Chapter Three

I swear that I only turned my back for five minutes and when I looked again Mr. Caesar was standing on the doorstep of Mr. Ellersley's London residence. Although if I was perturbed by this turn of events, I suspect that Mr. Caesar was even more so. He had, of course, no fit subject for his disappointment save himself, but that was perhaps part of why he had come in the first place. Having marred not only one of the few social events at which his sisters would be welcome but quite possibly their long-term prospects of a successful marriage, home was not especially appealing to him. And he knew where he was with Thomas Ellersley. Even if it wasn't anywhere he wanted to be.

It was an unfashionable hour—indeed an unseemly hour—to be calling but Mr. Ellersley, while always fashionable, was never seemly, and was taking brandy in the drawing room when Mr. Caesar was shown up to him.

"Well," he said, as Mr. Caesar lowered himself into an armchair, "that was a fucking mess."

Mr. Caesar poured himself a drink. "By God, I've missed your wit."

"Not half so much as I've missed your carefree demeanour. Though frankly, John, I swear you've deteriorated."

Frankly, Mr. Caesar agreed with him. In some respects, at least. "Perhaps I've acquired more cares. Between an angry goddess nearly killing my cousin and my sisters fast approaching marriageable age I have a great deal to think about."

"Isn't your sisters' future more your parents' concern?"

That raised something like a laugh. "My father has no connections, my mother burned her ties to society when she married, and my grandfather is less and less often in London."

"Still"—Mr. Ellersley swirled the brandy in his glass like a witch mixing a potion—"the old man won't let them starve, will he?"

The old man, in this context, was Mr. Caesar's grandfather, the Earl of Elmsley. A forgettable enough mortal, but a wealthy one. "He won't," Mr. Caesar agreed, "but Uncle Richard most certainly will, and Grandpapa won't be around forever."

Mr. Ellersley drained his glass and poured himself another. "You poor thing. The weight of the world truly does rest on your slender shoulders, doesn't it?"

"Oh, fuck off."

"No, no, I'm serious. I deeply sympathise." He did not sound like he deeply sympathised. He sounded like he found the whole subject loathsome, a position with which I sympathised myself. "Although I will say that given your doubtlessly heavy burdens you should maybe avoid running around smacking the gentry in the face."

Mr. Caesar didn't know what was worse. That Mr. Ellersley was an arse, or that he was in this instance a correct arse.

"Still," Mr. Ellersley went on, "it got the attention of Captain James, so there is some upside."

"I have no idea what you mean," lied Mr. Caesar.

"Oh, come off it, you love a soldier as much as I do and Orestes James is the pinnacle of British soldiery. All the dash of an officer, all the grime of the ranks, what's not to like?"

A scowl came unbidden to Mr. Caesar's face. He was used to Mr. Ellersley talking like this, of course. Once he'd even encouraged it, but for some reason this time it landed differently. "He helped me when he didn't have to. I'll thank you not to speak so wantonly of him."

Mr. Ellersley made a hollow sound that could have passed in a bad light for a laugh. "Gods and powers, John, you really have stopped being fun, haven't you? The man is a soldier; we must have fucked a hundred each and scratch the surface they're all the same. Drunken lackwits who'll suck every cock in the room if you throw them a guinea for a new jacket."

"Remind me why I thought I liked you again?" asked Mr. Caesar, genuinely uncertain.

Setting his glass down, Mr. Ellersley rose, sauntered behind Mr. Caesar, and began to massage his shoulders. "Because, Johnny, my lad, you and I are birds of a feather. You can pretend all you like but deep down you're a catty little Ganymede who hates the world, just like I am." He paused. "Also I have a truly gigantic member and you are profoundly shallow."

The latter point, Mr. Caesar was forced to concede. Out of his multitudinous memories of Mr. Ellersley, by far the fondest were at least member-adjacent. "I should probably go home," he told his glass of brandy. In truth he should never have come, and he tried to pretend that he wasn't sure why he had. Except he was, he just didn't like the reason.

"You should," Mr. Ellersley agreed. "But I strongly suspect that you won't."

And then he leaned around Mr. Caesar's chair and kissed him.

I left the gentlemen their privacy—I say privacy; the ease with which beings like myself can spy on your kind means you should never truly consider yourselves unobserved—but returned to watching over Mr. Caesar and his family the following day. Events of the preceding evening had convinced me that the gentleman's life might be on the edge of becoming interesting, and I was determined not to miss out when it did. Thus I was rather aggrieved when I returned to find him standing, quite politely, in his father's study, waiting for him to finish his correspondence.

Still, I contented myself with the hope that once the elder Mr. Caesar was done writing, they might at least have a heated exchange of words. Much as I enjoy watching mortals harm one another physically, I find emotional damage fully three times as entertaining.

While he waited for his father to be ready, Mr. Caesar found his gaze drawn, as it often was, to the portrait that hung above his father's desk. It depicted a woman who Mr. Caesar had never met, plain-featured but aristocratic and shown—as all aristocratic women were in her day—surrounded by the trappings of her high station. Thus her wrists and neck were adorned with jewels, horses gambolled in the fields behind her, and by her side knelt a young boy. He gazed up adoringly at his mistress, a pearl in his ear standing out brilliant white against his dark skin. It was the only portrait of his father that Mr. Caesar had ever seen.

He kept it, the elder Mr. Caesar had explained, to show that he was not ashamed of where he had come from. It was a boldness that his children admired on good days and resented on bad ones.

"John," the elder Mr. Caesar said at last, leaning back in his chair, "I hear you were involved in an … altercation last night."

Mr. Caesar nodded. "I struck a man."

"That isn't like you."

"I know."

Silence fell between them and I began to feel terribly afraid that they might continue in this nothingish back-and-forth for the rest of the encounter.

"He insulted Mary," Mr. Caesar added, hoping in vain that he would be asked to elaborate no further.

From the look on his father's face, that was still no excuse for violence. "You told your sisters that he insulted the queen."

"It seemed kinder than the truth. He insulted her by specific reference to …"

He did not need to finish the sentence. His father understood and had likely understood for some while. "I assume other people know of that detail?"

"Yes. Uncle Richard was there."

"Ah." The elder Mr. Caesar looked grave. "Keeping the specifics from Mary is probably for the best. She is having troubles enough, I think."

"Are you certain?" Mr. Caesar asked. He understood the impulse to protect his sister from certain harsh facts of the world, but his recent experience had taught him that things you did not understand could still hurt you.

The elder Mr. Caesar regarded his son thoughtfully. "I am never entirely certain, but … your mother and I always wanted to give you and your sisters an ordinary life. As much as we can. I would not compromise that thoughtlessly, and for the moment I do not see that Mary needs to know the details of an incident that, if we are fortunate, we will soon be able to put behind us."

Candidly, Mr. Caesar was not certain they would be able to put it behind them, especially given what had happened afterwards with the major. And for a moment he tried to decide whether bringing up the tiny matter of an irate military officer instructing his servants to beat him and then swearing nonspecific vengeance was a good idea. He concluded, in the end, that it was. While he had realistic expectations about his father's ability to intercede, they had always been honest with each other. "You should know," he said, "that the man I struck, he—well, he had his servants attack me outside the ball."

It wasn't that the elder Mr. Caesar didn't believe his son, but the facts were rather hard for him to reconcile. "You look remarkably well for it."

"I was … rescued?"

"Rescued?"

"By another officer."

That brought the trace of a smile to his father's lips. "Perhaps a knack for attracting mysterious saviours runs in the family."

"He—the first officer—also told me I'd regret crossing him."

The elder Mr. Caesar shrugged. "They usually do."

At this juncture, their conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. The Caesars had only one servant, a maid of all work by the name of Nancy, who hustled in with a calling card.

"Gentleman downstairs, sir," she explained. "Military."

Having never expected to see Captain James again, Mr. Caesar was surprised, gratified, and not a little flustered as he hurried through to the drawing room to meet their guest. And he was, therefore, wonderfully disappointed when he discovered that it was not the captain at all.

"I've come to give my regards," explained the too-young officer from the previous night, who held the inconsequential rank of ensign, the inconsequential given name of Robert, and the inconsequential surname of Bygrave. "And to reassure you all that nobody in the regiment thinks any ill of you for what transpired last night."

The Misses Caesar looked up as one from their needlework.

"Oh, but you are too kind," replied Miss Anne, which earned a warm smile from the ensign. Possibly because, sitting in her window seat the sunlight slashing lines of brilliant golden-brown across her bare forearms and her curls framing her face like she was a plate in a fashionable periodical, she looked almost angelic. Or at least as angelic as you can look if you aren't a giant wheel of flaming eyes. "Far too kind," echoed Miss Caesar. And this did not earn so warm a smile.

The five members of the Caesar household arranged themselves around the room in a pattern designed to put their guest just the right amount of at his ease.

"And is last night much discussed in the regiment?" asked Lady Mary. Being an earl's daughter, the lady of the house had, despite her marriage, kept her Christian name, her title, and her propensity for pointed questions.

Mr. Bygrave nodded. "Amongst the officers at least. One doesn't fraternise with the enlisted men, so I wouldn't know about them."

"Oh, well"—Miss Anne waved a hand—"they're scarcely of consequence anyway."

The elder Mr. Caesar gave his daughter a disapproving look that she steadfastly ignored, and offered the ensign tea.

Clearly an individual of what the misguided mortals of the day considered impeccable breeding—which is to say that his ancestors had been ruthless enough to acquire wealth and canny enough not to talk about it—Mr. Bygrave settled himself into an armchair and began making meaningless chitchat with the Caesars. Or rather, with Miss Anne Caesar, the others having far less of a hold on his attention.

"Have you been very long in the army?" asked Miss Caesar, in the hope that bringing the conversation around to martial matters might encourage the ensign to spread his attention more equally.

Mr. Bygrave looked almost abashed. "A few months only. My commission came through just after old Boney abdicated so I never got the opportunity. But, well, he's back now and if His Majesty needs me, I—I trust that he shall not find me wanting."

"I am sure he will not," declared Miss Anne with an earnestness I found flatly irritating. "You struck me as quite the boldest gentleman at the ball last night, though it seemed unfair to say so in front of the other officers."

His abashment progressed from almost to definite. "You flatter me, Miss Anne. There were many present last night who have done far grander things than I. Though of course I aspire to someday be their equal."

Attempting once more to participate, Miss Caesar asked him what kind of grand things the other officers had done and, when Mr. Bygrave noticed her presence, he deigned to answer.

"Well, Major Bloodworth—the gentleman your brother, ah, that gentleman—he fought with Wellington at Toulouse. And then there's Captain James, of course. Although he's rather …"

"Rather what?" asked Mr. Caesar.

Mr. Bygrave shifted uncomfortably. "Don't mistake me. I hear he's a very fine officer in many ways, but, well, he's up from the ranks, you know. You'll notice he didn't dance at all at the ball. Never learned, you see."

"Is dancing," asked the elder Mr. Caesar, "important to leading men in battle?"

"Well, not directly, " the ensign admitted. "But the men expect that an officer should be, that is, he should be of a certain sort."

Miss Caesar nodded. "Refined," she said.

"Educated," added Miss Anne.

"Rich?" suggested Lady Mary, with a little less sincerity than her daughters.

Mr. Bygrave smiled, not quite realising it was at his own expense. "Precisely."

This era being one of strict social convention, there was a limit to the duration any visitation could reach before it was deemed indecorous, and the refined, educated, rich Mr. Bygrave observed that limit scrupulously. He departed in a haze of pleasantries, avowing his intent to call upon the family again when next he was in the vicinity, which Miss Anne expressed the profound hope would mean "tomorrow."

"Was he not marvellous?" she asked the room in general once Mr. Bygrave was more or less out of earshot. "So genial and dashing and—"

"Well, I found him rather rude," replied Miss Caesar without much real conviction. "I don't see why he showed such favour to Anne when there were four other people present."

"In his defence" the younger Mr. Caesar said, making the subtlest effort he could to turn the conversation in a lighter direction, "I don't think I'd be entirely to his tastes."

Unfortunately the remark did not have its intended effect. Miss Caesar remained disconsolate, and Miss Anne took the opportunity to assert her inalienable right to occupy the ensign's attention.

"It is hardly my fault," she told her sister, "that gentlemen like me more than they like you. They clearly respond to my sweeter temperament."

This was decidedly not what they were responding to, and at least half the room knew it.

"It is not your temperament they admire," Miss Caesar said bluntly. "It is your face. You had the fortune to be born favouring mama. I did not."

A hush fell across the assembly. Miss Anne, if I am any judge (and as the omniscient narrator of the entire book I am), seemed about to break that hush with some indignant observation to the effect that she could not be blamed for her own prettiness, but her mother did not permit it.

"I do not think," Lady Mary said in the gentlest tone she could muster, which, despite her upbringing, was actually quite gentle, "that is necessarily a helpful way to—"

"And what would you know of it?" demanded Miss Caesar. "Gentlemen slight me at balls and in my own home. Dresses hang poorly on me. My hair will not take the fashionable style. My complexion is not fair, my features are not delicate, I dance well enough but I never get the chance to show it because nobody will ask me to dance with them."

Rising from the chair where she had been working on her own needlepoint, Lady Mary went to her daughter's side. "You are beautiful, Mary. Let nobody tell you otherwise."

"Not in the eyes of anybody who matters." Miss Caesar seemed close to weeping. "To the ton I am worse than nothing."

I have said many times that I am a connoisseur of human sorrow, and that watching mortal kind torment themselves is one of my finest pleasures. But even I found this exchange pitiable. More pitiable still was its effect on the elder Mr. Caesar, who sat stoic throughout but found himself unable to comfort his child, and for that matter on the younger Mr. Caesar, who found himself similarly affected but with less talent for stoicism.

Through it all, Miss Caesar proved quite inconsolable, and so at the first opportunity she retired to her room. And there, as the sun set, she sat by her window with tears in her eyes, and watched a star fall.

Miss Anne, in the end, got her wish. Which is suitable, for this is, after all, a story about wishes. Mr. Bygrave returned the next day, and the next, and the next after that. Indeed the sequence of events had become practically routine—Nancy would arrive announcing a military gentleman, Mr. Bygrave would appear, demonstrate his absolute besottedness with Miss Anne, and then he would depart with the impeccable manners of the set to which Lady Mary had been born and to which all three of her children, in their several ways, aspired.

Miss Anne was thus somewhat disappointed on the fourth day when Nancy once again announced a military gentleman at the door and—running downstairs in her best dress as she always did—she was met not by the lovely Mr. Bygrave but by somebody altogether shabbier. She should perhaps have expected that something was amiss when the visitor was announced rather before the fashionable hour and did not send a card, but the whole household had grown so lulled into complacency that it was only when the visitor was admitted that they realised the error.

The new guest was ill-kempt and rough-featured, and although he wore regimental red, he wore it with sufferance. When he spoke, it was with a thick Irish brogue that would have been quite unacceptable in fashionable society.

"Begging your pardon," he said to the elder Mr. Caesar, "I'm Infantryman Callaghan, and I've a message for the young master."

Mr. Caesar, who knew his son's proclivities and considered them nobody's business, fixed the visitor with a stern glare. "If you are here for money …"

"Nothing of the sort, sir"—the man seemed genuinely surprised—"I'm here on behalf of the captain, and he doesn't want no money neither, sir. Just, well, helped your son out of a spot of bother he did, and now that's landed him in a spot of bother himself."

"Has Major Bloodworth decided to cause trouble?" The younger Mr. Caesar had been expecting a development like this and dreading it. I, by contrast, had been hoping for it so fervently that had it not happened soon I would have seriously considered making it happen. Not that I do such things, of course. I am only an observer.

Callaghan nodded. "He's coming for the captain's commission. Brawling he says he was. Drunk he says he was. And seeing as he did you a turn, the captain thought as maybe you'd speak for him."

"I'm not a military man," the younger Mr. Caesar told him with genuine regret. "I'm not sure what influence I would have."

"And even if he had any influence," declared Miss Anne, "perhaps your captain should not have been brawling."

Lady Mary and the elder Mr. Caesar exchanged quiet looks. Neither they nor their son had explained in front of the girls exactly what service Captain James had performed for the family, but it should not ideally have been necessary.

"Brawling or not," said Lady Mary, "the captain came to John's aid when aid was required. It would be extremely unworthy of us to abandon him."

"It would be unworthy of us," her husband added, "to abandon anybody in need."

Miss Anne looked chastened and, with the mental flexibility of the very young, turned her position 180 degrees without missing a beat. "At the very least, I may vouch that the man was not drunk. I spoke with him and he appeared quite sober."

"I shall send word to Papa at once," said Lady Mary, "and to my sister. Though I fear time may be against us."

Mr. Caesar tried not to overly interrogate his feelings. That his parents had rallied more decisively in defence of his debt than he had was, if he wanted to be cruel to himself, both typical of them and typical of him. "I believe Maelys and Georgiana are in town also," he tried. "I shall see what they can manage."

"The hearing," Callaghan added, "is rather by way of being this afternoon, so while that all sounds wonderful we'd be exceedingly grateful if you could get a scoot on."

The logistics proved a little fiddly, with Lady Mary and her husband electing to take an emergency run to visit the earl in the hope that they could solicit his assistance personally while Nancy was dispatched with notes for the other members of the family.

As they variously departed I—being incapable, despite my preternatural swiftness, of being in two places at once—was forced to decide who to follow. And for the moment at least I chose none of them, but elected instead to remain at the family home. They had, after all, opted to leave their young daughters unattended, and I held out some hope that one or other of them would involve herself in some kind of mischief before the day was out.

They did not, while I watched. Miss Caesar divided her time between playing on the pianoforte, which she did rather pleasingly, and reading on the settee. Miss Anne took a novel and sat in a window seat, although the book seemed primarily decorative, since she mostly left it open on her knee and bombarded her sister with questions about society matters that Miss Caesar found by turns enthralling and vexatious, depending on their subject matter.

I, meanwhile, roamed the house, looking for things to steal or to break and growing increasingly uneasy.

You may already know—especially if you have ever seen a certain play that a certain mortal flagrantly stole from me some four centuries ago—that my master and his, shall we say, counterpart are locked in an aeons-ancient game of intrigue, recrimination, and rivalry. I should add, of course, that while the origins of this enmity are lost to the mists of time (or our closest analogue for it), my master is absolutely in the right and wholly justified in all of his actions.

Perhaps, then, it was merely paranoia that made me sense the hand of Titania in the way that the shadows shifted in the house, or the patterns that formed in the sunlight through the windows. Or perhaps it wasn't.

And really, would I be mentioning it if it didn't lead somewhere ?

Once I had convinced myself that my master's hated rival posed no immediate threat to my own plans for the Caesars (such as they were: I should stress that I am purely a passive observer and would never, ever, under any circumstances interfere with the unfolding of events for my own benefit), I flew in the shape of a swallow across London. I had been relatively confident in my own ability to track Mr. Caesar even if he did not go to the place I expected, but my hunter's skills did not, in the end, need to be tested. The hearing was taking place, as military matters often did, at the Mithraeum in Walbrook.

This ancient complex had been founded nearly two millennia earlier by a cult within the then Roman army and had expanded down the centuries as generations of legionaries, mercenaries, knights, dragoons, and infantrymen had added to it little shrines and icons devoted to whichever deity they most favoured or wished to propitiate. So it contained now busts of Minerva, statues of Bacchus, rune stones to Odin, and even a small alcove dedicated to Christian saints, although ancient pacts prevented those entities from intervening in the world as directly as the old gods could.

In recent years, as the British army had grown more structured and more organised, the Mithraeum had become a somewhat more formalised space, its corridors painted bright white and portraits of kings and generals hung in any space that wasn't already being used for the veneration of less worldly idols. Some of the less popular deities had—to their largely impotent chagrin—found their temples and offering-spaces relocated to make room for offices and antechambers.

It was in one such room that Captain James now waited, and had been waiting for some hours, impatiently aware that his future depended on decisions made by men who thought nothing of him. And it was into this room that Mr. Caesar appeared, hurried and flustered.

There was, even he could not quite keep himself from admitting, a certain pleasure to seeing the captain again. Although in ideal circumstances their reunion would have involved rather more swashbuckling romance and rather less bureaucracy. Still, even an ill-advised night with the execrable Mr. Ellersley hadn't quite been enough to shake the memory of their first meeting from his mind and so it was with a certain timidity that Mr. Caesar approached the captain and nodded a greeting.

"Wasn't sure you'd come," said the captain, without rising.

"I said I would assist you if you needed me," Mr. Caesar replied, a little stiffly.

"Didn't mean you'd do it."

Mr. Caesar looked almost offended. "Sir, whatever else I may be, I am a gentleman."

"I know," replied the captain. "That's why I wasn't sure you'd come."

That was, in Mr. Caesar's experience, a fair assessment. He'd known far too many gentlemen who weren't, so he understood why a man might hold the term to little account. For his own part, he had always taken pride in being a better gentleman than better gentlemen were. This, in his estimation and my own, was an extraordinarily low bar but still one Mr. Caesar failed to clear with alarming regularity.

Since the army moved on its own time, the two men had ample opportunity to become reacquainted while whoever was in charge of proceedings did whatever they needed to do on the other side of the door. They sat side by side on a low green bench that seemed to have been designed explicitly for discomfort. A portrait of George II and a statue of Mars loomed over them from opposite sides of the room, but neither made for a light conversational companion.

"Thank you," Mr. Caesar offered. "Again. You didn't have to look out for me."

Captain James shrugged with one shoulder. "Yeah, I did. That's what you do. Man needs a beating, you beat him. Man doesn't need a beating, you stop him being beaten."

By the standards Mr. Caesar was accustomed to, it was an almost na?ve principle to live by. In his own world, if a man needed a beating, you quietly put it about that he needed a beating, and if he didn't you put it about slightly more loudly, because you suspected he was saying the same about you. "Still, you put yourself in danger for me."

Despite the real peril hanging over him, Captain James laughed. "That wasn't danger, that was two servants not being paid near enough to fight a man who knows how."

"You risked your commission as well."

"I risk my commission by existing. Men like Bloodworth think I'm a threat to the army."

Though he didn't want to, Mr. Caesar felt a twinge of recognition in that. A shared knowledge of being part of something that resented him. "Even so, it was the least I could do to return the favour."

It seemed like an age had passed, and perhaps it had, for they were alone in a sparsely decorated room with little to mark the passage of time. But eventually, the door to the nearby office opened and an ancillary called them both through to the hearing.

There were three men in the room, and Mr. Caesar's heart sank as he realised he recognised all of them. One—a greying man in the uniform of a major-general—might have been a slight comfort. Mr. Caeser recognised him as Lord Hawksmoor and, although they were barely acquainted, he understood the man to be a friend of his grandfather. The other two, however, were less comforting. Major Bloodworth and Lord Hale, who familial propriety still required that Mr. Caesar address as Uncle Richard.

"Ah," began Lord Hawksmoor as though he hadn't been quite sure who he was expecting, "James."

"My lord." The captain bowed his head in a gesture of what seemed to be sincere respect.

"My lord, " Major Bloodworth interrupted, in a tone that read as rather less respectful. "This reprobate was caught not four nights past brawling in the street with common servants. He is a disgrace to his country, his uniform, and his king."

Lord Hawksmoor turned his hooded eyes to Captain James. "Is this true?"

"Not a word of it, sir," the captain replied, a little overzealously from my perspective, but then my understanding of truth is rather more refined than that of mortals.

A pretriumphal gleam appeared in Lord Hale's eye. "You deny that there was a fight."

"I deny brawling, my lord. I encountered a gentleman who was being accosted by two ruffians, and I fought them off."

"And by gentleman, " Lord Hale clarified, "you mean Mr. Caesar here."

"My grandfather is an earl," replied Mr. Caesar firmly. "And my uncle is a baron. I believe that makes me a gentleman."

Lord Hale, never original in his facial expressions, sneered. "And who is your father?"

This was an old point of contention within the family, and by this stage the Caesars had a standard response to it. "The best man my mother ever knew."

To Lord Hawksmoor, this all seemed to be drifting a little off topic. "But you were being accosted? And Captain James here came to your defence?"

"That's correct, my lord," confirmed Mr. Caesar.

Major Bloodworth made an unbecoming sputtering sound. "He was not being accosted, he was being taught an important lesson."

"What manner of lesson, precisely?" asked Lord Hawksmoor.

"Not to strike an officer of His Majesty's army," replied the major.

Lord Hawksmoor's gaze turned impassively to Mr. Caesar. "And did you?"

"The officer in question insulted my sister," Mr. Caesar explained.

The major bristled. "I did not. "

"I'm sorry"—Lord Hawksmoor rested his hand on his chin and gave the major a long, cool look—"it seems you might be a little more involved in this matter than I thought."

Lord Hale, if I was any judge, had expected this whole exchange to go better. But then he had also, perhaps, expected his companion to be more circumspect.

"I made"—the major launched into his version of events without consultation or consideration—"a perfectly reasonable comment about the young man's sister, a girl nobody will deny is ill-favoured—"

"I would deny it," remarked Mr. Caesar, as blithely as he could manage.

Lord Hawksmoor looked approving. "I should hope so. Man who can't stand up for his sister isn't much of a man at all in my book. And look here, Bloodworth"—he turned to the major—"even if this girl isn't so easy on the eye, that's no reason to go saying it aloud. It's unbecoming."

"But that doesn't excuse violence." Lord Hale's tone was so moralising I almost wanted to give him ass's ears there and then just to spite him. Honestly, I think it would have been an improvement.

"Well, no," conceded Lord Hawksmoor. "While many a gentleman might have felt compelled to strike a gentleman over such a slight, few gentlemen actually would strike a gentleman over it. That is also unbecoming."

"Certainly it isn't fit for polite society," added Lord Hale. "And that says nothing of the interference from"—he waved a dismissive hand in the direction of Captain James—"this individual."

"That individual protected me from serious injury," said Mr. Caesar, and he was surprised at his own conviction. Partly, of course, it was simply that he tended to assume any physical altercation would result in serious injury, but mostly it was out of an unexpected desire to protect the one who had protected him.

His uncle, however, was paying no attention. Instead he turned to Lord Hawksmoor with the conspiratorial affect that rich, powerful men used in their private dealings with other rich, powerful men. "What we have here is a private dispute between two gentlemen"—I can see the hearts of mortals as knots of coloured string, and a green skein of resentment twisted through Lord Hale at having to admit his nephew to be a gentleman—"in which a common soldier chose to intervene and, in intervening, brought disrepute on himself, his uniform, and the king's army."

Like all of the best horseshit, it was passionately delivered, and Lord Hawksmoor considered it for long enough that Captain James felt compelled to speak.

"I'm not a common soldier, my lord," he said with almost touching conviction. "I'm an officer, promoted by Wellington himself."

Lord Hawksmoor looked grave. "A fact that will remain true only so long as you continue to comport yourself like an officer."

"Which he has not," added the major.

"And cannot really be expected to," continued Lord Hale, "not being a gentleman."

If there is one thing I respect about mortals, it is their ability to invent meaningless hierarchies for themselves. My own kind do it as well, of course, but we at least have the insight to know that it is nothing more than a game.

Mostly a game. My lord Oberon, by contrast, holds his power and title by natural right and by virtue of his many fine qualities so self-evident that they need not be explicated.

Before the group could further debate the complex philosophical question of whether shouting at underfed men in a muddy field was truly a skill one needed to be born with, they were interrupted by voices from outside.

"—can't go in, his lordship's—"

"Nonsense, my son is in there and you will absolutely let me through."

"Now, now, Mary, fellow's just doing his job."

The harried ancillary opened the door and announced Lady Mary Caesar and her father, the Earl of Elmsley.

"Dicky," exclaimed Lord Hawksmoor, "what're you doing here?"

"Mary brought me," explained the earl. "Said there'd been a spot of bother involving young Johnny and that maybe I could clear it up."

Lord Hale gave his sister a cold look. "That was ill done, Mary. This was a matter of internal military discipline."

"Then why are you here, Richard?" asked Lady Mary, placidly. "I always thought you rather despised the army."

This was half a truth. Lord Hale had no special contempt for armed service, it was just that he seldom needed special contempt to consider something contemptible.

"Besides," added Mr. Caesar, "hadn't we established that this was a private matter between gentlemen?"

"I think we had, actually," confirmed Lord Hawksmoor. "Look, I'm sorry you got dragged into this, Dicky, but it really isn't the sort of thing you need to worry yourself with."

Where I come from, the resolution of this matter would have been simple. Each party would have abducted a mortal champion, transfigured them with fey sorcery into the most terrifying form possible, and then made them fight each other. The winner, naturally, would have been the contestant whose representative died most amusingly.

But in the mortal world, apparently, there were other, less sophisticated systems in place.

"The way I see it," the Earl of Elmsley said with the confidence of a man accustomed to his way of seeing being treated as fact by all around him, "this is all a very nasty business. Mary has told me what happened and while I'm sure different fellows have different perspectives, it seems to me there's no reason why we can't all just shake hands and put it behind us."

Lord Hale was looking at his father with a quintessentially human combination of despite and deference. "That may settle matters between John and Major Bloodworth, but there still remains the question—"

But his father didn't let him finish. "Of the captain? Well, far be it from me to intrude on a military matter, but as I see it, if he's good enough for Wellington he should be good enough for us."

"Yes, well." Lord Hale's habitual distaste for anybody different from himself continued to war with his instinctive respect for his social superiors. "I'm not totally certain I'd take character references from an Irishman."

Lord Hawksmoor pursed his lips. "Now, now, Hale. That Irishman is a peer of the realm. And a privy counsellor."

"And a Knight of the Garter," added the Earl of Elmsley.

"Field marshal of His Majesty's armies," added Captain James.

"And Knight Grand Cross of the Bath," added Mr. Caesar.

"And Count of Vimiera, Marquess of Torres Vedras, and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo," added Lady Mary.

"Field marshal of the Hanoverian army too, come to think of it," added Captain James. "And marshal-general of the Portuguese and captain-general of the Spanish."

"And Colonel of the Horse Guards," Lady Mary finished.

"Yes, yes," conceded Lord Hale, "he has a lot of titles. But that doesn't mean we should acquiesce to him in every instance."

On that one point, Mr. Caesar was in very slight accord with his uncle. "Well, no, but I think we can probably trust him to know a good officer when he sees one."

Major Bloodworth, who had remained at least mostly silent for the majority of this exchange, could hold his peace no longer. "By God, man, I've had about my fill of your insolence."

With a serene smile, the Earl of Elmsley turned to Lord Hawksmoor. "You see, Reginald, I really think this is just a private disagreement. And I'm sure the most sensible thing is to look at this as a matter between Johnny lad and the major here. One that I'm sure they can resolve amicably and put behind them."

Amicability, to nobody's delight except mine, was far from the major's mind. Indeed his thoughts seemed to be heading down a more drastic path. In unrelated news I may have conjured the scent of gunpowder beneath his nose at a strategic moment. "Oh, we can put it behind us," he said with an ominous tone suggesting that he did not mean by forgetting the whole thing ever happened. He had approached very close to Mr. Caesar now, and was glaring at him the way a dog glares at a burglar's leg. "Will you give me satisfaction, sir?"

As I have intimated several times, I do not normally like Mr. Caesar. I find him stuffy in most circumstances, insufferable in others, and fleetingly amusing only when he is frustrated. But he earned my temporary approval when he looked the major squarely in the eye and said, "I didn't realise your inclinations ran in that direction."

In retrospect, Mr. Caesar realised, his response to the question had made a duel inevitable. He had hoped that since duelling was at the very least strongly discouraged in the armed forces and that killing a man in a duel was still legally murder, Major Bloodworth might not be quite so foolish as to follow through on the challenge.

Now he chided himself for not remembering that it was never wise to bet against the foolishness of men like Major Bloodworth. So the event had been set, nominally at least, to take place upon Hampstead Heath at dawn three days hence. Which left Mr. Caesar with little time to prepare to fight or, as might be, to prepare himself for the social consequences of failing to fight.

That evening, the Caesars—excluding the Earl of Elmsley, who had a seldom-used London house to which he preferred to retire—hosted Captain James at an informal dinner. It was, by the standards of the day, an intimate affair. Just the Caesars, Captain James, Miss Mitchelmore, and Lady Georgiana. It was also, by the standards of the day—or at least by the standards of the ton—a meagre affair. The elder Mr. Caesar did not earn much from his writing and speaking engagements, and most of Lady Mary's inheritance was bound up with her various charitable commitments. The gossip sheets had, for a while, made great play of the fact that the Earl of Elmsley's youngest daughter lived like a Quaker, but, since she had persisted in taking the observation as a compliment, they had eventually stopped out of spite.

The whole concatenation of circumstances put Mr. Caesar in a tangle of conflicting thoughts and priorities that to my fairy senses was like a well-aged wine. In any other situation, he would have found the company of the captain delightful, but in any other situation, he would not have been three days from death.

"You didn't have to do this," protested Captain James as Nancy came around with the soup. Soup into which I had infiltrated myself disguised as a stray potato peeling.

"I'll say they didn't," Nancy replied. "No notice I've had, and guests for dinner all the same."

Miss Mitchelmore—still as conventionally pretty and as fashionably demure as she had been before all that messy business last year—cast Nancy an apologetic look. "I'm so sorry, we shouldn't have come. And we were no help at all with the hearing."

"But it did get us out of an evening at the opera," added Lady Georgiana. "For which I am eternally in your debt." Given her prior experience with the unnatural, it surprised me that Lady Georgiana was so casual with such language. You should never say you are eternally in something's debt. One day you might meet a creature that takes you seriously.

That proved a good enough segue for the younger Mr. Caesar, who turned to the captain with an expression of carefully calculated regard. Surviving society meant concealing his feelings about more or less everything, and that made it hard to conjure sincerity when it was needed. "And on the subject of debt," he tried, "it is only right that we repay you properly for your assistance."

However well it might have been meant, the captain took it otherwise. "I've no need to be bought."

"That we thank you, then," Mr. Caesar corrected himself. "You can surely have no objection to gratitude."

"Depends whose gratitude," replied the captain, with a smile I personally interpreted as promising and which Mr. Caesar couldn't quite bring himself to interpret similarly.

Miss Caesar and Miss Anne, for all they were inured to the tiresome pleasantries of their society, could be quiet no longer. Neither their servant's inconvenience nor their guest's amenability to recompense was the matter that interested them. Like me, they were here for the blood.

"Are you truly to fight a duel?" Miss Anne asked her brother.

And to that the younger Mr. Caesar had no easy answer. Yes was hubristic, no was cowardly, and the man he wanted to be hovered somewhere between the two. "Well …" he began, and when that seemed inadequate he added, "That is to say …"

"I sincerely hope he will not," put in Lady Mary. "It would be neither safe nor seemly."

Lady Georgiana was smiling the kind of smile I at once understood and appreciated. "True, but safety and seemliness are both highly overrated."

"Seemliness perhaps"—Lady Mary's tone was sharp, her advantage in years over Lady Georgiana compensating for her disadvantage in rank—"but not safety."

"People will think him a craven." Miss Caesar looked horrified at the thought. "They'll consider him less than a man."

Being accustomed to polite society thinking him less than a man already, for more reasons than he could count, this observation had for the younger Mr. Caesar the familiar discomfort of an old ulcer. "Is the major"—he turned to Captain James—"is he a very skilled swordsman?"

Captain James shrugged. "Doubt it. Though I'm sure he's had lessons. The proper officers all do."

"Do you not," asked the elder Mr. Caesar only slightly pointedly, "consider yourself a proper officer?"

"I've learned there's no sense in thinking myself something other men'll never think me."

The elder Mr. Caesar took a moment to digest the observation, nodded once, and then said, "Curious. I've learned the opposite."

"Well, I think you should do it," Lady Georgiana declared, drawing a look of harsh if loving reproof from Miss Mitchelmore. "There can't be that much to it really; just make sure the pointy end goes in the other man."

"In my experience, my lady," replied Captain James, "that's not easy to do when the other man's doing his best to kill you."

Mr. Caesar choked on his soup, and only partly because I'd slipped into his bowl and caught in his throat. "I mean … it won't come to that, will it? It'll be more of a … first blood honour-is-satisfied sort of thing?"

Captain James set down his spoon. "Maybe. Lot depends on the weapons."

To the younger Mr. Caesar's profound distress, both his sisters were looking at their new guest with rapt attention.

"If it's pistols," the captain went on, "then you'll both likely miss. But if you don't, the bullet could take your jaw off."

Mr. Caesar's hand went involuntarily to his face. He had always rather liked his jaw. Indeed he was rapidly coming to wonder if it might not be one of his best features.

"Sabres, now those are made to use from horseback. Wide blades, good for slicing." The captain made a cutting motion with his hand and the Misses Caesar gave little yelps of excitement. "Won't likely kill you, not with one cut, but they can split you open so's the doctor'll have a hard time stitching you up again."

"Is this quite the right talk for the dinner table?" asked Lady Mary, her aristocratic upbringing briefly surfacing through decades of rebellion.

"If he's to face it," said Captain James, "he should hear about it."

Lady Mary gave a cautious nod. "Yes, but can we remember he could always choose not to face it?"

This was too much for Miss Anne. "Mama, things are hard enough for our family without John being branded a coward also."

"Better a coward than a corpse," pointed out Miss Mitchelmore.

"Not amongst men of honour," Miss Anne protested.

"You must forgive Anne," explained Miss Caesar with only the tiniest trace of bitterness. "She is being courted by an officer and she believes it makes her an expert on all things military."

Miss Anne looked shyly into her soup bowl. "I am not being courted. He merely … visits the family a lot."

"He visits you "—the trace of bitterness in Miss Caesar's voice was growing less trace-like by the moment—"because—"

"Perhaps," the younger Mr. Caesar cut in, and only partly for selfish reasons, "we might return our attention to the many ways in which I might die in the near future."

Miss Mitchelmore concealed a chuckle behind her hand. "Not pleasant, is it, John?"

It was almost a relief to be fencing with words, rather than fearing the need to fence with swords. The younger Mr. Caesar raised an eyebrow. "I was very understanding."

"You were moderately understanding and, if I may say so, rather high-handed."

"I was not high-handed."

Lady Georgiana matched Mr. Caesar's eyebrow-raise and then some. "You did keep insisting that I was trying to murder her."

"No, I insisted you were trying to seduce her and"—the younger Mr. Caesar waved a demonstrative hand—"well."

Captain James looked around the party quizzically. "I feel like I've missed something."

"Long story," unexplained Lady Georgiana. "Perhaps we should return to sharper topics?"

The younger Mr. Caesar glared at her accusingly. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Immeasurably."

"So if it's smallswords," the captain continued, "which it might be for a dispute between gentlemen, then you're in proper trouble."

"Misnamed, are they?" asked Lady Mary, who had little experience of bladecraft.

The captain shook his head. "About this long"—he held his hands a little over two feet apart—"and thin as a knitting needle. One can go right through you and it'll take you a minute to even notice."

"That's not sounding too awful at the moment," Mr. Caesar hazarded, although the fact that talk of being run through constituted not too awful was its own kind of awfulness. "You've not mentioned losing any parts of my anatomy yet."

The captain gave him what could almost have been a teasing look. "Oh, you'll be fine on the day. Little hole never stopped anybody. It's the fever's the problem. Thin, deep wound. Hard to clean. Hard to heal. You just get worse and worse and then they put you in the ground."

Mr. Caesar was looking decidedly queasy but was, perhaps unexpectedly, feeling queasily decided. As ghastly as it was to admit, his sister had been right. He had already brought shame on the family by starting a fight; it would only deepen that shame were he not to finish it. "That sounds flatly terrible. But even so, I think I may have to go through with it."

Paying at least some mind to the gravity of the situation, the Misses Caesar managed to restrain themselves from applauding. If only just.

"Are you sure, John?" asked the elder Mr. Caesar. "It's a lot of danger for no gain."

The younger man nodded. "If I refuse, it will go poorly for all of us. I already caused a scene at a ball, I shan't compound aggression with cowardice. That would be the worst of all possible worlds."

"The worst of all possible worlds is one where you are dead," observed Lady Mary. And though restraint was in her blood, she sounded almost impassioned, which she normally did only when speaking of her causes.

Having restrained their ghoulish enthusiasm for whole seconds, the Misses Caesar would be held back no longer.

"Will you need to learn to fence?" asked Miss Caesar. "I am sure we could afford an instructor if we made economies elsewhere."

"Perhaps Mr. Bygrave could teach you," suggested Miss Anne. "I am sure he is quite the swordsman."

"With respect," replied Captain James, "I know the lad. He's not a bad sort but he's green as a spring lawn, and though I've no doubt he's taken lessons, he'll have seen no battle."

"Then perhaps you could teach him," suggested Miss Mitchelmore with, I thought, a wickeder glint than I was used to seeing in her eye.

Captain James considered this for a moment. "Duelling's a gentleman's art, and I'm no gentleman. I can't teach you to fence."

Everybody at the table looked, for their own reasons, disappointed. What those reasons were, of course, varied markedly from person to person.

"But," he continued, "I'm pretty sure I could teach you to fight. "