Page 28 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
She smiled lightly, as if I had admired the weather. “Attack me. Perhaps then I will answer.”
“I have searched for you for days. I thought you lost when you went into the lake. Dead.” My voice broke; I had never confessed that aloud. “Mary said you are healed.”
She was still for a breath, then said, “I wish to see you fight.” The scabbard was still in her hand. She flipped it to a sword-like grip and lifted iten garde. Mockingly, she poked it toward me. “Attack, or I leave.”
I recognized that tone; she was serious. Could I rush her? Restrain her by force? That image was repugnant, and somewhere a dragon was at her call.
Still, bizarre though this conversation was, it was better than Pemberley. There, she flew away without a backward glance. And oddly, fencing—literally for once, not with words—was not that strange. I had fenced with women before. The Angelo School of Arms, where I trained, had female students.
I tapped the last few inches of my blade against the scabbard, accepting combat. She waited, still as stone. I performed a slow lunge, a teacher’s demonstration. She watched the sword tip stop two feet short of her ribs.
“You are better than that,” she said. “I watched you practice this morning.”
I recovered from the lunge and lowered the sword. “You spied on me.”
“A man asleep in a field is common. A man and ahorseasleep are worth a look.” Idly she moved the scabbard through a parry and thrust, the exact riposte I had drilled this morning. “You practiced without clothes. Is that the problem? Must you remove them to fight?”
My cheeks heated. Ridiculous; this was my wyfe. And I had worn my drawers. “I was washing them.” The words felt stiff in my lips.
She eyed my wrinkled coat and trousers. One eyebrow rose fractionally.
From nowhere, my lips spread in a joyous grin. That was Elizabeth’s wit, familiar and beloved. Giddy relief rushed into me. I resumed my stance and launched a faster lunge.
This time, she watched the sword point stop eight inches shy of her waist.
She sighed. “If you are so afraid of hurting me, aim here.” She waved the scabbard in the air beside her, then dropped it on the ground.
Now unarmed, her manner changed. Her empty hands floated by her waist,elbows tucked close. Her knees flexed above her spaced feet, although her skirt made her stance hard to read.
And it was a stance. A fighting stance. The proof was in her gaze. She did not watch my hands, or the tip of my weapon, or my eyes—anything that could feint. Her gaze followed my chest, the center of balance.
“What happened to you?” I asked. She did not answer, so I tried, “Why have you not attacked the Blackcoats?”
“They have a woman with them. I do not understand her. Not yet.”
“Why are you doingthis?” I whipped the sword through the neutral space between us, fast enough that the blade sang. “Is this because of a memory?” Like Georgiana, Elizabeth’s power had granted her visions, but Elizabeth’s were memories of past wyves of war.
She did not answer. Her eyes were steady and unfocused. The best fencers, the tutors of royalty, had that gaze. They saw their opponent’s motion as a whole, not fixating on a button or a collar. Seeing that, an unexpected emotion tightened my throat, the same feeling I had felt at the modest country dance where we met and she offhandedly shredded my self-important conceit.
I drowned in awed admiration.
I lunged, a serious attack but aimed a safe distance to one side. I picked the opposite side from where she had pointed.
She lunged too, toward me, toward the sword, spinning as she moved. Her hand flashed out and knocked the blade aside, then the sword twisted to follow her spin—she had not struck it, she had grabbed it. The base of the blade levered against her hip, wrenching my sword hand past her as she finished her rotation by slamming bodily into me. Only fifteen years of hard practice kept my fingers on the grip.
She ended facing me, fully inside my guard, our bodies pressed together. My sword arm was half behind her back, the blade pulled harmlessly around her, her hand gripping it a foot from the tip.
Her grin was ecstatic. “You are dead, Mr. Dull Blade.” A hard point was jammed into the pulse of my neck. She took it away and showed me her two extended fingers, a mock knife.
My sword arm still wrapped her like an embrace. She tugged the blade teasingly, drawing us tighter. “Thisis why you sharpen the edge. So your enemy cannot just…” She wiggled the blade again.
The admiration that had filled me soured. I pushed her away, overly hard. She made a show of staggering, laughing and pirouetting to free my sword.
“Why are you doing this?” I said. “Who are you?”
“Everyone. A hundred hunted women. No one.”
“You are not yourself.” Elizabeth would not gloat. Well, Elizabethwouldgloat, just… not like this. Not coarsely. Not over violence.
