Deleted passage

All right, I *think* I've finished my rewrite of the start of "The Remorse of Others" -- whether it will be adequate enough to meet the various concerns expressed I don't know :-(

But here is one of the many, many deleted sections, most of which were multiple abandoned attempts at rewriting the same thing; ( Read more... )

Anyway, this is the only passage out of all that mass of crossings-out which I felt was worth saving in any form; it belongs instead, I think, with my speculations about a possible AU future in which the cross-Channel escape actually succeeds...

[out of France altogether, beyond the reach of Bonaparte, the First Consul, and anything he could do.]

Quite what would happen next Roland did not know. His imagination, normally so fertile, came to a blank stop when faced with England and an exile into the unknown. It was impossible, somehow, to imagine the leader he had only known as a brilliant, incisive general in time of insurrection sitting down on foreign soil to grow old in peace... but while such small fry as himself might perhaps be permitted to lay down their weapons and remain, no enemy as formidable as the Duc de Trélan could possibly hope to do so.

(I also noticed a plot hole in which the Comte de Brencourt takes a jibe at Roland's ill-fated riding expedition without actually ever having been told about it, so that needed to be patched!)