Chapter 30
Darcy found his mother in the Queen’s Lodge, where rooms had been made over for her use.
Lady Anne looked up eagerly from the tome lying open on the desk before her when the servant showed him in. “Is there any news?”
It was certainly more abrupt than she would have been before the bindings were removed, but that might mean nothing.
“About Jack? No. I explained to him how my land bond works and had him try the same things, but nothing happened. He can produce similar effects, but he does it completely differently. More like altering the earth itself from the inside rather than encouraging the parts of it I want to strengthen, if I understand him correctly.”
“So it is not merely a larger land bond.” She tapped her fingers. “But I imagine that is not why you are here.”
“Not primarily.” Why was he already bracing himself for rejection from a question he had not even asked?
It was not as if Lady Anne could hurt him more than she already had.
And, regardless of the outcome, Elizabeth would be proud of him for trying.
“I will be returning to Pemberley soon, and I want to extend an invitation to you to join us there, now or whenever you wish. We would like little Jenny to know her grandmother. There is no telling what the future will bring, if we will even be able to keep Pemberley after the invasion, but you will always have a home with us, wherever we may be.”
He had not expected her look of utter astonishment. “You wish me to come to Pemberley?”
And quite suddenly, he did. “Yes. I know your duty may keep you with Their Majesties, but you have family, too.”
She smoothed her hand over the open page of the book, as if the answer might lie in its texture. “I thank you for that. I will… consider it.” Clearly it was a radical notion for her.
“I hope you will. I wish I could say you would be safer at Pemberley in case of invasion, but that is not necessarily true. Totally apart from Napoleon’s interest in me, the High King has made several attempts to breach our wards. I do not know what his interest is, which is worrisome.”
She frowned. “I heard something of that when I was there, but I was reluctant to ask, given my… history with him. Do you think it may be related?”
Until now, she had always refused to speak of what happened during her time in Faerie. Could that have changed? “I cannot say, for I know nothing of your dealings with him, only that you made a bargain of some sort.” And he owed that knowledge to Georgiana, not to his mother.
Her shoulders drooped. “So you have discovered that much. I suppose I should explain the rest, in case it is useful to you.” As if she had not refused repeatedly to do so in the past.
“I would be grateful to know more. It is hard to fight an enemy whose motives I do not understand.”
“If it makes you any safer, then I will tell you. My bargain was an act of desperation. My sister’s bindings kept me from warning anyone what she was doing – and planning. He was my last chance to stop her before…”
“Before what?” Darcy asked.
“Before she killed you, among other things.” She grimaced.
“Have you wondered why there are so many fewer mages now than fifty years ago? She wanted her daughter to be King’s Mage after her, even though Anne was sickly.
And suddenly the children from other mage families started falling ill and dying.
All the Mortimer girls, and a few of the boys.
All the Percys except for one who was living in Italy at the time.
She was sparing other Fitzwilliams at first, but then she started seeing them as a threat, too.
When the earl’s eldest daughter, our own niece who had just come into her Talent, died of the same symptoms, I knew you and Jack were in danger.
Do you remember how I came to Pemberley when you were a boy and began teaching you to access your Talent? ”
How could he forget, when those very lessons had caused him to be recruited for his mission to France? “Yes.”
“It was so you could defend yourself against her if needed. I made you practice invisibility again and again, because that is the one thing that could save you from her bindings. She could not bind someone she could not see.”
Was that why Napoleon had failed to bind him to silence during the assassination attempt, too? Because Darcy had fallen back on his earliest and strongest mage skill – invisibility.
If so, he owed the thanks for that to his mother.
“But that was not all,” she continued. “She was sapping King George’s strength, until no one would think it odd if he died.
Then she could get Prinny to marry her legally and make her queen.
I knew I could not manage the trick of spiriting another of their children away.
I had to act, for your sake and for England’s.
But how? I was bound against injuring her or even speaking of her to humans or dragons.
So I did the one thing that was left and turned to the fae.
Even knowing it would end badly.” Suddenly she seemed to diminish right before his eyes.
“I could not imagine how badly, though.”
He had paid the price for her deal, and Georgiana even more so. “What bargain did you strike?”
“He gave me a ring that would cause my sister to lose her powers as soon as it was set on her finger. It seemed to work, though it also made her rather simple. I did not object to that, to be frank.”
“But it wore off eventually.”
She hesitated. “As I understand it, it ended abruptly, around the time I arrived at Pemberley earlier this year. I suspect the effect was also tied to the tracking spell on my wedding ring. Once the dragons destroyed my ring, Catherine went back to her old self. Typical fae trickery, though I cannot understand why he would care about being able to track me.”
How much should he tell her? “He seems to have a peculiar interest in our family, as I have learned to my regret. But there is something else I must ask you. What was the price you paid for his help?”
“Does it matter?” She sounded defeated.
“It may.” He needed all the information he could get.
She looked away. “I had to deliver a different ring to another person and make certain he wore it, at least briefly.”
“Who? And what did it do?”
“He never told me the purpose of it.” She hesitated for a long moment. “I was to give it to an obscure French officer, someone I had never heard of. By the name of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Suddenly Darcy could not catch his breath.
The implication was clear. Napoleon the dragon had somehow avoided being in the High King’s thrall, even though he had killed many people.
But the High King could not let that stand.
For some reason he could not cast his spell on Napoleon himself, and so he needed a mortal to deliver it.
And sometime thereafter, that spell had made Napoleon his ally.
The High King would have helped him to rise to the highest rank, never losing a battle, teaching him how to hunt down dragons in hiding.
That ring had been the first step to Napoleon’s conquests.
Soon the price would be England’s independence.
And he knew just when it had happened. His mouth went dry. “That was why you took Jack and me to France, supposedly to broaden our horizons. So you could find him.”
She raised a delicate eyebrow. “I had no other reason to explain traveling to Paris just after the Terror. And it did broaden your horizons.”
He was not mollified. “You took advantage of Jack’s fascination with soldiers to go to a military review. By God, was that the officer you invited to dine with us? Napoleon himself?” He remembered the evening well, although mostly for his own efforts to avoid their guests.
“I could hardly walk up to a stranger and give him a ring. This way he was pleased to receive it as a token of my esteem, and he placed it on his finger immediately.” She glanced down at her book, as if wishing she could end the discussion.
That had been it, though – the beginning of the entire disaster. All those hundreds of thousands dead, Europe ransacked, and England about to fall.
All because his mother had delivered a ring for the High King.
Somehow he forced out the words. “And the other part of your bargain, about Georgiana?”
She went pale. “How did you find out about that?”
He could tell this was hurting her, but he needed to know. “The High King told her. That you were so desperate for a daughter you traded a lock of your hair.”
“Not so much a daughter as any mage child. You must consider the situation I faced. Frederica was but a child, and she was the only potential female mage left alive apart from Anne de Bourgh. And six boys, none of whom were interested in magery. I knew I could not bear another child without help because Catherine had made certain of that. But that ended up costing me far more.”
“Do you ever think of her, your daughter in Faerie?” He should not ask, but the spectre of his lost sister haunted him.
Her lips went white. “I do my best not to consider things I am powerless to change,” she said, but her voice cracked a little. “I am fully aware of how much damage I caused. I wish I could have found a different way. Any other way.” Her words had the ring of hard-felt truth.
Should he risk saying something more? “I wish the dragons had done more to stop Lady Catherine before she made you so desperate that you turned to the fae. Why did they let her go, when they knew she had stolen powers from her dragon? They must have known no human could stand against her.”
His mother blinked several times, as if she had something in her eye. “Yes. I wish that, too,” she said in a small voice.
Time to abandon that painful subject. “I have wondered how you managed to contact the High King.”
She seemed to rally a little. “That was the simple part. Too simple, in hindsight. He was eager for me to find him.”
“But you must have done something.”
“There is a faerie ring in the woods near Matlock. Everyone knows about it; there were old stories of people who disappeared in it, and music that seems to come from nowhere. I went there and said that I wanted to make a bargain with a fae sorcerer. A small fae appeared and asked me to wait, and then a few minutes later, the king himself came. As I said, too easy.”
“Is that where you cast yourself into Faerie, too?”
The corners of her mouth turned downwards. “For my sins, yes. I never should have done that. I think I lost my mind a little when I discovered Georgiana was a changeling. It was so terribly unfair of me, most especially to you.”
“To me?”
She met his eyes directly then. “I lost my own mother when I was about the age you were then. I know what it is like. I am aware I was not much of a mother, but I would never have put you through that, if I were in my right mind.”
Frederica had been right – his mother was different now. Very different.
He swallowed hard, not ready to discuss that painful time. “I thank you for saying that.”
She must have sensed he needed some distance, though, for she changed the subject. “I have been trying to discover more about the King’s Bond, without much luck. I have people combing the library.”
He accepted the new direction gratefully. “Have they found anything?” The Library of the King's Mage was the largest collection of books on magic in Britain.
“Very little. Something is supposed to activate the bond.
Edward III and his son the Black Prince both used it at the same time, as the succession was clear then, but Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary did not have their power awakened until something happened at their predecessor's deathbed. Unfortunately, we have no hint as to what that was. In case there may have been an Artifact involved, I have allowed Jack to handle all the crown jewels, even the orb and sceptre, but without success.” She hesitated. “If only we knew more!”
He was not going to bring up Roderick and his mysterious knowledge. The Welshman had a propensity to disappear whenever Lady Anne was present, and he was actively avoiding Jack now. Frederica was their only hope in getting an answer from him.
And time was getting short.
“I am heading back to Pemberley soon,” he said abruptly.
“There are preparations I must make, and no more I can do for Jack here. But I will inquire at the Nest if they have any information about it.” He had tried to convince his brother to come with him, but if there was any chance the King's Bond could be used against Napoleon, Jack felt a duty to try.
For what little difference it was likely to make. For any of them.
“I am glad we spoke today,” his mother said softly. “And I will give your offer every consideration, Fitzwilliam.”