Free Someone Wishes to Speak to You by Jeremy Mallinson Page B

below his twinkling blue eyes by a whiter-than-white well-trained military moustache. There was something in his manner, an emanation of kindness, which put people at ease although he was a man of high principles who always expected others to have the same level of integrity. He would never suffer fools gladly. During the next ten years, Sir Colin was appointed High Sheriff of North Yorkshire; awarded the Life Presidency of the North Yorkshire Branch of St John Ambulance; and selected to by an Honorary Colonel of his old regiment.
    Mathew’s brother, Sebastian, had always wanted to be a professional soldier. After leaving Wellington College, which had been built as a national monument for the Duke of Wellington and opened as a school in 1859 with its motto‘Fortune Favours the Brave’, he gained entrance to the Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Sandhurst. After two years of intensive training, he narrowly missed gaining the academy commandant’s much-coveted Sword of Honour, but was awarded the Queen’s Medal as the officer cadet achieving the highest scores in military practical and academic studies.
    Prior to entering Sandhurst, Sir Colin had recommended that his eldest son and heir should aim at gaining a commission in the Household Brigade. So Sebastian took the opportunity to make friends with members of the brigade and, due to his family’s many social connections and his evident military prowess, he was soon to be sponsored throughout his two years as a cadet as a potential future officer in the Life Guards (which together with the Blues and Royals, represented the oldest and most senior British cavalry regiments). Toward the end of his training, a place in the regiment was confirmed. At the time of Mathew’s return to Hartington Hall, Sebastian was serving as a senior captain with his regiment as part of an armoured unit on his second tour of Northern Ireland.
    Before Mathew was accepted by Scaife University in Tupelo, Mississippi, his mother had schemed as much as possible to pair him off with the oldest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Drysdale, the eighteen-year-old Lady Antonia Clinton-Kemp. Antonia was just the type of person she would like to see her youngest son betrothed to. She was five feet six inches tall, with light-blonde hair and an English rose complexion. These attributes were matched by her fine cheekbones, clear blue eyes, and a countenance that gave her a kind of delectable innocence as well as, to Lady Sally’s reckoning, the fact that she was ‘a perfectly nice young lady’. Adding to such agreeable qualities, she sat on a horse well and rode to hounds impeccably, she was intelligent and also a fine shot. So in Lady Sally’s estimation, Antonia possessed the majority of the social attributes that she considered were essential for the next generation of the Duncan family to reproduce from.
    Prior to having embarked on his African field studies, Mathew had had a brief flirtation with Antonia at the annual January Bramham Moor Hunt Ball at Wetherby. The encounter had been rather champagne-fuelled and had been restricted to a few furtive kisses, cuddles, and a lasting embrace, within the confines of the front seat of his MGB GT. But in spite of Mathew having enjoyed this first physical contact with a member of the fairer gender, he could not help regarding Antonia as just a delightful, attractive, sporty friend who shared his social circle; not a person to attempt to deflower and thereby dishonour.
    It was well known that girls within his set would be quick to warn each other of the boys who had ‘tried to pounce’, and word would soon get around that they were NSITs – ‘Not Safe in Taxis’. On the odd occasion the behaviour of one of his social group had been considered by his peers to have gone too far, to have breached their moral code, they were quickly ostracised from the circle. However, due to his mother’s continued scheming it was not long after Mathew’s return to