Wyrde and Wayward

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘No,’ said Gussie, backing away. ‘I had nothing to do with this! This is an abomination! If you cannot see that Lord Maundevyle wanted nothing to do with the Wyrde, it is plain enough to everyone else!’

  ‘But you had everything to do with it,’ said her ladyship, smiling blissfully. ‘Sweet scion of Werth, have you still no suspicion?’

  Footsteps sounded. Strolling up to his mother’s side came Charles Selwyn, looking… altered. Not so profoundly so as his brother, for he was still human, still himself. But there was a suspicion of ferality about his suddenly hawkish gaze, and when he smiled — not a nice smile, he had been taking his cues from Theo — Gussie rather thought that his teeth were longer. Sharper.

  Gussie looked from Lord Maundevyle to his brother and back, an unpleasant sensation unfolding in her gut. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I — I danced with them both, and only they, but surely—’

  Lady Maundevyle, still smiling — really, by now the expression was making her appear quite mad — held out her own hand to Gussie. ‘Clarissa’s Wyrde sleeps too deeply to wake,’ she said. ‘Even with such encouragement as you can provide, Miss Werth. But, I beg you. Give but one chance to me.’

  ‘You want me to take your hand?’ Gussie demanded. ‘Is that supposed to be effective of something?’

  Lady Maundevyle, a vision of patience, waited.

  Miss Frostell stirred at Gussie’s side. ‘I have often wondered why Lady Werth seemed intent on keeping you at the Towers,’ she offered. ‘Have not you?’

  Gussie had, in fact. Not that her aunt had ever gone so far as to forbid Gussie to leave the grounds, or anything so gothic. But by dint of steady, mild discouragement, and on one or two occasions whisking her away to one or another of the Werths’ alternate properties, she had contrived to keep Gussie away from large gatherings such as this. When Gussie had danced before, she had danced with her own cousins, together with one or two scant others chosen from the surrounding families by some logic Gussie had never been privy to. It now dawned on her that her few erstwhile partners had all been plain and unWyrded, and Lady Werth had probably had reason to imagine they would remain so. Like Clarissa.

  Gussie stared at her own hands as though they might, at any moment, sprout wings and fly away. Or set fire to her own face. ‘You mean,’ she said slowly, ‘that I can call forth the Wyrde?’

  ‘It is a source of constant surprise to me that you should never have known it,’ said Lady Maundevyle. ‘I cannot think what Georgiana was thinking in keeping it from you. She has known it these many years, I assure you.’

  ‘As have you?’ Gussie left off examining her own, traitorous hands, and directed a challenging stare at her stark-mad hostess.

  ‘We used to correspond. I heard much of your early escapades, Miss Werth, including your aunt’s suspicions upon just this point. You caused a commotion at more than one party, before she realised the nature of your powers.’

  Gussie blanched, picturing herself at three or four years old, heedlessly sprinkling Wyrde-curses about like an abominable wish-fairy.

  ‘It is a great gift,’ said her ladyship, detecting, perhaps, a distinct lack of joy in Gussie’s features. ‘I beg you to share it now with me.’

  ‘Lord Maundevyle does not find it so,’ she said. ‘And look at Mr. Selwyn! The gift was yours, my lady, in being free of such a mixed blessing. You were ordinary — respectable — and so was I—’ Gussie, choked with shameful emotion, was obliged to leave off speaking.

  She felt a touch at her elbow, and turned her head, expecting to see Miss Frostell there. Instead, to her surprise, she found Theo. ‘Daresay all will be well, Gus,’ he said.

  Gussie’s composure vanished. ‘It will not! Lord Maundevyle has turned into a dragon and will die of despair, and it is my fault!’ She stood, trembling and taking in great gulping breaths, unsure just what had so totally undone her customary self-command.

  Theo subjected Lord Maundevyle to an unimpressed scrutiny. ‘If he’s minded to die, let him get on with it,’ he said. ‘Feeble of him, but each to their own.’

  ‘I certainly shall live,’ said Mr. Selwyn acidly. ‘But mother will pine away if you do not satisfy her life’s wish, Miss Werth. I beg you will not subject us to the agonies of watching her waste away with disappointment.’

  ‘Something must be done about Lord Maundevyle,’ said Gussie stubbornly.

  ‘Nothing to be done,’ said his brother, utterly without sympathy. ‘He is changed, and it cannot be taken back.’

  Miss Frostell said, ‘I hope he shall not forever be a dragon. It would be inconvenient never again to be a man, and he could hardly take his seat in the House of Lords in that state. Why, the chairs could never be big enough.’

  Gussie was surprised into a damp laugh. ‘Chairs may be more easily altered than his lordship, I fear.’

  ‘Miss Werth.’ Lady Maundevyle’s show of patience was over. She shook her outstretched hand, a sternly beckoning gesture, and her smile had vanished.

  Gussie deliberated. She had not yet had time to accustom herself to her changed identity, nor to consider what this Wyrde of hers truly meant. The transformation she had helped to effect in Lord Maundevyle had deeply shaken her, not to mention that of Mr. Selwyn. Was she prepared to do it again, even if it was at her ladyship’s own request?

  She reflected, with little satisfaction, on the nature of fate. She had demanded an answer to the mystery of Lady Maundevyle’s interest in her; an answer she had received. And now? Much as she might deplore her aunt’s apparent decision to keep her ignorant as to her own nature, some part of her also wished futilely for the simplicity of those days. Half an hour as a Wyrded Werth, and already she wished to go back to mundane ordinariness.

  Feeble, she told herself.

  Right, if Lady Maundevyle wanted to gamble with her own fate, let her bear what consequences might come; Gussie would take no responsibility for it.

  ‘Very well, ma’am,’ she said. ‘But I must be permitted immediately to go home.’

  ‘I have never sought to keep you here against your will,’ said her ladyship.

  ‘Only to bring me here against my will. And now I understand the reason why.’

  ‘Couldn’t have just paid a visit?’ said Lord Bedgberry. ‘Mauled Miss Werth about a bit on her own ground, and then cleared off? Would have been simpler.’

  ‘That could never have been proper,’ said Lady Maundevyle, rather severely, and Gussie was bereft of any possible response to such a distinction of etiquette.

  ‘Right,’ said Theo. ‘Naturally not.’

  Abruptly wearied of the Selwyns’ games, and exhausted in general, Gussie stretched out her hand to her hostess. Whether it was her touch alone that could awaken a sleeping Wyrde, or whether a combination of that and her general proximity, she did not imagine the procedure would take longer than a moment or two. If Lady Maundevyle had it in her to turn Wyrded, she would be forever transformed before the evening was out.

  Leaving Gussie free to travel all night if she would, just so long as she was restored to all the familiarity and comfort of her own home before many more days had passed.

  And could then confront Lady Werth.

  Before her hand met Lady Maundevyle’s, however, a sudden surge of motion caught her attention, behind and to the left of her. Scarlet scales flashed and shone; something vast loomed over her; an impact knocked her prone, and left her winded, with a smarting pain in her left side.

  She glowered up at Lord Maundevyle, whose claws proposed to keep her in so humiliating a predicament. ‘This is a rudeness beyond anything, sir! I demand that you release me.’

  He did not, however. His head tossed, in the grip of some heightened emotion once again (truly, she had not imagined that a mere transformation into dragonkin could effect so profound an alteration upon the taciturn lord’s character. Who could have suspected that he possessed such fervent feelings?).

  ‘Henry!’ shrieked Lady Maundevyle. ‘How dare you interfere! Release
Miss Werth at once!’

  His lordship ignored this as well, and remained unmoved.

  Gussie felt his talons tighten around her waist.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she whispered, seized by a sudden deep foreboding. ‘I do hope you are not entertaining any thoughts of—’

  Lord Maundevyle reared up, his wings spreading wide, and flapped great gusts of wind over the few remaining guests. Gussie’s words ended in a choked scream as she was abruptly borne into the air, his lordship displaying none of his siblings’ aptitude for abduction, for she was dangled upside-down, a position of neither comfort nor dignity, and he did not even appear to notice.

  ‘Henry!’ shrieked his mother again, as Lord Maundevyle rose into the air. ‘I will have my Wyrde!’

  She was not answered. Amid a resounding splintering and crashing and rumbling of ruined stonework, Lord Maundevyle signalled his opinion of his mother’s scheming by destroying the ballroom of Starminster Hall, his enormous bulk tearing down half the wall as he forced his way into the skies. A rush of cool night air upon Gussie’s face came as a shock, but not half so much as the experience of being carried aloft, still the wrong way up, her posture affording her an excellent view of the ground as it receded to a distance of twenty feet — thirty — one hundred—

  Gussie shut her eyes, and tried to pretend that the thin scream splitting the soft and dulcet evening belonged to somebody else.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Augusta will be hopping mad,’ commented Miss Frostell into the ensuing silence. ‘To be carried off twice in one week! What a heroine of romance! Not even Mrs. Radcliffe could be equal to it.’

  ‘Awfully bad luck,’ Theo agreed. ‘Think she will want to remain with Lord Maundevyle, too?’

  ‘I can hardly imagine it likely,’ said Miss Frostell. ‘His lordship could not offer her half the comforts she had enjoyed at Starminster, and there is the matter of propriety to be considered.’

  Theo duly considered it. ‘Is it improper, for an unmarried female to be alone with an unmarried dragon?’

  Miss Frostell seemed arrested by the question. ‘I cannot think how it comes about, but somehow I have never before considered the matter.’

  ‘Unaccountable,’ Theo agreed. ‘For my part, I think—’

  ‘Will you be silent!’ said Lady Maundevyle, in a tone of such venom as to shock Theo. Really, she seemed an altogether different person. ‘Of course Miss Werth must be recovered, and my son also. They must all be brought back to me, and then we may straighten out this deplorable— mess—’ Her words faltered as her eye fell on the ruin of her ballroom, and she swayed on her feet. Her remaining son was obliged to support her, lest she disgrace herself with just such a recumbent posture as Gussie had lately occupied.

  ‘Do not trouble yourself overmuch, Mama,’ said the highwayman at her elbow. Heavens, but that was Miss Selwyn’s voice. Theo stared.

  ‘It’s my belief this whole family is mad,’ he declared.

  ‘Charles and I will go after Miss Werth,’ Miss Selwyn continued, but she directed at him such a smile—! Saucy and knowing and not at all ashamed of herself.

  Theo felt a stirring of interest.

  ‘In point of fact,’ said Miss Frostell, ‘Lord Bedgberry, Lady Honoria and I will go after Miss Werth.’

  Miss Selwyn’s smile turned into a glower. ‘I believe we are much more likely to anticipate our brother’s movements, Miss Frostell. What, do you mean to trail them all over the countryside?’

  ‘Having spent the last three days of my life doing just that,’ said Miss Frostell, ‘I had imagined it possible to continue. And, you know, following a scarlet dragon across Somerset must be far easier than tracing a mere coach.’

  ‘It is night,’ said Charles Selwyn, baring his teeth at Miss Frostell. ‘No one will have seen anything of my brother’s flight.’

  Miss Frostell folded her arms. ‘And where do you think he will go?’

  ‘He will go to one of our family’s lesser properties, naturally. You cannot be imagined to have any notion what, or where, those are.’

  ‘You might, however, consent to tell me. Our goal is the same; why might not we help one another?’

  ‘Nearly the same,’ put in Theo. ‘No occasion for bringing Gussie back here. We’ll take her home to the Towers.’

  Theo did not imagine he had said anything wrong, but Miss Frostell directed a cold stare at him anyway. ‘Thank you, Lord Bedgberry,’ she said in tones of ice. ‘That is most helpful.’

  ‘Gussie should never have been here at all,’ he said coldly. ‘Look what’s come of it!’

  ‘I do not at all disagree, but to say so just then—! You will never make a conspirator, my lord.’

  ‘She has promised Mama a service,’ said Charles Selwyn. ‘It must be performed.’

  Theo showed the fellow his teeth.

  Charles’s lip curled, displaying an incisor to rival Theo’s own. Not the same Wyrde, his; Charles was a wilder, feral thing, very low, in Theo’s opinion. But that he had the might to match Theo tooth-for-tooth could no longer admit of a doubt.

  Briefly, Theo heaped curses upon Gussie’s head, whose very wilfulness and curiosity had enabled the mad Maundevyle family to achieve these lamentable changes. Then, cursing himself for disloyalty, he said: ‘Do as you please, Charles. I shall find my cousin, and take her home, with or without your interference.’

  ‘We,’ said Miss Frostell.

  ‘Yes, quite,’ said Great-Aunt Honoria, appearing from somewhere in a flurry of cold wind and fresh blood. ‘Your uncle and I have been on the watch, Theo dear, and can tell you in which direction to go.’

  Theo bowed to the floating severed head. ‘Much obliged, Aunt.’

  ***

  ‘No.’

  Sometime later, when the nightmarish flight had at last drawn to a close, thus spake Gussie. ‘This is wholly unsuitable. In fact, it is the worst accommodation with which I have ever been presented.’

  Lord Maundevyle had not covered himself with glory, in his first outing as an airborne coachman. Unused to the functions of his wings, and also their unwieldy size, he had achieved a drunken progress from Starminster out into the surrounding countryside, more than once dipping so low in his flight as almost to dash Gussie’s brains out on the unforgiving ground below. She had quickly lost track of their direction, or ceased to wonder where they might be going. To endure, with her eyes tightly shut and her breath held against any further screaming, was all that she could venture to attempt.

  And now she stood in a cave.

  ‘I do not know where you even contrived to find such an unprepossessing place!’ she continued, for railing against the privations of cavernly accommodation suited her better than shrieking at his lordship about his crimes as an abductor (apparently it ran in the family); his failings as a driver; and his total inability to communicate anything whatsoever of his intentions.

  ‘I should count myself lucky to have been set on my feet,’ she said, attempting, mostly unsuccessfully, to survey whatever the cave might consider to be its stock of comforts. The moon shed a strong enough light over the woods and fields of Somerset tonight, but little of it filtered in through the cave-mouth, and Gussie could discern scarcely anything at all. Even Lord Maundevyle had faded into shadow, and he was the size of a house.

  He had, in fact, come close to dropping her on her head as he had landed before the cave’s yawning mouth, saving her only at the last instant, with a lucky catch of his claws. Gussie’s gown would never forgive his lordship, but her head had an altogether different perspective.

  She heard a grunt, and a sigh, and a shuffling.

  ‘You could not manage a word or two?’ she pleaded. ‘I can imagine it would be no easy matter, with that mouth, but it would really add immeasurably to my comfort.’

  Another shuffling sound.

  ‘I should like very much to know why we are here,’ said Gussie. ‘If you felt the need to escape your family I could in no way blame you, for it’
s my belief they are all of them mad. But need I be dragged along with you? If your mother wishes to follow your reluctant example and make a dragoness of herself, or some such thing, that must be her own business.’

  A snort.

  ‘Your family loyalty is commendable,’ said Gussie mendaciously. ‘But I do not think your mother will appreciate this masterful attempt at promoting her welfare. Few ladies would thank you for overriding our decisions, though you are always surprised when we are annoyed by it.’

  She did not understand what, of all the things she had lately said, summoned his lordship out of the shadows, but his head erupted out of the depths of the cave, so suddenly as to send her scuttling backwards with a small shriek. He glared at her, his golden eyes hard and unamused, and then — then! — shoved her with his snout.

  ‘Shocking reply!’ said Gussie, smoothly correcting her balance. ‘But I am right, you know. Your mother will be extremely angry with you.’

  He snorted, so forcefully as to send streams of smoke billowing from his nostrils.

  Gussie took another prudent step back.

  Then, his anger dissipating, he laid his head at her feet and looked up at her with big, doleful golden eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ said Gussie, recognising this as an appeal. ‘I see. It was not so much your mother you wished to help, but yourself? Is that why you made off with me?’

  The enormous eyes blinked once, slowly.

  ‘But what do you imagine I can do for you? I did not precisely turn you into a dragon, and I cannot turn you back again.’

  A wistful sigh, expressed in twin puffs of steam.

  ‘Until tonight I had no notion I had any Wyrde at all, and I am still only imperfectly acquainted with what it might be. But it appears I am effective only in encouraging your own Wyrde to rise to the fore, and do with you whatever it will. If you would like it to go away again, well, I believe you are out of luck, my lord.’

  The eyes narrowed.

  ‘It may be possible to return to your lordly form, but I have no idea by what means. You will have to manage that yourself.’