Page 84 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“I do not feel free,” she said. “I feel ashamed. Dirtied.”
I leaned close. “That is his method. He blames his victims for his sins. Deny him that.” She smiled tentatively, then fiercely, and suddenly offered to help pick strawberries.
I bent to help too, but the strawberry beds, wild with fuzzy mouse-ear weed, muddled my eyes. The shadows under the plants flickered with the blueish glow I had seen in the Abbey cellar. It was not the miasma—I felt that too, lurking in a recess of my brain, stubborn but contained even though Augusta’s gown had a dozen fringes of torn threads. The blue glow was something else. It rose from the earth, a force for harmony, not for illness.
“You chose well, Miss Smith,” Lady Catherine pronounced as she paraded up, rigid in her cinched dress stays. “I am regularly named an exceptional judge of natural beauty, and I find this hill most suitable for a wedding.” Her gazelanded on me. “I have told Mr. Collins to prepare the ceremony. Now, Miss Woodhouse, you and I shall speak.” She strode away.
I gave Augusta a farewell pat and followed her ladyship, bemused by her quirks.
Lady Catherine led us past a lime-washed cottage, home of the Abbey drainsman, an ancient position funded by a withering endowment of twenty pounds a year. Because those funds were woefully inadequate to maintain miles of medieval ditches, the drainsmen traditionally supplemented their income by selling strawberries, not to mention the whortleberries and dewberries that flourished in the marshy hollows.
Lady Catherine chose a patch of meadow bordered by dog rose and elm and studied me with her habitual scowl.
Charlotte, the sensible half of the Collinses, had taken me aside to warn me about Lady Catherine’s “technique lecture.” Charlotte did that with such calm humor that I decided she would be a wonderful friend, and if I had questions about the marriage night, I would certainly have asked her rather than her ladyship, who was old enough to be my grandmother.
However, two winters ago I had investigated this on my own, at least the pressing issues—how to recognize conception, and how soon one could tell. All that had required was carefully crafted, wide-eyed questions to local widows. They reminisced at length, so it was a wide-ranging education.
“Your ladyship is gracious with her advice,” I said, “but I sought out my own knowledge on the consequences of the marriage bed. It seemed important for a lady on her own.”
“Good,” Lady Catherine said shortly, her eyes narrowing. She inhaled a stupendous breath. “But that topic was a pretense. I wished to speak without interruption, and the specter of an old woman describing lovemaking keeps curious ears away.”
“That is clever,” I said, impressed. “You have surprised me.”
“When I can no longer surprise young ladies, I will consider myself tiresome.”
“What do you wish to discuss?”
“You knew my nephew’s wyfe, Elizabeth.”
Knew, as if she were dead. That was the public report. Mary had been the first to realize that Lizzy survived, but when I left Pemberley, that was secret. And though I had felt Yuánchi rise, I had no idea what that meant for Lizzy, not with half of England between us.
I settled for a nod. If Mr. Darcy had not told his aunt, I would not.
A nod seemed sufficient, and Lady Catherine resumed, “I will share that my relationship with Elizabeth was not close. When she was Miss Bennet, a rumor about her engagement to my nephew led to… an estrangement. Oh, we were polite after the wedding—my nephew is nothing if not polite—but before that, Darcy had been like a son. I had feared losing him to an upstart, inferior woman. Instead, a rumor”—her mouth wrinkled—“myreactionto a rumor drove him away. But it drove him to a different sort of woman than I thought.”
She was quiet then, perhaps waiting to see if I would comment on what sort of woman Lizzy was. I waited too, a picture of attentiveness.
“Then,” Lady Catherine said, “Elizabeth died. Suddenly and mysteriously. I felt…” She sighed, considering.
Gently, I offered, “Remorse?”
She straightened. “Certainly not! I feltregretthat I had not investigated her more thoroughly.”
More coolly, I said, “And what has this to do with me?”
“When Elizabeth died, a lady with golden hair was a guest at Pemberley. Pemberley has a loyal staff, and Darcy battened down the hatches after Elizabeth’s death, but I have sources, and the name ‘Woodhouse’ reached my ears. I remembered you, a woman who, at the museum ball in London, was impossibly at ease with my wyvern. A woman who was so trusted by the Darcys that she was invited to Chathford House even after that horrific evening.”
On the path below us, Mr. Collins bustled into view, looking very ministerial with a bible in one hand and his ceremonial tippet folded in the other. He saw Lady Catherine, fluttered the tippet in an obsequious wave, then noticed I was with her. Even at thirty yards, I saw him blush. He ran back down the path.
Lady Catherine smiled at his fleeing back, then aimed her gaze at me. “While my nephew mourned, you remained at Pemberley. That was unusual. You remained for months, unchaperoned by your family. That was… provocative. Darcy began to be seen with you, an hour or more each day in private conversation.”
I did not like this. “Are you accusing me of something?”
She scoffed. “I am not suggesting a tawdry affair. I would not care if there was, but it is not in Darcy’s nature.” She leveled a finger at my reticule where I had tied the red, plaited lanyard from Lady Anne’s diary. “My sister wove that. I doubt even Darcy would think that a token from his dead mother was a romantic gift. His interest in you is different.”
“Madam, I am not enjoying this conversation. I must excuse myself—”
“Not until you summon my wyvern,” she said.
