Man Of War

The two friends alighted, adjusting their neckcloths self-consciously. Hervey paid off the coachman and arranged refreshment for him and for the horses, then led his friend up the ten impressively wide steps to the vault-arched doorway.

Inside, the only sound was of a fortepiano, and not too distant. It stopped abruptly, and a moment or so later Lady Lankester appeared. She smiled – welcomingly enough, thought Fairbrother, but without great ardour (and he wondered again if he intruded) – and Hervey and she kissed, fleetingly.

‘How good you are come,’ said Kezia, and turning to Fairbrother, smiled warmly: ‘And this is the companion of whom you wrote so keenly.’

Hervey’s companion bowed. ‘Edward Fairbrother, Lady Lankester.’

Kezia did not curtsy, but held out her hand.

Hervey had marked, before, Kezia’s preference in her manner of greeting. Combined with such a smile as hers it was ever the more welcoming. ‘We left London betimes, but the carting traffic was savage,’ he explained. ‘We did not manage a trot before, I think, Edgware. The Romans would have been faster along Watling-street than we. You were practising just now?’

‘You know that I practise for three hours every day.’

The manner of Kezia’s reminding – almost a rebuke – told him very decidedly that he must know (truly he had no recollection of it). ‘Well,’ (he cleared his throat) ‘Fairbrother and I returned to London only yesterday. As I said in my letter, there was urgent business to be about in Wiltshire and in Hounslow. But we are here now, and delightful it is, at last.’

They sat down near a window in the morning room. A footman brought a tray, followed by another bearing a coffee pot.

Fairbrother sensed a certain stiffness, and was inclined to ascribe it to his presence. He made to rise. ‘I think perhaps I ought to see our boxes—’

‘Oh no, Mr Fairbrother,’ Kezia protested. ‘All will be attended to, I assure you. Take your ease with some coffee, and tell me how you find London. Colonel Hervey says you have not been in England before. Did you visit the Royal Academy? There is a fine exhibition there, is there not? You have seen Mr Turner’s paintings, Colonel?’

Hervey frowned. It was rather like finding his horse on the wrong leg as they turned. ‘I confess I have not, yet.’

Kezia looked dismayed.

But he would make no more apology: it was true that military business did not always require his attention when he was in London, but there were other things to be about than looking at paintings, however fine. He made to change the subject. ‘Where is Perdita?’

Kezia turned towards the fortepiano. Perdita lay curled on a chair next to the piano stool, silently eyeing him. ‘Come, Perdi,’ she said.

The little Italian greyhound slid from the chair, stretched, and stalked to her mistress’s side. She sat, without taking her eyes off the interloper.

The three talked for a quarter of an hour, of this and that, inconsequential matters, until Fairbrother rose again, managing this time to beg his leave successfully. Kezia told him that in the evening they would drive to Knebworth, to a soiree which its chatelaine, General Bulwer Lytton’s widow, was hosting. Fairbrother enquired whether he would be intruding, saying that he was perfectly content to remain at Walden: he had with him several books. To which Kezia protested that he was most welcome: Mrs Bulwer Lytton held these gatherings almost weekly during the close season, and new faces were most positively encouraged. ‘The mere mention of books, Mr Fairbrother, assures me that our hostess will find your company agreeable. The soirees are of a literary and artistic bent.’

‘Shall you sing,’ (Hervey hesitated) ‘dearest?’

Kezia rose and turned to him with an almost puzzled look. ‘If I am asked to do so, yes.’

Fairbrother bowed. ‘I am all eagerness, Lady Lankester,’ he said, smiling confidently. And he left the promised couple to each other.

Hervey put down his coffee cup and made to embrace his betrothed. Even though he had stumbled in the preliminaries, he had been studiously admiring of Kezia’s appearance. Her fair hair intrigued him more with every meeting: he had not had any proper acquaintance before with such a colour and complexion. Strange as it was, she seemed to him almost . . . foreign. More so than Isabella Delgado, or even Vaneeta. Her mouth was quite perfect: any scholar of the ideal of beauty would admit it. Nothing like as full as Kat’s, or Isabella’s, or Vaneeta’s (or Henrietta’s), but appealing to him for its very . . . he supposed, distance. Her form, a constrained grace which provoked the imagination, was powerfully pleasing, and greatly the more so for his absence these past nine months. The checked Levantine, her arms and bosom covered to throat and wrist (its being ‘morning’ still), only served to increase his admiration.

They kissed. She did not resist, though she did not give herself up to any passion. Hervey understood. It was not her sitting room; they might be disturbed at any moment. He caught Perdi eyeing him still – a reproachful eye, threatening, almost.

‘Dearest, I am so very glad to see you. There is much to speak of.’

Kezia glanced at the fortepiano.

‘Do I disturb your practice?’

She looked a shade wistful. ‘In truth you do, but it was discourteous of me to reveal it.’

Hervey shook his head, smiling apologetically. ‘Would you play for me?’

‘Play for you, Colonel Hervey?’

He frowned. ‘Is it so outrageous a suggestion? And . . . Kezia,’ (he pronounced her name – for the first time – somewhat tentatively) ‘would you dispense with the formality of that manner of address?’

Kezia raised her eyebrows. ‘What would you have me call you?’

Hervey sighed. ‘Well, I have a given name, as you.’ Few but his close family used it (and Kat).

She smiled a very little, but wryly, so that Hervey felt drawn to kiss her again – which she did not object to.

‘You are very fond of music, I know, since you told me so at Sezincote, and we have had so little opportunity to speak of it.’ She sat at the fortepiano again while Hervey resumed his place by the window. ‘Did you recognize the piece I was playing as you arrived?’

Hervey had not the slightest idea. He had declared a love of music while in something of a heady state, having heard Kezia sing at the house in which they were both staying in company with Sir Eyre and Lady Somervile. He liked music – or, as Elizabeth had often chided, he liked the noise it made, especially if it were made by men in uniform.

That evening at Sezincote, he managed to recall (though how, he could not say), Kezia had sung something – two things – by a German called Gluck.

‘Might it be by Herr Gluck?’

Kezia frowned. ‘Oh, Matthew Hervey!’

Her use of his Christian name, even so-qualified, encouraged him to return a rueful half smile. ‘Not Gluck?’

‘Do not you recognize Der Erlkonig?’ She sounded dismayed.

It was time for honesty, though he would instantly regret it. ‘I confess I never heard of him.’

‘Oh, Colonel Hervey! Erlkonig is the name of the piece I was playing. It is by Franz Schubert. You have heard of Schubert, I take it?’

Hervey sighed. ‘I was a long time in India, ma’am.’

Kezia looked at him almost studiously, and for some time. ‘Of course. Forgive me,’ she said softly.

There was nothing to forgive. And if there had been he would have done so readily. Kezia Lankester was a picture of scholarship, of a serious, high mind, the like of which he had not seen in a woman, certainly not one so young. Or so powerfully attractive. He thought to reply that Erlkonig was first a poem by Goethe, but he could not. At that moment he wished only that the nuptials were over and done with.

After a lunch of pigeon breasts, Hervey and Kezia walked in the formal gardens while Fairbrother ranged further.

‘My parents will hasten back if I send word, I do assure you,’ said Kezia.