Chapter 40
Chapter forty
With the morning edition of The Dragoneer’s Journal, a derby with open registration was announced.
Valeraine jumped at the chance to practice her flying in a true competition.
She needed to handle Lelantos when he was nest-tetchy, surrounded by other dragons, if she would have any chance of success in the Royal derby.
There was one problem: it was being hosted by Pemberley.
Tomorrow, after she met with him, he wouldn’t be a problem anymore.
But did she dare to push him so far as to race on his estate?
Would he surrender to her superior blackmail material?
Or would he not suffer the offense of her in his house — of her winning the race — and decide to doom them both? She didn’t know him well enough to say.
Pemberley was a liar. He used the guise of Lady Scaleheart to turn the tide of the dragon houses against his enemies.
He was a rough rider, responsible for the death of at least one poor soul, and the injuries of many others (including some of her own).
He was an underhanded snake, and it might be dangerous to assume he would be cowed.
She did not truly know his mettle, or how far he would go to avenge his wounded pride.
Valeraine would register for the derby at Pemberley.
She refused to back down, feeling her own pride stinging at the thought.
She sent the registration letter off that very day, before she could take the coward’s route.
Mr. Pemberley was squarely in her power, and tomorrow he would know it.
She would prove it by out-racing him in his own home.
Valeraine was worried about how Lelantos would behave once he was nest-tetchy at Pemberley estate.
She had only ridden him while nest-tetchy once, and it had been a mix of success and disaster.
She had gotten injured, but they had also come in second.
This was the true practice she needed, though.
In the Royal derby, Lelantos would be far from home, and in a bigger crowd of dragons than ever.
The challenge was coming to meet them, and they would rise to it.
Kesley left that day for the four day’s journey to Sidton house.
He would be riding the mail coach — always an uncomfortable trip — and not returning for weeks.
Every year, he spent the winter solstice with his family.
Perhaps this year he would manage to convince one of his brothers to give him a ride back on a dragon.
Then, at least, the travel wouldn’t be so onerous.
Valeraine was anxious for his return. Would the spark between them still burn? Would they fan it into something more?
Pemberley had set the meeting place as a gazebo on the edge of the Netherfield lands.
Valeraine knew it well, a playful haunt of her childhood.
The sisters had gone walking out to it, just a mile or so away from Longbourn house.
It was built by the previous owner of Netherfield, maybe one hundred years ago, and now was overgrown with vines.
It was sturdy enough, built out of white marble (now coated with green moss) in a classical style.
There was a frieze set into the roofline, with muscled, naked men riding chariots and dragons.
Valeraine wondered why it had been built.
Had the owner believed in the ancient pantheons, and performed ablutions here?
Had he prayed for fair races, or for plentiful crops?
When the Longbourn sisters had come, they had prayed to the goddess of maidens — particularly the adventurous ones.
Valeraine had dreamed of triumphal adventure, of saving her house.
Now, she was terribly pleased that she would deliver the final blow to Pemberley in this place of worship, her prayers answered.
Pemberley had probably picked it as their meeting place because he had come across it in their hunting parties. It was a private place where he would not have to stand in the snow.
That morning, Valeraine woke early, and walked to the gazebo. The mile to it seemed much shorter than it had when she was a girl. It had been a journey, now it was a stroll.
Pemberley was already there, waiting. The dawn light played with his black, heavy coat, and his warm darkness stood out starkly from the whiteness of the holy place and the snow on the ground.
His head was resting against one of the graceful columns, his arm braced above him.
He might be praying. Who would he be praying to? A trickster, for inspiration?
He heard her approach, and startled upright. “Miss Longbourn.” There was no bow to accompany this greeting, no graceful sweep of the arm to invite her into the gazebo. Only fidgeting with the button at his shirt cuff.
“Mr. Pemberley,” Valeraine returned, and climbed the two stairs to join him on the marble floor. “I have something to tell you, and be reassured that I have proof —”
“You must allow me to speak.”
Valeraine didn’t intend to allow him to do anything, much less speak at her with this fervor. But the passion in his voice, the pain there, stunned her into silence for a moment and he took the conversational reins with an unforgiving jerk.
“I have toiled for months now, against my feelings. It has been a war with many battles, no survivors. You have placed me in a terrible position. I will struggle with this for no longer.”
“You needn’t struggle, for this charade between us is over. I know you are —”
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
This was the second time he had interrupted her, and the shock was even greater than the first. He admired her?
It must be a terrible joke. Next, he would manipulate her into some terrible position.
It would not work, of course, because she had the upper hand.
He could ruin her reputation, but she could ruin his just as effectively, and he had so much farther to fall.
He falsely took her silence as a kind of encouragement, and continued with the momentum of a diving dragon, unstoppable and with fire building.
“This is fully unsuitable to my station. Your family is so lowly, not a proper house. It should be out of the question for me to love someone of your status, and yet I still sputter against my feelings.”
Valeraine felt that she needed to argue, to take control of this exchange, but she hardly knew where to begin. “Longbourn house has a dragon, who is mighty —”
“Yes, you and your insistence to pretend as if your house still belongs among the dragoneers. My disdain for this should be strong enough to overcome your allure, but it fails. My reason tells me your attitude is fully unsuitable for that of a wife. You are rebellious, and already mired in a scandal waiting to break. And yet some perverse part of my nature is drawn to that conceited independence of yours.”
Valeraine could only say, her fury building, “Conceited independence?”
“When we are married, I will do all in my power to conceal that you have ever raced, to shield us from scandal.” He said this in a reassuring tone, as if this would be her only objection.
When she married him, he would no longer be threatening to reveal her secrets lest they spill onto him, her husband.
“When we are married?”
Pemberley moved his hands, as if to start another speech, but Valeraine preempted him.
“You say my status is so much lower than yours,” she said, “but I do not see how that can be. You are the vilest being on this earth. You are arrogant, selfish, violent, and manipulative. At our very first conversation I already knew you were the last man in the world whom I would ever marry.”
Now, Pemberley’s nervous energy transformed into something darker. Deprived of his assumed success, he grew angry. “You return such rudeness to my generous offer?”
“A generous offer? When you so carefully outlined the deplorable state of my family and my person? I’ve only returned rudeness for rudeness.”
“So if I had presented things prettily, had lied and pretended at your suitability, you would have accepted?”
“No. If you had presented yourself with humility and supplication, if you had behaved in a gentlemanlike manner, I would have felt the slightest concern as I refused you,” Valeraine said.
“That concern would have been wiped away the second I considered the hurt you’ve caused to me and my family. You are —”
“I have dealt no injury to you or your family!”
“Is that what you call spoiling the romance between Alyce and Mr. Nethenabbi? She truly cared for him, and he her, and you kept them apart.”
“I would hardly call that injury to —”
“Do you deny it? Do you deny forcing Nethenabbi to stop his courtship?” she asked.
“I first tried to reason with Nethenabbi on the unsuitability of the match, on grounds of lack of consequence of Longbourn house,” he said.
“When he would not act to protect himself, I needed to do something. I stopped her letters from reaching him, and his from being sent. I persuaded him to go to Kinellan City.”
“You act in the vilest manner to someone whom you call a friend, then turn around and propose to a daughter of that same house. I should not be so surprised, for I already knew you were —”
“As I have told you, it is not from my reason or better nature that I’m here. I will have you as my wife not because it is right, but because I need it and in vain I have resisted —”
“I know you are Scaleheart!” Valeraine cried. “I have proof. If you act against me I will spread it abroad.”
This, finally, silenced both of them. They were breathing hard, as if they had been boxing with each other instead of merely ripping their souls apart.
“How do you —” Pemberley said.
“I know you are the worst kind of man: the kind of hypocrite that pretends to have moral superiority. You write of the horrors of racing, hiding behind the guise of a scandalized woman, and yet you are one of those horrible racers. You are just as bad as the others, wounding and even killing your opponents in the case of poor Mr. Allencourt. No — you are worse than all the other riders, because you do not stop at ruining their bodies, you continue in ruining the reputations of those who challenge you.”
Pemberley had no defense for himself, no rejoinder to this. What defense could he offer, now that he knew how thoroughly she had him in her clutches?
“I will not tell anyone you are Scaleheart,” Valeraine finished, “so long as you don’t tell anyone of my racing.
Your blackmail over me ends now. If you break this pact, I will ruin you far more thoroughly than you could ever ruin me.
As you have pointed out, your status has so much farther to fall than mine does. ”
With that, she turned and left the gazebo. Her hand grazed a column as she passed it, a small benediction to her patron.
Once she was a fair distance away from the gazebo, Pemberley found his voice again. “Valeraine!” he called, voice flowing over with an anguish, rougher than the anger he had shown.
She did not turn around. He did not chase after her.
But her name on his lips echoed. She thought of it, in the night, and every day after.