She asked where tha were.’
Hervey could not bring himself to ask what had been Johnson’s reply. ‘Very well, I think I will take three hours’ ease in that chair again. Would you wake me with water?’
‘Right. An’ are we gooin to Elvas?’
Hervey shook his head, unclipping his cloak but keeping it about his shoulders. ‘It depends on Colonel Norris.’ He sat heavily in the low chair. ‘I have to close my eyes and think what’s best to be done.’
Just before seven, Johnson shook Hervey’s shoulder. ‘Tea, sir.’
It was an age ago, but the words could still take him back to that rain-soaked dawn on the ridge of Mont St- Jean, when they had risen to face the ’emperor’ and his Grande Armee. How Johnson had found a flame in that night’s downpour was one of the minor miracles of life in the Sixth, and Hervey had never sought to comprehend it. Tea at dawn ever since had been one of the sustaining rites of the day, cosily familiar when all else was uncertain.
They had been together for a long time; as officer and groom longer than any in the Sixth could remember. Johnson had refused all promotion and preferment, knowing his defects perhaps even greater than did Hervey, but also because he had been devoted to Henrietta, and that devotion, he somehow felt, endured indefinitely. Yet he did not revere her memory to the exclusion of all other company. He had held Vaneeta in real affection, for she had nursed his captain back to health after the affair at Rangoon. He liked Lady Katherine Greville, for she was clever, and there was something about her that could make any man turn. Above all he liked Isabella Delgado, because he saw in her a proper respectability, the sort that would make a mother for the daughter they left behind too often.
‘What is the parole, Johnson?’ asked Hervey, with just the wriest of smiles.
‘Aw, I ’aven’t ’eard that in years!’
Hervey sat up and took the canteen of tea (he did not suppose to ask why a canteen instead of china). ‘Indeed you have. And only this year too. What about Bhurtpore? I asked you every morning there.’
Johnson was laying out brush and razor by the bowl of steaming water. ‘Were that only this year? Seems like an age.’
It did – a simpler age too.
‘Does Lady Katherine stir?’
‘I ’aven’t ’eard owt. An’ she didn’t say as she wanted wakin’.’
‘Well, I must speak with her before I go to see Colonel Norris. I’ll shave first, and then take her some of your tea.’
‘All thi kit’s ready. ’As tha any idea when we’s gooin?’
‘Thank you. But no, I don’t have any idea, not until I’ve spoken to Colonel Norris.’
‘Will Lady Greville be gooin?’
Hervey looked surprised. ‘I don’t imagine so! Why should she?’
‘An’ Mrs Delgado?’
‘No.’
‘I like Mrs Delgado. Brave as a lion she is.’
‘Yes, Johnson. A fine woman indeed. But if we go to Elvas it will be because a siege is expected, and I can’t say that either Lady Katherine or Senhora Delgado would bring peace of mind to the defenders there, no matter how skilled they are with words or dressings. Or with a sword, for that matter.’
When he had finished shaving he put on a clean shirt, one of his Indian cottons, then his tunic, and then Johnson brought Kat’s tea – a tray laid with a white cloth, silver teapot, milk jug and sugar basin, and a cup and saucer that looked like Pinxton, the provenance of which at that hour Hervey could not even begin to imagine. He certainly had no intention of enquiring.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
Johnson opened Kat’s door for him. Although it was now full daylight, the curtains were heavy and drawn, and Hervey edged his way cautiously to the bedside. He put the tray down on a table, and then he pulled open one of the curtains just enough to light the room to his purpose.
Kat did not stir. She lay in her clothes of the evening before, the blue velvet cloak ridden up above the hem of her dress, and her hair loose on the pillow. A little of the daylight fell onto the left side of her face, and to effect: Hervey once again observed a woman of marked beauty – the high cheekbones, porcelain complexion, generous mouth, elegant neck. Kat was as engaging in repose as she was when animated. It was not fair she should be married to an old fool like Sir Peregrine Greville.
He shook her shoulder gently. ‘Kat.’
She sighed; groaned almost.
‘Kat.’
She sighed again, then opened her eyes. ‘
‘Kat, I’m sorry I was not here when you came. I—’
She lifted a hand and tugged at his forearm before he could finish.
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips, and she raised her hand to his neck to pull him closer.
When they parted, he sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair. At Elvas he had begun to think he must end the liaison; and he had thought so
‘Do you love me, Matthew?’
Why did she ask? And why now? She had never made his love – in the sense she now meant it – a condition of their association, and he certainly had never protested it. There could be no other answer but yes or no.
‘No, of course you don’t. Matthew Hervey could not love another woman.’
He frowned. ‘Kat, you cannot say that.’
She merely raised an eyebrow, quizzically. ‘So, what do you suppose you deserve to hear of my essay on your behalf last evening?’
Hervey was at once qualmish. Had it all become an affair of barter? ‘Kat—’
‘Well, you may be grateful that I am a proficient at whist, for the Forbeses are devoted to the game and I was the charge’s partner.’
Hervey smiled, relieved that Kat made light of matters again.
‘And well may you look content, Matthew, for the form of the evening gave me ample opportunity to advance your cause. Not that Mr Forbes required much persuasion. His opinion of Colonel Norris is, I would say, not high. He believes the cost of putting those lines of his in order would dismay the Portuguese. So he is sending a letter to Mr Canning to advocate
Hervey smiled again, but this time with intense satisfaction. He bent to kiss her once more.
‘No, Matthew,’ she protested, teasing with practised perfection. ‘I think I will have some tea, if you please.’
Fortune now truly began to favour Hervey. When he went to Norris’s quarters a little after nine, he learned that the colonel had left for Torres Vedras at five. It gave him sufficient of a pretext to apply at once to the charge d’affaires in person. Mr Forbes, already disposed to think the best of a man recently appointed Companion of the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath, and who had presented a design for intervention more practical and economical than Norris’s own, at once gave him leave to go to Elvas. Moreover, Forbes said that he himself would go at once to the Negocios Estrangeiros e Guerra to discover what he could of the official intelligence; and, too, he gave him discretionary powers to take what measures he saw fit. While these were not actually plenipotentiary, they nevertheless released Hervey from the obligation of referring his action to Colonel Norris (Hervey thought it a truer mark of his standing than any ribbon). Nevertheless, his military sensibility obliged him to report his intentions in writing, and so he returned briefly to his quarters to pen a letter to Norris, with a copy to Lord John Howard at the Horse Guards.
