Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis
Chapter 2
The road to Elinor’s personal ruin began just outside Hathergill Hall.
Unfortunately, she had to pack first.
It would have been infinitely more satisfying to march directly from the drawing room to the front door without looking back. But even in the grip of the most towering rage she had ever experienced, Elinor found that she was incapable of abandoning practicality so entirely.
All of her clean clothing was still folded neatly in her bedroom, as were her precious letters from her sisters…and, of course, her four shillings and sixpence. If she abandoned them, she would have nothing at all.
Unfortunately, by the time she finished folding her clothes into her valise and slipped her few coins into her reticule, her lovely, warm haze of fury began to slip away. She tried hard to cling to it, but it was too late. Like it or not, her mind had begun to work again.
And the practical, sensible conclusions that it drew, when it looked back at the last half hour…
Elinor’s fingers trembled uncontrollably as she set the last of Harry’s letters into the valise. She drew a deep, gasping breath. It sounded like a death rattle.
Sir Jessamyn was sitting on her bed—or rather, what had been her bed, for the last six months—gazing up at her with inquisitive golden eyes. She put out one trembling hand to touch the hot, smooth scales on his head.
“Oh, Sir Jessamyn,” she whispered. “What have I done?”
Downstairs, she heard the all-too-familiar sound of Penelope’s voice rising in a furious lecture. It was far closer than it had been the last time she’d heard it; her cousin must have left the drawing room by now. From the sounds of it, she was near the front door—probably demanding that the poor footmen apprehend Sir Jessamyn, and quite possibly Elinor, too, depending on exactly how angry she was and how much revenge she planned to exact once her father returned.
Elinor looked at Sir Jessamyn, and he looked back at her. “I think we’d better take the servants’ stairs,” she said. “Don’t you?”
They left through the tradesmen’s entrance at the back of the house. It felt horribly like skulking away in defeat, but it was definitely the practical thing to do. Penelope didn’t care to keep her toys once she had lost interest in them…but she never wanted anyone else to have them.
Elinor didn’t like to think what would have happened to the little dragon the first time he lost control on Penelope’s shoulder during a society ball.
“At least there’s one consolation, Sir Jessamyn,” she said, as she set off down the long and dusty road that led through the fields and away from Hathergill Hall. “You’ll never have to enter Society, now.”
Sir Jessamyn chirped softly and rested his small, warm head against her hair. The weight of him on her shoulder felt oddly reassuring. As she felt his hot breath brush against her ear, the tight band of panic around Elinor’s chest finally began to loosen its grip, until she could breathe properly again.
It was true that Elinor had lost her parents to death and her sisters to the far ends of Britain. Even if she could afford the travel costs to reach either Rose or Harry, it would be a wasted trip; their host relatives had made it perfectly clear that each of them could cope with one Tregarth girl and no more.
But at least she wasn’t alone anymore.
“The question is, Sir Jessamyn, what are we to do?”
Sir Jessamyn, unsurprisingly, refrained from comment. So it was left to Elinor to think for both of them as she walked down the endless road, kicking up dust with every step.
It was an ordinary, bumpy and narrow country road much like the ones back home, lined by a wall of thick hedgerows on one side and a murky, water-filled ditch on the other, dug to carry away the run-off from the farm fields. The sun was still shining overhead quite as cheerfully as if she hadn’t tossed away her entire future. As she walked along, she could almost believe that she was safely home again, on her way back to her younger sisters and their parents after a long morning’s walk for pleasure.
Almost…but not quite. Two crows perched on top of the hedgerow ahead; when their beady eyes alighted on Elinor and her companion, the bigger one let out a hoarse caw, and Sir Jessamyn stiffened nervously, his long, curving claws clenching tightly around Elinor’s shoulder.
“Shh.” Elinor reached up a hand to stroke him. “Shh. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again, I promise.”
The crows took off in a flutter of black wings, beating their way into the sky. As Elinor watched them fly away, she heard her cousin’s words again. “I was tired of you looking like a crow all the time…”
Her fingers clenched instinctively. Sir Jessamyn made a sound of protest.
“Oh, I am sorry! Poor Sir Jessamyn.” Elinor loosened her grip on him and leaned her head against his apologetically. “I’m not doing very well so far, am I? But I will find a safe home for both of us. Somehow.”
Harry would have thought of some bizarre but brilliant scheme by now, she was certain. It was due to Harry’s inventiveness, combined with Elinor’s stubborn practicality and Rose’s overflowing charm, that the three girls had survived six months of abject penury—and managed to cling to the safety of their father’s vicarage, despite all of the parish council’s attempts to reclaim it—before their relatives had finally claimed them.
But Harry wasn’t here now. And Elinor…
Crows, she thought, and sighed. Perhaps Penelope had been right about her. Elinor certainly couldn’t dream of winning a wealthy husband to rescue her from poverty now; she had neither the looks nor the charm for that fantasy, and besides, she was sensible enough to know that wealthy gentlemen weren’t naturally prone to marrying penniless girls. In fact, she was lucky not to be as startlingly beautiful as her sister Rose, right now; a beautiful girl on her own, without any protection, would be in serious danger from any gentlemen she met.
But being plain and tedious—yes, even crow-like—could have some benefits. One of her aunt’s friends had complained again and again over the past few months of the difficulty of finding any governesses for her younger children who wouldn’t attract her horrible older sons’ attentions. Why shouldn’t Elinor be the answer to that sort of plea?
She might not be as clever as Harry, but she was perfectly adept at sums and at French, she had read voraciously throughout her life, and now, she had one more dazzling qualification. A mere housemaid might not be allowed to bring her own dragon into a house, but a governess could claim a dragon of her own as a real advantage: she could teach her wealthy students how to properly handle Society’s most fashionable new accessory.
It was the perfect solution for both of them.
Elinor was so pleased that she stopped walking to grin at Sir Jessamyn on her shoulder. “There!” she said. “I have thought of something. We will be all right, after all!”
And then four snorting carriage horses swept up around the curve of the road behind her and the leader’s shoulder knocked her off her feet, straight into the watery ditch.
* * *
If there wasanything worse for a lady of dignity than being sent head-first into a ditch, it was, of course, being witnessed flying head-first into a ditch. Even as Elinor jerked her head up out of the dirty water, panting and spitting out dark-coloured liquid that tasted appallingly like manure, she was horrified to hear the carriage pulling to a halt close by with a jangle of reins and a clatter of horses’ hooves. Worse yet, she heard a man’s worried voice—and then the unmistakable thump of feet landing on the ground.
She groaned, and wished she couldn’t glimpse her own reflection in the murky water.
Her bonnet had come off in her fall, and at least half of her hair pins had escaped. Her face and gown were both hopelessly streaked with mud—not to mention her arms, which were still planted elbow-deep in the disgusting water, a foot or so beneath the road, while the lower half of her body clung tenaciously to the dirt above. Her skirts had thereby slid well above her ankles, and the only way she could imagine to return to safety would be to wriggle backwards ignominiously, like a worm.
If only this ditch were a few helpful feet deeper, Elinor would have let herself fall all the rest of the way in so that she could swim away from the social embarrassment.
The little dragon, who had hopped off her shoulder just in time, nosed anxiously at her exposed ankles, squeaking.
“It’s all right, Sir Jessamyn.” Elinor sighed and braced herself to start wriggling. After the last six months with Penelope, she ought to have been hardened to humiliation. “I’ll just—oh!” Her voice came out as a squeak of surprise as two big, warm hands closed with shocking intimacy around her waist.
“I do beg your pardon.” It was the same voice she’d heard calling out directions to the coachman. Now the speaker lifted her up and set her on her feet with apparent ease, while Sir Jessamyn skittered back nervously. The moment that Elinor’s feet touched the ground, the hands that held her dropped away, and the man behind her cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to presume, but it seemed the only way to save you.”
Elinor turned around...and had to stifle a groan of pure horror.
The gentleman who’d saved her was tall and broad-shouldered and only a few years older than her, with rumpled brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and a ruefully appealing smile. Even worse, he was dressed in the sort of close-fitting, forest-green coat and embroidered silver waistcoat that positively shrieked of money and taste—just like the elegant traveling carriage that had pulled up behind him.
Of coursehe was a romantic ideal come to life! What else could possibly make this moment more painful?
In any one of the sentimental novels that Rose had always devoured and that Elinor had always mocked, this would have been precisely the moment when the wealthy hero fell head over heels in love with the innocent young heroine and swept her away to a life of ease and romance as his bride...barring, of course, all the necessary misadventures with wicked cousins and leering highwaymen along the way.
Rose would have swooned over a scene like that.
Most of Elinor’s muddy, wet hair was plastered across her neck or pasted to the shoulders of her ruined gown. One long, slimy hank hung over her right eye and directly across her mouth. She blew it away from her face in a sigh and saw her rescuer’s lips twitch before he raised one hand to politely shield his expression.
Somehow, she didn’t think he was about to sweep her off her feet into a life of romantic luxury.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly, and stepped away from him. Her elbows, shoulder, and back felt like one big bruise; her dignity was far more battered. She turned painfully to pick up her valise, which had fallen to the ground a few feet away. “I appreciate your help, sir, but I won’t delay you any…oh,” she breathed, staring at her own bare wrist. “Oh, no.”
This time, her voice didn’t squeak. It dropped a full octave.
Despair did that, it seemed. Elinor had finally noticed what she should have realized immediately: her reticule was missing.
It had been hanging around her wrist before the accident. Now, her wrist wasn’t the only thing that was bare. So was the ground around her.
She lunged back towards the watery ditch and dropped to her knees in the dirt, heedless of any further damage to her gown.
“What is it?” said the man behind her. “What’s amiss?” And then, as she leaned over to plunge her hand into the water, “Be careful! You’ll fall back in.”
Elinor ignored him. All of her attention was fixed on the muddy water below. She couldn’t even see through the muck that filled it. She leaned further and further forward, swiping her hand desperately through it, until…
“There!” She finally felt it under her fingers: a plain cotton bag, squidged into a muddy ball.
“Wait!” Her rescuer grabbed her waist again just in time, as she began to slide back over the edge into the ditch. “For heaven’s sake. Whatever it is you’re hunting for, it can’t be worth the risk.”
“Oh, yes, it can!” Elinor straightened triumphantly, holding the reticule high. “It’s…” Her mouth dropped open. She finished, blank with shock: “It’s empty.”
The little reticule had come open in the ditch.
She stared at it. Her vision blurred.
Four shillings and sixpence, carefully saved over so many months…
Gone.