‘He thought it best if I took to a carriage for exercise, rather than the saddle.’

‘And you will?’

‘Yes, though I so very much enjoy riding with Allegra – and with Georgiana; and Annie.’

He was pleased she enjoyed her exercise so, but relieved that she’d moderate it. He was about to say ‘The time will pass quickly enough’ – the time until her birthing – but suddenly thought better of it, for how could he know how time passed for a woman with child?

Instead he pondered a moment or two. ‘By the bye, the strangest thing: Somervile told me that the commissary had got word that money has been changing hands – bribes – over the forage contracts. I said I thought it so preposterous as to consider it a slander, and that the commissary should produce his evidence, sworn as necessary.’

‘That is indeed very ill. I am sorry for you. But surely no discredit attaches to you personally?’

He shook his head. ‘It can amount to nothing, or else I’m no judge of horseflesh at all. Garratt, Collins and the quartermaster-serjeant are the only men engaged in the business of forage contracts. It’s unconscionable.’

‘I should think so myself, even though I know them but little.’

He nodded, and pondered a few moments more. ‘Somervile was, though, eager to tell me that my dragoon is reprieved. So God bless the major and the tigers of Madras.’

‘That is indeed happy news.’

He related the details – Australia, appeal, delay; she listened patiently.

Then it was silence again but for the cicadas. Kezia turned to gaze at the distant lanterns …

‘You will return to me, won’t you, Matthew?’

She said it not anxiously but insistently, yet with a note of affection that made him catch his breath.

‘But of course! I said to Worsley that it’s hardly the French we face – and we beat them.’

But she knew her husband. She’d known his reputation long before they’d married. Her late husband, then his commanding officer, used to say there was no handier officer in a fight; and she’d heard how he’d charged at Coorg, with Armstrong alongside (naturally), which they’d no right doing, except that (it was said) there was no choice; and how he’d sabred one and then been first through the sally port of a stockade. And doubtless it would be the same again this time. She’d never been happier, she supposed, than now – no, not even as Lady Lankester – and she was all too conscious of the miserable journey to that happiness. Yes, it was all in the past, but how could she know if contentment – the foundation of contentment – might vanish in an instant? A random shot, an unseen blade …

But there was no dissuading him from the cannon’s mouth. As well bid the incoming tide recede. Could she bear the blow, however, not least for Allegra and now Georgiana – even for Master Hervey, all unknowing still? The material comforts, here, were of no concern; at home in Hertfordshire she’d be as well attended. But she cared for her husband – not least, she believed, because he cared not enough about himself. How else was it that a man who’d saved the government’s skin by his action at Bristol remained a colonel still?