Chapter 5
REACQUAINTANCE
EMMA
“Miss Woodhouse?” Lucy asked.
I looked up from hovering my gloved fingers over the stone bench’s mossy armrest. Lucy curtsied. “Mr. Darcy regrets that he will be unable to attend today.”
That was expected, with Mary and Georgiana returned. I thanked her, and she hurried back to the house, shoulders square with duty to her absent mistress.
I did not regret the solitude. Pemberley’s north garden was alive with cheeps and bobbing branches. It was a relaxing setting, chosen by Mr. Darcy for our… I thought of them as lessons, but he preferred to give our meetings businesslike names. “Our discussions.” “Our joint endeavor.”
Well, today’s lesson was just me, now. An independent endeavor of Miss Woodhouse.
I settled myself on the bench, drew off my long gloves, and lay them on the seat beside me. That was too easy, so I scrunched them into a crumpled stack of satin bumps and folds.
Mr. Darcy’s mother had kept a journal describing how she confronted her compulsive habits. She found that constant practice weakened their grip on her mind. Mr. Darcy was very much in favor of practice.
Mr. Darcy also droned on about patience and the hazards of testing myself. Fortunately, he was occupied. So, I poked the scrunched cloth with my fingernail, adding ugly kinks and rumples.
Images of illness did not fill my mind. Trickles of miasma did not fill the shadows.
I liked practicing. It was active, a project to reclaim my life. Last night, secretly, I had dumped half my wardrobe in a mess on the bed and watched it while the house creaked and cooled, the candle melted to a stub, and owls hooted in the night.
Practice was healthy. The other projects that had consumed my life were not.
Perfecting my clothes, perfecting Hartfield’s decor, perfecting Harriet’s life—those were dangerous because, no matter how carefully I performed my rituals, flaws crept in.
Then, when illness or injury struck, my flawed rituals became the cause.
Fear and compulsion falsely coupled in my mind, dragging me in rutted circles.
The frustrating part was that, in quiet moments like this, the notion that an unfastened button caused illness was obvious nonsense.
So, how did the cycle begin? Mr. Darcy insisted that how and why were irrelevant, a distraction, but I wanted to know.
I wanted to blame something. I had drowned in this nightmare for years.
A test, then. An investigation by the Woodhouse independent endeavor. When had my habits turned to compulsion?
Even when I was little, Papa had obsessed about sickness, perhaps because of my mother’s premature death.
But I did not remember my mother, so that did not affect me, and I had no obsessive symptoms as a child.
My first hints of fixation started when I was a young woman—the same age they had afflicted Lady Anne Darcy and, according to Mr. Darcy’s research, Queen Mary.
Mr. Darcy thought fixation was preordained, an ironic yoke for any great wyfe of healing. That seemed too simple to me.
The sun had moved while I thought. Deep in the folded shadows of my creased gloves, silver glistened. That would be the satin shining. It began to puddle, transparent and threatening…
Hastily, I shook out the gloves and pulled them on, fastening the pearl button on each inner wrist with trembling fingers.
Perhaps Mr. Darcy was right. How and why did not matter. But as tests went, that had been no disaster. Particularly considering I had not touched Mr. Darcy for nine days. The last strength I borrowed, that scarlet surge of Yuánchi’s binding I absorbed through him, had faded and vanished days ago.
I could survive without Mr. Darcy. Survive without Pemberley.
I could go home.
The thought of the simple routines of Hartfield caught hold of me, a giddy tug under my breastbone.
Nessy was hiking up the path from the lake, her growing limbs coltish, her school dress the color of bluebells. She saw me and waved, then ran through the gardens, her book bag flopping as she rounded hedges and flower beds.
She arrived happy and puffing. “Aunt Emma!”
“You are back early,” I said, smiling. Her health was a gift from Lady Anne Darcy. Or from the ghost of her wyvern.
Nessy announced in one excited breath, “The school has too many children! They canceled my afternoon lessons! Will you do some magic for me?”
Very properly, I said, “I cannot imagine what you mean.” Nessy crossed her arms and scowled, so I made a show of relenting. “You must not tell anyone.”
“I never tell! Besides, everyone knows you can.”
“It is not magic. Not really,” I said, looking around the garden until I spotted a pair of black eyes gleaming beneath a hedge.
I lowered my gloved fingertips by the lawn and smiled invitingly, and a roseworm emerged and scurried over, stopping slightly short of my hand.
She wriggled with skittish curiosity. Like all roseworms, she was rabbit-sized and very quick, with finely wrought scales like a sheet of beads.
“Have it do a trick!” Nessy demanded.
“She,” I corrected. “Draca do not do tricks. But I have seen her chase squirrels…” I put my hands on my knees, leaned close, and said with huge enthusiasm, “Go get the squirrel!” The roseworm cocked her head, mystified, and I laughed.
“When I was a child, we had a dog that would search every bush if I said that. I suppose a draca has no way to learn the word.”
Nessy gave me the long-suffering look that children reserve for simpleminded grownups. “Use magic!”
Could I? I sensed the roseworm’s binding—that was my talent.
Her binding matched the delicate pink of her belly scales.
It wound around her rather than leading to a wyfe; she was feral, not bound.
But other than sensing bindings and generally intriguing draca, my great wyfe status provided no special affinity.
I could not command them like Lizzy or do whatever Georgiana did—calming them or communing with them.
She described it as musical collaboration.
I peered into the draca’s eyes and tried to… touch her binding or… do something a great wyfe would do. And something did happen. My sense of her binding brightened and sharpened.
Then it was overshadowed by another presence, huge and old. I looked up.
The inky silhouette of a dragon cruised above us, level with the lowest clouds. Fènnù. When Lizzy was first lost in the lake, Fènnù came every day, skimming the waves and searching for her wyfe of war. But in the last few weeks, her visits had become irregular and remote.
Today, she passed high over Pemberley House, then stroked her great wings to pass higher yet over the lake. She banked and vanished into the cotton tufts and skeins decorating the eastern sky.
As if angry, another force shuddered—the force always present here, quiescent and massive.
Lizzy and Yuánchi’s binding rippled in scarlet sheets of immense power.
If anything, it had strengthened in the last month.
It suffused all of Pemberley. But it was different today, streaked with black.
The yearning attraction I felt for it, the pull of the wyfe of healing to her fated dragon, Yuánchi, had also diminished. Was that good or bad?
Nessy sighed impatiently. I had forgotten my assignment.
Perhaps a direct approach would work. I caught the roseworm’s gaze and said firmly, “Pay attention.” She took a step closer.
In my mind, I pictured a squirrel lounging on the lawn. The draca’s little rose-tone legs tensed. That was promising.
I tried imagining the visceral hatred our little terrier puppy had harbored for squirrels. They were scruffy interlopers. Fluffy invaders hiding in every tree—
The roseworm tore off, running crazily around the garden, circling the shrubs and snapping at the air. She looked very silly, and Nessy clapped her hands in delight.
The roseworm skidded to a stop at a particularly suspicious hazel bush. She crept closer, each little foot placed with such drama that Nessy laughed. Then the draca’s little chest swelled, and hissing blue flame shot out, burning a round, six-inch hole clear through the bush.
She sat back on her haunches, pleased. The bush, fortunately, was plump and green, and the flames subsided to steam and smoke. It looked like a charred attempt at hedge sculpture.
Nessy’s eyes were saucers.
“This can be our secret,” I said, gathering my things. “Shall we see if the kitchen has any tea?”
The kitchen was bustling with dinner preparation, and no tea was made, but Nessy was the sole child in this sprawling palace and very spoiled, so a kettle was put on and a plate of biscuits provided.
While Nessy nibbled, the cook told me her expansive plans for dinner.
That made me think of Serle, our Hartfield cook, and I felt another pang of homesickness.
Should I leave Pemberley?
For a time, I had feared that Mr. Darcy’s moods endangered him. But I disagreed with Lord Wellington’s claim that Mr. Darcy was desperate. I thought he had become healthier. Determined.
Then there was the war, but the French and American invaders were well short of Surrey. Besides, I refused to abandon my home due to vague threats. All England might fall. What would we do then, scurry north and freeze in Scotland?
A more practical problem was my lack of funds for the trip.
My letters to Hartfield were unanswered—southern mail was disrupted—and my despicable brother-in-law, John, refused any letter I sent to London.
But it was false pride to call funds a barrier.
Mr. Darcy would provide a coach and driver if I asked.
While Nessy chose a third biscuit, I smoothed the fit of my gloves and wondered why I was reluctant to leave.
Perhaps I feared loneliness. Harriet was teaching at Netherfield, the Bingleys’ home.
She did reply to my letters, but her notes were short.
She might even be angry because of my… well-meant missteps.
I heard Mrs. Reynolds approach in the corridor. She was speaking formally, likely with a member of the family, so I kissed Nessy on her forehead and went to see.
Mr. Knightley, whom I had thought a hundred miles away, stood conversing with her.
His back was to me, the taper of his tailored coat pronounced from shoulders to waist. His hair, tied back in his old-fashioned style, had grown a half-inch; the corkscrews spilled down his brown neck and past his collar.
Even without that, I would have recognized the set of his body, so similar to how he stood when he played his violin, shoulders square but canted a little as if he were leaning into an intense note.
Recollections rattled my mind. When he last set out to the occupied south, I had cried in my room, afraid of a horrid outcome.
Before, he had asked me: What if a proper life were offered to you?
I had not answered, which of course was an answer: No.
A Black gentleman had enough barriers in society without a wyfe who feared crumpled gloves.
Mrs. Reynolds spotted me over Mr. Knightley’s shoulder. She apologized to him—some urgency in the pantry—then said “Miss Woodhouse” to me before curtsying and hastening down the corridor.
Mr. Knightley turned.
I said, “Good afternoon.” The noisy kitchen behind me had fallen perfectly silent. I recalled I should add, “Mr. Knightley.”
“You look remarkable,” he said. “Wonderful.”
It took a few seconds to believe he said that. I dragged a huge breath into my lungs to fend off a blush. “You wish to be informal, I see.”
“Honest, not informal. If you prefer, I can pronounce your dress handsome, but my patience for social understatement has faded in the past weeks.”
“Was the south so dangerous?”
He shrugged.
My heart was bounding in my chest like a silly girl’s, which I was not.
I hunted for a calming topic. “Did you call at Hartfield? I fancied you did. I could all but see you beside the fireplace.” I did picture him then, lounging in one of the deep chairs, relaxed in his high-collared shirt and patterned waistcoat, his coat…
missing for some reason. That was less calming than I expected.
Mr. Knightley, though, stiffened. “I was unable to visit Highbury.”
I felt foolish. “Naturally. It was hardly a social trip.”
“You have a brother,” he said.
Even my newly vivid imagination could not guess why he brought that up. “Brother-in-law. John.”
“I did inquire, you see… Your family is well known in Surrey.”
“Of course,” I said, because it was.
That made him laugh, but he turned serious. “I was just asking Mrs. Reynolds where to find you. I brought news from the south, and Lord Wellington has asked that we gather. He requested you by name.”