Page 131 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
It is your choice whether to stay or go, I replied.
Lady Catherine pulled her posture into a fragile semblance of her proud self. “You have ensorcelled my nephew, but I am unintimidated by your tricks. You are an upstart, inferior woman without honor, determined to ruin my nephew and make him the contempt of the world.”
“You have now insulted me in every possible method,” I said. “I must ask you to depart.”
“I will go. But I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. All society will follow my example. You will be shunned and condemned.” She drew a huge breath for her final riposte. “I am mostseriouslydispleased.”
Lady Catherine stomped off to her carriage. The driver snapped the whip. Loose bolts clattered.
The wyvern pushed at my hand until I scratched her thoroughly under her chin. Then she launched into the air, blowing the pins from my hair, and followed the carriage.
Miss Darcy and Mary came up, standing together beside me.
“She is a horrid aunt,” Miss Darcy observed.
“Mary,” I said, “can you manage the estate while entertaining Miss Darcy?”
“Of course.” Her brown eyes assessed me. “Where are you going?”
“Pemberley,” I answered, and Miss Darcy clapped her hands with excitement.
45
AMOST FOUL WYTCH
The hiredcoach arrived at Longbourn mid-afternoon, delayed by a surge of travel due to the rumored French invasion. The militia were leaving Hertfordshire to reinforce coastal towns in the southwest, while gentry on the coast were rediscovering their longing to visit inland relatives.
As my bags were loaded, Miss Darcy said, “Tell my brother I will be cross if he does not act sensibly.”
“I will certainly end his ridiculous plan to sacrifice Pemberley,” I said.
“I expect more than that. Do not let him just bow and mutter.” I laughed at her description but flushed at her implication. Relations with gentlemen always seem simple to ladies offering advice.
Mary handed me the Longbourn journal—the Loch bairn journal. She had searched for passages relating to lakes and high beasts, and several black ribbons had sprouted, each marking a folded page of notes. I promised to read them on the road.
Jane’s golden wyvern was crouched imperiously by our draca house. I had explained her responsibilities as best I could to a creature who neither counted days nor cared about entailments. I gave her a scratch, then whispered, “Will you be able to keep other draca away?” She panted her laughter, eyes shimmering.
Then we were on our way. I started out up top with the driver—the samedriver I used for my trip from Rosings, so he grinned as I clambered up. I admired the Hertfordshire spring while the horses trotted, and he told me the latest news.
“Napoleon’s bringing sixty thousand men,” he explained. “All on one giant raft, big as a city. There’s a dozen windmills that spin paddlewheels to make it go. And a hundred cannon. And a stone castle with turrets! I seen drawings in the paper, and they was marked ‘Accurate Plan’ in big letters.”
“That sounds formidable,” I said and kept my opinions on the accuracy to myself.
We stayed overnight at an inn in Bletchley I had visited with my aunt and uncle. Not long ago, I would have feared social condemnation for staying alone. Now, sneers and missed invitations seemed a trifling worry.
We set out in the morning at a relaxed pace, nothing like the sprint when I returned from Pemberley.
With a long day of solitary travel, I pondered Mary’s notes. The passages she marked were near the beginning of the journal, in archaic English I thought indecipherable. Mary had translated them. The most interesting was this:
“La Tarasque was a high beast as long as a horse, but water-bound in the Rhône, with teeth like swords and a serpent’s tail. It jetted flame and burned any who fought it, or slashed them with the claws of a bear. Saint Martha cast her holy splendor upon it, and it emerged from the river in foam and stood as quiet as a lamb, where she petted it and made it her servant.”
Mary added this comment:
“If, as you propose, draca are aquatic before being bound, I believe this recounts a wyfe summoning and binding a wyvern, which would be ‘as long as a horse’ if one includes the tail or exaggerates the retelling. This indicates that draca existed in ancient France, even though there are now none. Perhaps the French spies were searching the Pemberley library for clues to draca in modern France?
Lastly, I was sadly unsurprised to find our journal’s story conflicts with the Church’s account of Saint Martha in which villagers kill the beast.Doubtless, the Church’s male establishment falsified their version to disempower a female saint.”
With darkness falling, I leafed farther and found a note I missed. Mary had written no explanation—just copied the faded text into legible script. I read it, disturbed and unsure what conclusion she intended:
