Hervey 10 - Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page A

sojourn was therefore not entirely unwelcome: Kezia would be able to put her mind at rest concerning the arrangements for her music, and for Hervey there was the prospect of an end to headaches.

He kissed his new wife on the cheek, bid her well for the afternoon, said that he would be with her in Hanover Square (where she had lodgings with her aunt) by nine, and got down from the chaise. He watched it pull away, turned to the arched entrance to the barracks, acknowledged the sentry's salute (one of Third Squadron's dragoons, and therefore recognizing his longabsent squadron leader despite his plain clothes), and set off. He walked briskly towards the regimental headquarters beyond the parade-square. He returned several more salutes from NCOs with whom he had long acquaintance, though he was curious as to their rather solemn demeanour in contrast with the customary cheer of that rank. By the time he reached the orderly room he would not have been surprised to hear that the King were dead; except that there was no sign of court mourning.

The adjutant stood as he entered. 'Good morning, Hervey,' he said, with a double measure of surprise.

Hervey smiled at him. 'I know, Malet – appearing at orderly room with but a quarter of the honeymoon spent! The weather at Brighton was inclement. And, you may believe me, I have not the slightest intention of remaining here but an hour.'

The adjutant's brow furrowed. 'You are not come, then, on account of the . . . news?'

'What news?'

Malet swallowed hard. 'Mrs Armstrong.'

Hervey was at once alarmed. 'What—'

'I'm afraid she died yesterday. I sent an express at once.'

Hervey shook his head. 'I did not receive it,' he said, quietly. He sat down. 'How . . . Of what did she die?'

'Poisoning of the blood, I understand. Or rather, I do not understand.

That is what the surgeon reported, having it from the man in Hounslow who attended her. She had had a fall. I do not know any more. It was a very sudden business.'

'The children?' asked Hervey, still shaking his head in disbelief.

'Mrs Lincoln has care of them.'

That at least was no cause for concern: the quartermaster's wife was as capable as might be. But Armstrong himself, his serjeantmajor, dutifully at his post in the Cape Colony . . .

'Lord Hol'ness is visiting with them now.'

'That is uncommonly civil of him,' replied Hervey, and with complete sincerity, for whatever were Lord Holderness's weaknesses as commanding officer, they were certainly not of humanity.

'Shall I bring coffee?'

Hervey nodded.

He had known Caithlin Armstrong since before Waterloo. He had known her family, Cork tenants, rack-rented – had stood up for them, indeed, against the magistrate when they faced eviction, setting himself against the military authorities thereby, saved only through the intervention of the young Duke of Devonshire, himself a considerable Cork landowner, at the behest of his, Hervey's, soon-to-be betrothed, Lady Henrietta Lindsay. Caithlin was a scholar of the hedge school. She had good Latin, and he had taught her some Greek. Her marriage to a bruising serjeant, his own serjeant, had come as a surprise to many, but Armstrong had offered her protection, and the rough-hewn decency of his own home and calling, and they had become the best of couples, the parents of . . . four – was it five? – fine children. Hervey had seen the look in Armstrong's eye whenever Caithlin was there – the deepest pride, the most complete adoration, which he supposed he himself had once known, but never could again. He wondered how in God's name he would be able to tell Armstrong of this, how he would be able to see that look of pride and adoration fade, and in its place despair.

Malet came back with a clerk and the orderly-room coffee pot, which was kept permanently hot by a nightlight. Hervey bid the clerk dismiss. The merest nod of the head was all that was necessary in the atmosphere of collective bereavement (Caithlin Armstrong had long run a