Page 52 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
I touched the leading edge of her wing. It was a thick as my thumb, and it felt… powerful. Our drake had the same sense of toughness but was built on a finer scale. Almost delicate by comparison.
“She is both like our drake, and different.” I looked at her feet. “Her talons are large.”
“Not talons. Claws.” He held his hand in the air, mimicking a claw with three fingers and his thumb. “Hunting birds—raptors, like an owl or an eagle—theyhave talons. Talons are spears, sharp at the tip, so”—he pinched his fingers and thumb together—“birds drive them into their prey, then carry it to their nest. But flying draca, wyverns and drakes both, they hunt large game, and they don’t nest. They eat where they kill. So they have claws, edged like a razor their whole length. No good for carrying game. They’d cut through and drop it. But if you want to kill something… aye, that’s a sight. They can twist their foot for the strike, to cut with either the big rear claw or the three front claws. A weapon to behold either way.”
“I have seen our drake fight.”
“Have you now? You’re ruining all my perceptions of fine English ladies. I thought they embroidered all day.”
I touched the burnished arch of a claw where it rested beside my skirt. Like our drake, the wyvern stood with her claws spread, and each foot spanned wider than my stretched hand. Most of that was claw. “I embroider also.”
“Well, I drink also. We both have our bad habits.”
I laughed and turned to him. “Are Scottish ladies different?”
“The great dragon wyves were Scottish.”
“What made them great?”
“War, ma’am.”
I turned back to the wyvern. “War does not appeal to me.” The shifting eyes were running through oranges and blues and yellows. It was mesmerizing. “Have you been the Rosings gamekeeper long?”
“Not Rosings, ma’am. Just visiting. I’m gamekeeper for Pemberley.”
I shot to my feet, and the wyvern backed in surprise.
I was sure I would discover Mr. Darcy lurking, but no one was near. I turned a full circle to be sure he was not sneaking about on those long legs.
“You all right, ma’am?” The gamekeeper had stood also.
“I… I have remembered a commitment. I must depart.” I thought through what I had heard. “You mentioned two other women who touched a wyvern. Who were they?” I had assumed he meant Lady Catherine and her daughter. Now, I was not sure.
“Lady Anne Darcy was one, my master’s late mother. Lady Anne was sister to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Two sisters, and two bound wyverns. That tells you the strength of the bloodline. I was Pemberley gamekeeper for Lady Anne, and I miss her greatly. ’Course, her wyvern is gone with her.”
“And the other?”
“Miss Georgiana Darcy. Never been a draca she couldn’t touch.”
I said goodbye and began walking back to the parsonage, rather distracted.
The stretched shadow of the wyvern’s wings flashed across the ground at my feet. A minute later, it passed again.
child
I stopped among the trees. I was sure I had heard someone speak. But there was nobody.
21
THE MATERNAL LINE
At Longbourn,I had memorized and inverted Mr. Collins’s exercise schedule. Now I dusted off that knowledge and took long walks in Rosings Park, sometimes with Charlotte but more often alone as she was often busy with the household.
The Rosings formal gardens were like the wrapping of a lady’s gift, layers of meticulous hedges concealing flower beds as exact as embroidery and lawns scythed and clipped to velvet. I visited them once to admire the tulips and daffodils, but that was sufficient.
But Rosings Park was an immense estate, and even the opinions of her ladyship could not stamp it all into submission. An open grove edged one side of the gardens, and there was a path that wound under ash and oak, with rough patches and fallen logs to deter more sedate walkers.
I sank into a pleasant routine. There is an inescapable bustle living with four sisters. Here, the weather was warming, the woods were greening, and even Mr. Collins’s silly behavior—if rationed, like a sweet—became amusing.
