It may not have been expressed with much erudition, but she’d found it a good deal more enlightening than much of what she’d read. She was glad her father let him ride out with them this morning. She’d known him for as long as she’d known anyone who wasn’t family – indeed, in many ways he was family – and he always had a cheerful word. Well, perhaps not to everyone’s mind, but she herself thought it cheerful, even if to others it sounded crabby. It was nice, too, for Serjeant Acton to have someone to talk to. She’d have been as happy to talk away with him as with St Alban – well, not quite (she blushed, again, to admit it) – but Annie didn’t approve. Or rather, she reckoned, Annie didn’t approve of Serjeant Acton talking to her. For it was plain as a pikestaff that Serjeant Acton – who was without question the finest of men and soldiers too, all that a serjeant of dragoons should look like and be – admired Annie. And Georgiana would have jumped with joy had Annie said ‘yes’ to a proposal … except that, as Corporal Johnson said, ‘Officers’ wives have puddings and pies; a serjeant’s wife has skilly’ (to the tune the trumpeter played for the mess call), and she didn’t suppose that Annie liked the prospect of skilly any more than would she, especially now Annie was ‘Miss Gildea’ – although in character, she felt sure that Annie was now as she had always been, and that she would no more have sold herself for a bowl of skilly when there was none other to be had, as now when she dined at their own table. No, Annie deserved puddings and pies.

‘Mr St Alban, Miss Hervey asks if we may take a ferry at the river today.’

St Alban had dropped back alongside them. ‘Indeed? Why, Miss Hervey, do you wish to take a ferry?’

‘To get to the other side, sir.’

Johnson, riding behind, snorted. He liked it when young officers – even ones like St Alban – got a smart answer.

St Alban smiled. Nor was it merely an indulgent smile for the child of his commanding officer. ‘And what, Miss Hervey, is so particular to see on the other side?’

‘Begum Mansoor says there are temple carvings in one of the villages that are very old.’

St Alban wasn’t sure about temple carvings – there were some, he knew, that were not for the contemplation of ladies – but he supposed he could send Acton on ahead to have a look. ‘Of course, Miss Hervey. We’ll enquire at the next village where is the nearest horse ferry.’

Annie steeled herself to ordeal by ferry once more. She’d have to dismount, which meant that she’d have to remount, and Serjeant Acton would try to assist her, and she’d probably have no alternative but to let him …

But she did like being in the saddle now. The RM had even complimented her on her seat, which everyone said was no little thing, for he was a stickler for position (nor one to flatter), although how he was expert in riding aside as well as astride she didn’t know.