Chapter Four #2
Caroline tossed her head, and Darcy realized he had yet again missed part of the discussion.
“John has prevailed upon me to dance the next set,” she informed him with a stiff smile.
She glided away and put her hand into Hurst’s.
Darcy smiled pleasantly, refusing to react to a naked ploy for attention and endeavoring not to consider the implications of his complete lack of jealousy.
Freed of his responsibility to Caroline, Darcy scanned the room.
Miss Lucas dancing with a militia officer and Elizabeth was standing alone; naturally she had no dance partners.
Well, he could rectify that problem—at least for the length of a set.
No scandal would attach to his name from such a slight association.
Yes, it would be an act of altruism to dance with her, and he could share the information he had received from the Convocation.
Before he was aware of having made a decision, he was standing before her and bowing. “Miss Elizabeth, how is your father faring?”
“He has mostly recovered. I thank you for your concern.”
The next set was not yet forming. Time enough for conversation. “I…er, wrote to the archmage on the subject we discussed last week in the Longbourn garden.”
Her eyes went wide. “The archmage?”
“He is my uncle.”
“Oh. The Earl of Matlock is your uncle?”
“Yes, but that is not the point. He assured me that the Convocation performed testing in the past that showed women do not possess as much magical potential as men. Obviously your talent is an aberration.” Miss Elizabeth did not reply.
“I was greatly relieved that the country is not wasting such a valuable resource.”
She still said nothing. Darcy tugged on the neck of his cravat where he was beginning to perspire. She did not appear as relieved as he expected.
“Of course, it demonstrates how rare your magic is,” he added. Women always liked a bit of flattery, did they not? Caroline would be quite pleased if he told her she was rare and special.
Her set expression did not suggest she was flattered. Finally, she spoke. “When was this testing carried out?”
“I do not know.”
“So it might have been two hundred years ago. How many women were tested?”
“Er…I do not know.”
“Five? Twenty? Five hundred? Surely one must have a sufficiently large sample to draw conclusions for an entire gender.”
“I assume so.”
“I do not,” she said sharply. “Show me a recent, fair test of thousands of women and perhaps then I will believe your conclusions. Until then, I reserve the right to rely upon my own experience.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Darcy wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Quite understandable. I…thought you would find the information reassuring, but I can understand why you do not….” She continued to regard him with a disconcertingly level gaze.
“Er…perhaps we can put this unpleasantness behind us? Would you honor me with the next dance?”
She had been eager to dance with him at the assembly ball, and he would love to see that shy smile again. Instead she appeared…shocked. That was not promising.
She coughed. “I thank you, Mr. Darcy. But I have no intention of dancing this evening.”
Darcy blinked several times, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. But no words were forthcoming. She was refusing? And without giving him a reasonable excuse? He understood that she did not like the information from the archmage, but that was hardly Darcy’s fault.
“If you will excuse me.” Elizabeth slipped away before he managed to respond.
Darcy turned on his heel and stalked in the opposite direction lest somebody notice him gaping in Elizabeth Bennet’s wake. He had singled her out for this honor—one he had not bestowed upon any other woman in Hertfordshire.
He wanted a drink. Something that was not wine punch. Perhaps Sir William could be prevailed upon to share some brandy.
I thought we were forming a friendship, but I would sooner befriend a porcupine. Less trouble. Well, he would not be the one to suffer if they were not friends.
He strode toward Bingley, who was speaking to Hurst on the edge of the dance floor. Darcy determined to eschew dancing for the evening. Perhaps he would even leave early.
A piercing scream reverberated throughout the ballroom, drowning out even the music.
Darcy froze for a moment and then whirled toward the sound.
The screamer was a woman of middle years near the French doors.
She pointed to something that had just flown into the room.
A bat? If so, it was the largest bat Darcy had ever encountered.
The creature swooped down and attacked the feathered turban on the head of one guest, who screamed and yanked the hat from her head. Other guests were backing away from the melee, but Darcy stalked toward it.
The creature did not resemble a bat at all. No, it was a small, winged goblin. Darcy stifled an oath as two more of the creatures darted into the room through another set of French doors. No, three. Four! They were streaming in through both doors.
“Close the doors!” Darcy shouted. “Close the doors!”
Other guests had drawn the same conclusion.
One set of doors slammed closed right before a goblin smacked into the glass.
At another door, the guests were slower to understand the threat, and several more goblins poured into the room before they managed to push the doors closed.
God save them if the goblins discovered how to break the glass.
Guests were racing away, pouring out of the ballroom and into the hallways and parlors of Lucas Lodge.
Women tripped over dress hems and fell to the floor.
Men clambered over each other in their haste to reach the exits.
But there were too few doors and too many people.
It would be several long minutes before the room was completely evacuated.
Having disentangled itself from the turban, the first goblin attacked the woman who had worn it. She threw up her hands to shield her face, and the creature bit deeply into her arm. She shrieked before collapsing in a faint.
Darcy unsheathed his bespelled sword just as he reached the creature. Seeing it clearly for the first time, he now recognized it from illustrations in his Academy textbook. “Tengu goblins!” he shouted to Bingley and the other mages who remained to face the foe—perhaps half a dozen in all.
The goblins were every color of the rainbow: azure blue, bright red, lime green, and more. Under other circumstances they might have been pretty.
Although Darcy had managed to distract the first goblin, he could not land a blow on it.
The creature was small and so fast it was only a blur to Darcy’s eyes.
Surely the paladins had devised a more effective way to fight them.
What had his textbook said about battling a tengu?
Whirlwind. He could visualize the words on the page.
A small whirlwind would disorient the creatures and prevent them from flying.
Only a few feet away, Bingley was trying to use his sword to fend off an attack.
“Whirlwind!” Darcy shouted. Bingley’s countenance lit with comprehension as he lowered his sword and shouted a few Latin words.
Within seconds he had conjured a small whirlwind that wrapped itself around the goblin.
It slammed the creature to the floor, and Bingley quickly dispatched it with his sword.
Emulating Bingley, Darcy yelled the Latin spell, grabbing strands of ether and twirling them to create a whirlwind effect. He needed to stop this goblin before it could hurt anyone else.
But he had never quite mastered the whirlwind spell.
Am I conjugating one of the Latin verbs incorrectly?
Grasping and twirling the ether presented no difficulties, but it would never spin fast enough.
The tengu encountered nothing worse than a stiff breeze.
Damnation! Darcy bent the ether to his will, but his whirlwind would not whirl, and the tengu was readying itself to attack the woman once more.
Not far away, Miss Elizabeth was effortlessly spinning up a whirlwind.
Of course, Darcy thought bitterly. Within seconds she had slammed the goblin to the floor so a stout, elderly mage could stab it with his belt knife.
Immediately pivoting to her left, Miss Elizabeth turned a new whirlwind on another goblin.
Darcy returned his attention to his own whirlwind, which had dwindled to a gust. Why did this have to be the one spell he found especially challenging?
He had managed to drive the tengu back against the curtains surrounding the French doors.
Abandoning his paltry whirlwind, Darcy instead reached up to swipe his sword through the ties fastening the curtains to the rods.
A huge swath of damask collapsed over the tengu, bearing it to the floor.
He flung back the cloth and stabbed the goblin before it could get airborne again.
His first blow cut into the creature’s arm.
Unfortunately, ichor, which served as blood for goblins, sprayed all over the portly matron who had apparently been hiding behind the curtains.
Ichor was not poisonous, but it smelled like swamp water mixed with animal dung.
The woman shrieked as if she were being murdered.
“My apologies—!” Darcy called after her as she stumbled toward the exit, where the other guests shrank back from her in disgust. He quickly finished off the goblin and cast about for new threats.
Elizabeth and Bingley had closed ranks. She brought down her third goblin so the paladin could slice off its head. Darcy raised his sword again, seeking another target, but it appeared that all of the goblins had been slain.