Laurence said slowly, “And yet—she cannot be looking for affection of the ordinary sort which one might hope to find in marriage. For that matter, she must know soon enough if not already that Napoleon has divorced another woman for her, one whom he married for passion; and she herself is a recent widow. Her marriage must be an act of state, rather than a personal gesture; I cannot think she would take it as an injury in the same manner as might a woman entering into the marriage contract under the more ordinary circumstances.”
“Laurence,” Granby cried, with a look of reproach, “I should not have said a word to you of any of this, if I had been set on fire and dragged by wild horses, except that I hadn’t the least notion how to get out of the thing without help; and now you are as much as telling me you think I ought to go through with it.”
Laurence, sorry, said, “I would say, rather, that I do not know how to advise you,” but in truth, he could not claim Granby’s confession had successfully overcome his uncomfortable consciousness of the advantages of the match—or more to the point the deadly disadvantages of the alternative. It only increased in great measure the pitiability of Granby’s situation, without making Laurence able to feel in earnest that it was not Granby’s duty to allow the arrangement to go forward, if it might be achieved. “This alone does not seem to me a greater bar to your marriage than must be all the other obstacles: the difference in your station, and the uncertainty of the local politics; the ruin which it must make of your career—”
Here Laurence trailed off: for he himself had ruined his career, to carry out what he felt his duty; and Granby, who had looked away, knew it: Laurence’s own actions spoke too loudly of the choice he himself would make.
“It is not, of course, your duty,” Laurence said.
“I beg you consider whether it is not your duty,” Hammond said, when they had come back into the hall: he had been lying in wait for them, or very nearly, at the door. “Of course there is no question of imposing the match upon you unwilling,” he added, “none at all—”
If this were true on Hammond’s part, a large assumption, it was certainly not true on Iskierka’s; she dismissed Granby’s protests one and all, even the last desperate attempt, when he corralled her in private, out of earshot of everyone else but Laurence. “Of course I know that you are not fond of women, in that way,” she said. “I am not stupid; I know that you and Captain Little were—”
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake, will you not be quiet,” Granby cried, scarlet, and looked sidelong at Laurence in misery.
“Well, why did you speak of it, then?” Iskierka said reasonably. “I did not raise the subject: Immortalis told me we mustn’t do so, although I don’t see why; it is not as though I would allow anyone to arrest you, no matter what. But here it cannot signify—Anahuarque does not want you to be in love with her, only to make eggs, and be Emperor. I will ask Maila if you like, to be sure there will be no difficulty about it, but there shan’t be.”
Granby made plain to her that he did not like, in the least; but between her relentless determination and Hammond’s coaxing, he was chivvied along in a manner which could only inspire sympathy, rather as watching a stag harried by a pack of hungry wolves. He was at length persuaded into allowing himself to be formally presented to the Empress as a suitor, in a ceremony of Maila and Iskierka’s joint devising.
“Which, Captain Granby, if it achieve no other good, Maila tells us will induce them to allow me into her presence,” Hammond said, “which must at least advance my ability to negotiate to our advantage—”
“And to my disadvantage,” Granby said to Laurence, with more grim resignation than real protest; and he said, “I don’t suppose any of us have a clean neckcloth between us? I must at least try and not look like a scarecrow, I guess.”
Temeraire could not feel that Laurence had taken a proper view of the situation. While of course no-one could like the Sapa Inca to marry Napoleon, it seemed to him quite unreasonable that poor Granby should be sacrificed to avert it, especially as he disliked it so. Someone else might marry the Empress, since after all she did not care and only wished for fire-breathing eggs from Iskierka, in what anyone of sense would call a great lack of judgment. Iskierka might stay with Maila, since she liked to—no-one very much wanted her, anyway—and Granby might rejoin Temeraire’s own crew.
He had hinted at the idea to Granby—not in a direct way, for Iskierka was sure to be unreasonable about it, and after all Temeraire did not mean to be rude—or to behave as though he wished to steal Granby; he did not. Only it seemed hard that Iskierka should be permitted to take Granby away from Temeraire in the first place, and make him wretched, and keep him forever in this far-away country, however much gold they did seem to have lying about everywhere.
But despite the gold, Granby had indeed said dismally, “I would give a great deal this moment to still be a first lieutenant, and nothing to worry about except whether I should ever get my hands upon an egg: what my mother will say when she hears of this, I don’t like to think.”