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all another Longwing; presumably he too insisted on a female captain just as did Lily, and with his many years of service, his captain could scarcely have avoided battle. Yet Laurence had to own he was surprised, and not a little shocked, to see a woman so cut about and so forward; Harcourt, his only other example of a female captain, was by no means missish, but she was still quite young and conscious of her early promotion, which perhaps made her less assured.

      With the subject of marriage so fresh in his mind after his discussion with Temeraire, he also could not help wondering about Emily’s father; if marriage was an awkward proposition for a male aviator, it seemed nearly inconceivable for a female one. The only thing he could imagine was that Emily was natural-born, and as soon as the idea occurred to him he scolded himself to be entertaining such thoughts about a perfectly respectable woman he had just met.

      But his involuntary guess proved entirely correct, in the event. ‘I am afraid I have not the slightest idea; I have not seen him in ten years,’ she said, later that evening; she had invited him to join her for a late supper at the officers’ club after bringing Emily back, and after a few glasses of wine he had not been able to resist making a tentative inquiry after the health of Emily’s father. ‘It is not as though we were married, you know; I do not believe he even knows Emily’s name.’

      She seemed wholly unconscious of any shame, and after all Laurence had privately felt any more legitimate situation would have been impossible. But he was uncomfortable nevertheless; thankfully, though she noticed, she did not take any offence at it for herself, but rather said kindly, ‘I dare say our ways are still odd to you. But you can marry, if you like, it is not held against you at all in the Corps. It is only that it is rather hard on the other person, always taking second place to a dragon. For my own part, I have never felt anything wanting; I should never have desired children if it were not for Excidium’s sake, although Emily is a dear, and I am very happy to have her. But it was sadly inconvenient, for all that.’

      ‘So Emily is to follow you as his captain?’ Laurence said. ‘May I ask you, are the dragons, the long-lived ones, I mean, always inherited this way?’

      ‘When we can manage it; they take it very hard, you see, losing a handler, and they are more likely to accept a new one if it is someone they have some connection to, and who they feel shares their grief,’ she said. ‘So we breed ourselves as much as them; I expect they will be asking you to manage one or two for the Corps yourself.’

      ‘Good Lord,’ he said, startled by the idea; he had discarded the thought of children with his plans of marriage, from the very moment of Edith’s refusal, and still further gone now that he was aware of Temeraire’s objections; he could not immediately imagine how he might arrange the matter.

      ‘I suppose it must be rather shocking to you, poor fellow. I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I would offer, but you ought to wait until he is at least ten years old; and in any case I cannot be spared just now.’

      Laurence required a moment to understand what she meant, then he snatched up his wineglass with an unsteady hand and endeavoured to conceal his face behind it; he could feel colour rising in his cheeks despite all the will in the world to prevent it. ‘Very kind,’ he said into the cup, strangled half between mortification and laughter; it was not the sort of offer he had ever envisioned receiving, even if it had only half been made.

      ‘Catherine might do for you by then, however,’ Roland went on, still in that appallingly practical tone. ‘That might do nicely, indeed; you could have one each for Lily and Temeraire.’

      ‘Thank you!’ he said, very firmly, in desperation trying to change the subject. ‘May I bring you a glass of something to drink?’

      ‘Oh, yes; port would be splendid, thank you,’ she said. By this time he was beyond being shocked; and when he returned with two glasses and she offered him an already-lit cigar, he shared it with her willingly.

      He stayed talking with her for several hours more, until they were the only ones left in the club and the servants were beginning to pointedly stop concealing their yawns. They climbed the stairs together. ‘It is not so very late as all that,’ she said, looking at the handsome great clock at the end of the upper landing. ‘Are you very tired? We might have a hand or two of piquet in my rooms.’

      By this time he had begun to be so easy with her that he thought nothing of the suggestion. When he left her at last, very late, to return to his own rooms, a servant was walking down the hall and glanced at him; only then did he consider the propriety of his behaviour and suffer a qualm. But the damage, if any, had already been done; he put it from his mind, and sought his bed at last.

Chapter Ten

      He was sufficiently experienced to no longer be very surprised, the next morning, when he found that their late night had led to no gossip. Instead, Captain Roland hailed him warmly at breakfast and introduced him to her lieutenants without the slightest consciousness, and they walked out to their dragons together.

      Laurence saw Temeraire finishing off a hearty breakfast of his own, and took a moment to have a private and forceful word with Collins and Dunne about their indiscretion. He did not mean to go on like a blue-light captain, preaching chastity and temperance all day; still, he did not think it prudish if he preferred his youngsters to have a respectable example before them in the older officers. ‘If you must keep such company, I do not propose to have you making whore-mongers of yourselves, and giving the ensigns and cadets the notion that this is how they ought to behave,’ he said, while the two midwingmen squirmed. Dunne even opened his mouth and looked as though he would rather like to protest, but subsided under Laurence’s very cold stare: that was a degree of insubordination he did not intend to permit.

      But having finished the lecture and dismissed them to their work, he found himself a trifle uneasy as he recalled his own behaviour of the previous night was not above reproach. He consoled himself by the reminder that Roland was a fellow-officer; her company could hardly be compared with that of whores, and in any case they had not created any sort of public spectacle, which was at the heart of the matter. The rationalization rang a little hollow, however; and he was glad to distract himself with work: Emily and the two other runners were already waiting by Temeraire’s side with the heavy bags of post that had accumulated for the blockading fleet.

      The very strength of the British fleet left the ships on the blockade in strangely isolated circumstances. It was rarely necessary for a dragon to be sent to their assistance; they received all but their most urgent dispatches and supplies by frigate, and so had little opportunity to hear recent news or receive their post. The French might have twenty-one ships in Brest, but they did not dare come out to face the far more skilled British sailors. Without naval support, even a full French heavy-combat wing would not risk a strafing run with the sharpshooters always ready in the tops and the harpoon and pepper guns primed upon the deck. Occasionally there might be an attack at night, usually made by a single nocturnal-breed dragon, but the riflemen often gave as good as they got in such circumstances, and if a full-scale attack were ever launched, a flare signal could easily be seen by the patrolling dragons to the north.

      Admiral Lenton had decided to reorder the uninjured dragons of Lily’s formation as necessary from day to day, to both keep the dragons occupied and patrol a somewhat greater extent. Today he had ordered Temeraire to fly point, with Nitidus and Dulcia flanking him: they would trail Excidium’s formation on the first leg of Channel patrol, then break off for a pass over the main squadron of the Channel fleet, currently just off Ushant and blockading the French port of Brest. Emily and the other two runners were already waiting by Temeraire’s side with the heavy bags of post that had accumulated for the fleet.

      The morning was so cold and crisp no fog had gathered, the sky sharply brilliant and the water below almost black. Squinting against the glare, Laurence would have liked to imitate the ensigns and midwingmen, who were rubbing black kohl under their eyes, but as point leader, he would be in command of the small group while they were detached, and he would likely be asked aboard to see Admiral Lord Gardner when they landed at the flagship.

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