I offered her to Georgiana, who shook her head and sat on her hands for good measure. “Not me!” Everyone laughed, and she said, “No babies, thank you. Mary has mastered them sufficiently for us both.”
Instead, I passed little Jemma to Mamma. Mamma promptly began extolling the joys of motherhood to Georgiana. “Just wait until you marry! You will have little feet running all about.”
“I shall not hold my breath,” Georgiana said, slipping me an amused glance.
Impulsively, I said, “Georgiana and I are residing together. At Pemberley. But we have discussed taking a house.”
“That is a clever plan,” Jane said. “You must do it.”
Mamma was puzzled. “Unmarried ladies taking a house? That is for spinsters. You are not even twenty.” She eyed our clothes. “A house in town?”
That was an excellent question. One Georgiana and I had never discussed. Suddenly panicked, I looked at Georgiana.
She ventured, “I always imagined the country…”
“I also…” I said.
“…but your medical practice must require a city?”
“Only for study. Once that is done, London would not feel…”
“Exactly! The music and socialization are wonderful, but if one stays too long—”
“—it is exhausting,” I finished, and Georgiana smiled in radiant relief.
“Well, a Darcy can afford all manner of houses,” Mamma observed. “Just be certain to choose a town with a regiment, or you shall have no officers.”
Having survived one improvisation, I sidestepped that one. “Is Kitty in Meryton?” She was likely shopping for officers herself.
“She is helping Harriet at Netherfield,” Jane said. “Most of the teachers went home after the invasion. They were frightened, but that left poor Harriet teaching herself hoarse. Kitty is trying, but I am not sure she is very good. She reads themnovels.”
“Your wyvern seems helpful,” Georgiana noted.
The children had formed a spinning circle around the draca. The scene was very Jane-like, children playing with a creature that a troop of armed soldiers would fear to approach.
“The children adore her, and she does like to keep watch,” Jane answered. Softly, she added, “The poor thing was very affected by what happened at the ball. Spending time with the children helps her mend. She has become attached to them, and to baby Jemma.”
Unwanted, that horrible moment filled my eyes. It had been five months since the London ball where Jane’s wyvern killed my friend Miss Rees. The wyvern had been compelled to attack—the madness of Fènnù reached through Lizzy and seized her mind—but those very claws had torn my friend from my outstretched hands.
Images of that memory, as vivid as life, overcame the idyllic garden scene and turned it into a spectacle of terror. The muscles rippling beneath those adamantine scales seemed tensed for violence. The four-inch claws cutting Longbourn’s turf were poised to strike.
As my heart pounded, the wyvern’s muzzle swung to me. Her faceted eyes sparkled in the sun, and a river of calm washed away my fear. The memory retreated.
An ethereal voice chimed in my head:
hear me, wyfe
Wonder filled me. When I was with Lizzy, Yuánchi had spoken to me this way, his dragon thoughts thunder in my mind. Afterward, I decided that Lizzy’s extraordinary skills fostered that connection.
But Lizzy was not here. Jane and Georgiana were chatting. Neither seemed aware of anything unusual.
The wyvern’s voice chimed again, aged and wise:
the wyfe of song shines. you shine. you are paired
“I love her,” I said. Mamma was laughing at the others’ conversation. Nobody heard me.
The wyvern rose. Delicately, she sidestepped the playing children, her wingtips flicking for balance. She took three swift, avian strides to stand by Jane.
