Page 3 of Scales and Sensibility
Elinor heard her own voice as if it came from very far away, beyond the ringing in her ears. “Those black gowns were mourning dress, Penelope. For my year of mourning. For myparents.”
“Well, I don’t know why you bothered to change into brighter clothing once the year was up,” Penelope said. “It’s all wasted on you anyway—it’s not as if you’re ever going to find a husband, are you? You’re not even a Hathergill, only a poor relation who couldn’t find anyone else to take you on. Your onlypurposeis to help me with my début, and instead you’re always nittering and moaning at me, ‘but Penelope’ this and ‘but Penelope’ that. I could go mad from the endless sound of your voice. Faugh!”
She narrowed her eyes and pointed at the dragon who had wound himself around Elinor’s ankles. “You’re exactly the same as him. Non-functional!”
Sir Jessamyn let out a low, trilling chuckle of fear.
...And the steam engine finally arrived.
“That is it.” Elinor’s ears were ringing so loudly now that she could barely hear her own voice even as it rose to a yell so dangerous and war-like, she would never have suspected herself capable of creating such a sound. “That. Is.It!”
“What? What? I beg your pardon?” Lady Hathergill’s head jerked up as she woke from her snooze. “Did someone say it was time for tea? Penelope?”
Penelope had scooted back a step at Elinor’s yell, but her shoulders stiffened at the sound of her mother’s voice. “It isnottime for tea, Mama,” she said. “It is time for someone to explain to my cousin exactly what her place is in this household, for once and for all!”
“Thank you, Penelope,” Elinor said. “But actually, there isn’t the slightest need for that.”
She knelt down and scooped up Sir Jessamyn with unaccustomed, fluid grace. With the steam engine’s whistle still ringing in her ears, she could have easily smashed through the windows of the elegant drawing room or picked up the piano in the corner and thrown it straight at her cousin’s pretty blonde head. It posed no difficulty at all to scoop up one trembling, chuckling dragon and set him securely on her shoulder.
“You have made yourself perfectly clear,” said Elinor. “So I shall do you the favor of removing both my non-functioning self and your non-functioning dragon from your life. Unlike you, this dragon is not a wild animal, sohe,at least, deserves some courtesy!”
“Ohhh!” Penelope shrieked. “Ohhh!Mother, did you hear what she just said to me?!”
“Oh, dear,” Lady Hathergill moaned, and put one hand over her eyes.
Perched on Elinor’s shoulder, Sir Jessamyn let out one last chuckle of terror…and through her ringing ears and haze of fury, Elinor finally remembered what that sound always signified when it came from this particular dragon.
“Oh, no,” she breathed. Hastily, she began to stroke his back. “Please, Sir Jessamyn—please don’t, not now—”
But she was too late.
Hot, steaming dragon slime exploded down the back of her gown, soaking through to her skin as Penelope’s shrieks of outrage rattled the chandelier overhead.
It wasn’t quite the exit that Elinor had hoped for, but she held her chin high as she marched out of the room, with Sir Jessamyn shivering on her shoulder and her wet, slimy skirts sticking to her legs at every step.
Chapter 2
The road to Elinor’s personal ruin began just outside Hathergill Hall.
Unfortunately, she had to pack first.
It would have been infinitely more satisfying to march directly from the drawing room to the front door without looking back. But even in the grip of the most towering rage she had ever experienced, Elinor found that she was incapable of abandoning practicality so entirely.
All of her clean clothing was still folded neatly in her bedroom, as were her precious letters from her sisters…and, of course, her four shillings and sixpence. If she abandoned them, she would have nothing at all.
Unfortunately, by the time she finished folding her clothes into her valise and slipped her few coins into her reticule, her lovely, warm haze of fury began to slip away. She tried hard to cling to it, but it was too late. Like it or not, her mind had begun to work again.
And the practical, sensible conclusions that it drew, when it looked back at the last half hour…
Elinor’s fingers trembled uncontrollably as she set the last of Harry’s letters into the valise. She drew a deep, gasping breath. It sounded like a death rattle.
Sir Jessamyn was sitting on her bed—or rather, what had been her bed, for the last six months—gazing up at her with inquisitive golden eyes. She put out one trembling hand to touch the hot, smooth scales on his head.
“Oh, Sir Jessamyn,” she whispered. “What have I done?”
Downstairs, she heard the all-too-familiar sound of Penelope’s voice rising in a furious lecture. It was far closer than it had been the last time she’d heard it; her cousin must have left the drawing room by now. From the sounds of it, she was near the front door—probably demanding that the poor footmen apprehend Sir Jessamyn, and quite possibly Elinor, too, depending on exactly how angry she was and how much revenge she planned to exact once her father returned.
Elinor looked at Sir Jessamyn, and he looked back at her. “I think we’d better take the servants’ stairs,” she said. “Don’t you?”
