A/N: thanks to those, who reviewed chapter one.

Chapter 2

Deadly Sins

Try as he might, Laurence did not manage to fall asleep. On the one hand, he was too excited about the news of the Waterloo victory, on the other hand, he was too upset by Emily's recent behaviour. And what upset him most was the exact notion that her behaviour had upset him, as it should not have. It was, after all, not at all uncommon for a soldier, a marine or even a member of the Aerial Corps to get drunk from time to time. Laurence himself too had on a few occasions, but never as badly as Emily had tonight.

At first he had not wanted to admit that the reason her drunkenness had bothered him so much was that she was a woman, but every passing minute at the dinner table, seeing her making more and more of an idiot of herself, forced him to realise that it was her gender that disturbed him. To be precise, her gender paired with her consumption of alcohol. True, he had seen Jane Roland and Catherine Harcourt drink more than a well-behaved lady should, but never enough to discredit themselves by falling on the table and knocking a jug of wine into the lap of a senior captain across them. Emily had done just that: Captain Black's best coat and breeches were ruined beyond repair.

After Laurence had ordered Allen and Smith to take her to her room, something had even compressed his chest uncomfortably upon seeing his second lieutenant's head loll helplessly while being dragged away. A situation so unworthy of a lady… And that was when he had stiffened for a moment – when had he started thinking of Emily Roland as a 'lady'?

He had occasionally called her a young lady before, when she had only been a child, but in the past few years he had not for a single second regarded her as anything but a faithful and talented member of his crew. Not a lady, for sure…

Now, having tucked himself away in the crook of Temeraire's foreleg, not wanting to withdraw to his small and hot room when it was already pleasantly cool outside, Laurence tried to fall asleep, but caught himself tossing and turning instead. Finally, giving up on the rest, he threw off his coat that he had used as a blanket, then, careful not to wake the dragon, clambered to his feet.

There were a few lanterns lit on the trees nearby, but when he stepped into the shadow of a larger tree and raised his eyes to the sky, he could easily make out the Southern Cross, shining brightly in the veil-like ribbon of the Milky Way. Laurence took a few deep breaths, enjoying the balmy scent of the night. Under normal circumstances a nice walk under the stars calmed him, but tonight he could not escape from the unsettling feelings that Emily's 'performance' had instilled in his heart.

"Laurence, what is the matter?" Temeraire asked all of a sudden, sounding wide awake, not as someone who had just awoken from his slumber.

"Oh, I thought you were asleep."

"I would have been, but I wanted to wait for you to go to sleep first. When you came here, you seemed upset despite the news of the victory, and I wanted to make sure you calmed down before I dozed off. But you apparently have not…"

Laurence made a wry face and settled back into the crook of Temeraire's foreleg, patting it gently. "Please, do not worry about me, my dear. Just go to sleep."

"Not until you have told me what is bothering you," the dragon replied stubbornly.

"Oh, it is just… Emily. Tonight she got horribly drunk and I could not help but feel mortified by it, which I usually do not when anyone else in my crew gets intoxicated… and I wonder why it has bothered me so much to see her like that?" Laurence muttered, although he had a vague idea what the answer to his own question might be. However, that answer scared him enough to want to push it out of his mind and not even give himself a chance to contemplate it.

"Oh, it must be your fatherly feelings for her," Temeraire suggested.

"Fatherly feelings?" Laurence choked.

"Why, have you not been thinking of her as a substitute for a daughter you never had? Even your parents thought she was your child… and had you got acquainted with Jane a few years earlier, Emily could have been yours."

Laurence hid his face in his palms, even though he knew Temeraire probably could not see his burning cheeks in the almost-darkness. How could he explain to his dragon without getting even more embarrassed that he had never had any fatherly feelings for Emily, and that tonight his feelings for her had been as un-fatherly as possible? The words 'Emily' and 'lady' had kept popping into his mind all evening, in various contexts, as in 'Emily has become a fine young lady', or in 'Emily is not behaving like a young lady should', and none of the contexts had anything to do with a father's pride or shame.

"Laurence…?" Temeraire spoke up after his captain had remained silent for a while. "Have I said something that hurt you?"

"No, no, my dear… you are completely right to think I should be having fatherly feelings for her… after all, I am old enough to be her father…"

"But you do not," Temeraire drew the conclusion. "And if you do not consider her as your daughter, but still have strong feelings for her… does that mean you would rather give her an egg?"

"What? No, of course not!" Laurence jumped to his feet, shaking his head and flailing with his arms. After a long second he dropped his hands and realised he was overreacting things. For one, Temeraire's suggestion should not have upset him so much… but if it had, then it had to have a foundation. And that foundation was highly disturbing. He had sworn to himself not to even think of women ever again… and Emily was a woman. Yes, she was definitely a woman, the realisation of which had slowly dawned upon him in the past few months or weeks – he did not even know how and when exactly – but it had only come through loud and clear tonight, when she had not been acting like a woman at all. As for 'giving her an egg'… Laurence heaved a sigh.

Before he had become Temeraire's captain, he had wished for nothing more than to marry Edith Galman and start a family – lonely nights at sea he had daydreamed of a loving family waiting for him at home… but that dream had shattered into a million pieces because Temeraire had chosen him.

As an aviator, his only hope of ever having children had been either through getting Jane pregnant by accident or getting a sugar-coated order from the Admiralty to breed. Neither of which had happened.

Temeraire had turned ten years old, and Laurence had not received such orders – the Admiralty must have forgotten about him, and if he were completely honest with himself, he had to admit that he did not count as the most eligible candidate to father future Corps officers. After all, who would want to expose an innocent child to the humility of having a traitor as a father? No, obviously no one would. And now, in retrospect, Laurence could easily imagine this to be the reason for Brianna's horrible acts: she could not have wanted to give birth to a child who would only be mocked by its peers for having a father like Laurence…

He had never asked Brianna why exactly she had done it – he simply did not want to hear it. He knew just enough to be miserable even without hearing excuses she might have tried to come up with: he knew that she had not loved him. For had she loved him, she would have at least given their child a chance. But, Laurence thought sometimes sadly, could it be possible that she had only done it to save the child from having William 'Traitor' Laurence as its father?

Yes, in the past six years Laurence had learned to blame himself for everything – even for Brianna's hideous sin of murdering their baby. Had someone else begotten it, it might not have had to die.

By now, Laurence had completely given up on his earlier desire to start a family – not only was there no woman who would want anything more from him than just one night stands without further obligations, but surely there would be none who would be willing to carry his child. And perhaps it was just how things were supposed to be. William Laurence was not meant to be a father or a husband. At least, he had managed to convince himself that he was not.

"Are you sure?" Temeraire pressed on. "Giving eggs is highly enjoyable, besides, Emily is quite pretty, and well, you are not that very old yourself…"

"Oh, thanks," Laurence replied caustically.

"You are most welcome. Would you please turn around?"

"Why?"

"Just turn around," the dragon motioned his captain, drawing a circle in the air with his talons.

Though feeling confused, Laurence obliged.

"Oh, yes, indeed…" Temeraire murmured.

"What indeed?" Laurence raised an eyebrow as he peered at the dragon over his shoulder.

"Oh, nothing, I just heard Marian Digby and Helena Parker the other day talking about how nice, firm a behind you had. Just had to check it out. I think they were right, as far as I can judge with a male dragon's eyes, your behind is indeed firm for your age."

That was when Captain Jacobs walked past them to his own dragon, the look of shock on his face quite visible even in the vain light of the lanterns.

Laurence slapped his forehead and groaned inwardly. He did not want to imagine what kind of news Jacobs would be spreading about him after overhearing this…

"Next time you decide to tell me something humiliating, please be so kind and do it when others are not around," he murmured to Temeraire after Jacobs had got out of earshot.

"But why is it humiliating, Laurence? I thought you would be delighted to hear that women still think you are a remarkable male specimen. Probably even Emily thinks that way…"

"Shhh!" Laurence pressed his index finger to his lips. Jacobs might not have heard his latest sentence, but Temeraire, as a sizable dragon, could not speak quietly enough. "The last thing I want is for Emily to find out that I am having… sinful thoughts about her!" he added in an angry whisper.

"Sinful? But why would it be sinful?"

Laurence rolled his eyes in disbelief. "You know, the Bible says that… oh, forget it. Tonight is not the night I want to discuss things like that… It is just enough for me having to listen to that every other Sunday in church…"

"Oh, tomorrow is going to be a Sunday," Temeraire remarked.

"Do not even remind me," Laurence sighed.

"Pray tell, Laurence, if you dislike going to church so much, why do you do it?"

"I do not dislike it, and as a Christian it is my duty to go, but… I cannot help wishing Reverend Whitwell were a little better at preaching and his choice of themes were a little more… diverse. Last week he finished the communion by announcing that tomorrow's main theme would be the seven deadly sins… again. For at least the tenth time since we came to Australia."

"The seven deadly sins?" Temeraire echoed his words. "And what are those?"

"Well… gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride, and…" Laurence blushed crimson once again, "…lust."

"And what about killing others? Is that not a deadly sin?"

"Of course it is…"

"Then why is it not included among the seven? And why are envy and pride and sloth included? Those are not that bad… and lust… well, that is definitely not bad at all!"

"Thank heaven the Bible was written for humans, not dragons. I think I had better sleep inside. Good night, Temeraire," Laurence muttered, and snatching up his cloak from the ground, bounded off for the main covert building, leaving a thoroughly confused Temeraire behind.

oOo

"…and gluttony is considered a sin because it means an excessive desire for food, and because its withholding from the needy, and as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote it is 'a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things'," Reverend Whitwell droned on, making Laurence almost fall asleep at his usual solitary place in the pew at the very back of the church. The sermon had started over ten minutes earlier and in a matter of twenty seconds had managed to lull all listeners into an early morning stupor. Laurence even thought he heard someone snore a few pews ahead, and Captain Bowles' head had just dropped onto the shoulder of his lover, Lieutenant Jessica Beckett.

Laurence turned his head away from the blatant display of affection, dismayed. Bowles and Beckett were very young, but in his opinion that did not justify such openness in a relationship, especially not within the walls of a church. Then again, he reminded himself with a pang of remorse, he had not exactly made a secret of his relationship to Brianna Johnson either...

With Jane Roland he had been more discrete, regarding her as a more or less respectable woman and England as a more or less civilised place, but Australia was still far from being civilised and Brianna had been even more straightforward in expressing her desires than Jane had been. Besides, when he had been 'courting' Jane – if occasionally sleeping with her and buying her a jade necklace that he never had a chance to hand over could be called 'courting' – he had still considered himself an honourable gentleman whose task was to protect a lady's reputation. After being banished to Australia, he had had a short period of time when he had thought nothing mattered. His reputation could not have been ruined further, and thus shrugging off responsibility and throwing caution to the wind, he had willingly flung himself into the arms of the first temptress that had come his way.

After Brianna's deliberate miscarriage, however, things had changed for him. On the cliff where Emily had caught him crying, his pain had still been too fresh to think it over, and he had been blaming Brianna for everything. As time passed, he had come to realise that he had been just as guilty as she had. And that was when he had started attending the Sunday services – something he had earlier avoided as often as he could. His conscience had badly needed relief, and the one source of relief he could hope for was his faith in God. It was sad though that the only church near the covert happened to have a vicar closer to seventy than sixty, good-natured but senile and horribly boring in his preaching.

"Pride, my brothers, is considered by many the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is a desire to be more important than others, and excessive love of self, especially holding self out of proper position toward God, which, my brothers, is indeed a hideous sin and woe betide those who…"

Laurence heaved a sigh. He could not help but feel the vicar's words strike home – all his life he had been proud, even proud of his pride, if such a thing was possible at all. More often than not his stupid pride had landed him, Temeraire and his crew in hopeless situations, but he had tried and tried to convince himself that he had had every right to be proud.

He no longer thought so. There was not much in his life he could be really proud of – perhaps only his and Temeraire's crazy rescue of the world's dragon population, and even that had resulted in a disaster for his homeland – in the deaths of thousands of Englishmen, in the rape of innocent women, in the ruination of whole cities. If there had not been the refuge of faith, he would very likely have gone mad by now. But once, in the early days of his attending the church, Reverend Whitwell had cited to him a verse from the Psalms: "Like as a Father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust." This line from the Bible had given him hope – hope that his sins might be indeed forgiven, for the Lord was merciful.

At that moment, however, all his thoughts of the Lord's mercy flew out of his mind as Emily Roland flopped down next to him, muttering a "Sorry, I tried to be on time, must have overslept, has he said anything of interest so far?"

Laurence was so shocked he could not even reply, for several reasons. Firstly, he had always thought it improper to talk during a service; secondly, Emily had so far never appeared for the Sunday services, except once or twice for the Christmas Midnight service; thirdly, she was wearing a dress. A female dress. And not just some dress: a crème coloured, frilly one with a shamelessly deep cleavage, the sort that ladies usually wore to evening occasions, not to the church!

Blushing, he shook his head, diverting his eyes from her.

"And finally, my brothers, I must address the sin that I personally regard as the greatest of all the seven: lust," the vicar carried on, and despite the flatness and emotionless quality of his voice, a shiver ran down Laurence's spine. "Adultery, fornication, self-abuse, these are all things that the Lord hates, and…"

"I wish mother could hear this," Emily whispered into Laurence's left ear. "But she never cared much for religion…"

Swallowing the lump in his throat, and, trying to fix his stare on the nape of an elderly man before him, Laurence nodded. He could not imagine Reverend Whitwell's preaching having much effect on Jane Roland's ideas of sexuality, but perhaps it would not hurt her to attend a service or two…

Emily chose that moment to lean over him to fish the leather-bound Book of Common Prayer from the pew shelf before him. Even if he had so far managed to force himself to close her out of his range of vision, her stretching before him had involuntarily drawn his eyes to her, precisely to her swelling bosom on which his eyes – also involuntarily – lingered even after she had settled back next to him, absentmindedly leafing through the book. With beads of sweat forming on his temples he noticed that there were freckles on her chest, disappearing in a neat row into her décolletage. Her leafing movements made the frill on her breast flutter a bit, her chest rising and falling in delicate ripples.

Laurence felt his cheeks burn and quickly looked away, directing his glance back at the vicar. For a second the old man looked his way, and Laurence did not know whether he had just imagined that the disapproving look in old Whitwell's eyes had been directed at him in particular, or at the whole congregation whose dubious morals the vicar had always been aware of.

"My brothers, as the Bible says, the only acceptable way of physical relations between a man and a woman is within holy matrimony. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, 'But if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn'…"

Laurence swallowed the lump in his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. There was no way he would let a woman distract his thoughts from the communion!

Yes, he recited in himself, it is only acceptable in marriage, so do not even think of her that way! Before his closed eyes, however, Emily appeared, leafing through the book of psalms, looking utterly innocent yet more exciting than any woman he had ever laid eyes upon…

With utter horror, his eyes flew open and he snatched another copy of the Book of Common Prayer off the shelf, opened it with shaking hands, placed it in his lap and held it in a way that would hopefully conceal the obvious.

"…and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount declared 'But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart'…"

Laurence felt rivulets of sweat running down the sides of his face and his breath was coming in gasps. O God, he closed his eyes once again, why are you punishing me like this? Have I not yet repented enough? I beg you to help banish her from my mind, for it must be the work of the devil to send me such unholy thoughts here of all places! Help me, Lord, for I am not strong enough alone…

Sometimes it is said that God has a peculiar sense of humour, and Laurence did not know whether the Almighty was being merely amused by his predicament or had just simply not bothered to listen to his prayer, all he knew was that he was feeling worse and worse with every passing second. The early morning warmth of the church had suddenly increased to unbearable heat, his clothes had got soaked with sweat in a matter of minutes and his limbs were shaking.

Trying to regain his composure, he organised his cloak for better concealment, chancing a sideways glance at the girl next to him. She seemed oblivious to the awkward situation she had landed him in, her eyes fixed on the vicar, her left holding the book, her right absentmindedly playing with a frill on her chest. It was obvious she was not used to wearing female dresses, as an average woman would have learned by the age of twenty-one that playing with your dress was a telltale sign of lack of manners. Yet with Emily it could not be called incivility, for her movements were as natural as everything else had been for her from an early age on…

Involuntarily her image bathing in the sulphurous pool in the ferals' cave came to his mind, all the innocence of her being squeezed into her confused little face upon hearing that she had been behaving improperly… and Laurence could not help but picture what it would be like to see her in that pool now…

Enough, his mind screamed. Enough!

"…and of course, when lust is mentioned, we must not forget about the narcissistic type of lust, self-love or self-gratification," the Reverend droned on. "The emphasis, my brothers, is on 'self', not on one's relationship with God or one's family members. We can establish that self-abuse is not part of God's original design for man and can never be entirely fulfilling since it is inherently an incomplete act. God did not design physical relations to be a solitary experience, they are supposed to be shared with another, and only in holy matrimony! And woe betide the man who engages in…"

Laurence could take it no longer. A few more minutes and the preaching would be over and they would have to kneel down for the prayers of intercession, and if he did not manage to calm down by then – and he was not exactly sanguine he would – then it would be highly likely that Emily would notice his predicament. After all, he could not carry on clutching the prayer book to himself even in a kneeling position… And if Emily noticed it… he would undoubtedly die of shame.

"Excuse me," he mumbled, holding the sides of his cloak in a way that hopefully only suggested he had a bit of a stomach ache, and sidled out of the pew to the right, then hurried out of the building as though a thousand devils had been chasing him.

The little church built near the covert was situated on the skirts of the forest, and with a few deliberate steps Laurence found himself hidden by the dense foliage. One of the church windows must have been left open, as the lines 'Almighty and everliving God, who by thy holy Apostle hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men' sounded up somewhere behind him, the sound fading with every step he took deeper and deeper into the forest.

He did not know how long he had run, he only stopped when he felt he was completely out of breath and far enough from the rest of the world for no one to hear him. Panting, he leaned against a tree. Why, O Lord, why? Do you not see I am too old for this? I thought this part of my life was over… so why is it not? Save me from sin, O Lord, save me…

The silence around him was almost depressing, almost frightening, as though the little chirps of the birds and the whistle of the wind on the treetops had died away too, Laurence's raspy breathing the only sound in the tiny clearing.

No answer came. Not that he had been hoping for any, not a verbal one anyway, but at least an abatement of the burning in his loins…

Reverend Whitwell's words echoed in his mind, the only sound he heard beside his own heavy breathing…

"God did not design physical relations to be a solitary experience, they are supposed to be shared with another, and only in holy matrimony! And woe betide the man who…"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, do not look at me like that! I have not been with a woman for six years!" he said aloud, his eyes directed upwards, as though hoping to be able to address the Creator. "Forgive me… but I am not strong enough. I tried… I failed."

For several long minutes the clearing stayed silent, save for a name he muttered over and over; a name that sounded worshipped, almost holy from his lips.

Finally the world span back into place and the birds started chirping again, the wind felt once again cool on his face as he observed the sea of green around him through half-closed eyelids. For just a moment the world felt perfect, devoid of longing, devoid of shame.

Then a voice broke the idyll, "You know, sir, if you wanted me so much, you could have just told me."

oOo

A/N: reviews inspire me to update faster… ;)