Blake laid down the pouch and returned to his accounts in the other room. With a sigh Arthur unfastened the pouch ties and flicked back the flap. Inside were several letters. He took them out and examined the first, a brief note from the War Office acknowledging his request for permission to conduct live firing exercises, and regretfully urging him to take the matter no further due to the stringent financial constraints the Treasury was placing on army and naval expenditure. Arthur tossed it to one side and opened the second letter, from his mother, Anne Wellesley. It was curt and precise and Arthur thought it read like a mere series of diary entries as it related the most recent social events she had attended in London. There were a few references to the family, including a caustic comment about Richard’s being too arrogant to defend the family’s good name in Parliament. It concluded with a brief expression of good will to Arthur, who she trusted was looking after his health. Arthur set the letter aside with the familiar sense of resignation over his mother’s evident lack of maternal affection for him.Then his eye fell on the next letter and he froze for an instant as he read the name of the sender.

Lord Longford, Rutland Square, Dublin. Arthur held the letter up and stared at it as he felt his pulse quicken.Then he broke the seal, unfolded the paper and began to scan it quickly. He read it once again, more slowly, to be sure that he had understood it fully. Kitty’s brother acknowledged his letter requesting permission to propose to her. In view of the rank that Arthur now held in the army, as well as the knighthood bestowed on him, and the private fortune he had accrued after his service in India,Thomas Pakenham deemed Arthur worthy of his sister’s hand in marriage. Therefore he would raise no objection if Sir Arthur Wellesley were to send a formal proposal of marriage to Kitty.

‘Good God,’ he said as he laid it on the desk.‘What a pompous idiot.’

‘Sir?’ Blake leaned out from his desk so that he could see his commanding officer.

‘It’s nothing. Pray continue with your work.’

Arthur was cross with himself for uttering such an uncharitable thought about his prospective brother-in-law. After all, Thomas had given him permission to marry Kitty, having rebuffed him eleven years previously on the grounds that Arthur was unworthy.Well, now the wait was over, and Kitty would be his wife, if she accepted his offer. Arthur realised, with some surprise, that the feeling uppermost in his mind was not unbridled joy at the prospect, but a sense of relief that all the uncertainty of his feelings for Kitty was almost over.