by Maria Grace
Pray Elizabeth did not notice it.
She squared her shoulders and rested her hands lightly in her lap. “I beg to disagree. If he is trying to claim the Netherfield territory, her presence would be a trespass. With no idea of whom she was, her rank, or anything else about her—”
“She is a firedrake! All dragons know the rank of a firedrake!” Fitzwilliam waved his right hand for emphasis, not that he really needed to; his volume alone made his feelings quite clear.
“English dragons do. But can you identify the rank of an Eastern Dragon on sight alone?”
Fitzwilliam stammered.
“I thought not. I will give you a hint. It is in the number of their toes. You might want to remember that when we find the envoy.”
“What has that to do with any of this?”
“Can you not see? The lindwurm’s failure to properly act upon her rank does not necessarily mean he was prepared to engage in an act of war any more than your failure to identify an Eastern Dragon’s rank would. Mind you, I am not justifying it, but it is the way that dragons seem to think.”
Darcy narrowed his eyes toward Fitzwilliam. “In any case, I will arrange for Pemberley to send Longbourn a gift of salt to demonstrate our gratitude.”
“That would do a great deal in raising his esteem of you both.”
Fitzwilliam leaned back in his chair, exasperation clear in his posture. “I am astonished at your father’s behavior on so many counts.”
“Not providing for a dragon’s hoard seems unconscionable.” And dangerous—but best not add that just now.
Elizabeth harrumphed as her lips wrinkled into a thoughtful frown. “Strict interpretation of the Accords does permit it in the case of impoverishment or for excessively expensive hoards. But one can hardly call Papa impoverished. Mama has placed many demands on him, to be sure. She expected a certain style of life upon marrying him and placing limits on that has been difficult. But still, it would have behooved Papa to make greater efforts to fulfil Longbourn’s hoard-hunger.”
“It does explain Longbourn’s temperament. Hoard-starvation does make them … ah … cranky.” Darcy said the word carefully lest she consider it an insult to her dragon.
“It would certainly give him reason to believe he was entitled to demand me as his Keeper.”
“I am astonished you would excuse his behavior so easily.” Fitzwilliam folded his arms over his chest as his command tone crept into his voice.
“I am not excusing him.” Elizabeth huffed and rolled her eyes, looking a bit like a dragon herself. “Why are you so insistent upon confusing understanding with approval? They are hardly one and the same. Longbourn was childish, petulant, and throwing tantrums. I do not approve of any of those behaviors and have the intention of teaching Pemberley otherwise.”
Fitzwilliam snickered. “You will teach a firedrake?”
Darcy winced. If Fitzwilliam did not desist, he was going to discover another draconic temper very soon.
She planted her foot firmly. “I most certainly will. Babies can be instructed and so shall she be. Already she has very fine tutors in Lady Astrid and Barnwines Chudleigh and her associates.”
Fitzwilliam laughed into his hands, so hard he might stop breathing. “You sound like a mother of the ton ensuring her daughter has all the correct accomplishments and connections for her eventual come out.”
Fitzwilliam was an idiot.
Elizabeth slowly stood. Darcy leaned back—hopefully she would not notice him there. “So good of you to notice. That is precisely what I am trying to do since neither of you seem to understand the critical importance of the process.” She took two long steps toward Fitzwilliam and towered over his seated form. “Pemberley will live five hundred years! Five hundred. What kind of influence will she have in that time? With her rank, it will be tremendous. At least five, maybe as many as ten generations at Pemberley will be her Keepers. What more worthwhile effort is there than shaping the kind of dragon they will Keep?” Her fists trembled at her sides.
Fitzwilliam raised his hands, a small gesture of surrender. “Forgive me. With so few dragons of her rank hatched, it is not something one thinks about regularly.”
“Perhaps not, but it behooves one to do so. That means understanding how dragons think—which is not at all the way men think—and adapting ourselves to it. That is the advantage we have over dragons: we are nimble and able to adapt and adjust in ways they cannot. Their opinions are formed early in their lives, and they do not change. It rests on men to exercise forbearance and creativity to finds ways to make it all work. That is what brought about the Pendragon Treaty in the first place.”
“You have an excellent point.” Darcy sneaked a glance at Fitzwilliam.
Fitzwilliam slapped his fist into his palm. “Understanding alone does not excuse dangerous behavior. There have to be consequences—”
“Of course, but they should be tempered with comprehension. One cannot punish a hoarding dragon because they crave their hoard any more than one can punish a hungry man for craving food. Neither will ever change. But one can teach them to acquire their hoard in acceptable ways, or in some cases, even accept a different item to hoard, like Talia with her rabbits. When her Friend died, she did not take to stealing as many pucks do. She found an acceptable substitute. If she can, then others can as well. Understanding their drives and what is possible for them must shape the consequences we invoke. That is the only way we will be able to live in cooperation with dragonkind.”
It was not difficult to imagine her standing before the officers of the Blue Order making the same sort of speech.
She and Fitzwilliam glowered at each other until it seemed they would suck all the air from the room.
Fitzwilliam drew breath to speak again, but Darcy cut in, “So it appears that the tincture Mary prepared was as effective as we hoped?”
She did not turn her attention to him, but her posture and expression changed to something grateful. She returned to her seat in a flowing, elegant motion that relinquished none of her power. “The initial receipt was not correct, and she had to make adjustments, but yes, she was able to settle upon a formulation that did work. I believe we can also use it to decontaminate the map room and the maps as well.”
Fitzwilliam’s entire countenance transformed from combative to fully attentive. “Tell me more.”
She quickly explained what she and her sister had devised.
“A mask of some sort soaked in the stuff might work.” Fitzwilliam rubbed his chin. “Instead of steaming the contaminated chamber, what do you think of setting up the room next door to be filled with the steam? We could bring the maps there to expose them to the steam, perhaps even wipe them down with rags damped with the mixture?”
“Will that not damage the ink?”
“We could test it on a letter or a painting first.”
“If it does not damage them, then it seems a reasonable plan.” Elizabeth glanced at Darcy. “Should it not be done by someone not already sensitized to the venom? It appears the risk to both of us is very great.”
“She is right, Darcy. Let me do this. At least I will feel somehow useful in this affair.” Fitzwilliam stared into the fireplace, rubbing his knuckles over his lips. He had probably not intended to be so open around Elizabeth. But then, it was difficult not to be.
“It is difficult to feel like the only one not associated with a dragon, I imagine.” Elizabeth’s voice was soft and gentle. “Mary often felt that way before Heather’s hatching.”
Fitzwilliam grunted, but did not—or perhaps could not—reply.
“Cait’s egg will hatch soon. She named you as her Friend of choice for the chick. I am certain that he will find you acceptable and—many things change once one becomes a Dragon Friend.”
Fitzwilliam sighed. “I am not sure it is such a good idea. I am not the sort—”
“That will be the dragon’s decision, not yours. Just because you are present at the hatching does not mean that the ba
by will choose you as his Friend. It does help if he takes his first meal from your hand, but it does not guarantee anything. Some will choose not to take a Friend without any rhyme nor reason. April nearly did that after her hatching. She did not like any of the possible Friends presented to her.”
Fitzwilliam cocked his head nearly sideways and lifted an eyebrow. He was not often surprised. “You were not among the choices?”
“No, I was merely there to assist my father. But she found me sympathetic when I understood she hated blood sausage as much as I. I suggested a dish of honey instead. At that point, she decided I would do for her, and my father would just have to live with it—and he was not particularly happy with that.”
Fitzwilliam snickered. “It is not difficult to picture her saying just that whilst diving for his ears.”
“You must be there for the hatching—you would not want to risk insulting Cait and Walker by shunning the event. If he is as perverse a creature as his mother, he could very well choose Papa or Mary as his Friend, just to make their lives even more challenging.”
Darcy chuckled. “I do not see your father as the type a cockatrice would favor.”
“Nor do I, but dragons see the world differently to us. They are never entirely predictable. You will forgive me, though. I am exhausted.” She rose and headed toward the door. “I will see you in the morning.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Fitzwilliam made for the cabinet where Bingley kept his brandy and poured two glasses. “I cannot believe Bennet’s Dragon Keeping! He deprives the creature of its hoard so his wife can indulge in fripperies! Worse yet, how could he be aware of the rogue and not say anything to the Order?”
Darcy sipped the brandy. Fruity with oak notes and a bit of spice. Not quite to his taste, but good enough. “I can only imagine he wanted the notoriety of making first contact and even negotiating peace with the creature.”
Fitzwilliam dragged a footstool near his chair and sat heavily. “That is one possibility. Another is that he is very much like his daughter and has too much sympathy toward the creature. He may be willing to take some very stupid risks to try to negotiate with it.”
“The creature sounds—well, almost like a pacifist, if you think about it. He has never shown any proclivity toward fighting for his territory, only for bribing Longbourn for it.” Darcy swirled the brandy in his glass.
Fitzwilliam propped his feet up and leaned back. “That does not make him a pacifist, only lazy. As long as bribing is easy, any sensible creature would do it. But consider where is he getting the salt? Think on it. Unless he has some secret place to mine it, then he must be stealing it, and that mostly likely means smugglers.”
“We already found evidence of smuggling whilst searching for the egg.”
Fitzwilliam took a deep swallow. “Precisely. Such men will not take losses of their merchandise kindly. Nothing calamitous may have happened yet, but this is a disaster in the making. Sooner or later, the smugglers and the dragon will encounter one another and the result will not be pretty. Blood will be shed, and there will be death. No matter whose blood and whose death, it will escalate and eventually result in war. There can be no other outcome.”
Darcy leaned forward on his elbows. “But if we should make contact—”
“You have—did you forget the scribbling on the cellar floor? It has made no difference. The creature has plenty of evidence that Elizabeth is no danger and even a great ally, but still nothing. I am sorry. The Blue Order’s ambassador has failed. It is now time for their warrior to manage the situation.”
“How are you going to find the creature?”
“As soon as the potion is ready, we will neutralize the poison on the maps. Hopefully that will give us means to locate the lindwurm’s lair. If not, I shall start searching the tunnels myself.”
“Do not be foolish, Fitz. You cannot kill a lindwurm by yourself, in its own terrain.”
“You would be surprised what can be accomplished when necessary.” Something about the look in Fitzwilliam’s eye pushed Darcy back a mite.
“You have not …”
“No, not I, but in France, once we found ourselves imperiled by one allied to Napoleon. We had a man—one of the Order—who took it upon himself to deliver us from the danger.”
“Did he survive?”
“Long enough to allow us to make a record of his tactics. I have been studying them. They are replicable here.”
“With the same outcome?”
Fitzwilliam downed the remainder of his glass in a single large gulp. “If that should be the way, it is not entirely a bad thing. With a death on each side—Blue Order and dragon—the score is even, and war can more easily be averted.”
“So you are to sacrifice yourself?”
“Those are not my orders, and no one has expressed a desire for that to be the endgame. But if it is to be so, then it is pleasing to know my demise might serve the cause.”
“How can you be so callous about your own mortality?”
“It is a soldier’s way. It is a way one survives.” Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Elizabeth cannot know any of this. She is far too sympathetic to the dragons to see the situation as it actually is.”
“If the dragon is slain, you think she will not find out how?”
“No doubt, she will. If I survive the encounter, I recognize I will be dead to her ever after. I regret that, but it cannot be helped.”
“I am still not convinced a diplomatic solution cannot be obtained.”
“I once shared that optimism only to see half the negotiation team eaten by a major drake on a French field.”
Darcy suppressed a shudder with another mouthful of brandy. “What happened?”
“The entire event is classified. I should not have even mentioned it to you. If word were to get out about it, the Order fears that it would undermine trust in the Pendragon Treaty—not all truly understand it only applies here, not on the continent. What I can say is that without the Treaty to restrict their behavior, French dragons are far and away more dangerous than you can understand. They are apt to turn on one the moment it is in their interest to do so. This rogue truly has the potential to destroy the entire fabric of English society as we know it.”
“Dragon’s blood! I had no idea they could be so wholly different to our dragons.”
“Elizabeth may understand English dragons—and I have no doubt that she does, perhaps better than any other person, living or dead. On that matter, I completely yield to her expertise. But she has no experience, no means, by which to understand what we are facing. It falls upon you to protect her from herself right now.”
Two days later, Darcy followed Fitzwilliam as they traipsed through the hall containing the mapmaker’s study, trying to identify rooms that might suit for decontaminating the maps. An especially low ceiling in the room across the corridor made it stand out as a particular favorite. But before a decision could be made, Fitzwilliam insisted on testing its usefulness by filling it with fragrant lavender steam, harmless but noticeable enough that they would be able to tell whether the draughts in the room would carry it away too quickly.
Walker had the staff believing that particular wing of Netherfield was haunted and not in want of any cleaning or attention, so they stayed away from the otherwise too interesting flurry of activity. It took surprisingly little persuasion to convince even Nicholls to avoid the area entirely. Perhaps, Darcy and Elizabeth were not the only ones to feel the faint affects from traces of wyvern poison in the hallway air.
When Darcy complained of a headache, Fitzwilliam dismissed him to find Elizabeth and take a walk outside before the effects became too pronounced. He rarely took on such a commanding tone—was that the persona he adopted for His Majesty’s army, or was that the person he had always been, but somehow Darcy had never seen?
Elizabeth had resigned herself to studying lindwurm texts while they worked and warmly welcomed the notion of a walk when he found her in the morning
room.
A steady breeze blew through the sunshine, each gust taking with it a little of the malaise weighing on his shoulders. Elizabeth’s posture suggested she experienced the same. Yes, a walk had been a very good idea.
Talia peeked out of the rabbit hole to greet them, happy that Elizabeth had returned to offering a daily plate of vegetable trimmings. What an amusing little creature she was, wholly different to Quincy in so many ways and yet so like him in others. Perhaps it might be good to invite a puck to live at Pemberley. Pemberley would benefit from the acquaintance.
Talia rubbed up against Darcy’s leg with a pleasant ‘good morning’ and offered to introduce her current favorite hopper. Elizabeth immediately accepted, laughing that she had never been introduced to a rabbit before. How easy she was among dragons of all shapes and sizes—English dragons. Even after all of Longbourn’s transgressions, she was so ready to forgive him, make exceptions for his uniquely draconic motivations. Fitzwilliam had a point: her greatest strength could, in the current situation, also prove her greatest weakness.
After meeting Talia’s hopper, they continued into the woods. Like most dragon woods, tall hardwoods arched up overhead, providing a dense canopy—or at least it would be dense later in the spring when all the leaves had filled out. For now, it was only dense enough to cast a dappled shade not a deep one. Rich, spongy loam hushed their steps, lending a soft stillness to the region. Some might consider it romantical, but it was the sort of ground that would muffle the sounds of slithering, too. Not the sort of thing that most lovers thought about while ambling with their beloved.
Perhaps not the sort of place they needed to be right now.
Elizabeth stopped at the broken-down folly and sat on the bench—in the middle as he had done not so very long ago. It was pleasing, very pleasing to think she wanted to be near him.
“I am worried about Fitzwilliam.” She leaned her head softly against his shoulder. “He has not seemed like himself since he arrived.”
“He is often like that after visiting with his father.” Why did Elizabeth have to be nearly as observant with people as she was with dragons?