Page 71 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“Of course.” He bowed, suddenly mature and channeling his father’s calm assurance. He left at a measured pace. The gardeners fled in his wake.
Georgiana’s arms were folded in disapproval.
Frustration and confusion swirled in me, but I had discovered a pattern in the last few days. “What is bothering you? I hear it in your voice when I talk about the great song. When I describe the power that I touch. When I confess that it makes me strong.”
Something I said struck home. She unfolded her arms, a gangly unwinding for such a graceful woman.
I was struggling to imagine an explanation for her anger. “Are you jealous?”
“Oh,” she gasped, a sobbing half-laugh. “Never, Mary. You know that I love you.” Her sapphire irises filled with tears.
Memory flickered—the lost memory, vivid as life:
I held a sheaf of paper in my left hand. A book? My throat stung. Georgiana faced me, her hair disarranged, a lock hanging by her cheek, tears streaming—
The memory shuttered as she resumed speaking. “I have not known how to—”
“Stop!” I threw out a hand, blocking my sight of her eyes, blocking her words, grasping at that edge of recollection, but the memory folded to nothing. I looked around wildly, as if it might have lodged on a clod of dirt or a fence post. “I almost had it…”
Georgiana had drawn back, stricken. Some combative corner of me notched that as revenge for her snickering at my reading, then remorse overwhelmed me. I lowered my hand. “I am sorry. But we did this before. This is the memory I lost! About music…”
I closed my eyes to concentrate. It was gone.
“Music?” Georgiana’s voice said uncertainly.
“Madams,” called Mrs. Reynolds. I opened my eyes and saw her trotting across the grass. “A messenger has arrived, an aide-de-camp of Lord Wellington. He says it is urgent.”
Georgiana sniffed and wiped each wet eye, then we exchanged cautious nods—agreement to defer—and hurried for the house.
Inside,and with Georgiana’s hair swiftly pinned by Lucy—Mrs. Reynolds stated that even military messengers could wait two minutes for a lady to be presentable—we entered the front drawing room.
The aide-de-camp was a uniformed officer in his early twenties. His coat was smudged with soot, his left forearm bandaged and bloodstained. He was flushed and smelled of horse, his trousers sprayed with mud from riding at a gallop.
He rose the instant we entered. “Ladies. Your pardon for my appearance. I am Lieutenant Colonel John Fremantle. Lord Wellington dispatched me from battle. I am to deliver this letter to the hand of a lady of Pemberley House and wait for a reply.”
He held out an envelope. I recognized Lord Wellington’s slanted script.
“To whom are you to deliver it?” Georgiana asked, her eyes on the envelope. It was addressed:The Great Wyves, Pemberley House.
The colonel recited, “To Mrs. Darcy, or to Miss Darcy, or to Miss Bennet, or to Miss Woodhouse.”
Georgiana’s lips thinned when my name was included, reawakening my mystification at her reactions. But she took the letter, broke the seal, and unfolded it between us where we could read together:
“Ladies, I write this letter in haste and with hope that it will reach Mrs. Darcy, but I cast this plea to you all.
Our soldiers in Surrey have been overmatched by a vile force. The enemy has marshaled hundreds of monstrous crawlers, and their perfumer strikes from the air. I cannot judge if such evil is natural or supernatural, but it is an assault beyond what brave soldiers and cavalry can withstand.
By the time you receive this, Surrey will likely be ceded to the enemy. I send this plea because the heart of London is but twenty miles farther, and the enemy drives toward it like they are possessed. We have no weapon to halt this foul tide.
If London falls, England falls. I will say simply that we require a miracle.
Wellington”
“How does the perfumer strike from the air?” Georgiana asked.
The colonel shifted uneasily. “I have only heard her in the distance, a roaring whir like the winds of hell.” He had a Hertfordshire accent; it reminded me of home. “I have seen the crawlers, though. They are controlled by enslaved English wyves, who are driven and beaten by Overseers. That is bad enough, but”—his voice caught—“in the worst of it, when soldiers were dying, some of the men tried to shoot the wyves. Shoot Englishwomen. Lord Wellington forbade it when he heard. And now, the French conceal the wyves where even cannons cannot reach while the crawlers advance.”
“That is abhorrent,” I said. I was not even sure which part. All of it.
