Man Of War

Lady Ballindine eyed him most particularly. Hervey braced himself for an infelicitous question, but, having imperilled him in the first instant, Kat came to his aid. ‘When is the happy event to be, Colonel Hervey? Is a date resolved upon?’

Hervey swallowed hard, and hoped no one – Fairbrother especially – noticed. ‘The eighteenth of next month,’ he near-stammered, adding, for no reason he would be able to recall, ‘a Wednesday.’

‘In London?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you able to be more particular?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Hanover-square.’

‘Oh, that is most agreeable – think you not, Aunt?’ She turned to Lady Ballindine with a distinctly conspiratorial smile, and then back to Hervey. ‘I shall be returned from Warwickshire then;’ (she paused) ‘I may take it that I shall be invited?’

Hervey now saw the net into which he had so obligingly stepped. In the company of an ‘aunt’, and Fairbrother, and the conversation heavy with overtone, like a huge rain-bearing cloud threatening to burst, there was not a thing he could do but concede the game. ‘Yes, indeed, of course . . . I would deem it a true blessing were you to attend, though it will be a very small wedding.’

‘Then I shall suspend all other engagements, my dear Colonel Hervey.’

He could not but admire, even as he despaired of it, Kat’s consummate skill in persuading a man of a course he would otherwise not choose to take, yet in a way that appeared his free choice alone. And so swiftly, so deftly, before even they were sat down to dine. It was, of course, the same skill that she had exercised so well to his advantage these several years; but he had never seen it played to Kat’s own advantage at his expense. A very little expense, it was true, for Kat’s presence at Hanover Square would be no occasion for concern (except, of course, that his sister believed she knew of their association), though it might be considered faintly distasteful – Kat’s sharing a ‘secret’ with the bridegroom. He sighed inwardly: these were the consequences of the life, the unwholesome life, he had drifted into – descended into, indeed.

But it would soon be put to rights by Holy Matrimony. For, as the Prayer Book proclaimed, was it not ‘ordained as a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as may not have the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body’? And if he was not entirely certain any longer of the claims of the Church, there were some practices which were proven by time. Of course, there were other causes for which Matrimony was ordained, said the Prayer Book, and these were by no means disagreeable to him; quite the contrary, indeed – in due season. But chiefly he sought, and confidently, the promises of the remedy, not so much against sin as its wretched consequences. He sought a simpler life in ‘the honourable estate’, and a better one for the child he neglected.

And he had no doubts, none at all, that Kezia Lankester was that remedy. A delightful remedy too, in the wait for which he could barely contain himself.

XXI

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

London, 17 June 1828

Fairbrother stood winding his new hunter in the United Service’s hall. On the inside of the cover was engraved EF from MH, and he was still relishing the sentiment with which his friend had presented it to him the evening before. Hervey had spoken of the Cape, the Xhosa and the Zulu, of his gratitude for Fairbrother’s ‘singularly faithful and adroit service in the most dangerous of circumstances’; and most of all for his ‘companionship these latter months . . . forbearance and good counsel, support and . . . friendship’ which he confessed he had not imagined he would see so manifest again in any but Peto or Somervile. And now he, Fairbrother, waited, unusually, on his friend, who was invariably in advance of him. He was, however, early upon his hour; but he had business with Hervey’s tailor – a new coat, the final fitting for which had been most promising. He wished it done before midday, after which the two were to dine early with Hervey’s parents, and with Elizabeth and Georgiana, at Grillon’s Hotel in Piccadilly, where they were lodging, having arrived in the afternoon of the day before in a glass landau lent by the Marquess of Bath.

‘Forgive me; I had a letter for the agents,’ said Hervey, come at last.

‘It was an agreeable wait; I saw Lord Hill.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Was presented to him.’

‘How so?’

‘Your friend Howard. They are breakfasting now.’