But here, the Darcys’ scarlet binding glimmered around Lizzy, tantalizing and potent. My soul reached for it, but it was ungraspable. Claimed by another.
The miasma surged, colorless pestilence that drowned the world. Awareness fled.
2
ELIZABETH DARCY
LIZZY
“Elizabeth,”my husband said in my ear. “I must speak with the constable.”
I nodded, and Darcy crossed to the constable, joining Mr. Knightley, who had helped subdue the attackers. One attacker had been taken away, but the other lay tied at the constable’s feet. Behind the men, the chill autumn wind gusted through the windows, thrown wide to clear the smoke.
Memories of the attack clicked through my mind as if I were watching a reenactment. The gunmen brought their weapons to bear so slowly. They were fools. I had an eternity to act.
But that was a strange way to think of it. I knew nothing of weapons, other than profoundly disliking them.
My recollection froze at the moment I had commanded the three draca to attack. The sensation hung, bitter in the back of my throat. I had not commanded a draca since I forced the Longbourn drake to stay after Papa’s death. The concept of command repelled me—compelling any creature was wrong—but beneath that, a rawer emotion lurked. Exhilaration.
Why had this happened?
I crossed the room and sank to my heels by the man who shot at me. He lay on his side, glaring at me with an uneven squint.
Above us, the gentlemen’s conversation fell silent. Three pairs of trousered legs and polished shoes turned in my direction.
“Why did you try to kill me?” I said.
“That bleedin’ Negro got ’is hands all over me!” The man launched a spittle-spewing tirade, although at Mr. Knightley, not me. Five months ago, I would have known few of the words, and fled blushing from those. Now I had sterner standards from my visits to the slums of London. The desperate poor were usually polite, even starving in a wealthy city, but the men who earned enough for drink were unpredictable, some admirable, others as vile as this one.
“You might want to take your lady away,” the constable suggested to Darcy above my head.
“Mrs. Darcy is resilient,” Darcy said. He offered me his hand with a lift of his eyebrow, and I rose, very satisfied with my choice of husband.
Mr. Knightley gave me a refined bow at odds with his disheveled collars from tussling on the floor. He frowned at the man by our feet. “This fellow has consumed my entire reserve of string.”
“String?” I asked, looking at the fine coils around the man’s wrists.
“Mr. Knightley is a violinist,” Darcy explained. Mr. Knightley’s and my introduction had been rather rushed. “He is a founder of the Royal Philharmonic Society.”
“I know these two ruffians,” Mr. Knightley said. “They have caused trouble at meetings of the Freedom Society.”
“What is the Freedom Society?” I asked. It did not sound musical.
“We assist refugees from slavery who wish to settle in England,” Mr. Knightley answered.
“Would you be an abolitionist, ma’am?” asked the constable. “These two were with those pro-slavers. That might be the cause.”
“I support abolition, but not in a public manner.” If they wished to hurt an abolitionist, Mary would be their target. She was positively strident. I cast a worried glance to where she stood by the pianoforte, speaking to Georgiana. She seemed unshaken. Mary had become very steadfast in the past year.
Darcy indicated a vacant corner, and he and I moved to speak privately.
“That man sought you by name,” he said. “It is not hard to guess his motive. You are bound to a creature that could destroy the French army. Napoleon sought to raise a legendary dragon and failed. An informer could have reported that you succeeded.”
I snorted. “Except the Council of War insists we keep Yuánchi secret.”
After Lord Wellington told the Council that Yuánchi had risen, they sent a delegation to Pemberley. Three pompous cabinet ministers had lectured a bemused Darcy, saying that dragons did not exist and he had likely seen a distant wyvern—which reached seventy pounds or so. They thoroughly ignored me.
I led them to the shore of Pemberley lake where Yuánchi’s arrival shook the stone beneath our feet. One minister, blanched and trembling, extended a gold-sealed proclamation. Yuánchi nosed the ribbon, informed me silently he was as unimpressed as I, then departed in a storm of wind.
