Free Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik

home?"

    "Oh, pray do not speak of that monster," Mrs. Brantham
    spoke up. "I am sure I have never heard anything half so
    dreadful as what he has done to the poor Queen of Prussia:
    taken both her sons away to Paris!"

    At this, Lady Seymour, still high-colored, burst out, "I am
    sure she must be in agony. What mother's heart could bear
    it! Mine would break to pieces, I know."

    "I am sorry to hear it," Laurence said, to Mrs. Brantham,
    into the awkward silence. "They were very brave children."

    "Henry tells me you have had the honor to meet them,
    Captain Laurence, and the Queen, during your service," Lady
    Catherine said. "I am sure you must agree, that however
    much her heart should break, she would never ask her sons
    to be cowards, and hide behind her skirts."

    He could say nothing, but only gave her a bow; Lady Seymour
    was looking out the window and fanning herself with short
    jerking strokes. The conversation limped on a very little
    longer, until he felt he could in politeness excuse
    himself, on the grounds of the necessity of an early
    departure.

    He was shown to a handsome room, with signs of having been
    hastily rearranged, and someone's comb left by the
    washbasin suggested it had been otherwise occupied until
    perhaps that evening. Laurence shook his head at this fresh
    sign of over-solicitousness, and was sorry any of the
    guests should have been shifted on his account.

    Lieutenant Ferris knocked timidly on his door, before a
    quarter-of-an-hour had passed, and when admitted tried to
    express his regrets without precisely apologizing, as he
    could scarcely do. "I only wish she would not feel it so. I
    did not like to go, at the time, I suppose, and she cannot
    forget that I wept," he said, fidgeting the curtain
    uneasily; he was looking out the window to avoid meeting
    Laurence's eyes. "But that was only being afraid at leaving
    home, as any child would be; I am not sorry for it now, at
    all, and I would not give up the Corps for anything."

    He soon made his good-nights and escaped again, leaving
    Laurence to the rueful consideration that the cold and open
    hostility of his father might yet be preferable to a
    welcome so anxious and smothering.

    One of the footmen tapped at the door to valet Laurence,
    directly Ferris had gone: but he had nothing to do;
    Laurence had grown so used to doing for himself, that his
    coat was already off, and his boots in the corner, although
    he was glad enough to send those for blacking.

    He had been abed scarcely a quarter-of-an-hour before he
    was roused again, by a great clamor of barking from the
    kennels and the horses shrilling madly. He went to the
    window: lights were coming on in the distant stables, and
    he heard a thin faint whistling somewhere aloft, carrying
    clear from a distance. "Bring my boots at once, if you
    please; and tell the household to remain within doors,"
    Laurence told the footman, who came hurrying at his ring.

    He went down in some disarray, still tying his neckcloth,
    the flare in his hand. "Clear away, there," he called
    strongly, some number of the servants gathered in the open
    court before the house. "Clear away: the dragons will need
    room to land."

    This intelligence left the courtyard empty. Ferris was
    already hurrying out, with his own signal-flare and a
    candle; he knelt down to set off the blue light, which went
    hissing up into the air and burst high. The night was
    clear, and the moon only a thin slice; almost at once the
    whistling came again, louder: Gherni's high ringing voice,
    and she came down to them in a rustle of wings.

    "Henry, is that your dragon? Where do you all sit?" said
    Captain Ferris, coming down the stairs cautiously. Gherni,
    whose head did not come up to the second-story windows,
    indeed would have been hard-pressed to carry more than four
    or five men. While no dragon could precisely be called
    charming, her blue-and-white china complexion was elegant,
    and the dark softened the edges of her claws and