Page 53 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
We walked to the house and were met by a joyful collie. I petted him, then knocked. Mrs. Hewitt herself answered. The Hewitts had a maid of all work, a parish orphan they took in, but she would be busy scrubbing, not answering doors.
Mrs. Hewitt was a welcome sight after so long, and she clapped in delight when she saw me. “Miss Woodhouse! Glory, what a relief. Are you here to send that nasty man back to London?”
She launched into a spirited recital of my brother-in-law’s faults, not least his refusal to purchase proper Hartfield cider. I nodded along cheerfully, adding I-told-you-so glances to Mr. Knightley at the best parts.
When she wound down, I said, “I must ask a favor, though. This is my friend, Mr. Knightley.” He bowed, sweeping his black topper with panache, and Mrs. Hewitt hurriedly curtsied. “We wish to visit Donwell Abbey, but the road is closed. May we leave our coach here? You need not pay it the slightest attention. Mr. Knightley’s men will watch over it.”
“Oh…” She peered at the coach. “What a fine coach. Where are you from, sir?”
“London,” Mr. Knightley answered. Mrs. Hewitt frowned, and he amended, “Chelsea, more properly. I have an apple orchard, myself.” I thought that was a clever invention.
“Oh, well then.” She smiled, her eyes flicking between us. “Certainly, a coach is no bother. You go have a walk with your gentleman.” She waved us on our way and winked at me, eyes twinkling.
That left me self-conscious, and I stewed while Mr. Knightley arranged matters with the driver and footman. At last, he joined me.
“Shall we bring the footman?” I asked, striving so hard for a light tone that I sounded quite inane.
That surprised him. “Do Surrey ladies bring their footmen on walks?”
“No…” I suppose it hardly mattered if Mrs. Hewitt thought this was a courtship. Mr. Knightley knew better. Still, I felt my ears turn pink. I turned to study the trees. “There is a footpath in Donwell Abbey. It leads most of the way to Hartfield. We can cut through the orchard to reach it.”
We walked among the apple trees and their masses of bloom. The weather was nicely cool. When we reached the hedgerow at the edge of the orchard, I showed Mr. Knightley the stacked fieldstones for climbing over. “These keep the sheep in their place, but goats go over, and we shall too.” The stones provided two tall steps, each a stretch, but country ladies are practical abouthems and glimpses of ankle. He held my hand for balance, and feeling happy, I jumped down the far side, skirt flaring. The ground thumped harder than I remembered. I had been twelve the last time I jumped instead of descending sedately, and rather smaller.
Mr. Knightley scrambled up with no trouble and jumped beside me with a huff and a grin.
“These are the Abbey grounds,” I said. “It has been abandoned for centuries. Nothing is left but fallen stones. I like to imagine it looks like Rome.”
He gazed over the grassy field. Blocks of golden Bargate stone, a sandy rock much harder than it looked, lay at odd angles in the greenery. A few ragged sections of wall remained, none taller than a man, all of them rough-topped with stones and bricks poking out from crumbled mortar. The Abbey stones were very large and heavy, or they would all have been taken for building long ago. Ivory arum lilies and pink masterwort filled the marshy, eastern side.
“It is a beautiful setting,” he said. “The drainage needs repair. Why is the land not maintained?”
“There was a disagreement over who owns it. A duke died without an heir, the Church made a claim, then other debtors argued. That was hundreds of years ago. I imagine it is still a tangle.” He nodded thoughtfully, and I set out across the uneven meadow. “I had an adventure here with a draca. I think that was when I realized I had some affinity for them.”
“A feral draca?”
“No, she was bound.”
Bound to Miss Bates, a local spinster who was at least forty. Miss Bates was widely assumed to be silly, harmless, and thoroughly unromantic—certainly I had thought so. Learning she was a widow, let alone secretly bound, was a shock. She had confided her story to me: eloping with a soldier, being disowned by her family, then being widowed and penniless.
I understood her choice of secrecy. Bound widows risked terrible persecution. Draca usually left when a husband died, so a widow who kept her draca was suspected of harlotry or even witchcraft. There were only a handful of bound widows in England, all of them wealthy and influential enough to fend off the Church’s disapproval. Although, now that I thought about it, if Miss Bates was secretly bound, other bound widows might hide their draca as well. Perhaps publicly bound widows were wealthy and important because only rich women dared admit the truth.
Mr. Knightley and I walked for a time, and I thought about secrets. Finally, I said, “I feel something is changing with my affinity.”
Mr. Knightley’s answering look was hesitant. “Should you discuss that with Mr. Darcy? Or Miss Darcy?”
“You mean, instead of you?”
He nodded. A few black locks had gone astray when he doffed his hat, and they stuck out around his ears. If he were Harriet, I would reach over and tuck them in. I could even picture doing it, the heel of my glove resting on his cheekbone beside his dark lashes.
Shocked by my own musing, I concentrated on swishing my boots through the grass until we reached a row of old building stones. I stepped up on the first one and began walking along them, one step for each.
“If I discuss my affinity with the Darcys,” I resumed, “it is instantly serious. War. Lost wyves. Dragons. Dusty books are opened, and armies readied. I just want to talk about it.”
“Then I suppose you must tell me. How has it changed?”
I reached the end of the row and rested my gloved fingers in his to step down. “I do not think I can express it.” He burst out a laugh, and I had to smile. “I said Iwantedto talk about it, not that I knew how. Can we wait here for a moment?”
The Abbey ruins were as familiar to me as Hartfield’s gardens. I did not even remember my first visit, I had been so young. They had always interested me—for imaginary games, and later to paint or just to wander. I had seen the vines climb and die, the tree leaves rain down in all colors, the swallows nest in high corners. The ruins stayed steady through it all, an anchor while nature surged and changed.
