Chapter 44 The Pinnacle
THE PINNACLE
LIZZY
“A new day,” I croaked. The words made the cracks in my lips sting. “I feel much better.”
Darcy was seated on the floor behind me, steadying me. I had tried to steal away in the night, but he found me.
He wiped sweat-soaked curls from my temples and felt my forehead, then got to his feet and returned with a dampened towel and a cup of water. I wiped my face and neck, then chanced a few sips.
He said, “When I was a boy, I helped my mother care for her patients. You do not need to hide.”
“I am preserving my dignity.” I dabbed the soaked neckline of my robe. “What time is it? I should like to visit breakfast, at least. To see Mary and Georgiana.” My fever had roared back after the performance. I had only blurry memories of being guided through the crowd, then thrashing in bed.
“Lucy looked in already. I will ring for her.”
Lucy returned, and I banished Darcy to go find his valet.
Lucy made me presentable, chattering only one notch too cheerfully and never breathing a word about my health, for which I was stupendously grateful.
After fastening my dress, she became quiet, then said, “One thing more,” and gently dabbed rouge on my lips.
I had worn it perhaps twice in my life. Despite her effort, the face in the looking glass looked like death absent the courtesy of even a tepid warming.
There was no routine yet with our guests, but the household breakfast was private.
Darcy and I walked down together and found Mary with a dozen books spread over a third of the table.
She had her nose inches from the page, which meant she had been at this for hours, but she leaped up when we approached, looking doctorly and concerned.
I ended that by pulling her into a long embrace, then I held her at arm’s length to show my smile.
“I feel very foolish about misunderstanding you in that London park. I am all joy to know I have a sister in love, and to someone so admirable. You were clever about it, too. Will you have a royal commission?” Mary frowned, so to head off a lecture on the evils of monarchy, I said, “I do have a question about the opera. Why was Belinda a sprite as well?”
Mary smiled then. “When I was four, I wished to be a sprite. So why not?”
I nodded to her array of books. “Is this what you wanted to speak about?”
“We should wait for Georgiana and Emma. I have both questions and answers.”
The staff began placing breakfast, and Mary and Darcy greeted them while pouring coffee. I took one look at the silver coffee pot, every gleam a scintillating needle that stabbed my waking headache, then I turned my back to it to sip hot water with a thin splash of tea.
That left me sunk in morbid thought, and it took a minute to notice Darcy had stepped into the hallway.
I followed and found him with Mr. Digweed and Mrs. Reynolds, who were so rushed that they were speaking over top of each other.
Finally, Mr. Digweed deferred to our housekeeper, and Mrs. Reynolds began.
“Master and madam, I am afraid that Miss Woodhouse, Miss Smith, and Mr. Knightley have not been seen since the Box Hall entertainment.”
“Harriet went to the school,” I said. For some reason, the courtiers had thought that the hottest of gossip. “Perhaps they all went.”
“I thought so too, madam, and the staff assignments were topsy-turvy all evening, so I thought they only missed dinner. But the maids have been in this morning. Their beds were untouched.”
“Mr. Knightley was preparing to leave,” Darcy said. “Miss Woodhouse may have chosen to depart at the same time.”
“Without a goodbye?” I said. “Darcy, that is impossible.”
Rigidly, he said, “Miss Woodhouse had cause to leave. I behaved poorly.”
There was an awkward pause. Darcy considered it poor behavior if he was not the first to rise when a lady stood, but clearly his conversation on the terrace had been difficult.
Mrs. Reynolds spoke into the silence. “Mr. Knightley’s trunks were not yet packed. And nothing was taken from the ladies’ room. Not a comb. Not a shoe.”
Darcy’s comment had left me more curious than concerned, but Mrs. Reynolds’s news filled me with alarm—a strangely dispassionate alarm for a discussion of missing friends.
“I must add my news,” Mr. Digweed said. “The patrols we set up for Lord Wellington caught a pair of suspicious men in the hills. We are holding them in the east village, and they are angry about it. One is a laborer from Lambton. I do not know the other man, but his accent is Sussex. He is protesting loudly that they are hired to scout for a birding party and lost their way.”
My sense of urgency had soared, but Darcy’s answer was hesitant. “I am no soldier. What does the captain recommend?” That was the military officer Lord Wellington had left to manage the royal guards.
“He is unsure. Call a constable, perhaps. But they have broken no law.” Everyone pursed their lips as if this were cause for consideration.
Why were they so thickheaded? “They are spies,” I said. “It is a classic pairing. A local guide, who is bribed, ignorant, and untrusted, and a master, who will survive and report. Did the Lambton man have too much money?”
Mr. Digweed’s eyebrows rose. “Three guineas. That is a good guess.”
My alarm condensed to certainty. “We should not have brought the royal family here.”
“Wellington chose it,” Darcy objected. “No other path was safe.”
“Lord Wellington commands armies, but he is not a spymaster. Deception is key. When a single path is safe, you choose any other.” Dusty lessons skittered through my mind.
“It is my fault, too. Mary and I took their reserve of captive wyves, but they had moved one wyfe. Their captives do not live long, so they must use her. It no longer matters that Lord Wellington’s precautions hid the royal family.
Our enemy is forced to attack, so they will gamble. ”
“Elizabeth,” Darcy said intently. “You are not speaking like yourself.”
I looked up at him, and the final realization whispered into place. “These are lessons learned by others. But if I can feel these memories…” I closed my eyes and threw my mind wide.
Yuánchi filled me first, a blaze of awareness a mile distant. He sensed me reaching, but I blocked his query, hiding his mind to search elsewhere like a night sentry shielding a torch to see beyond.
There. The oily black of a dosed wyfe, and from that, a tendril reaching south over the hills of Pemberley. And at the end of that tendril, a powerful, broken mind was reaching for me, but restrained by an iron grip.
“They are using the dagger,” I said. “Fènnù is coming. They will destroy Pemberley.”
I opened my eyes to three disbelieving stares, and the confidence that had carried me—the discipline to forgo emotion—drained like spilled water. My body was wretchedly ill, my head aching. Fear filled my heart. I had no idea what to do.
“We must move the royal family,” Darcy said. He watched me, waiting, then said, “Do you agree?” That seemed sensible, so I nodded. He rushed off with Mr. Digweed and Mrs. Reynolds, and they gave orders. Servants ran down hallways with instructions.
From the frenzy, Mary appeared, half dragging Georgiana, whose undressed hair hung loose to her waist.
Mary said, “Lizzy, we are to leave!”
“No!” Georgiana cried. “Pemberley is safe. It is always safe.” She had tears in her eyes.
“Not today,” Mary said. She took my hand and rushed both of us past the breakfast table and out a side entrance onto a garden path. A handful of the iridescent blue song draca were perched outside the door and window. They burst into the air, swirling over our heads.
The morning light burned. I narrowed my eyes and said, “Please go slow.” I had to feel for the path’s spaced flagstones through my slippers.
Yuánchi’s awareness was pressing at me, so while Mary led me, I reached for him. Yuánchi.
People flee your house.
I had forgotten he did not have the senses of a great wyfe. Fènnù is coming. She is commanded by our enemies. You must flee as well.
I will fight her.
No. You will lose.
I felt him rise into the air. I will not let her harm you. I will not let her take you.
You sound as foolish as a human. I will be dead within a day. That truth had been driven home while I fought through the night. The next surge of this illness would be the last.
There was no response, but that did not matter. I could not command him, but he would accept reality. Draca were not captive to emotion like people.
I thought, Can you see her?
In answer, his vision replaced mine. That was an unexpected relief as the aches in my eyes vanished. The sky, variegated in a hundred shades of blue and violet, spun as he searched, ferociously acrobatic. This made the twists when we rode him seem as tame as a child’s ride on a pony.
His voice filled me, quieter than usual. I do not see her. But she will be close before I do. There were hills and ravines and lumpy, low-hanging clouds. Ample cover for a hunter.
I could guide him to her. I knew her rough direction. But she would kill him. What if I lied, and sent him the wrong way? Morals aside, our mental communication was so intimate that I doubted I could deceive him.
But Fènnù, for all her danger, was not the true enemy. “Mary, stop!” I cried. “I must concentrate.” Holding Yuánchi’s vision, I spread my other senses as well.
There. That stir of oily black.
Yuánchi, look here. I tried to convey the position and felt him puzzling over my request. The skies flipped fully upside down, inverted trees rushing overhead, then Pemberley House came into view and spun right-side up. His vision fixed on a hillside beyond the lake.
I felt myself uselessly squinting my own eyes. An old memory made me ask, Can you look farther…
There was a tightening. The view faded at the edges but sharpened in the center.