Page 20 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
Through our touch, another sensation grew. Her husband, watching anxiously, filled her with warmth. Their love was a shining thing, and from theforest around us, I felt an answering stir, the tawny brown attention of an intrigued observer.
“Have you seen draca in these woods?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, brightening. “A handsome broccworm comes and goes. A proud thing.”
That was the draca I sensed, unbound, his binding latent and loose. I imagined his binding reaching to this woman and then, almost like I had tugged it, the end stretched to graze her shining love.
I leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Hold your husband close tonight, and see what happens in the morning.”
We departed. As we passed back through Lambton, I had the driver stop so I could speak with the mother of another girl who attended the school. When I climbed back in, I told Mr. Knightley, “She will visit them and explain about the school.”
“That is kind of them,” he said. He crossed his arms thoughtfully. “And of you.”
“They left so much behind. Letters to businesses are well and good, but they lost their home. I do not see why they cannot stay in Pemberley. Carpenters are always needed.” I watched the few streets of Lambton pass. “They would be better here than in a big city like Sheffield. Here, everyone is a friend. Appearances are forgotten. A city is filled with strangers. You cannot imagine what it is like for a woman to be harmed that way. We are so judged by our faces.” Mr. Knightley did not answer, his complexion as brown as the oak panels, and I realized I had blundered. “Of course, you do know what that is like.”
“I understood your point.” He watched me with peculiar attention. I wondered if I would get another lecture about projects. Instead, he asked, “Did you try to heal her?”
I looked at the trees passing the window. “Mr. Darcy is wrong about me and healing. I have the most useless gift. I feel what is wrong with people, but I cannot help. It was Lady Anne’s gift that healed Nessy. I have no skill like that.”
“That must frustrate you.”
“If I could imagine doing it, or even how it would happen, I would be frustrated. But I cannot. It feels as unimaginable to me as it would be to you. It is not frustrating. Just… disheartening.”
A little sad, I looked through the things I had brought to pass the time ofour travel. The red lanyard from Lady Anne’s journal was loose in my reticule, so I tied it to the drawstring so it would not be lost.
“That couple will bind, though,” I said. “To the handsome broccworm. She will like that.”
8
?FENSANG
MARY
From somewhere inthe crowded village square, I heard Lucy’s cheerful call. “Come see, Miss Bennet!”
At breakfast, Pemberley House had been abuzz for Beltane eve, but the true celebrations were in the hills, so for an afternoon walk I set out to one of the larger Briton villages. It was even busier than Pemberley: vegetables stacked for paring, meats set to roast, and ladies and children preparing decorations, which was where I spotted Lucy waving.
“I am making a Green Woman,” Lucy said as I sat beside her. The table was covered with flowers and twigs. Lucy folded a scrap of linen to protect her fingers, then tucked tufts of spikey holly into a vaguely feminine, hawthorn-branch form. “The Green Woman listens to our wishes—especially at Beltane!—so she will tell Mrs. Darcy that we are thinking of her.”
Satisfied with the holly, she wrapped a piece of ribbon around a few twigs, avoiding the thorns, wicked things an inch long. She tugged it tight, pricked her knuckle, and muttered a curse as raw as any urchin in a London gutter. Her guilty gaze sprang to me.
“I attend women in childbirth,” I told her. “They would shock a Navy quartermaster.”
Lucy nodded seriously. She was fourteen, or a year more, her woman’sfigure filling in. Girls her age hung on any scrap of knowledge about marriage, love, and childbirth, and she had no mother to give her an organized explanation. Perhaps we should take a stroll and talk.
I asked, “How will the Green Woman know it is for my sister?”
“She will know,” Lucy said. “Mrs. Darcy likes pretty things. I weave in woodbine, which is what they call honeysuckle here, and I add cowslip, because Eostre likes yellow—that is why egg yolks are yellow—but Mrs. Darcy has a dragon, so mostly it will bethis.”
She held up a stalk of draca breath, the row of blooms blue and mauve, deep-belled and fragrant. Stewed for hours, this became draca essence, the treatment for crawler venom.
I touched a petal. “I thought the blooms were difficult to gather?”
Lucy rolled her eyes and pulled up her sleeve to show a row of scabbed pricks. “Needledrac scratches. Watch, you’ll see. The needledrac find the flowers, even after they’re cut. I got scratched when I helped gather for the next batch of essence. But we had more flowers than we could boil down, so I took the extra.”
Mr. Digweed, the headman for Pemberley’s Britons, strolled to us, a lad at his side. The boy was fit and tan, about fifteen, old enough to wear a gentleman’s coat and trousers. I invited them to sit, and Mr. Digweed introduced his son Thomas.
Thomas bowed to me politely, then his eyes sank to his toes while he murmured, “Good afternoon, Lucy.” Lucy mouthed a wordless “Good afternoon,” color rising in her cheeks.
