Empire of Ivory. Naomi Novik
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their number, a colonel of the marines whose long, seamy, sun-leathered face held a vague familiarity that most likely meant they had dined together on one ship or another, and a tall army captain in a red coat, stood near him, 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 obliging 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 us arriving 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, he should be welcome still.’
Laurence did not know what to say to this. He would no more have descended upon a strange house without introduction than loot one. The hour was late, but not uncivilized, and he was accompanied by her own son, so found such reassurances to be unnecessary, but 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 haughty. He made the early point, when Laurence complimented his house, of conveying that the house was called Heytham Abbey, and had been in their possession since the reign of Charles II. The head of the family had risen from knight to baronet to baron in a steady climb, and had there remained.
‘I congratulate you,’ Laurence said, dismissing the obvious opening to puff about his own consequence; he was an aviator now, and knew well that such evil outweighed any other considerations in the eyes of Society. He could not help but wonder why they should have sent a son to the corps; there was no sign of it being an encumbered estate: while appearances might be sustained on credit, so extravagant a number of servants could not have been managed.
Dinner was announced shortly after they arrived, to Laurence’s surprise; he had hoped for nothing more than a little cold supper, and thought it late even for that 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 constantly adjusting their dinner-hour. Dishes would be sent away half-eaten, only to be wished for later. Now, we will certainly not stand on formality; I must have Henry beside me, for I am longing to hear all you have been doing, my dear, and Captain Laurence, you shall escort 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 younger son. Her daughter-law looked for a moment as if she were going to balk at the offer, 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, but Lady Seymour gave no sign that she had heard her mother-in-law as she continued to speak with the gentleman on her right, the army captain, who was Ferris’s other brother, Richard. ‘I am very glad, Captain Laurence, to meet a gentleman whose family feels as I do on the matter.’
Laurence, who had only narrowly escaped being thrown from his house by his irate father due to 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 and yet we have not earned it. Younger sons in my family are supposed to go to the Church, but I was mad for the sea, and would have no other.’ He was then forced to explain his accidental acquisition of Temeraire and subsequent transfer to the Aerial Corps.
‘I will not withdraw my remarks, sir. It is even more to their credit that you have principle 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 profess for the Corps, and I will never hold with them in the least.’
The dishes were being changed once again as she made this ringing and overly-loud speech. Laurence noticed, baffled, that they were returning nearly untouched after all. The food had been excellent, therefore he could only conceive that Lady Catherine’s protestations were humbug, and that they had already dined earlier in the evening. He watched covertly as the next course was dished out, and indeed, the ladies in particular, picked unenthusiastically at the food, scarcely bothering to uphold the pretence of conveying morsels to their mouths. Of the gentlemen only Colonel Prayle seemed to make any serious progress. He caught Laurence looking and gave him just the slightest wink, then continued eating with the steady trencherman rhythm of a professional soldier, used to taking advantage of any food when it was before him.
If they had been a large party, coming late to an empty house, Laurence might have understood a gracious host holding back dinner for their convenience, or serving them a later second meal at the table, but the assumption that they might have been offended by a simple private supper, when the rest of the company had already dined, was absurd. He was obliged to sit through several more removes, uncomfortably aware that they were a pleasure for no one else. Ferris ate sparingly, with his head down; ordinarily he possessed as rapacious an appetite 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. Laurence refused all but the smallest glass for politeness’ sake. No one objected to rejoining the ladies quickly, most of them had already started 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 tonight!’ Lady Catherine rallied them, with a nervous energy. ‘You will give Captain Laurence a quite disgusting impression of our society.
‘You cannot often have been in Dorset, I suppose, Captain.’
‘No, I have not had the pleasure before, ma’am,’ Laurence said. ‘My uncle lives near Wimbourne, but I have not visited him in many years.’
‘Oh! The perhaps you are acquainted with Mrs. Brantham’s family?’
One of the ladies, who had been nodding off, roused long enough to say, with sleepy tactlessness, ‘I am sure he is not.’
‘It is not likely that I been introduced, ma’am; my uncle moves very rarely outside his political circles,’ Laurence said, after a pause. ‘Also, my service has kept me from enjoying wider society, particularly these last few 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 could be sunk in a gale, and to arrive 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 his elbow.
‘Richard, what nonsense, as if there were any danger of such a thing! I must insist that you withdraw the remark,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘You offend our guest.’
‘Not at all, ma’am,’ Laurence said, discomfited; the vigour of her objection gave an undeserved weight to the joke. He could more easily have borne the jest than her compliments, which he could not help but feel were excessive and insincere.
‘You are kind to be so tolerant,’ she said. ‘Of course, Richard was only joking, but you would be simply appalled to know how many people in society say such things and believe them.