“Utterly cowardly,” he agreed as he rose. He offered her his arm, and one corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile. “What do you say? May I grovel in private, after all?”
She clasped her hands firmly in front of her and walked before him to the door. “Luckily for you, my dragon enjoys the fresh air.”
“Excellent,” Benedict said. “I knew there was a good reason that they’d become so popular.”
Sir Jessamyn lifted his head with eager attention, golden gaze flicking back and forth expectantly.
And really, Elinor told herself a few minutes later, it hadn’t only been an excuse. As they stepped out of the house, Sir Jessamyn tipped his head back in pure bliss. His thin, forked tongue darted out to taste the air; he gave a shiver of delight.
Benedict laughed appreciatively and reached over to stroke Sir Jessamyn’s back, which glowed and glittered with colour in the open sunlight. “I see what you mean. He is much happier now, isn’t he?”
“Well, dragons weren’t meant to live in drawing rooms,” said Elinor. “Or in houses at all, for that matter.”
“You should hear Aubrey on the topic.” Benedict’s smile slipped as their gazes met, and their earlier conversation echoed silently between them. “Mrs. De Lacey, I must—”
“Wait.” They were still standing directly in front of the house, overlooked by the windows to Penelope’s bedroom. Elinor turned away from Benedict and set out across the carefully-manicured lawn. “There’s a little wilderness on the east side of the house,” she said. “We can talk there.”
He followed her in silence, until they’d walked through the gap in the low stone wall that enclosed the Hathergill’s “wilderness.” It was, Elinor had always thought, the most orderly wilderness she’d ever seen, but still, there were enough rocks and bushes and long-branched trees to make it feel nearly natural. Better yet, it was completely private.
She reached out to touch the tallest rock—really an ornamental boulder, set beside a long stone bench—and Sir Jessamyn ran down her arm to bask on top of it. When she looked up, she found Benedict studying her with disconcerting intensity.
“You knew exactly where to come,” he said.
“I asked a housemaid for advice, earlier,” said Elinor. “Maids know everything.”
Unfortunately, she added silently.
She had failed in her first attempt to earn Sally’s silence and her own letters—and after that first failure, the second attempt would be infinitely more difficult.
Benedict opened his mouth as if to speak—then shook his head and turned away. He was facing the drooping willow that spread its branches across the small pond nearby, and he might have been appreciating its beauty, but Elinor saw the stiffness in his shoulders and was not fooled.
“I owe you an apology, Mrs. De Lacey.”
Elinor drew a deep breath and sat down on the bench. “Yes,” she said, “you do. How did you realize?”
He let out a half-laugh. “Well, I certainly knew I was being offensive at the time, but it wasn’t until I spoke to Aubrey that I knew I’d also been mistaken.”
Elinor’s fingers curled around the cool stone of the bench. “You spoke to Mr. Aubrey?”
“I knew what I believed I’d seen, but you were so outraged…I thought I had better make quite certain of my facts.” He still hadn’t turned to face her.
Elinor swallowed. “And what did Mr. Aubrey tell you?”
“Very little.” He shook his head, reaching out to run one finger along the line of a willow branch. “He kept muttering about fairy tales and practical jokes. I take it he didn’t care for what you asked him about your dragon?”
“No,” Elinor said, “he didn’t. But…” Her fingers were beginning to ache; she forced herself to ease her grip on the bench. “He wasn’t any more specific than that?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Amusement crept into Benedict’s voice. “When I made the mistake of trying to press him, he launched into a fiery lecture on how fairy tales have been the ruin of dragon scholarship. He thinks they should be banned, and all existing collections burned, by order of the King. I wasn’t sure whether first to enlighten him on the Prince Regent’s part in our government or try to argue over the literary merits of fiction…so I took the coward’s way out and left him to his studies.”
“Very wise of you.” Elinor’s voice sounded thin and airy.
He still didn’t know the truth, after all. She was relieved that Mr. Aubrey had kept her secret. Shewas.
But she also, irrationally, felt bereft.
Absurd, she told herself, and stiffened her spine. “And? What about your accusation that I stole my dragon?”
“That…” Benedict finally turned to face her, but he still didn’t meet her eyes. “That was an unjust conclusion to leap to, I’m afraid. There was no reason, if you’d helped Elinor Tregarth in other ways, that you should have turned against her in that despicable fashion. By far the most sensible conclusion, I finally realized, is that you are looking after her dragon for her until she finds a more stable situation.”
