I hear talk that you will not be long in India, that Lord Hill has need of you and that you will be major-general in Ireland or in some such place. I dined with the Duke quite lately and he was of the opinion that your promotion was much overdue, but says that he has no influence in the matter these days because the Whigs are so much in the ascendancy and he is so heartily disliked by them and said I should petition Earl Grey, but that it would almost certainly be to no avail for he is so unbending a man, and that matters would be so much better arranged were Lord Melbourne to be in his place, for Lord M is a sensible man in these tempestuous times. I do of course know Lord M, he came to dine at Rocksavage on occasions when he was Chief Secretary but have not seen him in many months, he is so oppressed by the troubles in the country and I suppose you will have read there was a great tumult over his transporting some labouring men to Australia who had taken some secret oaths or some such and they are being called martyrs in the newspapers and even Parliament, but I shall endeavour to call upon him as soon as I am out of mourning, or even before if occasion presents itself, for I do so believe, as the Duke, that there is none more deserving of promotion after your exertions at Bristol, which Greville himself wrote to Lord M of in approbation or so I believe.

Hervey cursed. He wished she wouldn’t meddle and intrigue so. It was no way for an army to arrange promotions. She’d meddled, even, with admiralcy, though in truth he couldn’t regret it. She’d told him of her efforts on behalf of his great, good friend Commodore Peto, who against all the odds – confounding even the surgeons by the extent of his recovery from the terrible wounds of Navarino – was now a port admiral. But had this really been her doing? The secret, black, and midnight process by which their lordships advanced a post-captain to flag rank might well admit of petitioning, for as Peto himself had said more than once, he’d known many an officer with red, white or blue at the mizzen whom he’d not trust to take a single ship to sea. Who knew what heads could be turned by a good ankle?

And yet, if it helped his cause now, did it matter in the end? When it came to the time that he must, if with all reluctance, hand over the reins of the Sixth, could he bear to bide his time in that military purgatory between command and generalcy? Would it not be better to write in reply that he appreciated any effort on his behalf – doing so of course in a way that did not in the least suggest there remained any tendresse on his part – or indeed obligation – except the wholly proper feeling of friendship towards one whom he’d known before his marriage?