I write to you this week surrounded the pleasant detritus of an early summer weekend—my ukulele, a pile of books, a sleepy dog, a plate containing the remnants of some homemade ice cream sandwiches. We take summer seriously around here. The only problem is that, although my children are both out of school now, I’m not done until Wednesday.

Although I gather that some aspects of being a Betan Survey Commander and Vicereine of Sergyar are similar to some aspects of teaching at the secondary level, Cordelia has never been a high school teacher. Nonetheless, Chapter 17 finds her in a state of mind not unlike mine: With Jole’s decisions about his career and his children made, the moment she is living is warm and glorious, in many ways the polar opposite of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”—but all the responsibilities are hanging over it anyway. We have miles to go before we sleep.

I didn’t capitalize the M. That’s all on you. I’m not a monster.

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At the end of chapter 15 of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Admiral Oliver Jole found himself underneath an unexpected swarm of radials that had also been set on fire. Where did this leave him?

For starters, it left him shirtless. He removed his shirt to throw it over Alex and Helen, who he was also protecting with his own body. I thought about calling the shirt thing implausible, but I decided against it. I think we have all, at some time in our lives, been in a situation where our desperate need to remove our shirts has caused us to defy the laws of physics. Plus also, take that, ImpSec! Does your training course cover swarming radials? What about emergency shirt removal? Suddenly I realize that I forgot to mention Miles’ childhood reminiscences about shooting fish in a barrel last week. He got caught before he could try the plasma arc. He had a dustbin lid to use as a shield. No mention of the lake fishing trick with the stunner battery.

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Chapter 14 of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen opens with Miles and Jole in a field of misdelivered plascrete. Earlier in the book, Jole compared Aral falling in love to being hit by a falling building—not a building falling over, but a building falling from a great height. I haven’t personally laid eyes upon Jole’s collection of plascrete—and indeed, I cannot imagine a reason to see it other than that it offers an opportunity for private conversation with Jole—but today it strikes me as a metaphor for the remains of the falling building.

Miles is spending his week running wargames with Kaya Vorinnis, but he is apparently too much in charge for Vorinnis to run him enough to distract him from his informal investigation of his mother’s personal affairs. The conversation with Jole is an interrogation in Miles’s classic style. Since Jole is also a military officer of significant experience, it is a little more two-sided than it could be. Miles has yet to expand his line of inquiry beyond the relatively simple idea that Cordelia and Jole are an item and Cordelia is having more children. Jole is exploring his own goals and motivations; I think he learns a lot more from this conversation than Miles does. A combination of further investigation and luck brings Miles into the loop on the promotion Jole has been offered and his plan to have a son. This is certainly an educational week for Miles. It’s also educational for Fyodor Haines, who learns that Jole and Cordelia are dating.

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In Chapter 10 of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Cordelia is preoccupied with her impromptu visit from her grandchildren.

Cordelia’s grandchildren are amazing. Taura is my favorite. There’s nothing wrong with the rest of them, I just appreciate a person who knows a good hopscotch opportunity when she sees one. I’m ride or die for a tile floor. We’d get along.

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Chapters 8 and 9 of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen focus rather more on the Red Queen than on Gentleman Jole. The key issue is that Jole and Cordelia aren’t acknowledging the exact nature of their relationship in public. Rykov, Cordelia’s armsman, supports this decision—which was very definitely NOT Cordelia’s decision—because he’s in favor of discretion in all things. He’s also younger than Cordelia (and probably also Jole) and less aware of the full and complex range of issues that Cordelia needs to consider. These issues are going to make themselves felt.

Jole and Cordelia find themselves very busy with work this month, something that occasionally happens to adults who are running a planet. They find time for another few visits to Lake Serena, still termed as inspections, and they have a discreet and well-chaperoned dinner together in Kareenburg’s unnamed pleasant restaurant. The watchful eye of ImpSec has a quelling affect on their public expressions of affection. ImpSec’s concerns about Jole’s out-dated personal security training have reached his ear now as well. While Jole acknowledges Rykov’s position on discretion, he privately thinks it’s a hard habit to break.

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This week, Jole and Cordelia take off on what Bridget Jones might have described as a weekend mini-break. There’s a vast range of reading experiences between the Bridget Jones books and this one, but they DO have some things in common, most notably a connection with the works of Jane Austen. Gentleman Jole is, in some ways, Persuasion with a sexually adventurous backstory. Like, if you took the scene in chapter 20 of Persuasion where Anne Elliot talks to her cousin about Italian love songs, and rendered all the Italian love songs literally and with a carefully curated collection of sex toys, then Gentleman Jole *is* Persuasion.

The most important similarity between the two stories is the progression of the protagonists from friends to lovers. Jole and Cordelia have flown (via lightflyer, no roads) away from what passes for civilization on Sergyar, to a sort-of-kind-of rustic retreat. They’re camping, but there’s a cabin with a roof, a bed, and a door that shuts. There are also boats, a dock on the lake, dry towels, food, Cordelia’s armsman, and the Penneys, who own the facility and see to the catering. This is a very grown-up camping trip.

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