Page 146 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
The wyves seemed unconcerned that the outside world would consider theirbindings remarkable. I was sure they knew their status was unusual; the villagers were not ignorant or isolated. Several husbands had studied at universities before returning to the hills, and many children attended the Lambton school.
Aggy and another young wyfe named Ellen squeezed into our increasingly crowded table. At the other end, their husbands laughed and traded stories with Mr. Darcy, Lord Wellington, and Mr. Digweed.
I asked Aggy if the bound wyves were married in the Lambton church.
“?’Course not! I was married right here,” she said. “Ed married us in the true way. None of those crosses and Christ. We do as nature and the Mother command.”
I thought of the French couples plowing through an unfamiliar English ceremony. Perhaps the Catholic service would work as well. Or was the binding-of-gold the key?
Aggy was so happily unreserved that I asked a question that would be rude elsewhere. “Did you have marriage gold?”
Aggy petted her roseworm, curled in her lap. “The Darcys gift a gold guinea to any wyfe who wants to bind.”
“Mind you,” inserted Ellen, “not all the girls choose that as their wedding favor. Some ask for a stove, or good pots.”
A guinea of marriage gold. That was an astonishingly generous wedding gift.
I heard a buzz, and a familiar tiny shape flashed past us in the air.
“A needledrac!” cried Ellen. She pulled a flower from her hair and dangled it over her head.
“She hopes it will land on her flower,” Aggy explained through laughter. “?’Tis good luck to have a visit.”
“I have never seen that flower before,” I said. Ellen was now waving it wildly. It was long and tubular, like an oversized honeysuckle blossom but blue and mauve.
“Draca breath,” Aggy said. “They grow only by a needledrac hive, and the dracs gather only their nectar. So the dracs give you a prick if you come close. But we risk it for the essence.”
“What?” I could not believe my ears.
“Draca essence,” Aggy said, mystified at my reaction. “From stewing the flowers. We keep doses in case of crawler sting.”
She spoke with such nonchalance that I felt foolish. But after both ourScottish laundress and our journal mentioned draca essence, I had inquired at every apothecary in Hertfordshire. No one had ever heard of it.
The celebration was becoming noisy as food was cleared and the mead jug was passed. I took a tiny splash and received some teasing for my restraint.
No teasing was required for the male half of our table. Lord Wellington and Mr. Digweed were trading rambunctious toasts, alternating between stout English officers and a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Mr. Darcy was good-naturedly keeping pace, although he sipped rather than swigged.
He saw me watching and raised his cup in a quiet salute, smiling in the firelight. I smiled back, and my stomach did an unexpected, trembling flip.
What would happen between us after this evening? My encounters with Mr. Darcy had become driven by my determination to… to speak the truth. To unravel the tangle of our complicated intersections. But our tangle had come free on its own. We had shared secrets and fears and wishes. I was more intimate with this man, whom I had thought so coldly proper, than anyone but Jane.
I remembered Papa’s words before he died: “Mr. Darcy, to my surprise, is a man who draws confidences.”
Papa’s posy ring hung under my dress, suspended on a thin chain. I touched the cloth and felt it on my breast, close to my heart. The ring my father gave me to carry his blessing.
If there were no more painful truths to spill, what came next?
Two men began a lively tune on reed flutes, music in an unusual mode that made me think of Irish folk tunes. Couples began to dance. It was unlike any ball I had ever attended. A man and woman danced the entire song together without changing partners, spinning each other enthusiastically. When the music ended, they returned to their seats, laughing and holding hands, while the musicians raced into the next.
Aggy and Ellen’s husbands arrived to claim them for a dance. Aggy parked her roseworm on the bench beside me where he curled up, peering at me.
Mr. Darcy and I were now an island of stillness in the rollicking crowd. Lord Wellington and Mr. Digweed were waving their arms in some clashing rendition of an Eton song.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” Mr. Darcy said with sudden decision. “If you are not already engaged, would you honor me with this dance?”
I was so surprised that I answered very ungracefully. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
