Page 27 of The Dragoneers of Longbourn and Pemberley
“Longbourn!” a sharp voice called, no doubt to reprimand her for not caring for her dragon.
She kept walking. She wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, not now. She reached the edge of the trees and kept walking. Lelantos stayed behind at the treeline, too large to fit in the close-packed forest.
“Longbourn.” The voice was insistent, and frustrated. It was the voice of someone who’s in the privileged position of never having to say something twice, and is angry for needing to do so. The man trotted into her view, stopping her progress. It was Bennington Pemberley, here to gloat. “You can’t leave your shoulder like that. Sit down.”
She tried to take another step, to dodge past him, to escape, but he grabbed her arm — thankfully, the unwounded right one — and guided her to a log on the ground. It was dirty, and low, covered in moss, and beetles.
She didn’t have the strength to resist. She sat on the log.
He sat on her injured left side and pulled out a small leather case which had been attached to his flight harness. Pemberley fetched out a small knife.
He was going to kill her, threaten her, make sure that she was never a disgrace to a derby again.
Valeraine leaned away, but was too tired to jump up and run. He would catch her again, anyhow.
Pemberley brought the knife to her arm. He cut away her shirtsleeve, directly above the bloodstain, below her clavicle, with brisk, efficient motions.
He was going to discover her padded stays if he cut any farther, but he didn’t. Just the sleeve — just enough to expose her wound.
Valeraine glimpsed the slash for the first time. She couldn’t see all of it; she would need a mirror to see it properly; but the edge of it was in her view; a gash, who knew how deep it went, whoknew how long it stretched, but it seemed not too bad, from this angle. She could keep her arm, probably.
“What were you thinking, to race without armor?” Pemberley muttered. He didn’t seem to expect any response. He took gauzy linens from his little case. He pressed them to her shoulder with not a drop of gentleness, not reacting to her hiss of pain. He mopped up her blood, clearing the area of the worst of it.
He took a vial out of his pouch, and poured some on the wound. Valeraine recognized the aroma: dragon spit. It stung.
“This will need stitches,” Pemberley declared, and brought out a curved needle and thread from his bag.
Valeraine considered protesting. Pemberley was no doctor, and she certainly didn’t trust him. But, he did seem confident. And any word was a risk to her identity. She must stay silent.
“Hold still,” he instructed.
With every tug of the needle through her skin, she gave a little grunt of pain. She tried to keep it all inside, but couldn’t bear it. Silence was impossible.
Pemberley’s touch was clinical, his fingers cold on her arm. He was gentle, though, not pressing harder than he had to.
Her mind caught on the feeling of his hands there. (He had taken off his gloves at some point, when had that been?) Perhaps his fingers weren’t all that cold. Perhaps it was her arm that was burning, and his fingers were a refreshing salve. There were callouses on his palms — same as on her own hands, from ropes and reins — she could feel the rough spots as he held her arm steady, but his fingertips were soft as he worked the needle.
The pain was worse, somehow, than when she had first gotten the wound. At that moment of violence, she’d had Lelantos to scream with her. Now, she was here with her enemy, him touching her so intimately, and she must hold everything inside.
“You’re only a boy, aren’t you?” Pemberley murmured, eyeing her slim shoulder and thin arm hair. He finished with his needleand brought out a long bandage, which he wrapped tightly around her upper arm. “It is a brave thing, to race in a derby. You have courage.” He secured the bandage to itself with some efficient stitching, embroidering her together with not a drop of beauty.
Pemberley looked at her mask and his hands twitched, as if he was going to jerk it off. He didn’t. He formed a fist, instead, then seemed to think better of it and relaxed his hands, pressing them flat on his trousers.
For a moment, Valeraine wanted to rip off the mask herself. She wanted him to really see her, to see the breadth of her mettle. This infuriating man, who assumed she was some lowborn lad, playing at being part of Longbourn house. Let him see and know she was the heart of Longbourn, the one who would save it. Or, at least, the one who would be saving it if not for Pemberley’s recurring interference.
Let him realize he was touching a woman so closely, skin to skin. Let him, with his stuffy manners and strangled ideas, realize they were scandalously unchaperoned. What a fright he would take, shaken to his core.
Instead he grasped her lower arm, pinning her in place to hear the great wisdom which he would dispense. “You are not ready for racing. You are not a dragoneer. Stop.”
Then, Pemberley stood up and left the woods, returning to his dragon and the celebration of his victory. The ball would begin in an hour, after all. He had done the minimum of care to stop Valeraine from bleeding out, and he was finished with the masked rider.
Chapter twenty-three
Mamma was always at her worst when preparing her daughters for a ball. Thankfully, it was not only her daughters she aggravated, it was also herself. After fussing and managing, she would declare that she’d had enough of this, and leave.
And so it was the four Longbourn sisters in a tiny spare bedroom in Rosings Manor, dressing for the ball. Spaces were customarily given to derby guests to freshen up between the race and the ball, and having five ladies from Longbourn (if Mamma could be called a lady, which sometimes seemed up for debate) meant that they didn’t need to share with anyone else. They were crowded enough already, fighting for time at the mirror, or sitting in the only chair.
Selaide was wearing Valeraine’s cream gown again, with the lace and the Fellarik off the shoulder neckline. When Alyce had complimented it, Valeraine had scowled, and Selaide had somehow decided to be annoyed at that.
