Dreadfully Ever After (4 page)

“I was afraid I wouldn’t even get a chance to—” She stopped herself and smiled. “But here you are. How do you feel, my love?”

“Why am I still alive?” Darcy croaked.

His wife’s smile faded.

“We have hopes the infection can be stopped.”

“How?”

“I have sent for your aunt. You remember what she did for Charlotte Collins.”

“I do. I remember what became of Charlotte Collins as well. I remember her—”

He coughed, unable to go on. But in Elizabeth’s eyes, he could see her remembering, too.

Her old friend eating leaves; picking and licking at her own open sores; losing the ability to speak or think coherently; in short, deteriorating into a grotesque mockery of humanity.

Elizabeth brought a goblet of water to his lips, and as he took a soothing sip another memory returned: Lady Catherine forcing him to drink something that made his tongue tingle and his throat constrict. It had been no dream, he now knew.

“There have been improvements in the serum in recent years,” Elizabeth said. “Your aunt believes it might cure you entirely if we act quickly enough.”

“And I have already received my first dose?”

“Yes. The first of many—more than Lady Catherine was able to carry with her. She has asked that you be taken to Rosings to continue your convalescence there.”

“I see. When do we leave?”

“Immediately. In fact, her ladyship’s ninjas will be up shortly to collect you.” Elizabeth paused, and when she forged on her words sounded strained, forced. “Georgiana will be going with you.”

“Just Georgiana?”

“Yes. Jane has taken a turn for the worse, I’m afraid, and I must return to Fernworthy to look after her and the baby. It pains me no end that I cannot accompany you to Kent, but it is a comfort to know that your sister will be by your side and that your aunt has high hopes for your recuperation.”

Again Elizabeth’s voice struck Darcy as tight, her manner stiff and unnatural.

“Is it because of my aunt that you are not coming to Rosings?” he asked. “A renewal of the hostilities between you?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. If anything, she and I are more in accord than ever. Neither of us wishes for anything so fervently as your full recovery.”

There was something about his wife’s reassurances that Darcy found extremely
un
reassuring. It was a new sensation, not believing her, and he didn’t care for it one bit.

He reached out and took her by the hand. “My dearest ... please ... is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Has there ever been any deceit between us?” Elizabeth said. “A time when either of us was anything but entirely forthright?”

Well, technically, yes
, Darcy could have answered.
Years ago, when your sister was in London looking for Bingley, for instance. The way I held back my true feelings for you for so long as well. And if we had both been more forthcoming about George Wickham all those years ago, we might have spared your family and others much unpleasantness
.

Darcy lacked the strength to say as much, however. Besides, Elizabeth was already leaning in to kiss him right between the eyes.

“I love you,” she said, and this Darcy did not doubt—even as she shocked him by whirling and hurrying away. She kept her face turned to the side, as if there were something there she didn’t wish him to see.

“Elizabeth—?”

“I will tell her ladyship that you are ready.”

And she rushed from the room, leaving the door ajar behind her.

Darcy started to rise to follow her, but his head swam and his vision blurred and he ended up flat on his back, panting and nauseous. As he lay there, waiting for his strength to return so that he might try again, he heard the telltale
shush-shush
of tabi boots in the hall, so soft that no one untrained in the deadly arts would ever hear the sound. At least his ears remained as sharp as ever.

He managed to push himself up onto one elbow just as his aunt swept in with six ninjas at her heels.

“Fitzwilliam,” the old woman said.

“Lady Catherine. It is good to see you, though there is nothing good, I’m afraid, about what you find here to see.”

“No matter. What did the warrior monk Benkei say about failure?”

“It is but the longer road to triumph.”

“Precisely. Wise words.” The lady leaned in over her nephew’s bed. “I find more truth in them all the time.”

She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it over Darcy’s nose and mouth. It felt moist and reeked of acrid fumes, and with his first startled intake of breath Darcy sucked in a biting flavor not unlike exceptionally strong coffee. Bitter though it was, it didn’t taste like the serum she had administered earlier. It was something different—something Darcy would have recognized as undiluted laudanum, had he ever sampled any.

He reflexively pawed at his aunt’s hand, but he was too weak to pull the handkerchief away. He grew weaker every second it stayed in place.

“This will help you travel,” Lady Catherine said. “We have a long way to go together, you and I.”

Soon after, Darcy was asleep.

This time, for a while at least, he didn’t dream.

It took four days to find them. Elizabeth hadn’t even realized she’d been looking for them until she stepped into a pasture and spotted them feasting on a still-kicking cow they’d somehow managed to bring down.

Dreadfuls. Lots of them.

Just what she needed.

Every day since Lady Catherine whisked Darcy and Georgiana away in her carriage, Elizabeth had passed the daylight hours tramping up and down the lush wooded hills of Pemberley. She could do nothing but wait, for her ladyship had shared no details of the disgrace that apparently awaited her. Instructions would come once all was in readiness, she’d been told. There was nothing she could do to prepare—except, the lady had hinted, to practice swallowing her pride.

So she’d taken refuge, as she so often had in her life, in long, solitary walks. Only she hadn’t wished them to be
so
solitary, she knew now. She’d been hoping for a particular kind of company.

Elizabeth sauntered toward the zombies, an opened parasol perched on one shoulder.

It had been difficult, these past four years, watching Darcy ride off to war whenever the summons came, waiting in futile frustration for news of distant battles she should have seen—and claimed heads in!—firsthand. Georgiana had been free to join her brother, and often did. Even Elizabeth’s own sisters, Mary and Kitty, occasionally fought by his side, for neither had taken a husband. (And neither ever would, if Elizabeth’s mother had any say in the matter. They could be wedded to but one thing: caring for the aging matriarch of the Bennet family.)

Unmarried ladies taking up arms could be tolerated (barely) as long as Britain remained in peril. Yet for a wife to wade into battle would be an affront not just to her husband, whose duty it was to protect her, but to all English manhood. Elizabeth, despite her formidable skills, could be seen in public wielding nothing more deadly than a lace-fringed parasol.

Of course, she wasn’t in public now, for no one was around to see her but a pack of dreadfuls and a few scattered cows, and they didn’t count.

At last, one of the unmentionables spied her. It had been gnawing on a rubbery length of bowel, but now it dropped its meal midchew and staggered toward her. Though animals would do in a pinch, there wasn’t a zombie alive (so to speak) who’d choose one over fresh homo sapiens.

The other dreadfuls took notice, and soon the whole bunch was scuttling in for the kill. They were a motley assortment, fresh next to rancid, rag-shrouded beside fashionably clothed, all united in the democracy of death.

When the nearest of the ghouls was about thirty feet off, Elizabeth stopped and calmly lifted the parasol from her shoulder. A single tug on the handle simultaneously released the razors running along the ribs and the small sword hidden in the shaft. With her left hand, she sent the top of the parasol spinning through the air to remove as many limbs as it might, while with her right hand she brought up the sword, having already picked out the first three necks it would slice through. After they were seen to, she would improvise.

It all went smoothly enough ... to Elizabeth’s disappointment. Aside from one particularly dogged and shrieking she-zombie who kept flailing at her, even after both forearms and most of her face were littering the grass, there were no surprises, and Elizabeth was unable to lose herself in battle as she’d hoped. It was just like the day Darcy fell, when he’d tried to cheer her with a little nostalgic slaughter. It hadn’t worked then and it wasn’t working now. Even as she hacked and slashed and vaulted and kicked, her thoughts kept returning to the road not far away where her husband had fallen to a single unmentionable child. Because of her moodiness. Her perverseness.
Her
.

“
SHE
SENT
THE
TOP
OF
THE
PARASOL
SPINNING
THROUGH
THE
AIR
TO
REMOVE
AS
MANY
LIMBS
AS IT
MIGHT
.”

When the last of the dreadfuls lay in pieces at her feet, Elizabeth reassembled her parasol (a cherished wedding gift from her father) and strolled back to the manor, still plagued by all the guilt and apprehension she’d sought to escape. How many more days would she have to endure?

The answer was waiting for her at Pemberley House.

“There you are, Ma’am!” Mrs. Reynolds cried as Elizabeth stepped out of the woods. The housekeeper came scurrying down the front steps holding an envelope aloft. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! We’ve received a message from her ladyship!”

Elizabeth darted forward, took the letter, and started to tear it open while Mrs. Reynolds hovered anxiously nearby. All that the servants knew was that Darcy had been taken to Kent to be cared for by his aunt’s personal physician. With each day that passed without news of their injured master (or of the missing boy, Andrew Brayles), the household slipped deeper into gloom and despair.

Elizabeth pulled out the message—then remembered what it might contain.

“Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds,” she said, stuffing the letter back in its envelope. “I’ll be meditating if you need me for anything else.”

She left the housekeeper to wring her hands and furrow her brow on the front lawn.

Once Elizabeth was settled in the Shinto shrine that took up most of the east wing, she sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and took in forty soothing breaths while reciting her mantra exactly eighty times. Then she looked at the envelope in her hands.

It was addressed to “Elizabeth B.
D.,” and the pages inside contained no greeting line at all. “Elizabeth Darcy,” “Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy,” “Dear Elizabeth”
-Lady Catherine obviously couldn’t bring herself to write any of it. Even that “B.” she had to slip in so as to somehow negate the “D.”

In lieu of empty pleasantries, her ladyship began her message with a warning.

Read quickly and commit all you see to memory, for you will have no record of what I tell you in but a few minutes’ time. You are about to learn secrets no one of your station has ever been privy to, and even a personage as high-born as I would lose everything—including my very life—if certain parties in London learned I had enlightened such as you. Should the undertaking I lay before you end in failure and your true intent be revealed, I will deny having told you anything of what follows, will accuse you of acquiring your knowledge of it through subterfuge and guile, and will, in fact, possess the loudest voice calling for your immediate execution
.

If you now find your fortitude faltering, screw your courage to this: Darcy lives, but there can be no doubt that the plague is in him. Just this morning, I found him gnawing on his own toes in his sleep, and when I roused him he told me he’d been dreaming of eating boeuf bourguignon. His slide into the service of Satan has begun, and the serum will only slow that so long. If you still intend to honor your pledge to me, you must act immediately and in unswerving compliance with my instructions. If you do not so intend, stop reading here and begin planning your husband’s funeral
.

First, the facts. The serum I once used on your friend, the unfortunate Mrs. Collins, was not, as I told you at the time, of my own creation, nor was it administered at its full strength. In truth, the elixir is made available, in miserly amounts, only to those of special interest to the Crown. Though its provenance has been kept secret even from them, there have been whispers in recent months that it has
been improved to such a degree that, at long last, it might serve as an actual cure. These rumors inspired me to make my own private inquiries and, through much effort and expense, I have learned that the serum is the handiwork of one of the king’s personal physicians, Dr. Sir Angus MacFarquhar, and is most likely produced within the confines of the infamous cesspit of insanity and squalor he oversees—Bethlem Hospital. Though once open to the public, Bethlem today is a virtual fortress, and the loss of many a ninja has taught me that the place is impregnable. We must try a different tack if we are to acquire the cure before my nephew succumbs to the strange plague. We must go through Sir Angus himself
.