She caught Lord Maundevyle watching her as she ate.
‘I know,’ she said in between mouthfuls. ‘I am not at all a ladylike diner. But then, you know, I am ravenously hungry.’
The great golden eyes blinked, unimpressed.
‘I see your table manners have left a lot to be desired, yourself,’ Gussie added, for the dragon’s jaws bore traces of some fresh kill, messily consumed.
Lord Maundevyle abruptly turned away his head, and pawed at his face, without much effect.
‘Do not trouble yourself,’ said Gussie. ‘I have spent too long living in close proximity to Lord Bedgberry, to feel at all disconcerted by a little blood.’
The dragon ceased his ineffectual ablutions, and curled up. He soon fell into a half-doze in the golden sun, and Gussie was tempted to join him. After all, what more was there to do at this moment? To return to Starminster must be the only sensible goal she could have, but the problem of finding it did not strike her as any more soluble this morning than it had last night. Werth Towers, of course, was utterly out of reach.
‘Will you take me back to Starminster?’ she tried. ‘I should be very grateful to you. Young ladies were not made for impromptu adventures in the wilderness, without maid or chaperon, or a cook either. And it is too absurd for us to go on this way much longer, both of us dressed in dragon-suits, and only one of us making a convincing display of it.’
The dragon snorted. He had done so before, but on none of those occasions had it sounded nearly so much like laughter.
‘I do assure you that I cannot change you back,’ Gussie said. ‘And since being near me appears to have done the mischief in the first place, I can only assume that a prolonged sojourn in my company could only make it worse. Five more minutes and you shall be a dragon for the next five hundred years.’
Lord Maundevyle was trying to communicate. Gussie was almost sure of it. His jaw worked in the oddest way; he spat; he appeared to be chewing his own tongue; and at last he emitted a hoarse croak, like a whole pond-full of frogs in full voice.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘It’s no use. None of those things in any way resembled words.’
His lordship stamped a foot.
‘Yes, it is terribly frustrating,’ Gussie agreed. ‘Let me see if I can guess at what you are trying to say. You remain convinced that, since I have been the instrument of your doom, I must also be the instrument of your salvation?’
The dragon nodded his head, but hesitantly.
‘Partially correct? Hm. You cannot think your family holds the solution, or we would be back at Starminster, not picnicking in this charming glade.’
A furious nod.
‘Ah! I have it. You mean to hold me captive until my family arrives to extract me, and the price of my freedom shall be your return into manly form.’
Another enthusiastic nod, taking Gussie aback. ‘I spoke in jest,’ she said. ‘You cannot be serious?’
Lord Maundevyle was completely serious.
‘There must have been some grave mismanagement in the upbringing of the Selwyn siblings,’ she mused. ‘And while I have not the smallest doubt that your mother has not a sensible idea left in her head, I cannot imagine what she did with the three of you that has given you so collective a freak for kidnappings. And while,’ she added, cutting off his lordship’s latest attempt at enunciation, ‘I can be fairly said to have colluded in my own carrying-off, at least your brother and sister had the courtesy to abduct me to a place of comfort! I refuse to remain here!’
So saying, she got up from the grass, gathered her shredded skirts around her, and marched away in the approximate direction from which she had seen Lord Maundevyle returning. Yes, she would inevitably meet with difficulties and condemnation in her present state, if she should happen to find the village he had robbed of bread and pastry; but to continue blithely sunning herself while Lord Maundevyle hatched such absurd schemes was in no way tolerable.
‘My family,’ she called back, ‘may know of some way to assist you. Goodness knows but what we have more experience with the Wyrde than anyone. But this, sir, is not the way to solicit their goodwill.’
She more than half expected to be stopped, and hauled back, but she proceeded some little distance without encountering any resistance at all. Surprised, she paused, and looked once over her shoulder.
Lord-Maundevyle-as-dragon lay in his cave, his chin on his front feet, watching her leave with great, sad eyes.
‘Absolutely not,’ she said. ‘I will not permit you to manipulate my sympathies! Not that it would avail you anything at all if I did. I undertake, sir, to apprise my uncle and aunt as to the nature of your plight, and if any aid is available to be sent to you, I daresay they will be happy to oblige.’
Lord Maundevyle still remaining motionless, Gussie proceeded on her way.
‘Oh, Theo,’ she said two minutes later, having almost collided with a tall and ominous cousin angrily on the march.
‘Oh, there you are, are you?’ said he. ‘Quite free, as I told you!’
This last he directed over his shoulder at Miss Frostell, whose dear and sympathetic countenance broke into a smile of such relief upon seeing her that Gussie could almost have collapsed, weeping, all over her.
Which, naturally, would never do.
‘I hope you have the carriage with you?’ she said. ‘The day has been unusually trying.’
‘We have not,’ bit out Theo. ‘Miss Frostell having insisted upon pursuing you on foot.’
‘Well,’ said Gussie stoutly. ‘She was perfectly right, I daresay, for you could hardly have brought the carriage over all this uneven ground. Still, I hope it is waiting at no great distance? I should like very much to be at home, and without further delay.’
‘There we agree,’ said Theo savagely.
‘Lord Bedgberry has not much enjoyed his morning,’ said Miss Frostell. ‘I am sure he is overcome with delight at seeing you safe and sound, my dear.’
‘He will properly express his feelings as soon as he has got over his tantrum,’ came the voice of Great-Aunt Honoria from somewhere.
‘Tantrum?’ bellowed Theo.
‘He never did like being away from the Towers,’ Gussie said, by way of apology for her cousin’s behaviour. ‘He always comes back in a rage, but he will soon calm himself once he is at home.’
‘You have left the dragon to fend for himself, I see?’ said Great-Aunt Honoria, choosing that moment to rise, ghoul-like, from the grass. ‘Very wise, I am sure.’
‘He had some idea of holding me hostage,’ said Gussie. ‘I took exception to the notion. Twice in one week is the outside of enough.’
‘But you are not captive now?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘You fought your way free,’ said Theo, ‘by some means I cannot guess at, but which was no doubt heroic.’
‘Well,’ Gussie hesitated. ‘I walked away.’
‘Ah?’
‘And his lordship did not seek to prevent me.’
‘An unusually obliging kidnapper.’
Gussie could only agree, for in comparing his behaviour with that of his brother and sister, he featured as a remarkably inept abductor. Or perhaps only a half-hearted one.
Thinking back over their one-sided conversation, a terrible thought struck Gussie.
‘He was not serious!’ she said. ‘He had no thought at all of detaining me.’
‘Lord Maundevyle?’
‘He was joking me! And looked grave as a judge while he did it. Why, I had not thought him capable of it.’
‘He did carry you off, however,’ Miss Frostell pointed out.
‘Yes, and that was rude. I believe he imagined that I had turned him into his present draconic shape, and thought that, were he to extract us both from the chaos of the ballroom, perhaps I would be able to reverse the procedure. Naturally I was devastated to disappoint him.’
‘Naturally,’ murmured Great-Aunt Honoria. ‘And what does he now mean to do?’
‘I
have not the first idea,’ said Gussie, smoothing the shreds of her scaled gown. ‘I left him in his cave, drowning, I believe, in self-pity.’
‘He must come with us,’ said Great-Aunt Honoria, and without waiting for a reply, she drifted off in the general direction of Lord Maundevyle’s cave.
‘He will never fit in the carriage!’ Gussie called after her aunt. ‘And he will terrify the horses!’
Honoria did not respond.
‘She is right, of course?’ said Miss Frostell. ‘He cannot be left as he is. It would be inhumane to abandon him.’
‘For my part, I am tired of every one of the Selwyns,’ retorted Gussie. ‘A dragon for an heir is what Lady Maundevyle wanted, and it is what she has got. Let her manage the business.’
‘That is precisely why his lordship ought not to be left at her mercy,’ said Miss Frostell. ‘It is not what he wanted, that much seems clear. And her ladyship has not the resources to manage the matter sensibly.’
‘You mean because her ladyship is ignorant, and incidentally, off her head?’
‘I could never express myself with such a want of tact.’ Miss Frostell was severe.
‘My aunt will not be pleased,’ Gussie warned.
‘I believe she will be thankful to have you back,’ said Theo, ‘even bringing a miserable dragon in your train.’
And so the whole party departed almost immediately for Werth Towers, coaxing the dejected Lord Maundevyle along in their wake, and heartlessly abandoning his hapless siblings to wander the countryside in a futile search for their brother.
Chapter Thirteen
‘I will take a gun out later,’ announced Great-Uncle Silvester, as the Werth carriage drew up outside the doors of the Towers.
‘Oh, hush,’ said Great-Aunt Honoria, wafting out of the window.
Gussie stepped down as soon as a footman opened the door for her, and sought at once for a glimpse of Lord Maundevyle. The journey had been rather slow, and fraught with difficulties, not the least of them being the problem of transporting the dragon. He was far too large to travel via carriage, not even to balance atop the roof, so he had been obliged to use his own wings. But keeping him within sight of the carriage, or vice versa, was no easy task when the horses were unused to such company, and showed themselves inclined to take violent exception to it. His lordship, not knowing the way, had trailed along at some distance behind — which worked splendidly, except that halfway through the second day they had lost him altogether for a period of three and a half hours, and had found him at last engaged in entertaining a small flock of sheep, with demonstrations of the efficiency of his talons and his teeth. Harried, Gussie had scolded him into a cessation of his predations, consoling herself with the notion that she might, once arrived at the Towers, send compensation to the farmer.
Fixing upon some convenient inn each night had been no easy matter either, for Gussie herself had no luggage with her, and was forced to borrow from Miss Frostell; and since neither of them possessed a maid, or any other attendant, and were seen to be travelling with a single gentleman, a stone grotesque, and a severed head, their welcome at such establishments had been scant. Poor Theo had resolved the matter by quietly terrorising the landlords into offering rooms, which she knew he hated to do, and his mood had soured on each subsequent occasion he was forced to do it.
Gussie, therefore, beheld the familiar stone-and-brick walls of the Towers with a sense of such relief, she did not think she would even be too incensed with her aunt Werth. Here was safety and acceptance, even if she might deplore the secrecy that had, in part, made it so.
Lady Honoria wasted no time in spreading the news, for the family soon came running. Gussie’s heart sank a little on perceiving Aunt Wheldrake coming first out into the courtyard, in full, thunderous flow, but her interest settled not on Gussie but Lord Maundevyle, who had claws enough to defend himself; she felt no uneasiness on that score. Uncle Wheldrake followed in his wife’s wake, and then Lady Werth appeared.
Theo promptly vanished into the depths of the Towers, and was not seen again for some hours.
‘Gussie!’ said Lady Werth. ‘I have but just received your letter yesterday, and had not the smallest notion of how to proceed — good heavens, what is that you are wearing? Miss Frostell is with you, I perceive, and what of Theo…?’
‘Probably disappearing into his own rooms as we speak,’ said Gussie. ‘And barricading the doors.’
Lady Werth dismissed Theo with a wave of her hand. ‘He will be well enough, there,’ she decided, and directed at Gussie a searching look, and a close scrutiny, as though she expected to see some profound change come upon her niece, reflected somehow in her personal appearance. ‘And you, Gussie? Are you— well?’
‘If by that you mean, have I emerged from Somerset leaving a trail of disaster behind me, then yes, Aunt. You see the results approaching through the south gate.’
Lady Werth transferred her gaze to the end of the driveway, but her blank expression informed Gussie that their attendant dragon was not there.
Since a shadow at that moment darkened the sun, Gussie glanced up. ‘Or, indeed, from above.’
Lord Maundevyle landed in a spray of earth and loose stones, and the ground shook.
‘Oh,’ said Lady Werth faintly. ‘Oh, dear.’
‘His lordship is not desirous of maintaining his Wyrded state,’ Gussie said later, restored once more to one of her favourite muslins, and engaged in dispatching a quantity of cakes and wine in her aunt’s personal parlour. Tea might more ordinarily be served at such an hour of the afternoon, but Lady Werth, perceiving a degree of strain in her niece not at all usual, had decreed that the occasion called for the “special provisions”. The cook, it seemed, had known exactly what she meant.
‘For that matter,’ Gussie continued, feeling strengthened with every sip and bite, ‘I am not altogether satisfied with the nature of my own Wyrde. Some day or another I will have to ask you why you did not tell me, at least, but I can quite see why you did not especially want to announce it to the world at large. It is highly inconvenient, and can only make me splendidly unpopular.’
‘Except, it seems, with Lady Maundevyle,’ said Lady Werth, gliding past Gussie’s implied question.
‘Yes, but she is quite mad. We were all agreed upon it.’
‘Is she, indeed? Why do you think so?’
‘Why, to solicit a return of the Wyrde, and across her whole family! She was not even cast down when her eldest son grew talons two inches long, and teeth to give any reasonable person nightmares. I ask you, who but a madwoman would sacrifice the respectability of their family in exchange for the Wyrde? And such a Wyrde, at that! Mr. Charles Selwyn is at least half animal as well, I am sure of it, though I he is not of the draconic type, like his brother.’
Lady Werth spent a few moments in silent reflection. ‘She was always fascinated by our family’s history,’ she said at length. ‘I regret imparting my suspicions as to your Wyrde to her, many years ago, but I trusted her at the time. Indeed, she was one of few who not only treated me with unreserved warmth, but who actively sought my acquaintance. I was newly married to your uncle, then.’
‘But you stopped corresponding with her?’
‘Yes.’ Lady Werth hesitated. ‘I realised at last that it was not precisely me she sought, but a connection with the family into which I had so lately married. That the extent of her fascination with all things Werth, and indeed all things Wyrde, went rather beyond the reasonable. It made me uneasy.’
‘Were you very angry, aunt, when you imagined me to have disobeyed your prohibition, and gone into Somerset anyway?’
To Gussie’s surprise — so confidently was she expecting an affirmative — her aunt smiled, an expression of high mischief. ‘On that point I was never deceived,’ she said. ‘Miss Selwyn’s letter being a paltry device, and besides, Honoria was on the watch, and saw what had happened. At first I was very frightened for you; not because I imagined you to be in any danger
from the Selwyns, but because I foresaw some small part of what has ultimately happened. But upon returning to myself, I began to think differently.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘If Lady Maundevyle was so anxious to engage with the Wyrde, well, let her do so. I did not imagine her much of a match for you and Theo.’
‘No one is a match for Theo, poor boy,’ Gussie sighed. ‘I left her esteemed ladyship rather angry, though. She wanted me to awaken her own Wyrde, as well as those of her sons, and I was — prevented.’
Lady Werth raised an enquiring brow.
‘Lord Maundevyle set himself against it. As you can imagine, he can be persuasive.’
Lady Werth’s eyes twinkled. ‘But why have you brought him here? Not that he is not entitled to claim our hospitality, since his state is somewhat of our doing. But I hardly know what it is we will do with a twenty foot dragon.’
‘Turn him back into his human state,’ said Gussie. ‘That is what he wants, I believe. We had both hoped that you, or my uncle, might have some idea as to how the Wyrde might be— discouraged, again.’
‘We do not,’ said Lady Werth, setting down her emptied glass. ‘No one but you, Gussie dear, could ever imagine we might wish to.’
‘Not— not even Theo?’
‘There are drawbacks to Theo’s condition, certainly. But he would not be Theo without it, would he?’
A reflection which rendered Gussie speechless, for a short time. She had always felt that Theo detested his Wyrde, and would cheerfully give it up if he could. But when had he ever said so himself? She had only felt that she would be glad to be rid of such a Wyrde, were it hers. But Lady Werth was right. Theo was Theo.
Gussie sighed. ‘Still, I cannot but be disappointed.’ She spoke with regret for herself, as well as Lord Maundevyle. The general prohibition against the world imposed by her aunt, she would now have to impose upon herself. She could not wander about the country, attending dances and balls hither and thither and leaving a trail of Wyrded destruction behind her. Few people would see the matter as Lady Maundevyle did; she would become a pariah. ‘Shall he always remain a dragon, then?’
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