Empire of Ivory (8 page)

attic corner, with a crust of bread. The noise of the day

behind them, he was finding it difficult not to yield to a

certain lowness of spirit. The ferals had behaved quite as

badly as expected, and he could not help but see how

impossible it should be, to guard the Channel with such a

company. The contrast could not have been greater, to the

fine and ordered ranks of British formations, those ranks

now decimated; and he felt their absence all the more

keenly for it.

The word was accordingly sent, and a carriage summoned; it

was waiting outside the covert gates by the time they had

gathered their things, and walked to meet it down the long

narrow path which led away from the dragon-clearings.

A twenty-minutes' drive brought them to the outskirts of

Weymouth. Ferris grew steadily more hunched as they bowled

along, and so miserably white that Laurence might have

thought him taken ill with the motion, if he had not seen

Ferris perfectly settled through thunderstorm aloft and

typhoon at sea, and not likely to be distressed by the

motion of a comfortable, well-sprung chaise. The carriage

turned, then, drawing into a heavily wooded lane, and

Laurence realized his mistake as the forest parted, and

they drew abreast the house: a vast and sprawling gothic

sort of edifice, the blackened stone barely to be seen

behind centuries of ivy, the windows all illuminated and

throwing a beautiful golden light out onto a small

ornamental brook which wound through the open lawn before

the house.

"A very fine prospect, Mr. Ferris," Laurence said as they

rattled over the bridge. "You must be sorry not to be home

more often. Does your family reside here long?"

"Oh, a dog's age," Ferris said blankly, lifting his head.

"There was some Crusader or other first built the place, I

think, I don't know."

Laurence hesitated and a little reluctantly offered, "My

own father and I have disagreed on certain of our

occasions, I am sorry to say, so I am not often at home."

"Mine is dead," Ferris said. After a moment, he seemed to

realize this was a rather abrupt period to the

conversation, and added with an effort, "My brother Albert

is a good sort, I suppose; he has ten years on me, so we

have never really got to know one another."

"Ah," Laurence said, left no more the wiser as to the cause

of Ferris's dismay.

There was certainly nothing lacking in their welcome.

Laurence had braced himself for neglect: perhaps they would

be shown directly to their rooms, out of sight of the rest

of the company; he was tired enough to even hope to be so

slighted. But nothing of the sort: a dozen footmen were out

with their lights lining the drive, another two waiting

with the step to hand them down, and a substantial body of

the staff coming outside to greet them despite the cold and

what must surely have been a full house within to manage, a

wholly unnecessary ostentation.

Ferris blurted desperately, just as the horses were drawn

up, "Sir-I hope you will not take it to heart, if my

mother-she means well-" The footmen opened the door, and

discretion stopped Ferris's mouth.

They were shown directly to the drawing room, to find all

the company assembled to meet them, not very large, but

decidedly elegant: the women all in clothing of unfamiliar

style, the surest mark of the height of fashion to a man

who was often from society a year at a time, and several of

the gentlemen bordering on outright dandyism. Laurence

noted it mechanically; he was himself in trousers and

Hessians, and those stained with dust; but he could not be

brought to care, very much, even when he saw the other

gentlemen in the greater formality of knee-breeches. There

were a couple of military men among their number, a colonel

of Marines whose long, seamy, sun-leathered face had a

certain vague familiarity that meant they had most likely

dined together on one ship or another, and a tall army

captain in his red coat, lantern-jawed and blue-eyed.

"Henry, my dear!" A tall woman rose from her seat to come

and greet them with both her hands outstretched: too like

Ferris to mistake her, with the same high forehead and

reddish-brown hair, and the same trick of holding her head

very straight, which made her neck look longer. "How happy

we are you have come!"

"Mother," Ferris said woodenly, and bent to kiss her

presented cheek. "May I present Captain Laurence? Sir, this

is Lady Catherine Seymour, my mother."

"Captain Laurence, I am overjoyed to make your

acquaintance," she said, offering him her hand.

"My lady," Laurence said, giving her a formal leg. "I am

very sorry to intrude upon you; I beg you will forgive our

coming in all our dirt."

"Any officer of His Majesty's Aerial Corps is welcome in

this house, Captain," she declared, "at any moment of day

or night, I assure you, and should he come with no

introduction at all still he should be welcome."

Laurence did not know what to say to this; he himself would

no more have descended upon a strange house without

introduction than he would have robbed it. The hour was

late, but not uncivilized, and he came with her own son, so

in any case these reassurances were not much to the point;

he could not have supposed it otherwise, having been

invited and welcomed. He settled on a vague, "Very kind."

The company was not similarly effusive. Ferris's eldest

brother Albert, the present Lord Seymour, was a little high

in the instep, and made a point early on, when Laurence had

made a compliment to his house, of conveying the

intelligence that the house was Heytham Abbey, in the

possession of the family since the reign of Charles II; the

head of the family had risen from knight to baronet to

baron in steady climb, and there remained.

"I congratulate you," Laurence said, and did not take the

opening to puff off his own consequence; he was an aviator,

and well knew that one evil outweighed any other

considerations in the eyes of the world. He could not help

but wonder that they should have sent a son to the Corps;

there was no sign of the pressure of an encumbered estate,

which might have made one reason: while appearances might

be kept up on credit, so extravagant a number of servants

could not have been managed.

Shortly dinner was announced, to Laurence's surprise; he

had hoped for nothing more than a little cold supper, and

thought them arrived late for even this much. "Oh, think

nothing of it, we are grown modern, and often keep town

hours even when we are in the country," Lady Catherine

cried. "We have so much company from London that it would

be tiresome for them to be always shifting their dinnerhour early, and sending away dishes half-eaten, to be

wished-for later. Now, we will certainly not stand on

formality; I must have Henry beside me, for I long to hear

all you have been doing, my dear, and Captain Laurence, you

shall take in Lady Seymour, of course."

Laurence could only bow politely and offer his arm,

although Lord Seymour certainly ought to have preceded him,

even if Lady Catherine chose to make a natural exception

for her son. Her daughter-in-law looked for a moment as if

she liked to balk, Laurence thought, but then she laid her

hand on his arm without any further hesitation, and he

chose not to notice.

"Henry is my youngest, you know," Lady Catherine said to

Laurence over the second course; he was on her right.

"Second sons in this house have always gone to the drum,

and the third to the Corps, and I hope that may never

change." This, Laurence thought, might have been subtly

directed at his dinner companion, by the direction of her

eyes; but Lady Seymour gave no sign she had heard; she was

correctly speaking with the gentleman on her right, the

army captain, who was Ferris's brother Richard. "I am very

glad, Captain, to meet a gentleman whose family feels as I

do on the matter."

Laurence, who had only narrowly escaped being thrown from

the house by his irate father on his shift in profession,

could not in honesty accept this compliment, and with some

awkwardness said, "Ma'am, I beg your pardon, I must confess

you do us credit we have not earned: younger sons in my

family go to the Church, but I was mad for the sea, and

would have no other profession." He had then to explain his

wholly accidental acquisition of Temeraire and subsequent

transfer to the Aerial Corps.

"I will not withdraw my remarks; it is even more to their

credit that you were given good principles enough to do

your duty, when it was presented to you," Lady Catherine

said firmly. "It is shameful, the disdain that so many of

our finest families will profess for the Corps, and I

certainly will never hold with it in the least."

The dishes were being changed again as she made this

ringing and over-loud speech, and Laurence noticed that

they were going back nearly untouched after all. The food

had been excellent, and he could only conceive, after a

moment, that all Lady Catherine's protestations were a

humbug: they had already dined earlier. He watched covertly

as the next course was dished out, and indeed the ladies in

particular picked unenthusiastically at their food,

scarcely making pretense of conveying a single morsel to

their mouths; of the gentlemen only Colonel Prayle was

making any serious inroads. He caught Laurence looking and

gave him just the slightest bit of a wink, then went on

eating with the steady trencherman rhythm of a professional

soldier used to take his food when it was before him.

If they had been a large party, coming late to an empty

house, Laurence might have conceived of a gracious host

holding back dinner for their convenience, or serving a

second meal to the newcomers, but not under such pretense,

as though they should have been offended with a simple

supper, served to them privately, the rest of the company

having dined. He was obliged to sit through several more

removes, conscious they were a pleasure to no one else of

the company; Ferris himself ate with his head down, and

only lightly, though in the ordinary course of events he

was as rapacious as any nineteen-year-old boy unpredictably

fed of late. When the ladies departed to the drawing room,

Lord Seymour began to offer port and cigars, with a

determined if false note of heartiness, but Laurence

refused all but the smallest glass he could take for

politeness' sake, and no one objected to rejoining the

ladies quickly, they most of them already beginning to

droop by the fire even though not half-an-hour had elapsed.

No-one proposed cards or music; the conversation was low

and leaden. "How dull you all are to-night!" Lady Catherine

rallied them, with a nervous energy. "You will give Captain

Laurence quite a disgust of our society. You cannot often

have been in Dorsetshire, Captain, I suppose."

"I have not had that pleasure, ma'am," Laurence said. "My

uncle lives near Wimbourne, but I have not visited him in

many years."

"Oh! Perhaps you are acquainted with Mrs. Brantham's

family."

That lady, who had been nodding off, roused enough to say

with sleepy tactlessness, "I am sure not."

"It is not very likely, ma'am; my uncle moves very little

outside his political circles," Laurence said, after a

pause. "In any event, my service has kept me from the

enjoyment of much wider society, particularly these last

years."

"But what compensations you must have had!" Lady Catherine

said. "I am sure it must be glorious to travel by dragon,

without any worry that you shall be sunk in a gale, and so

much more quickly."

"Ha ha, unless your ship grows tired of the journey and

eats you," Captain Ferris said, nudging his younger brother

with an elbow.

"Richard, what nonsense, as if there were any danger of

such a thing! I must insist on your withdrawing the

remark," Lady Catherine said. "You will offend our guest."

"Not at all, ma'am," Laurence said, discomfited; the vigor

of her objection gave an undeserved weight to the joke,

which in any case he could more easily have borne than her

compliments; he could not help but feel them excessive and

insincere.

"You are kind to be so tolerant," she said. "Of course,

Richard was only joking, but you would be quite appalled

how many people in society will say such things and believe

them. I am sure it is very poor-spirited to be afraid of

dragons."

"I am afraid it is only the natural consequence," Laurence

said, "of the unfortunate situation prevailing in our

country, which keeps dragons so isolated in their distant

coverts as to make them a point of horror."

"Why, what else is to be done with them?" Lord Seymour