Georgiana’s paintings burst with color and passion. The thought heated my cheeks. “What would you do with a painting of me?” Georgiana’s lips crooked, and the heat spread to my shoulders.
Emma wrinkled her nose. “You must have used up your entire pencil to draw all thatblack.”
There was not a thread of black on Emma. Today, she wore one of her yellow and gold gowns, although it was hidden by a khaki wool coat—one borrowed from Lizzy. Some unfathomable whim of fashion.
Georgiana resumed humming. F major. Telemann. I flipped through his scores in my mind’s eye. Fantasia No. 5.
Outside, men’s voices called out. Harriet sat up excitedly. “Are we near Pemberley?”
“Not yet,” Georgiana said. She cleared a spot on the steamed window. “There is another hill before the house. A mile to go.” Matter-of-factly, she added, “We have been within the estate for some time.”
Outside, I spotted a stout, frowning man wrapped in layers of wool. He gestured angrily at the row of stopped coaches. I leaned and saw an officer and Mr. Darcy listening. “The court protocol man wants the coaches to arrive in a different order. Even though we are disguised and indistinguishable.”
“I suppose the Prince must be first,” Emma said. “Or should it be the King, even though he is mad? Or is it reversed, and the royal family comes at the end?”
“I imagine that is the debate,” I said dryly.
Our caravan was ten coaches, twenty soldiers, and three wagons. A blind spy would guess this was the royal family fleeing London. But Yuánchi had overflown Pemberley’s woods for months without a rumor. Pemberley had no spies. It was Camelot-like, as if honor were extant, not a fable.
But our flight to Pemberley was driven by fear, not honor. Only Yuánchi could turn Fènnù aside, and Yuánchi was at Pemberley, so to Pemberley we ran. And fear was justified. Brighton Pavilion, the prince’s favored home, had been leveled and four royal cousins killed. Half of Westminster Palace was rubble, and thirty members of Parliament dead. Even a wing of Windsor Castle, that edifice of stone, had been razed, mere minutes after Lord Wellington’s men hustled the mad king and his keepers to safety.
And though only Yuánchi could turn Fènnù aside, even Yuánchi was overmatched. The dragons’ battle over London had been a clash of gods. Whole stands of buildings were crushed, the worst London disaster in a hundred and fifty years. In the end, the black dragon turned to other targets, but Yuánchi had fled, wounded, to shelter at Pemberley. Now the royal court scurried north while the remade French invasion force,l’armée des côtes de l’océan, landed with American slavers on the shores of south England.
“Will you draw me?” Emma asked Georgiana.
To avoid hearing her answer, I pushed open the carriage door and stepped onto the road.
The hills spread, sunlit and spottily snowed. I walked a few paces from the coach. The turf gave little squishes and creaks under my boots: thawed. The great freeze had been worse in London than the north, but when Fènnù left the Thames, the cold spell broke. The freeze followed the black dragon, winter made a weapon.
Emma stepped down next. “I will check on Nessy.” She headed to Nessy’scoach, her steps effortlessly balanced on a grassy fringe to avoid the mud. I scowled at her back. Beautiful, goodhearted Emma, gifted with healing. I had lugged a traveling chest with twenty pounds of medical texts.
After the violence in London, fear gripped the city. Everyone with a country estate or relatives in the north sent their children to safety. Lizzy had shuttered the school, sending the older children to the Lambton school, near Pemberley, and the younger children to the Bingleys’ Hertfordshire estates. But Lizzy had been loath to separate from Nessy, nor did I want Jane to care for a consumptive child. Most London physicians ascribed consumption to smoky air, or uncooked milk, or said it was a cancer, a hereditary defect of the lower class, but I supported a neglected theory ninety years old: the cause was a slow and invisible contagion. Purging class bias revealed the truth: the poor died in droves because they were crammed in tiny rooms. So Nessy traveled with us, but I insisted she isolate in a private coach.
Despite my irritation, I called to Emma, “Keep the windows open while you are with her.” I sounded petulant even to myself.
Georgiana came down next and took my hand. Softly she said, “Are you jealous?”
“Evidently,” I said sourly; then self-mockingly: “Ferociously.”
She whispered in my ear, “You are everything to me.”
“Be careful.”
“I have no cares at Pemberley. This is my home.”
Other carriage doors opened. Even royalty grows tired of sitting. The coach before ours disgorged two uniformed attendants, then the prince, fifty years old, swinging his arms beside his overfed stomach. Georgiana and I curtsied; she did not release my hand. When we rose, a smile played on his lips. “Miss Darcy. Miss Bennet.” There was a thoughtful pause before he strode toward the courtier of protocol.
“Becareful,” I repeated.
“Twice!” she teased. “Are you my elder sister?”
I gave a crooked smile. “I have seen more of the world than you.”
“I have been to France and Greece. You have not.”
“Last year, Curate Mincekeep rallied his mob against witches at the doorstep of Longbourn. Yesterday, I read the newspaper accounts from Brighton. The invaders persecute those with dark skin, and ‘unnatural’ men and women vanish into their jails as well. There are no champions for the nonconformant, here or there.”
Seriously, she whispered, “Pemberley is safe,” and squeezed my hand before returning to the coach. I curled my fingers, preserving her warmth.
