Dreadfully Ever After (13 page)

“So far as Mama knows,” Mary continued, “I have been summoned to Berkshire to root out an infestation of dreadfuls in Windsor Castle.”

“And she let you go?” Kitty asked, incredulous.

“ ’Let’ is not quite the right word.” Mary thought a moment and then shrugged. “She couldn’t stop me.”

Mr. Bennet nodded gravely and then walked to the divan upon which Kitty sat and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“I am very fond of you, my child,” he said, “but if you answer my next question incorrectly, I shall be forced to beat you unmercifully with bamboo rods. It will sadden me, without doubt, yet our revered Master Liu would assuredly counsel me to do far worse. Now, tell me: Did you also write a letter to your sister Lydia?”

“No.”

Mr. Bennet tightened his grip. “Truly?”

“Well, did I
write
it? Yes. But I never got the chance to sneak out and mail it. It’s still hidden in the dresser in my room.”

Mr. Bennet leaned in and kissed his daughter on the forehead.

“You are saved,” he said. “As is Mr. Darcy. If Lydia were to show up, too, our little ruse wouldn’t last the afternoon.”

“Mr. Darcy?” Mary said. “Is he in some kind of danger?”

Elizabeth sighed again and repeated her story for the benefit of her other sister. As she listened, Mary asked no questions and offered no commentary, save for a single “I’m so sorry” upon hearing that Darcy had been tainted by the plague. Once Elizabeth was done, Mary took a moment to coolly appraise each person in the room—her sisters, her father, Nezu (who didn’t seem to feel the slightest discomfort about crashing a family conference)—before speaking again.

“And none of you considered other avenues by which the cure might be obtained?”

It was the reaction Elizabeth had expected: pious disapproval. She felt her face flush with shame—and not a little resentment.

“We would not even know the cure existed, nor would my husband still be alive to benefit from it, if not for Lady Catherine,” Elizabeth said. “Our efforts here in London are made possible only through her. I see no choice but to proceed as she directs.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Mary replied with all the smugness that implies that a “yet” or “however” or “but” is coming. “Yet still I find it curious that Lady Catherine would see no better use for you and Kitty than as temptresses. The lady herself knows that women are capable of far more than mere allurement. Why would she not call upon the mastery of the deadly arts that has thwarted her so often in the past? Why resort to romantic entanglements and elaborate intrigues?”

“Because that is all Lady Catherine thinks we’re good for,” Elizabeth was about to say.

Nezu spoke first.

“If you are suggesting a more direct approach—such as, say, an assault on Sir Angus’s laboratory—I can answer your question. My mistress has already made the attempt more than once. I would say that those she sent to Bethlem Hospital met the same fate as the many she once dispatched to Pemberley.” There was the slightest pause as Nezu’s frosty gaze slid over to Elizabeth. “But I don’t know that for a fact. I only know that they were never heard from again.”

“I see,” Mary said, and again her tone told Elizabeth that a “however” or an “all the same” was on its way. Standing firmly on principle was one of her sister’s few joys in life; once she took a position, she was as likely to change it as a marble statue was to change its own.

“All the same,” Mary said, “I would point out that we are no one’s minions. We are Shaolin warriors. Or
were
, in some cases.”

She nodded at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth resisted the urge to show her just how sharp her Shaolin skills still were.

“What’s more,” Mary went on obliviously, “this reliance on roundabout—”

Nezu silenced her with a raised hand.

“Goodness!” Kitty giggled. “If only I’d known it was so easy. I’d have been doing that for years now!”

Mr. Bennet shushed her.

“You hear something?” he said to Nezu.

“Footsteps,” Elizabeth answered for him. “Just outside. A man, long-legged, firm of purpose. He is about to—”

Someone knocked on the front door.

Nezu slipped quickly to the windows. The portico wasn’t visible from there, yet one could look out on the road before the house.

“There is a carriage waiting,” Nezu reported. “A landau. Very large. Very fine.”

A moment later, a servant—one with a prodigious black eye—came in bearing a card on a silver platter.

He took it to Nezu.

“My mistress might be in Kent, but she has a long reach,” he said upon reading it. “Gossip that she has planted about the presumptuous Shevington family and their lavish One North residence has reached the right ears.”

“Sir Angus MacFarquhar’s?” Mr. Bennet said.

Nezu nodded.

“Sir Angus is here? Now?” Elizabeth said. It was the sort of pointless regurgitation of news she usually disdained—like exclaiming, “His head? Bitten off?” when informed that an acquaintance has just had his head bitten off. She couldn’t help it, though.

She wasn’t prepared for this. Wasn’t ready to play the part of seductress.

Really ... would she ever be?

Her father seemed to know just what she was thinking.

“ ’Opportunities multiply as they are seized,’ ” he said, quoting Sun Tzu. “He is here. We must act. Steel yourself as you can. It might help if you were to reflect upon what we saw of the man earlier today. I don’t think you’ll have to play the coquette, my dear.” He turned to Kitty and Mary. “Avis, Miss Millstone, wait here.”

Elizabeth was still puzzling over his advice as she followed him out to the foyer. She began to understand when she heard the angry snap in his voice once he saw Sir Angus.

“You again? Have you come to make off with another of our guests? There would be no audience this time, though I can gather the staff if you’d like.”

Sir Angus narrowed his eyes, yet he didn’t look affronted.

“Do you know who I am?” he growled.

He was asking Mr. Bennet, but it was Elizabeth who answered.

“We know your name, for it was presented to us on your card. We can infer that you are in some way related to our acquaintance Bunny MacFarquhar. Beyond that, we have only your conduct to judge by.”

Sir Angus shifted his gaze to her and held it there. Elizabeth stared back in the way she hoped he’d most appreciate—openly, boldly, un-cowed.

He was a proud, stern, hot-tempered man, her father had been reminding her. And such men often respect only those who are themselves proud, stern, and hot tempered.

Of course, sometimes they
hate
anyone who’s as proud and stern and hot tempered as they….

After a moment, the tiniest sliver of a smile appeared beneath Sir Angus’s salt-and-pepper mustache, and he nodded in a way that suggested, “Touché.”

“It is that conduct I have come here to discuss,” he said. “Afterrr speaking to my son—forrr that is what young Bunny is to me—I rrrealized that some explanation was due to you. It was not my intention to insult you today, though I can see now that’s exactly what I did. The plain truth is this: I do not approve of the dreadful races, would neverrr attend them were it left to my own scruples to decide, and have strenuously conveyed my feelings about them to my son. I was not expecting to see him at Ascot today, as obviously he was not expecting to see me. My angerrr was directed at him alone—though there was enough of it to spill overrr onto those who would keep him company while he flouted his father’s wishes. And forrr that I should, and do, apologize.”

“Apology accepted,” Mr. Bennet replied. “Your plain speaking does you credit, Sir.”

Sir Angus acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow, but his eyes were on Elizabeth again.

“I’m sure my father is sympathetic, for he knows the frustrations of willful offspring,” she said. “As for myself, I share your objections to the races, if not your zeal for displaying them. My own late husband fell to the plague, and the thought of him chasing after Irishmen for the amusement of the masses is sickening, indeed. Why I let myself be coaxed into going I do not know, but I owe you my thanks for giving us reason to leave all the sooner.”

Elizabeth did her best to sound civil, though not entirely appeased.

“Your plain speaking does
you
credit, Madam,” Sir Angus said. “I bid you both good day.”

He bowed again and then turned to go. Nezu had slipped into the hall to eavesdrop while pretending to wait for orders, and now he darted around the Bennets, trying to reach the front door to spare the gentleman the indignity of opening it himself.

“I know how to turn a doorrrknob, man,” Sir Angus snarled, and he let himself out and stomped off toward the street.

“And so our second MacFarquhar of the day slips through the net,” Nezu said.

Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth stepped up beside him.

“You are an extremely intelligent and observant young man, Nezu,” Mr. Bennet said. “When it comes to
amour
, however, you are an utter blockhead.”

“Excuse me?”

Out in the street, Sir Angus was hauling his tall, broad frame up into his landau. Once he was seated, he glanced back at the house—and, seeing that he was being watched, looked long and hard at one of the three figures in the doorway. Eventually, he pursed his lips, and though she was too far away to hear it, Elizabeth knew he was saying a single word.

“Go.”

The coachman cracked his whip, and the carriage rolled off.

“No, he didn’t slip away as cleanly as all that,” Mr. Bennet said. “In fact, I daresay he’s still ours to catch, so long as we don’t draw in the net too quickly.”

A burning queasiness churned in the pit of Elizabeth’s stomach, and her hands began to itch as if chafing at nothing but their own skin. She didn’t know if it was because she suspected her father was right or because, in spite of everything, part of her hoped he might be wrong.

With more rest and ample servings of roe and sashimi and regular doses of his aunt’s elixir, Darcy began to regain his strength. Yet the world around him remained a gray place draped in a dingy haze. Only occasionally did flashes of light and splashes of color cut through the gloom and warm him somewhere deep inside: in his dreams of tangy-fresh liverwurst and near-raw rashers and the red juice of undercooked beef running over his chin. Or anywhere there was life.

It gave him all the more reason to struggle out of bed, dress himself without fainting, and shuffle out the door, for his room now had the air of a tomb. To once again feel fully alive, he had to be among living things. Birds, insects, squirrels, people. It didn’t matter which. The mere presence of life strengthened him—though he always felt compelled to get closer, to take from it something it wasn’t giving, something hidden, hoarded. He was a hungry man always smelling a feast he couldn’t see, let alone eat.

Which was why he ended up taking so many long walks with his cousin. Lady Catherine he saw only twice a day, when she administered his medicine and coolly inquired about his dreams and appetite and bodily functions. The rest of the time she was off “on patrol” or “attending to affairs.” Her Ladyship’s servants, meanwhile, were skittish, her ninjas standoffish. Besides, it would hardly be fitting for a gentleman to keep company with the help.

So Anne became his near-constant companion, and each day they rambled around the grounds together. They spoke of their childhoods and family members long dead or, for long stretches, merely strolled side by side in silence. Thus the conversation was kept to either the past or nothing. What neither ever brought up, by unspoken mutual agreement, was how the present was once supposed to look and what the future might hold for them.

Until, that is, one of their walks took them both farther and further than ever before. It was late afternoon, approaching evening, and they’d strolled so long Darcy no longer recognized where they were. The ground swept up and down in bramble-covered hills that felt like the cresting waves of a choppy sea, and the slant of the setting sun sent beams of radiance slicing through the trees while leaving the gulleys in shadows as dark—to Darcy, anyway—as any ocean depths.

“Perhaps we should turn back,” Darcy said. “We have strayed far from the house, and the spring dreadfuls lack the sense to give Rosings a wide berth.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” Anne replied blithely.

She was dressed, as always, in black, and with Darcy’s vision muddled as it was, all he could see clearly of her was a pale face that floated along beside him, smiling serenely. She paused to admire something above them—a starling trying to stuff a fluttering moth into the upturned mouth of a cheeping chick, Darcy saw when he looked up—and then moved on.

“Perhaps the slightest bit of worry, or at least
caution
, would be in order,” Darcy said. “I am in no condition to defend us should any unmentionables avoid Lady Catherine and her traps, and you ... well ...”

“I am a weakling untrained in the ways of death,” Anne said. For some reason, her smile grew.

“I would not have used those words.”

“Surely, I captured your sentiments, though.”

They were heading down into another ravine, and the light grew so murky that Darcy was no longer certain they were on a trodden path anymore. Yet Anne walked with such a sure step, Darcy found himself carrying on beside her.

“Anne,” he began.

“Tell me, Fitzwilliam,” his cousin cut in. “Is that what first drew you to Elizabeth Bennet? Her skills as a warrior? Lady Catherine disparages them, but I can tell when she’s talking simply to convince herself. Your wife’s talents must be quite formidable for her to have withstood Her Ladyship’s wrath.”

“Elizabeth is a great warrior. Or
was
a great warrior. She’s given all that up now, of course. But, no. That is not what intrigued me. It was her spirit. Her wit. Her intelligence. Her strength of character.”

He almost stopped there. The conversation was already going places that made him uncomfortable. He couldn’t help but add one more thing, however, because he’d been thinking of it much, and it was true. It bolstered something within him to say it aloud.