Chapter 10 Tolerable
TOLERABLE
DARCY
I crawled belly-down, hidden by ferns and brush, my coat buttons snagging the forest loam.
The Blackcoat camp was forty yards ahead. I had approached from downwind, an unnecessary precaution as they had neither dogs nor horses. Even if they had, my scent would have been overwhelmed by their cookfires and general reek. Animal offal and human waste had been dumped and left to rot.
Ten men, poorly shaven and presented, wandered in flapping black coats. There were two large tents, probably stolen from some festival as the canvas was striped lemon yellow. Those might hold more. And if the camp was more competent at raiding than hygiene, there would be sentries out of sight.
My heart sped in my chest. Coming so close was dangerous but exhilarating. I had found my bait. Elizabeth would find them, too.
Only one thing nagged at me. Why had she not found them already? The first two nights after her return, bands of Blackcoats were ruthlessly eliminated. Then the attacks stopped, leaving only vague rumors of “the angel.” If I had found these men ahorse, how did she fail on dragonback?
Perhaps she was gone, flown away. She might be unthinkably remote. France. Ireland.
A tent flapped open, and a woman emerged. I tensed, but she was the antithesis of Elizabeth—blonde, slovenly, and hunched, as unkempt as the rest. She stared at the dirt while a man spoke to her.
I squirmed backward, collecting scratchy dead leaves in my collar, until I was screened by the underbrush. Then I walked a third of a mile through forest to where Escalus waited, tied in a clearing and grazing on lush spring growth.
I buckled my sword and pistol to the saddle and untied his reins from the tree branch. Then I watched his teeth methodically crop grass. My hands bunched the leather reins until they creaked.
What now? Follow the Blackcoats. Assume that, when Elizabeth came, she would see me. Would speak to me.
That plan, which for days seemed sensible, felt like a fool’s errand.
Irritated, I turned to mount. The buckle where I hung my sword was empty.
I whirled, expecting a lunging Blackcoat.
Elizabeth stood four paces away, examining my sheathed sword.
She still wore Mary’s striking black gown, a finely finished garment but fraying where it had been hacked off ankle-short.
Her feet were bare. She wore no bonnet, and her nose and cheeks were sunburned and peeling.
Her hair was gathered behind her neck with a piece of twine, then fell in a chestnut cascade that brushed her hips.
I had only seen her hair loose in our bedroom, and the sight, misplaced and intimate, stole my breath.
She rapped the sword’s shell guard, testing its thickness. I carried an English small sword, a gentleman’s dueling weapon, lighter and more practical than a military saber. Usually, they were shorter as well. Mine was two inches longer to suit my reach.
Eyes still on the sword, she said, “You have tracked them for two days. Why?”
“To find you. You are hunting Blackcoats.”
She looked up, and the words I had prepared vanished at the sight of her brown eyes. I remembered stumbling through inanities when we first met.
She moved one hand to the grip and raised an eyebrow. May I?
That was swordsman’s etiquette, unsettling from Elizabeth who, to my knowledge, had never held a sword, but it was habit to nod in answer.
She drew the sword and studied the blade, triangular and hollow-ground for lightness, then ran her thumb across the edge. “Not sharp.”
“It is a thrusting blade. The point is sharp.”
She cast me an amused glance, then tossed the sword to me, a perfect throw that seemed to hang in the air to be caught, which I did.
“Attack me,” she said.
“You know me,” I burst out. “You remember me. I see it in your eyes.”
She smiled lightly, as if I had admired the weather. “Attack me. Perhaps then I will answer.”
“I have searched for you for days. I thought you lost when you went into the lake. Dead.” My voice broke; I had never confessed that aloud. “Mary said you are healed.”
She was still for a breath, then said, “I wish to see you fight.” The scabbard was still in her hand. She flipped it to a sword-like grip and lifted it en garde. Mockingly, she poked it toward me. “Attack, or I leave.”
I recognized that tone; she was serious. Could I rush her? Restrain her by force? That image was repugnant, and somewhere a dragon was at her call.
Still, bizarre though this conversation was, it was better than Pemberley. There, she flew away without a backward glance. And oddly, fencing—literally for once, not with words—was not that strange. I had fenced with women before. The Angelo School of Arms, where I trained, had female students.
I tapped the last few inches of my blade against the scabbard, accepting combat. She waited, still as stone. I performed a slow lunge, a teacher’s demonstration. She watched the sword tip stop two feet short of her ribs.
“You are better than that,” she said. “I watched you practice this morning.”
I recovered from the lunge and lowered the sword. “You spied on me.”
“A man asleep in a field is common. A man and a horse asleep are worth a look.” Idly she moved the scabbard through a parry and thrust, the exact riposte I had drilled this morning. “You practiced without clothes. Is that the problem? Must you remove them to fight?”
My cheeks heated. Ridiculous; this was my wyfe. And I had worn my drawers. “I was washing them.” The words felt stiff in my lips.
She eyed my wrinkled coat and trousers. One eyebrow rose fractionally.
From nowhere, my lips spread in a joyous grin. That was Elizabeth’s wit, familiar and beloved. Giddy relief rushed into me. I resumed my stance and launched a faster lunge.
This time, she watched the sword point stop eight inches shy of her waist.
She sighed. “If you are so afraid of hurting me, aim here.” She waved the scabbard in the air beside her, then dropped it on the ground.
Now unarmed, her manner changed. Her empty hands floated by her waist, elbows tucked close. Her knees flexed above her spaced feet, although her skirt made her stance hard to read.
And it was a stance. A fighting stance. The proof was in her gaze. She did not watch my hands, or the tip of my weapon, or my eyes—anything that could feint. Her gaze followed my chest, the center of balance.
“What happened to you?” I asked. She did not answer, so I tried, “Why have you not attacked the Blackcoats?”
“They have a woman with them. I do not understand her. Not yet.”
“Why are you doing this?” I whipped the sword through the neutral space between us, fast enough that the blade sang. “Is this because of a memory?” Like Georgiana, Elizabeth’s power had granted her visions, but Elizabeth’s were memories of past wyves of war.
She did not answer. Her eyes were steady and unfocused.
The best fencers, the tutors of royalty, had that gaze.
They saw their opponent’s motion as a whole, not fixating on a button or a collar.
Seeing that, an unexpected emotion tightened my throat, the same feeling I had felt at the modest country dance where we met and she offhandedly shredded my self-important conceit.
I drowned in awed admiration.
I lunged, a serious attack but aimed a safe distance to one side. I picked the opposite side from where she had pointed.
She lunged too, toward me, toward the sword, spinning as she moved.
Her hand flashed out and knocked the blade aside, then the sword twisted to follow her spin—she had not struck it, she had grabbed it.
The base of the blade levered against her hip, wrenching my sword hand past her as she finished her rotation by slamming bodily into me.
Only fifteen years of hard practice kept my fingers on the grip.
She ended facing me, fully inside my guard, our bodies pressed together. My sword arm was half behind her back, the blade pulled harmlessly around her, her hand gripping it a foot from the tip.
Her grin was ecstatic. “You are dead, Mr. Dull Blade.” A hard point was jammed into the pulse of my neck. She took it away and showed me her two extended fingers, a mock knife.
My sword arm still wrapped her like an embrace. She tugged the blade teasingly, drawing us tighter. “This is why you sharpen the edge. So your enemy cannot just…” She wiggled the blade again.
The admiration that had filled me soured. I pushed her away, overly hard. She made a show of staggering, laughing and pirouetting to free my sword.
“Why are you doing this?” I said. “Who are you?”
“Everyone. A hundred hunted women. No one.”
“You are not yourself.” Elizabeth would not gloat. Well, Elizabeth would gloat, just… not like this. Not coarsely. Not over violence.
She became serious. “Who are you? Would pretty Mr. Darcy chase fourteen Blackcoats alone?”
My name sounded strange on her lips. “I am chasing you.”
“You found me.” She cocked her head, studying my wrinkled clothes. “You are less pretty. That is an improvement. Find me again when your sword is sharp, and I will show you another trick.” She turned away.
“Wait! You need me.”
Smiling, she turned back and placed her hands on her hips. Waiting.
I tried to think, ignoring my irritation over her jibe about clothes. “You need reinforcements.”
She snorted. “You? Will you have them form a line, then ask them to fight one-by-one so the others can admire your footwork?”
“You need clothes. A bonnet. A bath. Food.” I was throwing ideas randomly, and her eyebrows notched higher with each one. “Tea. Boots.”
Her skepticism vanished. “You have my boots?”
“Um… not with me.”
She laughed and turned away, then stopped mid-stride, toes in the grass, one bare heel lifted. I had forgotten how delicate her feet were.
I tried again. “At Pemberley—”
She held up her hand. Silence.
Escalus snorted. He stamped the turf, great head swinging and ears twisting.
A rattle grew in the forest, like a hundred twigs drumming on wood.
Elizabeth yanked her skirt up, exposing a scandalous length of muscular leg and a makeshift cloth sheath strapped to her thigh. She drew the dagger Gramr and let the skirt fall.
“Why are you watching me?” she hissed.
I started and turned, peering into the dense forest. Clicks come from every bush and shadow.
A giant foul crawler slipped into the clearing, the clatter of its feet hushing on the soft grass.
It was serpentine, four feet long, thick as a man’s leg but flattened and low to the ground.
A pair of jointed legs sprang from each shiny, armored segment.
The front third lifted into the air, questing blindly as if scenting, the finger-length pinchers on the head clacking open and closed.
Elizabeth reached it with one lightning step and stabbed underhand, driving her dagger through the lighter-colored bottom shell. The creature gave a peculiar squealing hiss, writhing on her blade.
“Above you!” she shouted. I looked up as a six-inch crawler fell from a branch. I jerked back. It brushed my thigh, the feet scrabbling but missing their grip. It landed by my feet.
Another crawler, longer than my arm, burst out of the bush and ran at me, legs a blur.
I kicked it, as awkward as kicking a rope, and it retreated in a seething mass.
The smaller crawler was hissing, so I stamped in the grass and felt shell crack just before the long one flowed out again, faster than a snake.
I jabbed it with the sword. The tip skittered off the shell, then the pincers closed on my boot toe, crushing the thick leather and squeezing the bones of my foot.
I kicked, a disgusted reflex, and its grip on my boot whipped the crawler like a yard-long rat shaken by a dog.
There was a sharp snap, and it fell off, limp.
Escalus whinnied and bucked. I raced to him and stabbed at another long crawler squirming by his feet.
Again the blade skidded. Fool. I backed two steps and executed a proper downward lunge—in practice, I hit targets the size of a guinea.
The point caught between two segments and slipped under the shell, skewering the thrashing vermin to the ground.
The back of the creature flicked over its head, scorpion-like, the stingers hunting for flesh. Then Escalus’s hoof came down, smashing a dinner-plate-sized chunk of the body into shards of shell and mushed, clam-like flesh.
The horse reared again, screaming, front feet sawing the air, and a hoof clipped my forearm with a stinging smack. “Easy!” I shouted. “Down!” I caught the reins left-handed, sword in my right. The pistol on his flank was in reach, but priming it would take an eternity. A blade was better.
The clattering had stopped. There was only Escalus’s frenzied panting and my own.
Frightened, I spun, seeking Elizabeth. She was turning a wary circle in the center of the clearing. In her hand, Gramr dripped unpleasant, yellowish gore. Four large crawlers lay dead in the grass around her.
“Where did they come from?” I gasped. My words shook with the strange, harsh tremble that follows combat.
She looked up. Even now, her eyes made my heart stutter. It was Elizabeth’s serious, steady gaze.
“That is what she does,” she said. “The woman with them. She sends crawlers.”
“You encountered this before?”
“Twice. They are not dangerous.”
“Not dangerous!” Venom was trickling from the crushed crawler. The acrid, sour scent stung my eyes.
“A little dangerous,” she admitted. “That is why I do not bring the draca. They cannot fight in this.” Her hand wafted the venom scented air. She pointed her dagger at my riding boot. The heavy leather toe was pinched and cut. “You see why I want boots.”
“This is madness. You must come home.”
She considered me. She was not even breathing hard. “No. I was called for revenge, and it is not done. What will you say next?”
“Then I will go with you.” The only other choice.
She laughed. “You are no use to me.”
I raised the sword and stepped toward her. She fingered Gramr’s hilt, eyes narrow. I took another step, then lunged, driving the point a few inches beside her calf.
It was a good hit, exactly between the crawler’s pincers and straight into the maw. The blade sank in a foot and a half, spitting half the length of the body. The stingers, which had curled for a last, wounded strike, rattled and fell limp.
I kicked the repulsive thing off the sword, then wiped the blade with my handkerchief and discarded the fouled cloth.
“At least the point is sharp,” I said. “Still no use?”
This time, she did not laugh. I could see her turning it over in her head. That lasted too long, a puzzle more subtle than the benefit and cost of another blade and another mouth.
Every mannerism was wrenchingly familiar. Seeing her was joy and loss together. She was Elizabeth. She was not. She was.
“You are tolerable,” she said at last.