Dreadfully Ever After (8 page)

“Mrs. Bromhead?”

Elizabeth turned toward the voice but couldn’t believe she was seeing its source. The tone had been deep, the Rs rolled regally, the accent as English as the Union Jack and buttered scones. Yet walking up to her carriage was a slightly built young Asian man dressed in the tidy but unassuming black and white of a gentleman’s valet.

“Yes?”

The man stopped, offered her a shallow bow, and then swept an arm toward the gateway into the city.

“If you would be so good as to step down and come with me,” he said—and yes, it was with
that
voice.

“But my carriage—”

“Will not be needed.”

“My servants—”

“Will not be needed.”

“My things—”

“Will not—”

Elizabeth silenced the man with an upraised hand.

When she stepped out of the brougham, she took only one thing with her: her parasol.

“It will not be needed, I know,” she said. “Yet I hope I shall be permitted this one little nonessential.”

“Of course, Ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

And with that, Elizabeth said her goodbyes to her astonished servants and followed the little stranger through the gate into the biggest, grandest (and dirtiest, wickedest) city on the face of the earth.

Of course, Georgiana Darcy was relieved to see how much her brother was improving. If only he’d stop talking in his sleep about lungs and livers and kidneys and brains ... and then licking his lips.

Whenever he awoke and found his sister sitting at his bedside, he would look abashed, and if she asked what he’d been dreaming of he deflected her questions with those of his own. About the bitter, crimson liquid their aunt poured down his throat twice a day. About Jane Bingham’s supposed descent into dire illness. And, most of all, about Elizabeth and her decision to stay behind in Derbyshire.

Georgiana did her best to bat these queries aside with still more, but there are only so many times one can say, “Fancy another round of Crypts and Coffins?” or “I brought my Sun Tzu with me—shall I read another chapter?” Still, despite the awkwardness, she rarely left her brother’s side. And she knew that, if she did, he would not be alone long, for their cousin Anne was ever ready to continue the vigil. Which made Georgiana uneasy. There was something about the way Anne watched over Fitzwilliam that reminded her of a vulture perched near a battlefield, waiting patiently for the moment when the fighting ended and the wounded stopped moving.

Anne had never been a favorite of either Georgiana or Fitzwilliam, though she’d been capable of a rousing game of Spank the Dreadful once upon a time and seemed destined for the same training in the deadly arts as they had received. Yet she’d changed drastically about age fourteen or fifteen, withdrawing into shadowy corners and dark moods and the black dresses of a Spanish contessa, sometimes even donning a veil. It was as though all vitality had been siphoned out of her, and Fitzwilliam once said he knew who the succubus was. While some—his Elizabeth, for instance—had the kind of strength that not only nourished but was nourished by the strength of others, Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s strength fed on weakness.

Still, Anne seemed to have regained a measure of her old vigor, though she remained a quiet, lurky creature given to inexplicable smirks and cryptic comments.

“Ahhhh, fresh meat,” she’d said when a servant entered Fitzwilliam’s room bearing a bloody slab of undercooked beef that Lady Catherine had sent up. “Just what we’ve needed around here for so long.”

Another time, Georgiana checked on her brother in the middle of the night only to find her cousin hovering over his bed, so motionless she could have been a dressmaker’s mannequin.

“Back again?” she said as Georgiana stepped up to the bedside. She reached out and pressed a clammy hand to Georgiana’s cheek, and it was hard to tell if Anne was gazing at her tenderly or trying, in her langorous way, to slap her. “What need has Fitzwilliam of anyone else when such a sister as you is with him?”

Then she’d turned and swept soundlessly out of the room.

The next day, Anne looked up from her breakfast—the same small dollop of red roe and salmon sashimi she took every morning—and said, apropos nothing, “How many unmentionables do you think you’ve killed?”

“Oh, not so many. Only two hundred and seventy-three.” Georgiana thought a moment and then added: “And a half.”

“Only?” Anne glanced at her mother, who was glowering at her from the head of the table. “Of course. Not so many when compared to some. Still, you’ve been in battle after battle, Georgiana, and your reflexes must be finely honed, indeed. So honed, in fact, it makes me wonder if you can entirely control them.”

“I don’t think I understand you.”

“Anne,” Lady Catherine said.

“It’s just that you’ve been spending so much time with your brother,” Anne went on. “Even as he improves, there will certainly be moments when he will behave erratically, alarmingly, perhaps even like a—”

“Anne!” Lady Catherine gave the table a thump with her fist that sent every plate and cup jumping. “This is neither the time nor the place!”

If the downward-looking kimono-wearing servants shuffling around the room showed any sign of noticing the exchange, Georgiana didn’t see it. As far as she knew, none of them spoke English, for Her Ladyship populated her household staff entirely with imported Japanese peasants.

“I bring it up only out of concern for Fitzwilliam,” Anne said coolly. “You warriors are always so eager to kill, I should think it would become something of a habit. An impulse barely held in check. And I would hate for something tragic to happen if your little potion didn’t work quickly enough.”

“Not the time,” Lady Catherine grated out. “Not the place.”

“Fine.”

Anne returned her attention to her meal, albeit with a strangely serene smile upon her face. She plucked up a single roe with her chopstick and glanced over at Georgiana before sliding it between her thin lips.

The proper time and place for the conversation to continue, Georgiana couldn’t help but think, was whenever she wouldn’t be around to hear it. And, indeed, Lady Catherine did all she could to arrange many such times, pressing her young niece to spar with her ninjas and sample the exotic weapons in her vast armory and make use of the small flock of dreadfuls she kept on hand for target practice. Yet always Georgiana resisted and, aside from those moments when she slept or bathed or ate, she stayed at her brother’s side. She would not leave it willingly unless Elizabeth herself asked her to.

And then she did.

One of Lady Catherine’s waiting geishas brought the letter to her in Fitzwilliam’s bed chamber. Fortunately, her brother had plunged into a deep slumber after taking his morning medicine, so he couldn’t inquire about the mud-speckled envelope that had just come, it seemed, all the way from the Yorkshire Dales. Georgiana didn’t open it until she was alone in her own room.

My dear Georgiana
,

I have not the time to tell you everything that has happened since your departure from Pemberley. Suffice it to say this: Our situation is more desperate than ever. The physician who holds the key to curing the strange plague has, I have just learned, left London for Aberdeen! He has there, I am told, a laboratory like a fortress, and only
within its high stone walls will we find what we seek
.

I have already begun the long journey north. Our only hope, I am convinced, is to strike immediately, taking the cure either by stealth or by force. In either case, my paltry peasant skills are unequal to the task at hand. I need assassins versed in the noble Shinobi ways of death. I need you, Georgiana, along with as many of your aunt’s ninjas as she might spare! Let us rendezvous at the Seasick Sheltie Inn in Aberdeen, and together we shall snatch your brother back from the very gates of Hell!

Yours etc.
,

Elizabeth

Georgiana didn’t linger over the letter. She read it through just once and then dashed downstairs to find Lady Catherine. Her Ladyship was giving her kitchen staff their midmorning beating, but paused to hear Georgiana through. She immediately agreed to send a small force of ninjas to accompany her to Scotland.

“I wish I could go along myself,” Lady Catherine said. “But I must remain here to continue administering the serum to Fitzwilliam. Only I, of all of us here, have some inkling as to its properties and proper use.”

“I understand entirely. And how grateful I am to have you for an aunt in this hour of need!”

Georgiana turned and started to hurry off, but Lady Catherine called her back.

“Where are you going?”

“Why, to pack my things. And I shall want to say goodbye to my brother, of course.”

“And where is it you will tell him you are going?”

“Well, I ... I hadn’t thought about that.”

“That is obvious.”

Her Ladyship approached, not stopping until she was
too
close—her chest mere inches from her niece’s, her eyes glaring down over a sharp nose that would, with but the slightest nod, poke the younger woman in the forehead.

“Georgiana, do you know why I asked your sister-in-law not to tell Fitzwilliam that she is in search of a cure?” She didn’t pause for a reply. “It is for the same reason I will ask you not to speak to him now: We must preserve his peace of mind. His very soul is in flux. All that is good in him is weakened, dying, while unspeakable urges grow ever stronger. We mustn’t upset or agitate him, lest we tip him all the more quickly into the dark pit that looms before him. He rests now, and that is good. Would you disturb that rest to tell him that his sister and wife are risking their lives to save his? No. Just go, and I will find the best words to explain your absence.”

“Oh, but surely I couldn’t—”

“Just.” Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes. “Go.”

“Yes. All right. If you really think it’s for the best….”

Not a quarter of an later, Georgiana was hurrying out to a carriage already loaded with clothes and ropes and grappling hooks and an array of weapons from Her Ladyship’s arsenal. Riding up top were four ninjas dressed in coachmen’s livery.

Anne de Bourgh was standing by the carriage door. Georgiana rarely saw her cousin venture outside, and her jet-black dress made her seem somehow incongruous in the full light of day, like a shaft of coal jutting from a glass of milk.

“I understand you must leave us,” Anne said.

“Yes. It pains me to quit my brother’s sickbed, and with such suddenness, but I fear it must be done.”

Anne nodded.

“Well, I, for one, am glad to see you go,” she said, “knowing that when you return, all will at last be set to rights.”

She gave Georgiana a hug that imparted no warmth and then stepped aside, smiling. Once the carriage was rolling off up the drive, she reentered the house.

As Anne took her young cousin’s place at Fitzwilliam’s side, curling from one of the chimneys came smoke that had been, not long before, the
real
letter Elizabeth had sent Georgiana from an inn on the road to London.

“There is one more thing you will no doubt tell me that I don’t need,” Elizabeth said as she and her mysterious companion passed through the Northern Guard Tower and into London. The soldiers, she noticed, let them stroll by without question. “Your name. Even if, by your reckoning, it is not required, it would still be nice to know.”

The young Asiatic who’d met her at the gate—surely another of the Japanese servants Lady Catherine so favored—pulled an envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

This is Nezu
, the note inside read.
He will guide you in my absence. You will find him to be an invaluable tool. Trust him in all things
.

This time, Elizabeth wasn’t caught by surprise when the paper began to smoke. She let it drop to the ground, and within seconds it was but more swirling soot in a city that produced it by the ton.

“If you have any further messages from Her Ladyship, I’d appreciate knowing so in advance,” Elizabeth said. “I should like to have a bucket of water at the ready.”

“There will be no more notes from the mistress. Anything else you need to know will come from me.”

“Wonderful. You’ve been so loquacious so far.”

Nezu said nothing.

A dark barouche was waiting just beyond the gate, and, upon reaching it, Nezu opened the door and motioned for Elizabeth to climb in. As she started to oblige him, her eye caught sight of something odd: a grotesque parody of the very carriage she was stepping into. It was a squat black box, perhaps four feet high, careening around a corner up the street. Pulling it were two small, scruffy dogs in harness.

“Did you see that?” Elizabeth asked.

“See what?”

He didn’t even bother following her gaze.

“Never mind,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps I didn’t see it, either.”

Once she was seated, Nezu hauled himself up next to the driver—another stone-faced Asiatic who seemed no more garrulous than he—and with a snap of the reins they set off down the narrow streets of Section Fourteen North.

Years ago, before the partitions were erected and London was sliced into perfect squares like some colossal cake, the area had been known as Camden Town. Once an unimportant district on the fringes of the growing metropolis, it was now more or less a rampart protecting the affluent sections of the interior. Only the meanest sorts of shops—most of them for “used” (that is, stolen) clothes and jewelry and Zed rods and swords—would take up residence where, so many times, the dreadfuls had broken through. Indeed, the buildings looked as though they’d been burned down and rebuilt before the charred planks had finished smoking. The other elegant barouches and phaetons and landaus coming through the gate shot down the filth-poked avenue with teams at full gallop, the whip-snapping drivers desperate to reach Four Central or Six East before their passengers could peek out and have their delicate sensibilities bruised by the sight of such squalor.