Hervey winced at the old familiarity. Such a letter was compromising enough, in his 'present circumstances'. What was it, therefore, that Kat could not commit to the page? Or was it merely a device to have him travel to Holland Park?
No, that was an ignoble thought. Kat had been the best of friends to him; she would not now use subterfuge. And, indeed, he ought not to flatter himself so. In any case, they would, in all probability, meet in Norfolk, when she convoyed Peto there.
'George, do you have a carriage?'
'I do, sir.'
'Then, if I may, I will return with you to Holland-park.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Colonel Hervey, sir, there are more letters here,' called the porter after him.
Hervey took the little bundle and quickly looked them over. There were none in hands he counted pressing, save Somervile's (and there could be no immediate reply to one originating at such a remove). He beckoned to Kat's footman. 'Come then, George, for I must be back here before eight.'
As they turned into the Haymarket, Hervey opened the lieutenantgovernor's letter.
He folded the letter and stifled a sigh.What he would not give to be at the Eastern Frontier this very moment! And then he shivered, though the evening was not cool. He was new-married. Indeed, it was, rightly speaking, his honeymoon still. But to be at the Cape did not mean he must abandon his new wife. Far from it. She would accompany him, take quarters in Cape Town, the house he had found, not far from the Somerviles at the castle. And Georgiana would be with them. Why, therefore, did he recoil from his enthusiasm for being back in the saddle, under arms? It was not escape, nor evasion of his paternal responsibilities, as once it might have been. He was a soldier, was he not? What was a soldier if his instinct were for other than the field and the sound of the guns?
He began turning over in his mind the things he must do preparatory to an early return to duty. He must send an express to Captain Edward Fairbrother in Devon (he could not possibly return without Fairbrother: he was as much a kin of the spirit now as he was a superlative practitioner of frontier war). He must arrange the same passage for Serjeant-Major Collins (no doubt Collins, too, would consider it a mixed blessing, for he himself was newly married). There were all manner of requisites to obtain and accounts to be settled, letters to be written, official and otherwise, work for the War Office to be completed, and not least the business of the Eighty-first to be decided. And there was Kezia and Georgiana . . .
Kat's yellow Offord chariot bowled through St James's and then Green Park, through the Piccadilly bar past Apsley House, the residence of the Duke of Wellington (now prime minister), where Hervey had first met Kat, and along the fashionables' drive through Hyde Park, past the Knightsbridge Barracks, Kensington Palace, and into Holland Park, to the elegant but not large establishment of Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine and Lady Katherine Greville.
Sir Peregrine, he knew, would not be at home. Indeed, he would not be in London, nor even England. He would be in the governor's residence on Alderney, which position he had occupied largely unaccompanied but with the greatest satisfaction for many years. The fishing off Alderney, and indeed Sark, which island was also within his commandery, was infinitely diverting to him, and now that all threat of hostile landing from France was gone, the appointment allowed him a life of complete ease.
There were many years between Sir Peregrine and his wife. Kat was forty, or there about, yet she possessed the blush of a much younger woman. Her many admirers, of whom the Duke of Wellington was merely the most elevated (not counting the King himself, whom Kat had never found herself able to flatter with much conviction), admitted her one of the handsomest females in London. Hervey, though several years her junior, shared their opinion. Although now he would place Kezia alongside her. Their looks, their whole demeanour, were, however, so unalike as to puzzle him: the attraction of two women so markedly different.
