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Laurence had never spent quite so much time politely ignoring social missteps in his life as he did in the first two weeks of his assignment to the covert of New South Wales. Even his stint at Loch Laggan, and the paralyzing dilemma of addressing a woman wearing men's clothing when she was insulted by being called "Miss" and he could not look anywhere other than her face for fear of her inappropriately fitted clothing revealing more of her figure than etiquette permitted Laurence to observe, could not compare to the challenge of purposefully failing to notice not one but three socially inadmissable but apparently long-standing liaisons. On one hot afternoon, he had returned from a lone patrol with Temeraire to find his commanding officer sprawled - there was no other word to describe the placement of her lanky limbs - on the grass with her head in her first lieutenant's lap, peacefully asleep. The sight was less than peaceful for Laurence, who was forced to avert his gaze and, upon Temeraire's inquiry, insist that his flushed face had been caused by overexposure to the Australian sun.
Leightley looked content, at least, Laurence thought, risking a glance out of the corner of his eye. The more heavily scarred side of her face was turned toward Shadwell, hidden from view, and with the usually cynical downward curve of her mouth relaxed, she might have even been passably pretty. Perhaps. Probably not, Laurence revised, if he were to be brutally honest; it was only the contrast with her usual stern visage that seemed favorable. Shadwell's expression was, as always, impenetrable, but his gentle fingers in Leightley's hair were more revealing. Then Shadwell caught Laurence's eye with a disquietingly amused smile, and Laurence looked away once more.
"Shall I continue?" Shadwell asked mildly of Leightley's dragon, a surprisingly sweet-natured Longwing several years older than Temeraire who, although less badly scarred than her handler from their various battles, had for the most part lived up to the grandiose moniker of Victrix. Laurence had been startled to discover that she shared Temeraire's fondness for books, although Leightley herself deprecatingly denied any responsibility for her dragon's taste in literature. She had clearly indulged Victrix, however, as had Shadwell, and Laurence suspected that Leightley was rather fonder of the written word than she liked to admit in mixed company.
"Pray do," Victrix said. "Temeraire, would you like to listen? Shadow is reading one of my very favorite poems to me."
"Trixie, love, I do not think that Temeraire speaks Latin," Shadwell said.
"Oh," Victrix said, disconcerted. "Do you not? Victoria says that all educated people do, and Temeraire always says he is a very educated dragon."
Shadwell covered his mouth to hide his laughter and jiggled his leg a bit to rouse his captain. "What is it?" she mumbled, the words barely understandable with her mouth pressed against Shadwell's thigh. "I gave strict instructions not to wake me unless the aboriginals besieged the covert en masse."
"Victrix has been repeating all manner of your ill-advised remarks," Shadwell said, the very image of calm propriety once more, if only one ignored the woman irritably stirring in his lap.
"Oh, well," Leightley sighed, sitting upright. "Trixie, what are you about now?"
Laurence's interest in the conversation was thoroughly diverted when he caught full sight of Leightley's face - more specifically, the left side, and the eye which she had lost some years ago to an enterprising French boarder's rapier. As usual, a patch concealed the worst of the scar tissue, and Laurence was no stranger to the remnants of old injuries; what had startled him was the fact that Leightley's eyepatch was adorned by a luridly blue embroidered flower. Laurence blinked, and decided that under the circumstances it might be better not to inquire.
" - and it was most certainly very rude of you to call me uneducated," Temeraire was saying indignantly when Laurence managed to look away from Leightley's unusually decorated left eyesocket, "especially when you have never read Confucius' Analects; my mother would say you were very uneducated indeed."
"Oh, I suppose it is because you are a Chinese dragon," Victrix said comfortably, not at all unsettled by Temeraire's accusation. "That is all very well, but I am a British dragon, and Victoria has always told me that if I wish to think myself so deuced clever I had better know enough Latin to throw off the philosophers."
"Trixie!" Leightley gurgled, nearly choking as she attempted to restrain her laughter.
"Well, you have," Victrix said, the picture of injured dignity.
"That is no reason to be rude, darling," Leightley said firmly.
"Shadow says that you are rude for any reason that you please, even if it is no reason at all," Trixie pointed out.
"Well, and if you are so deuced clever you should know better than to follow my example," she replied, losing her battle with her giggles. "And you should not laugh," she added to Shadwell, thumping him across the head with one of her mannish fists; "it is entirely your fault that she insists upon being so precocious. She certainly never got it from me."
"I do not see why I should have to know Latin," Temeraire said, still rather offended. "Laurence, do you?"
"Not very well," Laurence replied, startled. "I was not a great reader, you know, before I met you."
"Oh," Temeraire said. "But you have learned it?"
"When I was a boy, of course - but really, my dear, it hardly signifies; I can scarcely conjugate a verb reliably at this point. I certainly never was much good at it to begin with, and I've not seen a word of Latin since I made lieutenant."
"Temeraire, you needn't fret over it," Victrix said, a little smugly but all in all more tactful than could reasonably be expected of a dragon. Laurence looked at her in surprise and noticed Shadwell's meaningful gaze upon her. "After all, you are a Chinese dragon, and you certainly know enough languages already."
"Laurence is a British gentleman, so I am a British dragon," Temeraire said firmly. He might have continued in this vein, but their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Iskierka, Tharkay and Granby harnessed to her collar. She dropped to the ground between Victrix and Temeraire with a jealous glare at the older female, and let her tail lash dangerously close to where Shadwell and Leightley were sitting.
"None of your nonsense, if you please," Victrix snapped.
"Trixie," Shadwell said sharply.
"Iskierka, be careful," Tharkay warned, almost at the same time. Iskierka hissed slightly, but her tail stilled and she crouched over to let Granby and Tharkay down. Laurence allowed his attention to be captured by an interesting cloud formation, and thus avoided watching the uncomfortably intimate way in which Granby caught Tharkay around the waist to steady him after his leap.
"Granby, do you know Latin?" Temeraire demanded, oblivious to the tension between Victrix and Iskierka, and his own role in their small confrontation.
"Only a little," Granby said, puzzled. "I was never much for book-learning as a boy. Whyever do you ask?"
"Victrix says that all educated people speak Latin, but if neither you nor Laurence does I am quite certain she is wrong," Temeraire huffed.
"I know Latin," Tharkay offered unexpectedly, and smirked ever so slightly at Laurence's look of surprise. "I certainly never managed to attain the status of an educated person, but I did give it the old school try for a few years."
"Oh, did you," Leightley murmured, and then let out an undignified squeak when Shadwell pinched her side. She grabbed both his wrists in one hand, forcing the threatening fingers away from her body, and continued, "You don't strike me as an Ovidian sort."
"Mmm," Tharkay said noncommittally. "I favored Catullus, actually."
"'Hesterno, Licini, die oti'?" she suggested, glancing at Granby, who was slowly but surely turning red.
"'Verani, omnibus e meis amicis,' more like," Tharkay countered. Shadwell winced almost imperceptibly, but Leightley laughed.
"Ah, well. Trixie, would you like me to continue reading?"
"Read the end," Victrix requested. "My favorite part. I want Temeraire to hear it."
"Darling, would you not prefer something a trifle more... cheery?" Shadwell asked. "It is such a sad story."
"It is my favorite," Victrix repeated.
"Books are all very stupid anyway," Iskierka grumbled; "I don't suppose it matters if they are sad."
Victrix gave her a very superior look; Tharkay frowned. "Iskierka," he said quietly. She subsided with ill-grace. Laurence saw Granby discreetly entwine his fingers with Tharkay's, and shifted his stance slightly to block them from Leightley and Shadwell's direct line of sight. It was probably a pointless gesture; it was hardly necessary to protect Granby or Tharkay from Leightley, when she was as affectionate with Bell as she was with anyone but Shadwell or Victrix, and so far as Laurence could tell she actually liked Granby. Still, Laurence thought it should be done, and so he did. Tharkay, not at all fooled by Laurence's casual air, smiled at him, an unfamiliarly sweet expression on his hawkish face. He made no remark out loud, however, nor did he release Granby's hand.
"I will translate for you," Victrix announced to Temeraire, interrupting Laurence's train of thought; Leightley was still paging through the book, which she had taken from Shadwell. Iskierka snorted softly but otherwise refrained from editorializing, and all three dragons settled themselves down to listen as Leightley found her place and began to read. She declaimed in smooth, rolling cadences, completely unlike her usual terse style, and Laurence, unable to understand the words, found himself nearly hypnotized.
"The wrath of a not inconsiderable godhead works against you," Victrix began, in the rumble that passed for a dragon's murmur. Temeraire's head swung around to look at her in surprise, and Iskierka looked up with veiled curiosity. "You are paying for the great crimes you have committed; pitiful Orpheus raises up these punishments for you (or he would, if the fates did not stand in the way), not at all on account of what is due, and rages bitterly for his wife, who was snatched away..."
~*~
"...his very voice and frozen tongue called out, Eurydice, oh wretched Eurydice, as his soul fled: the banks along the whole river echoed back, Eurydice." Victrix paused and lowered her head to signal that she had finished, and Laurence came back to himself with a jerk. Temeraire looked more dissatisfied than moved by the story, Laurence noticed as he looked up at his dragon, but Iskierka was snuffling softly and trying to hide it by faking an allergy attack. She let off explosive clouds of steam through her nostrils whenever she sneezed, so this effort was not terribly successful in disguising her reaction. Granby appeared torn between being amused and being touched.
"But, that cannot be the end," Temeraire protested at last. "He never found Eurydice again! What good did he even do by going into the Underworld?"
"He proved that he loved her," Tharkay said quietly. Laurence could not venture to interpret the look on Tharkay's face, though it was turned towards him. "He proved that he would follow her anywhere rather than leave her, even into death."
Iskierka let out an undignified honk. "It was beautiful," she said wetly.
"Mind you," Tharkay added thoughtfully, "he went about it in an exceedingly stupid fashion. But the sentiment stands on its own." He looked over at Granby, who smiled at him, and Laurence felt suddenly and inexplicably lonely. He glanced away, towards Temeraire, and was immediately reassured.
"And - that is your favorite poem," Temeraire said to Victrix, interrogative. "I do not think I wish to learn Latin after all."
Before literary analysis could erupt into bloody war, Shadwell cleared his throat and suggested that the aviators consider returning to the covert for supper. Laurence was surprised to realize that this was not entirely a stalling tactic: the dinner hour was already approaching. The five humans walked up to their home together, Leightley with Shadwell, Tharkay with Granby, and Laurence trailing behind, struggling to push down the unwanted sense of wistfulness that resurfaced as soon as he left Temeraire's sight.
~*~
Laurence knew he was being, at the moment, a terrible dinner companion, but somehow he could not quite manage to escape from his strange mood. Lieutenant Robbins mostly compensated for his quietude with light, cheerful remarks, and while under normal circumstances he would have been grateful to her overwhelming and bewildering normality - she invariably came down to dinner in a dress; aside from the ugly pockmark left by a bullet in her shoulder Laurence would not have felt the least surprise or dismay at meeting such a woman in the company of his mother - he found her easy conversation almost as much a trial as real dialogue. He could not bring himself to ask for silence, however, although he knew she would grant it in an instant; she had been very kind to him since his arrival, and her unconventionally conventional manners were an unlooked-for port in the storm of aviator etiquette. If she occasionally seemed more amused than sympathetic, Laurence was not one to question a lady's smile.
The rest of the aviators at the table, by and large lacking Robbins' social graces, plowed through their meal and addressed each other as they pleased, from Leightley's ensigns (though not, Laurence was satisfied to note, his own) to the other captains in her formation. There were few enough of them, at least, that such conversation was, if not ideal, at least feasible: Leightley's crew, the handful that had elected to follow Laurence, Granby and Tharkay, and the small crews under Leightley's largely benevolent admiralty, comprising two Anglewing captains and their lieutenants, and one lone courier.
Lieutenant Hunt, directly across from Laurence, ate carefully and in silence, barely even looking up. It was rare to see him without Bell looming in the foreground, a guard-dog that had mysteriously attached itself to a rabbit. And Hunt certainly was a rabbit, Laurence thought in exasperation, as the anxious lieutenant very briefly glanced up, allowed his gaze to meet Laurence's, and immediately dropped his eyes again in what seemed to be as much fear as embarrassment.
"You underrate him, my good sir," Robbins murmured in his ear. He jerked and stared at her in surprise. "Everyone does, of course, so I am hardly amazed, but I assure you he does not merit your contempt."
"I - I cannot understand your meaning," Laurence stammered.
"He saved Victoria's life," she said matter-of-factly. "Shot the boarder who took her eye, and had Bell up to bandage her before she bled out. Head wounds, you know," she added; "they do bleed so distressingly."
Before Laurence could think of anything to say in reply, though not before an excessively awkward lull had occurred in their conversation while he cast about for any remark which might save him from responding directly to the information she had just bestowed upon him, salvation arrived in the person of Doctor Bell, who bounded into the room in great good cheer and salutated Captain Leightley with an apology for his tardiness. "I certainly do not care whether you come to dinner late, or at all," she said severely, "but pray do not interrupt my supper with your foolishness, Bell; Lindsay has been waiting for you. Go on."
Completely unintimidated, Bell laughed, complimented her on her garish eyepatch, and finally obeyed, taking his seat at Lieutenant Hunt's left hand. Hunt seemed somehow, unquantifiably different with Bell beside him: braver, maybe, or brighter, or just happier, though he still hunched his shoulders and kept his eyes on his plate. "I see you finished Victoria's patch at last, Mary," Bell said merrily, making inroads on the plate that Laurence now realized Hunt had filled for him. "Excellently done - I might even dare to say eye-catching!" He chuckled at his own joke. Hunt, to Laurence's surprise, smiled; Robbins cast a look towards the ceiling in theatrical despair. "Ah, Captain Laurence, you must forgive us; we are on family table manners as always, and you do not catch us at our best. Would you join us after supper? There will be entertainment for more refined tastes tonight."
There was no possible reply that would not unpardonably confirm Laurence's opinion of table etiquette in New South Wales, so he merely made an interrogative murmur. "Is there new music?" Hunt asked softly.
"Three duets, sent in the latest packet," Bell confirmed, to Hunt's delight and Laurence's confusion.
"Shadwell is fond of opera," Robbins explained mildly to Laurence. "Victoria can't abide it, of course, but she does her best to have music sent when she can - she feels it, you know, that he was obliged to give up those sorts of things, even if she does not understand them."
"Captain Leightley sings beautifully," Hunt said, with heretofore unprecedented resolution. "I shall turn your pages, Mary, if you like."
"You shall sing," Bell said firmly. "Leave the turning of pages to someone with a less lovely voice." Hunt flushed, looking pleased, and was silent.
~*~
There was a pianoforte in the officers' club; this was more of an oddity than Victrix's taste for Virgil, but perhaps less of one than Robbins' dresses or Leightley's flamboyant eyepatch. "We had room enough, on that enormous scow," Leightley said by way of explanation; Shadwell smiled faintly, and Laurence guessed that its transportation had not been so easy a matter. Robbins settled at the bench with a Scarlatti song, silently rehearsing a tricky run. Laurence was almost surprised at his own lack of surprise that her accomplishments apparently encompassed the musical realm, but after the embroidery he was perhaps jaded.
"What strange customs these Englishmen possess," Tharkay murmured in his ear. Laurence looked at him wryly; he was observing Victrix's crew with almost anthropological interest from afar, as they crowded around the pianoforte, but Granby had pressed in close with evident curiosity. Once Robbins began actually playing, however, he retreated with an imperfectly concealed look of disgust on his face.
Hunt had overstated Leightley's talent: she sang passably, but her voice was too low and quiet to be at all remarkable. Laurence drifted over to take Granby's place in spite of his and Tharkay's wordless gesture of invitation to leave with them, wanting almost against his will to know what she was singing. It was only some silly love-song from an opera he had never heard, full of overdone flowery metaphors and sospiri - completely ill-suited to Leightley, he thought, and she was smiling ruefully down at the music as she sang, as if she knew it. Hunt took up the man's part when her verse was finished, with more confidence than Laurence had seen in anything else he had done, and if nothing else, he could sing: for a few moments, the song seemed sincere rather than absurd.
Leightley's second verse was still soft and self-conscious, but Laurence's pleasure was undiminished: how, he wondered, could he have forgotten music, and how he loved it? He joined Hunt, barely aware of what he was doing, in singing another verse, and paid no notice when Leightley moved back to allow them to sing the whole song through again without her, Hunt's surprisingly rich baritone on the woman's part less jarring that it might have been.
After that, it was only natural to play through the other two songs together, and then a trio which Shadwell laughingly produced, claiming they had long been short a proper tenor and Laurence could not deny them now that they had found him. All in all nearly an hour passed before Laurence came back to himself, at the thoroughly unwelcome awareness that he had just addressed Lieutenant Robbins as Edith.
He could have been at home, for that hour, passing the time after supper with his mother and Edith and their friends. Really it was not such a strange slip to make, and Robbins had hardly been offended; he was not even certain she had noticed. But having realized why he felt so comfortable in the laughing circle around the pianoforte, it was impossible not to follow the realization to other, less pleasant recollections: that he would never see his mother again; that Edith had married Woolvey; that Woolvey was dead. Hunt was beaming at Bell, brighter than the candlelight, and Leightley's grudgingly tolerant expression was belied by the loose clasp of her fingers around Shadwell's wrist; all of Laurence's simple joy in the music was gone, and he was unendurably lonely.
He made his excuses hurriedly and fled; Granby and Tharkay were long gone, and if Robbins looked after him in puzzlement, he did not see it. He might have gone out into the cool night air and visited Temeraire, except Temeraire had grown more perceptive of his moods lately, and he knew he could not explain in any satisfactory way his abominable selfishness, or why, with Temeraire's unbounded love an undeserved gift in his possession, he still wanted another human body to press close to his own and keep the dreadful ache of isolation at bay. He abruptly missed Jane; felt certain, had she been there, she would have said something in her no-nonsense, practical way and made the entire situation seem ridiculous; and in some leap of logic that was utterly clear to him at the time, made his way to Tharkay's door in search of the next best thing to Jane.
Laurence's abstraction, however great, made a poor excuse for his actions, but in his defense, Tharkay and Granby had made such an effort to avoid offending his sensibilities by what lay between them that it had never quite seemed real to him: it was understandable in theory, but unapplied in practice. And so when he knocked on Tharkay's door and then entered without waiting for a reply, it honestly failed to occur to him that he might be interrupting anything but Tharkay's sleep, for which, he was fairly certain, Tharkay would forgive him in short order.
In fact, neither Granby nor Tharkay was engaged in anything remotely similar to slumber, though they were both stripped of their shirtsleeves and entangled in the sheets. Laurence went white, felt so embarrassed he was nearly dizzy, and stammered out, "I am so dreadfully - that is - I mean to say - I most sincerely beg your pardon," before beating a hasty retreat.
The paralyzing mortification he had brought upon himself led him to his second misjudgment of the evening, and rather than attempt to escape in any direction at all, Laurence attained the dubious safety of his room one door distant and remained there in numb anticipation, until Granby burst in after him, his shirt unbuttoned and his cheeks red. "Laurence, for heaven's sake - Will!" he said, exasperated.
"I am so very sorry," Laurence managed. "I had no notion - I did not intend - "
"I assure you that neither of us suspected for a moment that you intended anything of the sort," Granby said. "Pay us the trifling compliment of trusting in our good sense. Whyever did you run off like that? We were not offended, truly."
"No, I - it is not - it is only that I find myself in a very strange mood tonight," Laurence said, in an unprecedented fit of honesty, perhaps instigated by a lingering sense of shock. "Really it is nothing, only I have felt very... alone, seeing Leightley and Shadwell and Bell and Hunt, and, John, I am very grateful for your company but I do not think at present that it will help."
"Rubbish," Granby said rudely. "As though you did not know - but you don't, do you," he added, in a very different tone of voice, suddenly almost gentle. "Will, how could you not?" He sat beside Laurence on his bed, taking his hands almost as an afterthought. Laurence looked at him, bewildered.
"There is nothing I would not do for you, Will Laurence," Granby said, with all the simplicity of inexorable truth. "There is nothing Tharkay would not do for you. I do not know what is wrong with you that you still do not know that after we have followed you halfway around the world, but there you have it. If you feel alone, it is without cause." He squeezed Laurence's hands, and then released them. "I would not trouble you with affection you do not desire, but pray realize that you are better loved than you give yourself credit for."
"John? Will?" Tharkay appeared in the doorway, as immaculate as Granby was disheveled. Laurence wondered if perhaps overfamiliarity with his features led him to superimpose expressions on them, but he thought he could detect the faintest hint of anxiety in the set of Tharkay's mouth.
"All's well, beloved," Granby assured him, getting to his feet. He held out a hand to Tharkay, resting the other very consciously on Laurence's shoulder, and when Tharkay matched his grip, pulled him in close and kissed him, deliberate and slow, while Laurence watched and a strange fire in his stomach burned away any trace of embarrassment. He could have this, he thought, caught between wonder and disbelief - how long had he guiltily envied them this, and they had been trying to offer it to him all the while -
"Will," Granby said, an eternity later, "I wish you would comprehend that there is no earthly reason for you to be lonely."