Chapter 17 Pemberley by Stealth
PEMBERLEY BY STEALTH
DARCY
“I should have kept Mary’s dress,” Elizabeth whispered, brushing irritably at her white sleeve. “This is too visible.”
We were hiding in a lush grove of sapling oaks. Pemberley House was ahead, shadowed by the deepening evening twilight.
After a harrowing, treetop-brushing flight that hugged ravines and valleys—all aboard a blind steed—Yuánchi had landed two miles from the house. Elizabeth and I had walked from there, choosing the most obscure paths.
I did not comment on her clothes. I was too busy scheming.
Our visit to Longbourn had restored her more to her old self. She no longer felt like a stranger. This was Elizabeth, only moody and guarded. So, when she proposed visiting Pemberly—raiding it, really—I wholeheartedly agreed. The familiarity of Pemberley could only restore her further.
“There is no need for secrecy,” I pointed out, again. “We can walk through the front door. Mrs. Reynolds will gather everything we need.” That was a scheme, of course. Elizabeth would be mobbed when we appeared.
“We only need the saddle.” Elizabeth dashed off, sprinting across fifty yards of meadow and vanishing into the shadows behind the stables. I hurried after her, expecting to hear a shout of recognition, but, incredibly, not a soul was in sight.
That was no more incredible than the rest of our trip.
Like many country ladies, Elizabeth had been raised tramping through wilderness, and being an adventurous woman, she had even explored the roughest forest at my aunt’s estate, Rosings.
Now, though, traveling with her was like being guided by a master hunter.
For the second time today, I thought of Rabb.
Elizabeth had the same awareness of her surroundings, every rustle, every sightline, every snapped twig.
I was not sure if her skills were gleaned from memories of past wyves, or if she augmented her awareness with unseen draca.
She was intimidatingly fit as well. When I reached the back of the stable, puffing, she was inside. I slipped in and found her greeting the small mare she sometimes rode.
Escalus scented me and whinnied from his stall. I hurried to quiet him. “Good fellow,” I said while he pranced excitedly. “Mary certainly retrieved you quickly.” Feigning a sudden thought, I turned to Elizabeth, “It was good to see Jane and the baby. We could—”
“I do not wish to speak with Mary,” she said.
Apparently, my schemes were transparent. More relieved than anything, I tried honesty. “She will be desperate to see you.”
“She does not know we have come, and you informed her I am well.” That sounded dismissive, but her gaze was earnest. “Mary is safe at Pemberley, safer away from me, and safer yet when I am gone.” She pointed across the stable. “There it is.”
Yuánchi’s saddle hung on a far wall. It was a large affair, rigged for two riders with room to spare. With tack, it would be heavy and awkward—far too heavy for two people to carry for miles.
Elizabeth had considered that. She opened the mare’s stall. “If we strap it loosely, I think she will carry it. If not, we can find a cart.”
“That provides our seating. But we will need more than the clothes on our backs.”
“So you can look pretty?” she asked while leading the mare to Yuánchi’s saddle.
That felt uncalled for; I had looked like a feral hound for days. “A gentleman presents himself properly.” And if on occasion I was fastidious, that was to honor my mother’s reliance on pristine clothing. A reliance shared by Miss Woodhouse, for that matter.
When Elizabeth did not answer, I added, “I thought you liked that I dressed well,” which sounded unfortunately peevish. But her jibe about “pretty” had lodged in my head. Could she have been teasing?
I realized she was staring at the saddle. A folded sheet of notepaper was pinned to a strap and addressed in angular script: Lizzy.
Reluctantly, Elizabeth unpinned it:
“Talk to me before you go, or I shall not forgive you.
—M”
Five minutes later, Elizabeth announced, “She is coming.”
I was tired of endlessly asking “How do you know?” so I simply nodded, as if one sister summoning another without lifting a finger were perfectly normal. That drew an assessing glance from Elizabeth, relieved or annoyed that her parlor tricks no longer merited surprise.
Mary exited the conservatory door carrying a lantern, her black satin almost lost in the onset of night. One of the small, feathered draca that followed her flew celebratory figure eights in the air—a messenger, presumably.
Mary entered the stable, noted her sister, nodded to me, and hung the lantern from a hook. The small draca fluttered to her shoulder, and she said, “He began pecking at the window. I thought it must be you. You are not here to stay, clearly.”
“I cannot,” Elizabeth said. Mary waited, and Elizabeth added, “The changes to me are harming Yuánchi. We must escape Fènnù, and the war, and the… temptation of violence.”
“So you will just leave,” Mary said tightly.
“I have no choice—”
“You have a choice!” Mary shouted, then seemed shocked that she had.
She closed her eyes for a breath. “Lizzy, it is a miracle you are alive. You were passing through death’s door.
With you returned, we can heal the song.
We must. That is the cause of all these disasters.
The foul crawlers. Fènnù’s madness. The madness that impinges on you and Yuánchi. ”
“That madness is consuming me. Do you know what will happen if Fènnù claims me as her wyfe of war? She will lay waste to England, searching my own memories for targets, burying us in a yearslong winter. All while the black blight spreads.”
Mary shrank under her sister’s assault, arms clutching herself.
But when she spoke, she straightened, and her tone was proud.
“I do know. I have read accounts. When there are allusions to Fènnù rising, famine and war follow. Realms are erased. Even the historical record falls to fragments. But Lizzy, you must understand: Georgiana and I have achieved something miraculous! We sang Fènnù’s song.
It is one voice of three that make up the great song. If we find the others, we can heal it.”
“You sang Fènnù’s song?” Elizabeth said in disbelief.
“Georgiana sang. I played. But I saw the song.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “The great song is beyond us. You must not try.”
“I did not try. I did it!” Mary retorted angrily, then she waved her hands in frantic apology. “I am saying this all wrong. Lizzy, I do not want you to go. You were gone for so long. It is hard without you.”
Elizabeth was silenced by that, and I used the pause to offer a calming hand. “There is no disagreement between you. No conflict. Elizabeth and I are leaving so we can find the flute and heal the song. Our goals are aligned.”
“Why did you not say so?” Mary said finally. “You know where to find the flute?”
Elizabeth seemed stymied by the question. Her gaze flicked between me and Mary before she answered, “Only a clue. It was in the north. Far in the north.”
Mary sagged. “The arctic?”
“What?” Elizabeth burst out laughing. “No! Scotland. I am sure I can write you a letter.”
Mary drew a relieved breath and smiled back. She turned to me, her spectacles circular gleams in the lamplight. “And you are going with her. I am glad for that. But what about Pemberley? You cannot imagine what was required to convince the other landholders to hunt for crawlers.”
“That sounds like you succeeded,” I noted. “Georgiana and you are worthy of Pemberley. Trust yourselves. Do what is right.”
I added no qualifier, no “until we return.” When a person accepts responsibility, it is churlish to trot out conditions and limits. But hearing my words, the phrasing felt right.
I understood the cause of the sisters’ argument. Fear. Fear that I shared.
England was being ripped asunder by war.
In the face of that disaster, the English ideal was to pretend normalcy—to trust in calm and competence, to persevere, and to return to an unchanged life.
But that ideal had been exposed as a myth.
The American War of Independence shook the British Empire, and the weight of this war pressed deeper, not only because battle was being waged within our own shores but because it was aided by rifts in our politics and society.
The soldiers dead or maimed, the families fleeing or broken by hate—they had no unspoiled life to resume.
To pretend that English constancy waited for Elizabeth and me was self-deception.
To pretend our lives were safe was a lie. And I abhorred dishonesty.
Even now, while war raged, I was being dishonest, trying to ingratiate myself to this incredible, altered woman as if our old life were a play that she could be tricked into performing by parading the halls of Pemberley. In truth, I had no idea what life awaited us, only that it would be changed.
“It would be unwise to leave without supplies,” I said to Elizabeth. “I will fetch them. You need not come, but I must speak with Georgiana before we go.”
She watched me, her thoughts hidden, then nodded.
I left her with Mary and strode to the house, every seam of the stone path known to my boots even at night. The windows of the grand music room were dark, so I entered through the conservatory door that Mary had used and set out for Georgiana’s room.
Shimmering candlelight and clavichord notes came from her adjacent music salon. I knocked on the half-open door.
“Fitz!” she exclaimed and ran to embrace me. “How did you arrive without an uproar?” She drew back, frightened. “Is Lizzy not with you?”
“She is,” I reassured her. “She is in the stables with Mary. She did not want a crowd. She fears that her presence endangers those around her.” In a few words, I explained Yuánchi’s illness, and Lizzy’s plan to fly north to escape Fènnù and search for the flute.
“What of the war?” Georgiana asked, after a moment.
“It is like a poison to her, and to Yuánchi.”
“It is a poison to us all. The blight is the war—it is a darkness corrupting minds and morals, affecting life itself. Have you read of the horrors in the occupied south?” Her finger touched a reading table stacked with rumpled newspapers.
“We can do nothing without the flute.”
“Yuánchi could turn the tide of battle in a day.”
“And Fènnù would claim Elizabeth.” I smiled to reassure her. “Others can fight the war.”
“Others,” she echoed, disbelieving. “That does not sound like my bold brother.”
The passion on her face, the challenge, filled me with unexpected wonder.
We had a rare relationship: two parentless siblings who, due to age and circumstance, were almost like father and daughter.
A year ago, Georgiana had seemed girlish and cloistered to me.
Now I saw, or finally recognized, that she had been transformed by our trials.
“Elizabeth needs me,” I said, “and I am faithful to her. Until we return, you must be the bold Darcy.”
I rode Escalus while Elizabeth and Mary followed in the pony cart.
In the forested vale two miles from the house, I packed supplies into Yuánchi’s cavernous saddlebags: clothes, both mine and Elizabeth’s; spare shoes and weatherproof outerwear; rye bread with a chunk of cheddar—I, at least, was hungry.
To prove we were civilized, I wrapped up a bottle of whiskey from an upstart but promising distillery in Oban.
In my coat pocket, I carried every guinea and half-guinea from Pemberley’s coffers.
English banknotes were worthless in Scotland, but gold was valued everywhere.
Elizabeth handed me a pair of the flying goggles she had commissioned. She fastened hers, tightening the strap that drew the leather frames snug to her temples. Looking like a caricature of a woman in spectacles, she said, “Now we can fly fast.”
I suppose that meant we had been flying slowly.
“Thank you for helping,” I said to Mary. “And for staying with Georgiana. For being with her.”
She seemed unsure how to respond. Finally, she said, “You look much better.”
A snort issued from Elizabeth’s direction. My valet had greeted me with a rueful shake of his head, then worked wonders while Mrs. Reynolds gathered the supplies.
“You still have Gramr?” Mary said, resuming her customary brisk delivery, and Elizabeth nodded. “The French seek for it and for the amulet, but they approached me about the flute. They think it is connected to the Bennets—”
“What?” Elizabeth said, so sharply I wondered if she had remembered something, but her tone was normal when she asked, “Why?”
“I do not know, but the journal calls the flute the ‘hollow relic of music.’ It will be inscribed with the third song.” Mary snatched a breath. “It is strange that our family journal mentions it. Ask about Bennets—”
Elizabeth stopped her with a touch on her shoulder. “I will. But we must go. It is time to move the horses back.”
Mary led the mare with the pony cart twenty paces distant. Escalus, his lead tied to the cart, followed, looking reproachfully at me and challengingly at towering, saddled Yuánchi.
Elizabeth turned to me and removed her gloves. “Fènnù is west of us, a half hour’s flight. She stays close to track my binding to Yuánchi. I must hide us so she cannot follow.” She offered her bare hands. “Hide both of us. Yuánchi bound you, too.”
I removed my gloves. She crossed her wrists to take mine, her left hand in my left.
The pose felt formal, and memories of our Beltane handfasting whispered.
Her fede ring of knotted gold gleamed, a sight so familiar that I only now noticed she still wore it.
Was that significant, or was her request that I travel north simply practical?
Desired or not, Yuánchi’s binding linked him to us both.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Escalus shivered and neighed. Yuánchi drew straight, his wings rustling, and his scythe-like claws cut into the forest loam.
I felt… a coiled heat in my breast, spooling like a ship’s line.
“It is done,” Elizabeth said and opened her eyes. “It will not last long. Fènnù will feel the absence. We must be far away before she arrives to search.” She called to her sister, “Hurry on your trip back. Stay at Pemberley. It is safe.”
Elizabeth climbed the stirrup-like footholds to the saddle. I settled in the rear seat and followed her example, fastening the leather belt over my lap.
She pointed to the northern sky. “Tiānshū. The pivot star. We will fly like the wind and leave the war for those in the south.”