Major Colquhoun Grant scanned the faces around the table they’d set up in the converted stables at the end of the courtyard and breathed a sigh of relief when he noted a particular absence.
“Where’s Strange?” he asked the man next to him.
“Oh, he took himself off to the mountains as soon as the post arrived. Said the men need him to read their letters for them.”
Grant smirked. It was clear that the magician undertook this task out of a need to boost his sense of self importance rather than any altruistic motivation but as least he was making himself useful and keeping out of the way.
Title: I Will Lay Me Down
Author: solitaryjo
Characters: William De Lancey/Colquhoun Grant, Arthur Wellesley & Jonathan Strange
Summary: Colonel De Lancey receives a letter that shakes him to the core.
At the end of a hard day’s ride, they came at last to their night’s resting-place, an abandoned farmhouse in the valley. The setting sun shone on a walled orchard full of pear trees, gilding the fruit that hung heavy on the boughs. Major Grant dismounted with an exclamation of delight and set about pulling the ripe fruit from the trees.
“What will you cook them with?” asked Strange, who doubted the farmhouse would provide what was needed here. He did not intend to eat any of the fruit: stewed pears reminded him of his childhood and attendant bellyaches.
“Cook them?” Grant exclaimed in astonishment. “You don’t cook pears like these, Merlin. It would be a sacrilege.”
Title: Scrumping Series
Author: fengirl88
Characters: Colquhoun Grant/Jonathan Strange
Summary: a series of short fics in which Grant and Strange indulge in both the local delicacies, and one another.
Colonel William De Lancey is utterly exhausted but the last thing he wants to do is sleep. He rubs his eyes and turns his attention back to the map in front of him, squinting to bring the writing into focus and stop the contours from jumping around on the page. He knows it probably isn’t a good idea to plan routes for the next day’s march when he can barely keep his eyes open but he needs something to occupy his mind. Grant has been gone too long and there has been no news for weeks. He tries not to think about the fates that could befall a man alone in the mountains. He looks out the window and sees dark clouds beginning to cover the moon.
Title: The Darkest Hour
Author: solitaryjo
Characters: William De Lancey/Colquhoun Grant
Summary: Both Grant and De Lancey suffer from insomnia.
Author’s Notes: This started out as a fill for a prompt on the kinkmeme but I didn’t post it there because it doesn’t really meet the brief. I’m not entirely sure what it has become. Call it my experimental phase 😉
He is a good friend to her after Italy. Such a great man in the eyes of the world, a hero. He makes a favourite of her and the world in turn looks on her with greater favour.
He provides a little brightness too: a dinner, a dance, a trip to the theatre. Small distractions from what was lost and what she is still fighting to regain. If he becomes a little too forward, she can forgive him for it. He is used to the adoration of women, of having his pick of the crowd to warm his bed. He has an easy charm that leaves her tempted, even as she laughs at his flattery and veiled offers.
Title: Arabella/Wellington
Author: Owl_by_Night
Characters: Arabella Strange/Arthur Wellesley
Summary: Post-canon, Arabella finds herself the subject of the Duke of Wellington’s attentions.
There had been a point on that flight home when Grant had been sure that William was going to die. The moment when he’d stopped thrashing, stopped twisting away from the pain and gone quiet. His hand, bloodied and shaking with shock, had fallen lax against his side and Grant had thought ‘he’s going to die’.
Title: In dreams
Author: Owl_by_Night
Characters: William De Lancey & Colquhoun Grant
Summary: Grant dreams about the flight back from France when William was injured.
Author’s Notes: Short snippet set sometime around Chapter 19.
Colquhoun Grant’s time as the Intelligence Officer to Lord Wellington had bred in him a particular skill: that of concealment. That was all well and good when he was scanning enemy lines or attempting to move undetected through the undergrowth, but Grant found that his skill was put to best use in concealing his romantic disposition.
The truth was that Major Grant fell in love all too easily and all too quickly.
Title: The Skill of Concealment
Author: rosncrntz
Characters: Colquhoun Grant/Jonathan Strange
Summary: Grant reflects on how these feelings came about. He didn’t realise that it was bound to happen. There was never any question.
(c) Edmund Miller; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Grant finds De Lancey asleep in his office chair with his boots on Grant’s desk, so Grant thinks it only fair to kick the chair away from the desk until it wakes him up.
“Is there a reason you’re in my office?” he asks, dropping a stack of reports down with a thud. “Or are you just here for a quiet place to kip?”
De Lancey stretches lazily, his pale blue uniform shirt pulling tight across his chest. “I’ve got news for you actually. They’re sending you a new magician.”
Title: The Art of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Author: Owl_by_Night
Characters: De Lancey/Wellington, John Childermass/John Segundus, Colquhoun Grant/Jonathan Strange
Summary: Team Peninsular reimagined as combatants in World War 2.
~*~
Chapter 1: With World War II raging, a unit of the Special Operations Executive is dedicated to the use of magical espionage. They are Arthur’s Ungentlemanly Magicians.
Chapter 2: Very few people have a good night’s sleep and Jonathan Strange joins the unit.
Chapter 3: Strange arrives on a mysterious airfield in East Anglia and meets the rest of the Peninsulads. It does not got go quite as he imagined it.
Chapter 4: The team are sent to France to rescue Arthur and nothing goes according to plan. They also go to the pub, where everything goes according to Childermass’ plan.
Chapter 5: After the catastrophe of the last mission to France, plans are made, Strange gets his chance to shine and Childermass discovers that not all is as it seems behind enemy lines.
Chapter 6: An interlude from espionage. After events in France, leave is taken and three couples spend the weekend together.
Chapter 7: Leave comes to an end and the boys return. Meetings are held and Strange gets his new assignment.
Chapter 8: Cold weather and worry make for short tempers but fortunately there are phone calls from home and visits North to make things better.
Chapter 9: A mission is planned and Jonathan makes his first trip to wartime France.
Please leave your adoring comments for Owl_by_Night on Archive Of Our Own!
~*~
Related Posts
(Listed in chronological order relative to the timeline of the main story).
The Great War: The impact of the Great War on the characters in The Art of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Learning to Dance: Vignette set in the 1920s, when De Lancey and Grant were at school together.
Recruitment: 500 words to tell the story of how William came to be working for Special Operations Executive.
Grant: Five minute challenge backstory fic, set just after Grant returns to England, having escaped from captivity in occupied Europe.
It’s the Coat: Short fic set some time before Jonathan joined the Ungentlemanly Magicians, which also touches on the incident that Grant referred to in Chapter 9.
Grant does not see Jonathan when he first enters the room. He is facing towards the window, already stripped and in his bath. Jonathan, standing in the doorway from the servants’ corridor, allows himself the indulgence of watching for a moment. Grant is efficient in his washing as befits a military man, scrubbing a cloth briskly over his arms to remove the dust of his journey. He has strong arms, strong enough to hold a man of Jonathan’s size down if he chooses, and the water curls around the curve of his muscles. It is an appealing sight.
Title: A Bath by Candlelight
Author: Owl_by_Night
Characters: Colquhoun Grant/Jonathan Strange
Summary: After a long journey, Major Grant takes a bath.
Author’s Notes: Set in canon-era, some time between the Peninsula and Waterloo, Grant pays Jonathan a visit at Ashfair. After the long journey there it seemed right that he have a relaxing bath, but Jonathan has other ideas.
Recently fengirl88 gave me the prompt ‘sharing a bath’ and this is the result.
“What the devil -?” Strange stared in bewilderment at the picture in his silver basin. He had been quite clear in his intention to find Lord Wellington’s whereabouts, so why was the wretched thing showing him Major Grant in a state of undress? If magic was beginning to play tricks on him, the consequences did not bear thinking about.
Grant lay on a bed such as Strange had not seen in many months; the room must be in some hotel. He was wearing his shirt and (as far as Strange could see) nothing else. Strange knew he should dismiss the vision and try again, but it was difficult not to let his gaze linger over the Major’s bare legs, or to refrain from admiring his well-shaped calves and powerful thighs.
Title: An Unexpected Vision
Author: fengirl88
Characters: William De Lancey/Colquhoun Grant/Arthur Wellesley, and Jonathan Strange
Summary: Strange discovers Grant in an unusual situation.
Author’s Notes: Written for a prompt on the JSMN kinkmeme; thanks to theicescholar and Owl_by_Night for their encouragement with this one.
“We’ve been talking – arguing, rather – about magic, how it’s done,” Lord Wellington said at breakfast, when Strange had finished the short catalogue of his wartime experiences to date.
Strange was by now thoroughly accustomed to ill-informed speculation about magic, but no doubt Lord Wellington and his officers would have their own particular variety of this. He waited politely to hear what it was.
“Major Grant here – ”
That man. The one who had sneered down at him from his horse when Strange, newly arrived in Lisbon, asked where he could find Wellington. A handsome fellow, now that he saw him properly, and looked as if he knew it. He was eating grapes and staring at Strange with a provoking air of lazy amusement.
Title: Magic By Numbers
Author: fengirl88
Characters: Colquohoun Grant, Jonathan Strange & Arthur Wellesley
Summary: “Major Grant here says you and this other chap have given every word in the Bible a number.”
Author’s Notes: written for the Numbers challenge at fan_flashworks; thanks to Owl_by_Night and theicescholar for their help with this one.
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