Chapter 7 Love and Songbirds
LOVE AND SONGBIRDS
LIZZY
“Ma’am? Mrs. Darcy?” a girl’s voice whispered.
Light tickled my eyelids. I was cozy in bed. Well, not so cozy. The sheets were soaked. I felt cold, and yet… I touched my forehead. Sheened with sweat.
A maid of thirteen or perhaps fourteen was grinning at me. I wiped a sticky curl out of my eyes and whispered, “Good morning, Lucy. Do not wake Mr. Darcy.” His shoulder was pressing my back, but for once I was not trapped under one of his immovable arms.
I felt under the quilt for my nightgown, then searched with my toes. Nothing.
Lucy’s grin tilted mischievously. She lifted a length of gauzy muslin from the floor. “Lost something?” she whispered.
I pulled it over my head while she innocently studied the ceiling. The fabric clung unpleasantly to my wet spine and breasts. I pinched a fold and fanned it to dry off.
I whispered, “Was the fire high last night?”
“Don’t know, ma’am. Mrs. Reynolds had a coach for me at the hotel this morning. Brought your things.”
We tiptoed out, leaving Darcy sprawled across most of the bed.
Really, it was a good thing I was small.
In the dressing room, Lucy tugged my damp curls into a mass that could be tied while she prattled about what she had packed.
Then she tsked and held up a petticoat I had worn yesterday. “How’d you get so muddy?”
“Oh,” I said.
The door to the bedroom was ajar. I leaned to peer through. Darcy’s hand and wrist were sticking off the side of the bed. Sound asleep.
When I returned from my trip to the boathouse, the house had been in a tizzy. Mrs. Reynolds had every servant running one way or another. It had been decided that our party would stay the night even though rooms had not been made up.
Amid the fuss, I had not a second alone with Darcy until we shut our bedroom door. And then I barely drew breath before… Well, he had been distracting.
Lucy was watching expectantly.
“I am infamous for muddy petticoats,” I said. “Consider it training as a lady’s maid. Will you take it down and see if Mrs. Reynolds has a laundress?”
“Now?”
“Please. I should hate for it to stain.”
Lucy tripped off. I heard her shoes tap down the stairs.
I laid my palms flat on the dressing table, still empty despite Lucy’s arrival. There was mud under my fingernails. I closed my eyes.
You are awake, Yuánchi thought. Good. I am hungry.
“Oh,” I said again. I opened my eyes.
Who first, Yuánchi or Darcy?
Yuánchi. I had used the pulleys to open the boathouse gate before I left. Presumably, the rump of a dragon was now on display for any passing boat.
Darcy swung the dressing room door wide, yawning within a thick maroon robe. “Good morning.”
“Oh,” I said, mentally reordering my conversations.
“I have been considering our meeting with the War Secretary.” Darcy grimaced and rubbed his unshaven chin. “Wellington’s goals are straightforward enough. But the Secretary is a politician. How does one influence a politician?”
I thought about it. “Other politicians? Or important personages. Perhaps we should host a ball.” That last was a joke, as Darcy abhorred large social events.
He ran a finger under the thin muslin covering my shoulder, and I touched his wrist, watching our wedding bands gleam in the looking glass.
I wore a gold fede ring with interlocked knots to honor our Beltane ceremony.
Darcy wore the posy ring my father had worn, plain gold but inscribed inside with verse.
“A ball seems drastic,” he said. “Our London acquaintances are already curious. They would poke into every nook and cranny.”
“Nooks and crannies?” I said, not understanding.
“A ball at Chathford.”
I held up a warning finger. “No. Not at Chathford!” Darcy looked surprised, so I summoned my well-crafted reasons for stuffing a dragon into our boathouse. “Last night—”
Lucy popped in the other door. “No laundress yet, but we put it in to soak. I’m to tell you that the cook is sorry, but it will be a half hour before you can bathe. The stove is not drawing properly, so there’s no warm water.”
“The trials of a new home,” Darcy said cheerfully. “I will walk the grounds first.”
“Yuánchi is here!” I cried.
“He looks bigger,” Lucy said.
“It is an illusion,” I said uncertainly, while fastening a button on the thick pelisse I had thrown on. “I think. From being inside.”
The peak of Yuánchi’s back, sheathed in neatly folded wings, was a few feet shy of the boathouse rafters—certainly taller than the gate.
The air roiled with a vital scent like cooking cloves.
His faceted eyes, each larger than my fist, gleamed gold, green, and blue from a shadowy mound of neck and shoulders.
It was difficult to tell what connected to what.
Like wyverns and firedrakes, Yuánchi was two-winged and two-legged, although his sinuous shape was more reminiscent of the smaller firedrake. But, sinuous or not, the question was…
“How did you fit?” I exclaimed.
I curl up to sleep.
Scales chimed and flashed scarlet in the dusty light as his torso straightened and lowered… slightly. His long neck unwound until his nose was a foot from mine.
“Well, it is good you managed,” I said. Then I remembered something. “May I see your teeth?”
Yuánchi’s head cocked in human-like bemusement. Then his jaws stretched wide. Heat deep in his gullet lit my skin as if a hearth had opened. Lucy hastily stepped back.
His obsidian-dark teeth were four or five inches long and slightly back-curved. The front of each was rounded and a half-inch thick. The backs were knife-edged with gleaming serrations. His tongue was also black and had sharp scales pointing down his throat like barbs. I had not known that.
I wiggled the tip of a tooth between two fingers. “Do you ever lose them?”
His head withdrew a yard. The jaws closed with a snap that blew my curls back.
No.
There was a clatter from the far end of the boathouse. Darcy had closed the gate. His silhouette returned through the narrow passage between Yuánchi’s torso and the boathouse wall.
“No one could see,” Darcy said as he reached us, knocking dust off his palms. “It is bright outside and dark in here. I would have to come within twenty yards to make him out.”
“What about boats?” I asked. The Thames was busy from dawn.
“The river froze in the night,” Darcy said. “There is ice from shore to shore. This winter will be one for the books.”
No one saw when I came, Yuánchi thought. I was careful.
“I am glad someone was,” Darcy said dryly. He could hear Yuánchi through our binding, at least when Yuánchi wished.
“I meant to tell you,” I said. “It was a confused evening.”
“I think it’s grand,” Lucy said, sidling up next to me. “I’ve never seen him so close. He sparkles.”
“He will touch you, if you wish,” I said with a smile.
Hesitantly, she reached out a hand. Yuánchi pressed his nose against her palm and puffed a rumbling snort. Her jaw dropped, and she stepped back, eyes wide.
She is brave, he thought. She will bind well.
I thought of Mary’s campaign for the rights of women to bind. Why not a housemaid bound to a draca? I chuckled, tugged his nose closer, and rubbed the smooth scales under his jaw.
You are very warm, he thought in a fussy tone. I stole a glance at Darcy, but it seemed Yuánchi had shared that thought only with me.
That is an amusing comment from a dragon, I thought.
Georgiana, Emma, and Harriet had left by the time Darcy and I arrived for breakfast. Darcy spotted Mrs. Reynolds in the hall and went in pursuit, muttering “sides of beef.” I presumed that was a menu for Yuánchi, not a ball. I liked my idea of hosting a ball, but Darcy would require persuasion.
Mary sat alone in the breakfast parlor, poking a ragged slice of cold toast with a bare butter spreader.
I sat beside her. “Are you not hungry?” Her head shook a slow No, her face lowered over her dented toast. All I saw was hanging hair and glints of her spectacles. “Why did you not accompany the ladies to the salon?”
“I am meeting Dr. Davenport. He advises outside exercise for health, so we walk to discuss cases.” That was the doctor Mary studied with, a commitment that had grown until she was often gone at unexpected hours.
“May I walk with you?” I asked. She nodded, her loose brown hair swaying.
We set out, dressed for the cold and leaving the tyke snoozing by the fire. The day was silvery-bright, overcast but dry. I chose a practical bonnet and checked I had coins for a coach if the weather turned. Mary wore her customary black, fashionably cut despite the intimidating hue.
I had barely noticed Chathford’s exterior when we arrived in the snow, so Mary and I stopped to inspect it from the circular drive.
We had exited the front, which faced the river.
The main entrance was recessed between a pair of octagonal towers that fronted the main house.
The walls were variegated red-brown brick and decorated with inset busts of anonymous figures.
It was handsome and elaborate and far more conventional than Pemberley.
Several acres of park surrounded us, fenced by a stone wall.
In the Darcy tradition, there were few groomed gardens.
Most was wilderness—chestnut, oak, and birch, their bare branches capped with thin snow.
Two footmen bundled in brown wool stood beside the iron gate. I did not know them, but they greeted me by name.
“Mrs. Reynolds described you, ma’am,” one explained with a bob of his head. “We was brought on yesterday. We’re to watch for miscreants.”
Darcy had hired guards against French assassins. He was nothing if not efficient. But they had been told to watch the property, not me, so they cheerfully pulled the gate wide for Mary and me to leave.