An informed taste had left its stamp upon the house, and its comforts were many: the fire laid to the precisely right degree, excellent wine at dinner, and all the furnishings of the best. Jane alone was out of place, and Excidium drowsing in the wide courtyard behind the house: his head was just visible through the windows, with the bone spurs gleaming white in the lamp-light.

“I have gilded the tool-chest, and kept the rusty old hammer inside,” Jane said, reading his face, and laughed at him when he tried to demur. “No, I meant to do just that. The place is my sacrifice to propriety. I have even given a dinner here, if you can conceive it,” she added. “It was your mother’s notion, and I felt I owed it to her, after all her efforts on my behalf. I oughtn’t have doubted her, either, as it worked marvels: a dozen girls applied to the Corps the week after. They were all ladies of small fortune, who preferred it to going for governesses, except one heiress who preferred it to being sold off like a heifer calf. Their families made a noise over it, but I told their Lordships I wouldn’t turn any girl away who could keep her stomach and her feet mid-air, when we have six Longwing eggs in the offing to consider.

“And speaking of which: how does Emily, when you last saw her? I thank you for her step, by the way.”

“Very well,” Laurence said, struggling to decide what to say of Emily’s connection to Demane, which had formed under his watch. He had not quite the pain of having failed in his self-appointed duty of chaperonage—although he certainly would have done, if Emily had wished to discard her virtue—but an uneasiness remained; he did not think she was heart-whole. “Has she spoken to you of Demane?”

“She has written volumes of nothing,” Jane said, “but that is all right: he has made up for it. He presented himself to me the instant the Potentate arrived in Spain, declared that he should make himself worthy, and raved up and down my tent about Emily’s graces for a quarter of an hour before I gave up waiting for him to be done and shoved him along—not too ungently, Laurence, you needn’t look so worried. I haven’t any complaints of the boy. A milder, sweeter-tempered creature than that monster of his, I have never met: it is just as well for Kulingile’s captain to have some fire in his belly, when his beast has none. Do you mean to tell me Emily is going to break her heart over him?”

“Not break it, I hope,” Laurence said, but slowly, and Jane read most of what he wished to say in his face. She shook her head a little.

“I never had much sensibility, myself—as you have cause to know, dear fellow. I have found it a luxury beyond my means. But she might as well marry him as not. I put my foot down and insisted they legitimize her, when they put the titles on me: if Wellesley can hand his coronet on to his brats when he spent all of ten minutes begetting them, damned if Emily was not getting mine. But there was quite the squabble over it, and I doubt they’ll let it go a second generation. So if she cares to hand it onwards, she will need to marry someone, and Captain Dlamini is respectable enough for anybody, I imagine.”

Jane imagined incorrectly, at least so far as the polite world would see it: an orphan boy from Africa with only a dragon to his name made no match for Lady Emily Roland, the daughter of one of England’s great heroes and the heiress to a coronet and a fortune. Of course, that Lady Emily was herself an aviator diminished her own luster a little, but when that service was the source of her titles, much would have been forgiven. Still, Laurence knew those considerations weighed not at all with Jane, who said only, “But she will scarcely see him one year to the next, chances are. Excidium is for Dover, and Kulingile will certainly be for Gibraltar, if ever we muddle our way back to peacetime. Well, it is a hard service.” She rubbed her mouth. “I suppose I may as well keep him with me, and give them more of a chance to forget one another. I had considered sending him along to Prussia, and taking Granby back—but we have the Flechas for fire-breathers, even if they are not so handy as Iskierka, and you may be in want of Granby’s advice, in any case. So they are giving you your flag?”

“Yes,” Laurence said, staring into the wine glass. It seemed still to him almost a subtle mockery; he had not understood, until nearly the end of the meeting, that the ministers were arguing with Wellington over naming him to the aerial command, forming now, which would join the allied effort in Prussia. “Or at least, that seemed their intention, by the close; I can scarcely conceive they will do it.”

“Oh, they will,” Jane said. “A little bird has sung in my ear that the Tsar wants you: how did you manage that? I have never known you to ingratiate yourself with anyone whose influence would be really useful to your career, when you could make yourself as inconvenient to them as possible instead.”

“I cannot claim any personal success in the matter,” Laurence said dryly. “I appeared on his borders with an army of dragons when he was in imminent danger of defeat; I suppose it must have produced a degree of warm feeling.”

“Well, we won’t hold it against your record,” Jane said. “And he is the man of the hour, make no mistake. I am never quite easy with these God-is-in-my-pocket sorts—begging your pardon—but if it keeps him zealous to be the savior of Europe, I shan’t complain. We will certainly never get another chance at Boney, from what news you bring. Four thousand eggs! Our breeders would dearly like to know how he has managed it, and our supply-officers how he means to feed them. For my part, though, I will settle for having good old fat Louis back on his throne before they are grown.”

She reached over to fill his glass: the port had been drunk, somehow. Laurence sat back into his chair, restless. The Tsar’s request made the Admiralty’s difficulty more clear: if Alexander had asked for Laurence, they must send him; and sending him, they could supersede him only with an officer of greater seniority, who must furthermore by necessity possess a dragon whose stature would outweigh or at least equal Temeraire’s in the eyes of their fellow dragons. There were few British officers who could claim either distinction: thanks to Hammond’s machinations, Laurence had been fully reinstated, so his seniority dated not from Temeraire’s harnessing, but from his being made post as a naval officer, some five years prior to the date.

And yet that was not sufficient argument for his fitness for the task: nearly all his own education at sea, not eight years on the wing, and that spent in an irregular fashion. He could not sensibly recognize himself as anyone’s first choice for command, even independent of animus.