Page 162 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
The faceted eyes glittered.Then you are ruthless. You are the wyfe of war.
Pressure pried at my mind. A vibration grumbled in my skull, too deep to be heard. Fire building in a giant’s forge.
“You killed no one,” Mr. Darcy said, his voice by my ear. “I will not permit you to take blame for my actions.”
“I killed Wickham.” I remembered hating him as Yuánchi approached. Condemning him. “If I stopped him sooner, I could have saved Lydia.” But I doubted my own words. I had seen Wickham’s eyes when he watched Lydia. How afraid he was.
Mr. Darcy’s fingers encircled my forearms. He cradled my elbows and drew me around, tearing my gaze away from Yuánchi. The pressure vanished.
I pressed my cheek to his shirt, dusty and damp with sweat. His voice resonated through his chest when he spoke.
“Now it is you who protects someone who did not ask for protection. I made my own choice. And Wickham doomed himself.”
ANSWER. Are you the wyfe of war?Yuánchi’s words were hammer blows.
But the blows skittered away. Unexpected as fury, iron certainty filled me. “No!” I said even as my husband said, “She is not!”
I raised my head. Each crystal facet of Yuánchi’s eyes shone with an aspect of the world—the azure of blue sky, the emerald of a distant hill, the dirty carmine of dying fire.
“I will never be that,” I said. “No archaic verse rules me. My destiny is my own. War is horrible. I will be no party to it.”
Yuánchi’s massive jaws opened, and he huffed with the laughter of his kind.
The Child of the Lake is old and wise.
The grumbling threat of violence faded.
Wickham’s men had thrown down their weapons. The Britons were herding them together. But pairs of captor and prisoner kept stopping, gaping at the scarlet dragon.
I let go of Mr. Darcy but held his hand as I faced Yuánchi.
“What do you seek?” I asked.
My kind live in solitude. We seek what is alien. Love. Passion. But I, Yuánchi, want more. I seek what is shared. Moral right. Sacrifice. Loyalty.
Miss Darcy was helping Lord Wellington toward the Britons. But Lord Wellington stopped and called to me.
“Mrs. Darcy. We must speak about what has happened. It is a matter of urgency.”
I did not answer. Miss Darcy helped him walk away.
Yuánchi stretched across the earth. His moving skin whispered like a bowl of jewels stirred with a finger. His chest and neck lowered to the ground, the scales glowing in the sunlight.
What do you seek, Child of the Lake?
I thought of Mr. Rabb’s opinion of English ladies and their embroidery.
My husband opened schools. Mary wrote music that revealed her soul.
My father had written books. They were on a shelf in his library, covered with dust. Sometimes, while I had exercised my wit in scorn of foolish society, his gaze had drifted to them.
I had never read them.
I remembered Mary’s summary of my life. Complacent.
“I would change the world,” I said.
Hands clasped, Mr. Darcy and I walked forward together.
