“Did I offer for her, then?” Laurence said, glad that at least he had been decent enough to give her the opportunity to refuse him.
“—yes,” Temeraire said, with a hitch. “So—so I suppose you do wish to be married, whatever you have said.” He fell silent, and then with a very evident summoning of all his resources said in determined tones, “Well, then I suppose, if Mrs. Pemberton will be sensible and not wish you always to be leaving me to go and be with her, and will not expect you always to be having children, and if she will not mind coming back to live in our valley, in New South Wales, after we have won the war—”
“I beg your pardon!” Laurence said, raising his voice to stem this torrent of conditions. “Temeraire, I have not the least desire to be married to Mrs. Pemberton, I assure you. And when should we have been living in New South Wales? There can hardly be any call for dragons, there.”
“—when we were transported,” Temeraire said in surprise, “Oh,” he added, “I suppose you do not remember that, either? Laurence, it is very inconvenient you should recall nothing at all.”
LAURENCE COULD SEE GRANBY speaking softly with Harcourt and Berkley; they had trailed him to the edge of the escarpment and stood now at a distance together, all of them looking at him warily as though they imagined he might fling himself over, and as though they would have been sorry for it if he had. Even though he was a traitor—a convicted traitor. Even though he had carried aid and comfort to the French, deliberately, of his own free will, and undermined thereby a stroke which might have averted the invasion of Britain.
An appalling stroke, one which would have meant the slow and dreadful death of a thousand dragons or more, a deliberate plague-bearing—but notwithstanding this, a stroke which had been commanded by his officers, by his Government, and through them by his King. He had betrayed them all, and the invasion of his country might be laid at his door.
“Laurence,” Granby said, low, coming to his side, “—pray will you come back to my tent? Temeraire is frayed like a torn rag already, and he’ll be worse the longer you stand out here. He is watching you.”
Laurence did not answer; he could scarcely yet form thoughts in his own head. The worst of the matter was to be unable to recall what should have shaped his choice: he had committed no mere act of passion. He had acted with deliberation. He had also been pardoned, Temeraire had urgently told him, pardoned and even restored to the list of officers; but Laurence felt that he would have given up that pardon, given anything, only to feel again the sentiments that had driven him to such an extremity.
But he did not; he did not remember, and only now understood that he did not know himself any longer. He did not know how he ought to feel. Temeraire had evidently driven him to the act; a court-martial had condemned him; the Government had pardoned him. But none of these facts could tell Laurence whether he had condemned himself, or ought to, and whether he should long since have separated himself from Temeraire as ought a sailor shut his ears to the Sirens.
Granby gently took his arm, and Laurence after a moment let himself be drawn away. They walked slowly back across the encampment, past the watchful, suspicious looks of the red dragons. Laurence did not look towards Temeraire’s pavilion, but ducked into Granby’s tent; there he took the glass of strong rice liquor Granby offered him and swallowed it straightaway.
“I’m damned sorry,” Granby said, sitting on a chest. “We ought have found some other way to break the news to you, whatever Pettiforth and Hammond said; we must have known you could not go forever, not learning of it. I suppose we have all been telling ourselves you would remember, surely, any day now.” He leaned over with the bottle, and filled Laurence’s glass again.
Laurence took another hot, too-bitter swallow. “I think I can scarcely blame myself,” he said, low, “if having forgotten, I did not wish to remember this.” He downed the rest of the glass and asked abruptly, “I beg your pardon: may I ask your opinion of the act; of the—” He stopped; he did not put a word to it. He did not know what name to give it; he did not know why Granby should consider his feelings, in the least, nor tolerate his company, in the face of it. But he desperately wished to know.
Granby hesitated a moment and then said, “I haven’t anything to say, Laurence. I was damned glad the French had the cure, and so was any aviator worth his salt, in my opinion. They asked me, you know, if I’d had a part in it; they asked all of us, and all I could tell them was you wouldn’t have taken any help, and I wouldn’t have thought of it. And that’s too paltry for words. Anyway,” he added, “you wouldn’t have, either; Temeraire came up with the notion.”