Page 72 of The Dragoneers of Longbourn and Pemberley
Chapter forty-nine
Valeraine needed to help Mr. Pemberley. Her heart yearned to finish the derby, to show to everyone that Lelantos was capable. But it was Pemberley’s reaction she considered now, if she left him to die after knocking him out of the air. He would be so disgusted with her, for good reason.
He would never leave her crashed on the ground. Perhaps he would patronizingly blame her for the fall, or insult the capacity of her dragon. But he wouldn’t leave her helpless, not ever. His heart was too gallant for that.
Now, how to direct Lelantos down to the ground while she was held in his claws? She put her hand on his leg, and shouted, “We need to land. Over by the red dragon.” She pointed, but he wasn’t looking at her.
Lelantos continued onward. He was determined. He saw the other dragons, and wanted to beat them. He was focused on the race, now that he had retrieved his rider.
“Please! We need to help him.” She pointed again, emphatically. She poured in her emotions to that gesture, conveying more than a direction. It was their duty to help someone who had helped them; her worry over if Pemberley was hurt; her guilt that their dangerous maneuver had knocked him out of the sky. This was more important than the race.
They couldn’t leave him to die.
She found a surprising depth of feeling in her heart with that thought. What if she never got to tell Pemberley that she would keep his confidence? Would their final exchange really be him calling her Mr. Sidton? There was so much more she needed to tell him, to hear him say to her.
Lelantos begrudgingly accepted that she cared about it, and so he would help. He didn’t see how this was more important than the derby, though.
Lelantos turned around, and started his descent.
The landing was jarring, but Lelantos was careful enough that she would only have a few extra bruises from it. She shimmied out from underneath him, walking on a field of disturbed snow, now mixed up with the dirt underneath. “Pemberley? Are you all right?” she called, and jogged on wobbly legs to the red dragon.
The dragoness was lying on her side, breathing hard and making little pained gasps. Valeraine was facing the dragon’s belly, so she circled (on the tail side, giving the beast plenty of room) to the back. She hoped the dragon wouldn’t notice her, or at least wouldn’t attack.
Pemberley was still tethered to the saddle, but he was not sitting in it. He was dangling in the air.
“Pemberley, hold tight,” Valeraine said in a shaky voice, which was the calmest she could summon. “I’m going to get you down.”
Pemberley gave an answering complicated moan of sorts, which may have been an attempt at speech.
Standing under the dangling Pemberley, Valeraine realized she couldn’t get him down. “Lelantos, I need you,” she said, and heard him walking over. The red dragon let him pass.
Lelantos was at her back now, a familiar and steady presence. She could breathe a little easier. Her defender was here. The red dragon wasn’t a danger to her.
Valeraine grabbed Lelantos’ dangling reins, and paired a tug with, “Come and stand so you’ve got Pemberley on your back.” The dragon waddled where he was guided.
She climbed on Lelantos’ back, and now it was a simple thing to untie Pemberley’s tethers so he rested only on her dragon. There. She could bring him back to the manor, where there would be someone to help.
But what if Pemberley was dying? She didn’t know anything about medicine, but she could at least make sure he was breathing, or tie a rag around his wound.
“Pemberley?” she asked.
No response. Not even a groan.
She put her ear on his chest, listening for his breath, for a heartbeat. Was he already gone? Had she killed this horrid man? Her mask was getting in the way, digging into her face as she tried to listen, and she ripped it off.
“Valeraine?” he asked weakly.
“Oh. You’re alive.” Suddenly, all she could muster up was disgust for him. He was alive, and hadn’t needed her help. She had sacrificed her status in the derby for absolutely nothing, for a foolish notion that she could do anything to help the grand, mighty, noble Pemberley. She pulled back from him, and he gave a gasp of pain.
“Are you injured?” Valeraine asked, letting her irritation show.
“I think,” he gasped, “something is wrong with my leg.” Here, he stopped to breathe very precisely. On his left leg — itsmuscular shape bound in athletic leggings — the lower half did seem swollen. “It might be broken,” he temporized.
“I’ll get you back home,” she said.
He was already wearing a harness, so it was no trouble to tie her tether line to him. She sat straddling Lelantos' spine, Pemberley's head before her, her hands on his shoulders. She was too far back to reach the reins, but she trusted enough in a verbal command. Lelantos had just caught her out of the sky, after all. “Back to the house, slowly and carefully.”
They rose smoothly into the air, and Pemberley panicked, trying to sit back up. “What about Amaranth? Is she all right?”
