“We will have to manage on what we can afford within the current bounds, and stretch that little out,” Laurence said. “But some effect may be produced by the searing of the meat alone, or stewing; let us not despair, my dear, but hope that Gong Su’s ingenuity may yet find some answer.”
“I do not suppose this Grenville eats raw beef every night, with the hide still on, and no salt; and then goes to sleep on the ground,” Temeraire said resentfully. “I should like to see him try it a week and then refuse us.” His tail was lashing dangerously at the already-denuded tree-tops around the edge of the clearing.
Laurence did not suppose it, either: and it occurred to him that the First Lord might very likely dine from home. He called to Emily for paper, and wrote quickly several notes; the season was not yet begun, but he had a dozen acquaintances likely to be already in town in advance of the opening of Parliament, besides his family. “There is very little chance I will be able to catch him,” he warned Temeraire, to forestall raising hopes only to be dashed, “and still less that he will listen to me, if I do.”
He could not wish whole-heartedly for success, either; he did not think he could easily sustain his temper, in his present mood, against still more of the casual and unthinking insult he was likely to meet in his aviator’s coat, and any social occasion promised to be rather a punishment than a pleasure. But an hour before dinner, he received a reply from an old shipmate from the gunroom of the Leander, long since made post and now a member himself, who expected to meet Grenville that night at Lady Wrightley’s ball: that lady being one of his mother’s intimates.
There was a sad and absurd crush of carriages outside the great house: a blind obstinacy on the part of two of the coach drivers, neither willing to give way, had locked the narrow lane into an impasse so that no one else could move. Laurence was glad to have resorted to an old-fashioned sedan-chair, even if he had done so for the practical difficulties in getting a horse-drawn carriage anywhere near the covert. He reached the steps un-spattered, and if his coat was green, at least it was new, and properly cut; his linen was beyond reproach, and his knee-breeches and stockings crisply white, so he felt he need not blush for his appearance.
He gave in his card and was presented to his hostess, a lady he had met in person only once before, at one of his mother’s dinners. “Pray how does your mother; I suppose she has gone to the country?” Lady Wrightley said, perfunctorily giving him her hand. “Lord Wrightley, this is Captain William Laurence, Lord Allendale’s son.”
A gentleman just lately entered was standing beside Lord Wrightley, still speaking with him; he startled at overhearing the introduction, and turning insisted on being presented to Laurence as a Mr. Broughton, from the Foreign Office.
Broughton at once seized on Laurence’s hand with great enthusiasm. “Captain Laurence, you must permit me to congratulate you,” he said. “Or Your Highness, as I suppose we must address you now, ha ha!” and Laurence’s hurried, “I beg you will not—” went thoroughly ignored as Lady Wrightley, astonished as she might justly be, demanded an explanation. “Why, you have a prince of China at your party, I will have you know, ma’am. The most complete stroke, Captain, the most complete stroke imaginable. We have had it all from Hammond: his letter has been worn to rags in our offices, and we go about wreathed in delight, and tell one another of it only to have the pleasure of saying it over again. How Bonaparte must be gnashing his teeth!”
“It was nothing to do with me, sir, I assure you,” Laurence said with despair. “It was all Mr. Hammond’s doing—a mere formality—” too late: Broughton was already regaling Lady Wrightley and half-a-dozen other interested parties with a representation both colorful and highly inaccurate of Laurence’s adoption by the emperor, which had been nothing more in truth than a means of saving face. The Chinese had required the excuse to give their official imprimatur to Laurence serving as companion to a Celestial dragon, a privilege reserved, among them, solely for the Imperial family, and Laurence was quite sure the Chinese had happily forgotten his existence the moment he had departed: he had not entertained the least notion of trading upon the adoption now he was got home.
As the brangle of carriages outside had stifled the flow of newcomers, there was a lull in the party, still in its early hours, which made everyone very willing to hear the exotic story; if in any case its success would not have been guaranteed by the fairy-tale coloration which it had acquired. Laurence thus found himself the interested subject of much attention, and Lady Wrightley herself was by no means unwilling to claim Laurence’s attendance as a coup rather than a favor done an old friend.
He would have liked to go, at once; but Grenville had not yet come, and so he clenched his teeth and bore the embarrassment of being presented around the room. “No, I am by no means in the line of succession,” he said, over and over, privately thinking he would like to see the reaction of the Chinese to the suggestion; he had been made to feel an unlettered savage more than once, among them.
He had not expected to dance; society was perennially uncertain whether aviators were entirely respectable, and he did not mean to blight some girl’s chances, nor open himself to the unpleasant experience of being fended off by a chaperone. But before the first dance, his hostess presented him deliberately to one of her guests, as an eligible partner; so even though much surprised he of course had to ask. Miss Lucas was perhaps in her second season, or her third; a plump attractive girl, still very ready to be delighted with a ball, and full of easy, cheerful conversation.
“How well you dance!” she said, after they had gone down the line together, with rather more surprise than would have made the remark perfectly complimentary, and asked a great many questions about the Chinese court which he could not answer: the ladies had been kept thoroughly sequestered from their view. He entertained her a little instead with the description of a theatrical performance, but as he had been stabbed at the end of it, his memory was imperfect; and in any case it had been carried on in Chinese.
She in turn told him a great deal of her family in Hertfordshire, and her tribulations with the harp, so he might express the hope of one day hearing her play, and mentioned her next younger sister coming out next season. So she was nineteen, he surmised; and was struck abruptly to realize that Catherine Harcourt at this age had been already Lily’s captain, and had flown that year in the battle of Dover. He looked at the smiling muslin-clad girl with a strange hollow feeling of astonishment, as if she were not entirely real; and then looked away. He had written already two letters each to Harcourt and to Berkley, on Temeraire’s behalf and his own; but no answer had come. He knew nothing of how they did, or their dragons.
He said something polite afterwards, returning her to her mother, and, having displayed himself in public a satisfactory partner, was forced to submit with rigid good manners to filling out one set after another; until at last near eleven o’clock Grenville came in, with a small party of gentlemen.
“I am expected in Dover tomorrow, sir, or would not trouble you here,” Laurence said grimly, having approached him; he loathed the necessity of anything like encroachment, and if he had not been introduced to Grenville at least the once, many years before, did not know he could have steeled himself to it.
“Laurence, yes,” Grenville said vaguely, looking as though he would have liked to move away. He was no great politician: his brother was Prime Minister, and he had been made First Lord for loyalty, not for brilliance or ambition. He listened without enthusiasm to the carefully couched proposals, which Laurence was forced to make general for the benefit of the interested audience, who were not to know of the epidemic: there would be no concealing such information from the enemy, once the general public was in possession of it.