The Shocking Miss Anstey Read Online Free PDF Page B

seven years.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘We went out in 1808, in battalion strength. For a month, they said, and we damn well stayed.’
    ‘How about leave?’
    ‘There wasn’t any. Lisbon, of course--forty-eight hours--but not home. Not even in winter. One of the Peer’s little whims.’
    ‘Peer?’
    ‘Sorry.’ Wickham laughed quietly. ‘One of our phrases. Wellington--after Talavera, when they first made him a peer, and he’s been the Peer ever since. But isn’t this enough about me? What are you doing?’
    ‘Nothing very much.’ Grant explained his situation briefly. ‘I don’t know this London, and I’m cruising at large, really, trying to get my bearings. Same with you?’
    ‘Well, more or less.’ Wickham stared thoughtfully at an empty plate. ‘Officially I’m here to collect a new chariot my Uncle Barford has just had built. I’m to take it home for him.
    That’s in Dorset. Actually, I’m getting away from things for a while. They’re not good, at home. Same tale, of course.’
    ‘War?’
    ‘Yes.’ For an instant Wickham sounded curt. ‘It’s all very well these people celebrating a victory--waving flags and getting drunk--but it cost something. Have you seen the casualty lists?’
    ‘From Waterloo?’
    ‘It was worse than Badajoz, and it hits some families worse than others. It took my father and my brother-in-law.’
    ‘Your---’ A memory of a published list came suddenly to Grant. ‘General Wickham? Sir Harry?’
    ‘Yes. He was on the Staff, and, of course, they were first targets all the time.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I---’
    ‘Can’t be helped. It was right at the end of the day, though, when we had them on the run. Just a stray musket shot. One’s enough, of course.’
    ‘You need not tell me.’
    ‘No. But you can guess---’
    Roast beef arrived, and vegetables and horse-radish, and again the talk was discreetly dropped while waiters were in earshot. Then Grant brought him gently back to it.
    ‘You were saying?’
    ‘Was I?’ He had a wry smile for a moment. ‘I think I was trying to say that it isn’t very lively at my home just now. I’m not quite used to the notion that it is my home--not my father’s. We buried him there.’ He paused for a thoughtful sip at his burgundy. ‘I must say the Peer was decent. He sent for me. “Sorry we’ve lost your father, Wickham. A good officer. Take him home, and bury him decently.” That was all he said, but he sent an order that I was to have special leave for it, and they’ve extended it now to sick leave.’
    ‘Convenient, perhaps. What will you do?’
    ‘I don’t know. I’m tempted to sell out and be done with it. I’ve had enough of soldiering.’
    ‘You’ve--er--inherited?’
    ‘Modestly. Just a house in the village and a little in the Funds. Barford’s the landowner. He lives at the Manor, with a good deal in the Funds. Which is why he can have a new chariot.’
    ‘Very pleasant.’
    ‘If you like the life.’
    ‘You mean you don’t?’
    ‘I don’t think I can judge. I haven’t had village life since I was a boy. There’s a danger, perhaps, of turning into a sort of vegetable.’
    ‘When you’ve been away--as we have?’
    ‘Perhaps not, and Barford seems all right. He’s lively enough. Do you know him, by the way--Lord Barford?’
    ‘Ambassador to Lisbon?’
    ‘That’s the man. I suppose that’s how he’s got the peerage --officially--though I’m not sure that playing whist hadn’t something to do with it too. But he illustrates what you were saying--you don’t go to seed in the country if you’ve been away. He’s spry enough. Of course he’s been everywhere--knows everybody. Quite useful, but disconcerting. You feel at times he sees right through you.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Yes.’ Wickham sat back laughing while waiters swooped deftly on the table again. ‘He knew exactly why I offered to fetch his chariot for him--the old devil! He just said, “Yes, go by all means, and my compliments to the