He had paid the price for her deal, and Georgiana even more so. “What bargain did you strike?”
“He gave me a ring that would cause my sister to lose her powers as soon as it was set on her finger. It seemed to work, though it also made her rather simple. I did not object to that, to be frank.”
“But it wore off eventually.”
She hesitated. “As I understand it, it ended abruptly, around the time I arrived at Pemberley earlier this year. I suspect the effect was also tied to the tracking spell on my wedding ring. Once the dragons destroyed my ring, Catherine went back to her old self. Typical fae trickery, though I cannot understand why he would care about being able to track me.”
How much should he tell her? “He seems to have a peculiar interest in our family, as I have learned to my regret. But there is something else I must ask you. What was the price you paid for his help?”
“Does it matter?” She sounded defeated.
“It may.” He needed all the information he could get.
She looked away. “I had to deliver a different ring to another person and make certain he wore it, at least briefly.”
“Who? And what did it do?”
“He never told me the purpose of it.” She hesitated for a long moment. “I was to give it to an obscure French officer, someone I had never heard of. By the name of Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Suddenly Darcy could not catch his breath. The implication was clear. Napoleon the dragon had somehow avoided being in the High King’s thrall, even though he had killed many people. But the High King could not let that stand. For some reason he could not cast his spell on Napoleon himself, and so he needed a mortal to deliver it.
And sometime thereafter, that spell had made Napoleon his ally. The High King would have helped him to rise to the highest rank, never losing a battle, teaching him how to hunt down dragons in hiding. That ring had been the first step to Napoleon’s conquests. Soon the price would be England’s independence.
And he knew just when it had happened. His mouth went dry. “That was why you took Jack and me to France, supposedly to broaden our horizons. So you could find him.”
She raised a delicate eyebrow. “I had no other reason to explain traveling to Paris just after the Terror. And it did broaden your horizons.”
He was not mollified. “You took advantage of Jack’s fascination with soldiers to go to a military review. By God, was that the officer you invitedto dine with us? Napoleon himself?” He remembered the evening well, although mostly for his own efforts to avoid their guests.
“I could hardly walk up to a stranger and give him a ring. This way he was pleased to receive it as a token of my esteem, and he placed it on his finger immediately.” She glanced down at her book, as if wishing she could end the discussion.
That had been it, though – the beginning of the entire disaster. All those hundreds of thousands dead, Europe ransacked, and England about to fall.
All because his mother had delivered a ring for the High King.
Somehow he forced out the words. “And the other part of your bargain, about Georgiana?”
She went pale. “How did you find out about that?”
He could tell this was hurting her, but he needed to know. “The High King told her. That you were so desperate for a daughter you traded a lock of your hair.”
“Not so much a daughter as any mage child. You must consider the situation I faced. Frederica was but a child, and she was the only potential female mage left alive apart from Anne de Bourgh. And six boys, none of whom were interested in magery. I knew I could not bear another child without help because Catherine had made certain of that. But that ended up costing me far more.”
“Do you ever think of her, your daughter in Faerie?” He should not ask, but the spectre of his lost sister haunted him.
Her lips went white. “I do my best not to consider things I am powerless to change,” she said, but her voice cracked a little. “I am fully aware of how much damage I caused. I wish I could have found a different way.Anyother way.” Her words had the ring of hard-felt truth.
Should he risk saying something more? “I wish the dragons had done more to stop Lady Catherine before she made you so desperate that you turned to the fae. Why did they let her go, when they knew she had stolen powers from her dragon? They must have known no human could stand against her.”
His mother blinked several times, as if she had something in her eye. “Yes. I wish that, too,” she said in a small voice.
Time to abandon that painful subject. “I have wondered how you managed to contact the High King.”
She seemed to rally a little. “That was the simple part. Too simple, in hindsight. He was eager for me to find him.”
“But you must have done something.”
“There is a faerie ring in the woods near Matlock. Everyone knows about it; there were old stories of people who disappeared in it, and music that seems to come from nowhere. I went there and said that I wanted to make a bargain with a fae sorcerer. A small fae appeared and asked me to wait, and then a few minutes later, the king himself came. As I said, too easy.”
