“... at least, I don’t precisely wish it,” she wrote, in a private letter to Jenny, “but I know Brough does, tho’ he does not press it. The thing is that he is much attached to Rockhill, who has always been particularly kind to him, which makes it awkward and slighting not to invite him. I daresay they will refuse, on account of the distance from town, but for my part I do not think it signifies if they do not, because when Adam accompanied my aunt and me to the Bickertons’ party they were present, and Julia in high bloom, but Adam did not appear at all conscious, but was perfectly composed, and greeted her in the most natural way...”

Bless the child, did she expect him to betray himself at a rout-party? Jenny thought, wryly smiling, as she put the letter up, and turned her attention to what the Dowager was saying to Adam.

She was explaining to him, at tedious length, the various circumstances which made June 21st the only really suitable date. The most cogent of these was that both Brough and Lydia had engagements in London during the preceding week, and that to postpone the date beyond the 21st would be to run the risk of coinciding with Charlotte’s confinement; and the least that the 21st would be a Wednesday.

“Jenny, are you sure you like this scheme?” Adam asked, when they were alone.

“Yes, that I do!” she replied. “Don’t you?”

“Oh, yes! As long as it won’t put you to a great deal of trouble.”

“It won’t put me to any trouble at all. But if you had rather — ”

“No, there must be a party, of course — or, at any rate, you all think so!”

“Well, it’s natural we should, but if you don’t wish it — ”

“My dear, you are perfectly right, and I do wish it!”

He spoke impatiently, and she said no more, believing that his reluctance sprang from the knowledge that the Rockhills were to be invited. He was not thinking of Julia, although he did not want her to come to Fontley, and had been dismayed when he had heard that she might. He was reluctant because he thought no time could have been more ill-chosen for festivity than the present. He did not say so; his brief sojourn in London had made him realize that between the soldier and the civilian there was a gulf too wide to be bridged. It had been no hardship to cut his visit short. The season was in full swing; the looming struggle across the Channel seemed to be of no more importance to the ton than a threatened, scandal, and was less discussed. To a man who had spent nearly all his adult life in hard campaigning it was incomprehensible that people should care so little that they could go on dancing, flirting, and planning entertainments to eclipse those given by their social rivals when the fate of Europe was in the balance. But England had been at war for twenty-two years, and the English had grown accustomed to this state, accepting it in much the same spirit as they accepted a London fog, or a wet summer. In political circles and in the City a different and more serious point of view might be taken, but amongst the vast majority of the population only such families as had a son or a brother in the Army regarded the renewal of hostilities as anything more than an inevitable and foreseeable bore. Except that Napoleon had not abdicated in March of 1802, it was the Peace of Amiens all over again. It was disagreeable, because taxes would remain high, and one would once more be unable to enjoy foreign travel, but it was not disastrous, because whatever he might do on the Continent Napoleon would not overrun Great Britain. Life would go on, in fact, just as it had for as long as most people could remember.

To Adam, who, until so recently, had had no other real object than to defeat Napoleon’s troops, such apathy was as nauseating as it was extraordinary. It increased his secret longing to be back with his Regiment tenfold; it drove him out of London, thinking that although he could not be where his heart was at least he need not remain amongst people who babbled about picnics and balls, or prosed comfortably and ignorantly in the clubs about the strength of the forces under Wellington’s command.

No veteran of the Peninsula could visualize without an extreme effort of imagination the possibility of the defeat of an Army under that command; but no one with the smallest military understanding could look upon the force now assembled in Belgium with satisfaction. People talked as if it was the same Army that had fought its way from Lisbon to Toulouse, but it was very far from being that Army. The hard core was composed of seasoned Regiments, but its size, so impressive to the uninstructed, had been swelled by raw battalions, and by dubious foreign troops. Adam had heard pompous and well-fed gentlemen lecturing with what appeared to him to be crass stupidity any who could be persuaded to listen on the strategy and the tactics the Duke would employ in the campaign, To hear them prating about the Dutch-Belgian Army was more than Adam could stomach. They seemed to believe that the Dutch-Belgians would be as valuable as the Portuguese Caçadores, whom Marshal Beresford had trained: they were more likely to be as unreliable as the Spaniards, he thought, remembering how often those volatile, damnably-officered troops had proved a dangerous embarrassment during the war in the Peninsula. He kept his tongue between his teeth, because to spread despondency was a military crime. Heaven knew, too,  that there were too many croakers already, shaking their gloomy heads, saying that they had always foreseen how it would be, that it was folly to think Napoleon could ever be beaten. The most woodheaded optimist was preferable to these gentry; so, even, were the fashionables, preoccupied with their balls, their scandals, the newest style of tieing a neckcloth, the chances of some pugilist in a forthcoming match. It was unreasonable to be so much irritated by the pleasure-seekers: there was nothing for them to do, after all, but to occupy themselves with their usual pursuits. It was even unreasonable to look with bitter contempt upon the rabid Whigs, who had been declaring for years that Wellington’s victories had been grossly exaggerated, that he was nothing but a Sepoy General, and who were now so thankful to know that he was in command: Adam knew that he ought rather to rejoice in their conversion. He could not, and the only thing to do was to remove himself from their vicinity. He would never, perhaps, feel himself a civilian, but he was one,  and had as little to do in the present military crisis as the most frivolous member of the ton. So he had gone home to Fontley, where there was so much to do that his inward fret was sensibly allayed. He still wished that he were with his Regiment, but if the work into which he had thrown himself was not military it was at least of enormous importance, whatever might be Mr Chawleigh’s opinion of it. Having agreed to the proposed betrothal party, he thought no more about it. Jenny never bored him with her housewifely schemes, so it was only when he saw his mother that the party was brought to his mind; and since Membury was ten miles distant from Fontley his meetings with the Dowager were infrequent. Nor did Jenny vex him by talking arrant nonsense about the military situation. Lambert did so, and Charlotte, too, acting as Lambert’s echo, but he met the Rydes as seldom as he met his mother; and, in any event, Lambert (thanks to Jenny) had become a mere bobbing-block.

Jenny rarely talked about the war at all, but when she did mention it she showed, he thought, a great deal of good sense. It did not occur to him that Jenny, like Charlotte, was her husband’s echo.

Out of hearing of all the rumours that flew about London, he regained cheerfulness and confidence. One or two of his old friends wrote from Belgium now and then: the news was growing better. Some of the Peninsular Regiments which had been recalled from America had arrived, and in capital trim; the dauntingly heterogeneous Army had been welded into a workmanlike whole (trust old Hookey!); Blücher’s Prussians were present in force, and were credibly reported to be well-disciplined soldiers. The Allied Army, in fact, was now ready to receive Napoleon at any date convenient to him. “We are all anxious to discover what costume he means to wear for the occasion,” wrote one of Adam’s, correspondents, in sardonic allusion to the postponed ceremony at the Champ du Mars, at which the Emperor, as far as could be gathered from the accounts published in the newspapers, had appeared in the vaguely historical raiment suitable for a Covent Garden masquerade.

Meanwhile, Jenny went quietly about the preparations for her first house-party, enthusiastically assisted by Mrs Dawes, who perceived in this small beginning the promise of a return to Fontley’s former state.

It came as no surprise to Jenny that the Rockhills accepted the invitation. She thought that for some reason beyond the grasp of her own simplicity Julia could not keep away from Fontley and Adam, and she had no reason to suppose that Rockhill would put any bar in her way. So far as she understood Rockhill, he believed that Julia’s love for Adam was a romantic fancy merely, which thrived on imagination, and would dwindle in the face of reality. Jenny hoped he might be right, but resented the strain which this peculiar cure imposed on Adam.

However, it could have been worse. She had felt herself obliged to invite them to come to Fontley on the day before her dinner-party, since it would take them some nine hours or more to reach it, but Julia wrote, very prettily, to decline this: she was bringing her next sister, Susan, to join the nursery-party at Beckenhurst, to be cossetted back to health by old Nurse, after an attack of influenza which had left her with an obstinate cough, and she and Rockhill would  spend the night there, driving on to Fontley on the following day.

Brough brought Lydia down on the 17th, a Saturday. There was no need to ask Lydia if she was happy: she was radiant. Mrs Dawes, much moved, said: “Oh, my lady, it quite brings the tears to one’s eyes, the way they look at each other, Miss Lydia and his lordship!”

“Brough, is there any news!” Adam asked, as soon as Jenny had taken Lydia upstairs to see her godson.

Brough shook his head, grimacing. “Nothing but on-dits. It seems pretty certain that Bonaparte ain’t in Paris: that’s all I know.”

“If he has left Paris, he’s gone to join his Army of the North. There ought to be news any day now: it wouldn’t be like him to dawdle! Do you believe all these stories that he’s a spent force? Gammon!”

“I’m damned if I know what to believe!” said Brough. “I’ve never heard so much slum talked in my life, I can tell you that! It’s a queer thing, Adam: you’d think there’s no question about it that we’re in for it again, but there are plenty of fellows still saving there’ll be no war — men better placed than I am to know what’s brewing.”

“It’s war,” Adam said confidently. “It must be! I’ve been expecting all the week to hear that we’re engaged on the frontier: Boney won’t wait to be attacked on two fronts! His only hope of making the game his own is to give us a knockdown before the Austrians and the Russians can come up!”

“Think he can do the trick?” asked Brough, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Good God, no!”

The ladies came back into the room, putting an end to discussion. The war was not mentioned again. It seemed remote from Fontley, drowsing in the late sunshine of a summer’s evening; but when the little party sat at dinner it came suddenly closer, with the arrival, in a chaise-and-pair hired in Market Deeping, of one of Mr Chawleigh’s junior clerks, bearing a letter from his master.

Dunster brought it to Adam, at the head of the table. Recognizing the scrawl as he picked the letter up, Adam said, a note of surprise in his voice: “For me?”

“Yes, my lord.  The young man desired me to tell your lordship that it is most urgent. One of Mr Chawleigh’s clerks, I apprehend.”

Adam broke the wafer, and spread open the single sheet, frowning as he tried to decipher it. An anxious silence had fallen on his companions, all three of whom sat watching him. His frown deepened; his lips were seen to tighten. Jenny’s heart sank, but she said calmly: “Has Papa met with an accident? Please to tell me, my lord!”

“No, nothing like that.” Adam glanced up at Dunster. “Where is the young man? Bring him in!” He waited until Dunster had left the room before adding: “It is difficult to discover what has happened. He seems to think it necessary that I should post up to London immediately, and has been so obliging as to warn them at Fenton’s that I shall be arriving tomorrow evening.” There was an edge to this; aware of it, he forced up a smile, and passed the letter to Jenny, saying: “Try what you can make of it, my love!”