For once I update quickly! This chapter will, I hope, explain a little bit why everyone (or at least the humans for most of the time) is going around in Regency dress and behaving in a manner somewhat typical to that period when they aren't exactly in the Napoleonic wars. (I did say Regency-esque, remember?) Please visit the art that I mentioned in the last chapter, it really is very good and funny, and I'm sure the artist would appreciate it! And thank you to everyone who has read this and reviewed so far!

Also, sorry for the chapters being so short at the moment. To be fair they were fairly short in P & P sometimes as well.

Chapter two

It was not until the sanctuary of the embassy had been gained and Bing had taken his leave of them that was received with thanks that were sincere – for even the ladies of the party approved of him, if of no other human - that the Vulcan guests of the evening could relax (although that is certainly not a word they themselves would have used in connection with their aforementioned selves, but it is true nonetheless) and divested themselves of the outfits that they had been obliged to wear for that evening's, for want of a better want, entertainment.

"How is it logical," asked Soran's bondmate T'Jin, as she pulled on what would be her favourite tunic if she admitted to having such thing as a favourite article of clothing, "for these Earth women to wear such revealing gowns? So much flesh on display, and so tight about the chest; I wonder that they manage to breathe even in this most oxygen rich atmosphere! Or how they do not freeze!"

"It is perhaps not logical, my wife, but it is traditional. These have been the fashions for many decades," Soran called from his adjoining dressing room; he had willingly if not gladly divested himself of the tight coat, the waist coat, the breeches, the stockings, the neck scarf that the humans called a cravat and the shirt and had attired himself in more suitable clothing, wrapping up warm even as he turned the heating up and up to take the chill of the assembly room out of his bones.

"Come, my wife," he added, stepping out of his dressing room as she stepped out of hers, "Sarek and T'Pen will be in the reading room. Let us meet them there."

Sarek and T'Pen were indeed seated in the reading room, also attired in preferred clothing, and as soon as Soran and T'Jin joined them the ambassador's sister began to talk. She was rather more vocal about what she thought of the gathering than T'Jin had been, if quieter. The humans' thoughts had been loud and distracting, their voices more so, their music lacked refinement, their actions were harsh and driven with un-tempered emotion. Her control had been sorely tested in the midst of such people. And this was the foremost species with which Vulcan had chosen to ally itself! Were there not indeed other worlds that had more control, more discipline? Betazed, or Trill? And how could a planet that was part of the Federation be so lacking in technology? Why, when they had travelled to that place where the humans danced she had looked out and seen vehicles drawn by animals, even if others had been drawn by machines! They had comm units and the basics of any Standard Federation world, but-

"On Vulcan technology is used but sparingly," Sarek said from where he stood and looked out upon the harbour of San Francisco. "We have formed a way of life that does not depend upon machines, holding on to our traditions. The tunic I wear now is new, but it is of a cut that has remained prominent in the clothing of our race for more than one thousand years. The Terrans do as we do. Is it logical to condemn another civilization when it does the same as ours?"

T'Pen was somewhat chastened by the words of her brother and made no reply as she thought for an answer. T'Jin attempted to salvage an argument that she believed in: "It does not excuse their behaviour, Ambassador. They are as undisciplined as the youngest of our children, so many years after contact has been made. Even if the wisest of their race at that time accepted the advice of our elders and held their people back to protect them, have they learned at all?"

"They have learned to temper their tendencies, if not their emotions," the ambassador of Vulcan replied. "Recall what this world had endured by the time that they were found. They had torn their species apart with war, and yet in order to heal they were prepared to recall and reinstate their past in order to attempt it again. What other species can boast such force of will, such determination?"

"And it was they that founded the Federation, and they that founded Starfleet." T'Pen had found her stride again, but one look at her brother's face meant that there would be no more talk of Starfleet.

T'Jin, having done her work, had rethought and was now inclined to be more generous. "But some of the young female students that were present this night were satisfying to engage in conversation. Some of them are very learned indeed; the one named Amanda Grayson I have heard described as being at the very top of her class, what say you?"

And so the ambassador and his sister and his aide and his aide's wife debated the various merits and observable faults that they had witnessed in the city's young lady students that had attended that evening; focusing of course on their wits and deportment and dismissing physical appearance as immaterial. Physical appearance, however, perhaps mattered more to the ambassador, for it was not Miss Amanda Grayson's various academic achievements that he recalled in the days until they were to meet again but her figure in the blue dress that had first caught his eye; and it was not the nature of her university degree that came to him as he sought for sleep that very night but rather the face that she had shown him over her near bare shoulder, her dark eyes bright and a wholly illogical smile upon her lips.