Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls (5 page)

Mrs. Bennet whipped around to face her husband.

“The baron?” she asked.

“The baron.”

“Is coming to Longbourn?”

“Is coming to Longbourn.”

“To pay a call?”

“To pay a call.”

“On us?”

“On
me
. I sent a letter yesterday requesting an audience to discuss the incident with Mr. Ford, and Lord Lumpley has agreed, though he chose to pay a call here instead of summoning me to him.”

“I wonder why he’d do that?” Lydia asked, and just in case anyone couldn’t tell the question was rhetorical, she winked and nodded at Jane and burst out laughing.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Bennet!” Mrs. Bennet cried, and she swooped down on her husband and delivered one kiss after another to his forehead and cheeks. “Sweet, patient Mr. Bennet! Wily, crafty Mr. Bennet! Luring the baron here when you know how smitten he is with Jane! Oh, sly, shrewd Mr.—!”

“Enough!” cried flushed, flustered Mr. Bennet. “Lord Lumpley and I will be discussing unmentionables, not marriage!”

But Mrs. Bennet wasn’t listening.

“Hill! Hill?
MRS. HILL!
” she blared. “Where is that wretched woman when you really need—ah, there you are! We have so much to do to get ready! You must cut fresh flowers, polish the silver, launder the table linens, set out the girls’ best morning dresses . . . ooh, and run to the village for cakes! What? Which one first? Why, all of them, of course! The Baron of Lumpley is coming!”

Through it all, Lydia and Kitty whispered and tittered and snorted, ignoring Mary’s disapproving glowers (it falling to their sister to sit around looking dour and long-suffering now that Miss Chiselwood was gone).

Elizabeth and Jane, meanwhile, were exchanging significant looks of their own. Elizabeth’s was simultaneously concerned and fierce; Jane’s, discomfited and mildly reproachful. The two girls disagreed on few things, and one of them was about to pay them a call.

“You don’t seem as excited as your mother,” Mr. Bennet said dryly, eyeing first Elizabeth, then Jane.

“My excitement is merely of a different sort,” Elizabeth said.

“And I think it is premature for overexcitement of any sort,” said Jane.

“I see.” Mr. Bennet nodded sagely, then looked at Elizabeth again, eyebrow cocked. “You know, I’m suddenly put in mind of the next move I should like to teach you all. It is called the Fulcrum of Doom. We shall take it up directly when we return to the dojo.”

THEIR FATHER WAS OBVIOUSLY UNHAPPY WITH THEIR LIMP GRIPS AND HESITANT MOVEMENTS.

The Fulcrum of Doom turned out to be a remarkably simple move involving no more than a quickly lifted leg and a strategically placed knee. (It was presumed the Doomee would be male.
Why
had to be explained with some delicacy.) After running his daughters through it to his satisfaction—and nearly being Fulcrumed himself more than once—Mr. Bennet chose to focus on sword work.

It was a bit frightening, picking up one of the long-bladed, foreign-looking
katanas
for the first time, and when Elizabeth and her sisters began taking slow practice swings, her hands were soon slick with sweat. No matter how tightly she tried to clamp down, the hilt felt lubricious, loose. As with everything her father had been trying to teach them the past day, Elizabeth found it difficult to get a grip.

Yet Mr. Bennet seemed pleased with the way she and Jane handled their swords, and he steadily increased the speed of the girls’ swings and thrusts—right up to the moment Kitty’s katana spun from her hands and speared a post mere inches from Mary’s head.

“Smooth, controlled movements,” Mr. Bennet growled. “Where’s the poise? Where’s the presence of mind?”

“Over there,” Lydia said, pointing at Elizabeth and Jane.

Mr. Bennet glowered at her. “Prepare yourself for the punishment you have long deserved. The first and last time I made a joke while training under Master Liu, he took blow dart practice on my . . .”

He blanched and, for a moment, could go no further.

“Ten laps around the grounds, child,” he finally said.

“Ohhh!”

“Ten laps! Go!”

Lydia shuffled off in a half-hearted jog, her arms hanging slack at her sides.

They practiced some more after that, but before long Mr. Bennet
gave the girls the rest of the day off to prepare for Lord Lumpley’s visit.

“I will remain in the dojo and am not to be disturbed,” he told them glumly. “I find I have much to meditate on.”

The girls marched off toward the house sluggishly, soaked with a perspiration that would be, for a proper young lady, an entirely alien and repulsive thing to experience. Yet, to her surprise, Elizabeth found that she didn’t much mind. It was what was to come that bothered her.

“Up we go,” she said to Jane as they trudged upstairs to change out of their soiled sparring gowns. “Onto the auction block.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Lizzy,” Jane admonished her gently. “A man like Lord Lumpley could never take a serious interest in any of us.”

It was true, Elizabeth knew. Yet it wasn’t a serious or, more to the point,
honorable
interest that concerned her, and as she dressed for the baron’s call, she paused from time to time to practice the Fulcrum of Doom.

__________________

ONCE THE BENNET GIRLS were ready, they lined up in the drawing room for review. Mrs. Bennet gave each a thorough going-over, adjusting ribbons and straps, fussing over nonexistent stains and wrinkles, plucking out stray strands of hair, clucking over all the bruises and abrasions, etcetera. When she was satisfied (or as close to satisfied as she could ever come), she arranged her daughters artfully around the room: Elizabeth at the pianoforte, Jane and Mary doing needlework on a divan, Kitty and Lydia bent over a book of Latin conjugations Miss Chiselwood had left behind when fleeing from the house.

Then, the panorama prepared, they waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Lord Lumpley’s note said he’d arrive at three, rather late in the day for a call, but allowances were made for an aristocrat. Or would be if one ever showed up.

By four, Jane was more tranquil even than usual, for, wearied by the day’s training, she’d fallen fast asleep.

By four thirty, Kitty and Lydia’s constant sniggering and sauciness had frayed Mary’s nerves to the breaking point, and she threatened to use her knitting needles in a most unsisterly fashion.

By five, Mrs. Bennet was ranting that Lord Lumpley probably wasn’t coming at all, having heard (she conjectured—
loudly
) that the girls had taken to beating each other with sticks under the direction of their deranged father.

And at precisely five fourteen, Mr. Bennet came in and told his wife to hold her tongue, if that were possible without causing herself grievous injury. The baron’s carriage was pulling up out front.

“Well, don’t just sit there!” Mrs. Bennet cried, shooing her daughters from the spots that she herself had cemented them in nearly two hours before. “Come and greet His Lordship!”

Mr. Bennet blocked the door. “For Heaven’s sake, he’s a baron, not the king. Keep your seats, all of you. I’ll bring him in once we’ve had our talk.”

Lord Lumpley’s proximity actually made Mrs. Bennet
worse
, and she spent the next half hour telling her daughters not to fidget while doing that very thing to such an extent she appeared to be having some sort of seizure. She blinked, she tapped her feet, she jumped at every step in the hall, she squirmed, she coughed. The only symptom absent was frothing at the mouth.

Kitty and Lydia found it endlessly comical, Mary asked if she should run upstairs and fetch the laudanum, and Jane simply weathered it with quiet, forlorn fortitude.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, attempted to preserve her peace of mind with a concentration aid her father had spoken of that afternoon: a mantra,
he’d called it.

Smooth stone beneath still water
, Elizabeth said to herself.
Smooth stone, still water, smooth stone, still water, smooth EGAD HOW I WANT TO THROTTLE THAT WOMAN!

At long last, her mother could take the suspense no longer, and she sprang from the chaise longue she’d been in danger of fainting upon and blurted out, “I swear, if His Lordship isn’t in here in the next ten seconds, I’m going to drag him in by the ear like the naughty little boy he is!”

It was at this precise moment, of course, that the door to the drawing room opened and a half-amused, half-mortified Mr. Bennet stepped in to announce their guest, the Baron of Lumpley.

“Oh, My Lord!” Mrs. Bennet said, and it was unclear to all whether she was blaspheming or offering a greeting.

“Oh, My Lady,” Lord Lumpley said with an elegantly arched eyebrow, and he slid smoothly across the room to press his lips to her trembling fingers. He was long accustomed to the awe he could inspire, no doubt, and he seemed to relish a fresh opportunity to be magnanimous about it.

Elizabeth fancied the man brought a whiff of sulphur in with him, though more likely his dressers had simply gone a little heavy on the eau de cologne. Certainly, they had labored long over him, for his girth—and he had plenty of it—had been packed into a black suit that, though beautifully cut, appeared to be on the verge of bursting at the seams any second. Around his neck, tied high enough to hide some if not all of his jowls, was an extravagant cravat such as to make Beau Brummell blush.

“My daughters,” Mr. Bennet said, preparing to make introductions.

“Oh, I remember them well, Sir. The beautiful Jane and Elizabeth and . . .” The baron flicked his gaze quickly over the younger girls. “Myrtle and the rest.” He resettled his stare on Jane. Jane alone. “It is a pleasure to be in your company again. I have so longed to see more of you.”

Jane attempted to deflect his attentions with averted eyes and a small,
demure smile, as it was not in her nature to be so flirtatious or brazen.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was of a very different inclination: one the day’s training had, somehow, tilted her toward all the more. She was readying what she considered a suitable reply, but only got as far as a sardonically cocked eyebrow when her mother spoke first.

“But His Lordship needs a place to sit! Lizzy, why don’t you come over here next to me?”

“Oh, I would not dream of evicting a young lady from her seat,” Lord Lumpley said.

He and Mrs. Bennet then waited for Elizabeth to make the appropriate reply: “It is no inconvenience, Sir. Pray, do sit.”

“Thank you,” she said instead, making no move to leave her place by Jane’s side.

Mrs. Bennet scowled at her behind the baron’s back, then turned and shooed “Myrtle” from her plush wing chair.

“But he said—,” Mary began.

“Come and sit with your beloved mother!” Mrs. Bennet snapped.

Mary slouched over and slumped down beside Mrs. Bennet, while Lord Lumpley, with no more thanks to her than a silent nod, settled himself in her spot. He was only a few feet from Kitty and Lydia now, and when he noticed them admiring him, wide eyed, he flashed them a devilish grin that had both hiding behind their hands, giggling madly.

Mrs. Bennet cleared her throat and began conversation in the approved manner: with the most boring topic imaginable.

“It is quite an uncommonly warm spring we’re having, is it not?”

Lord Lumpley acknowledged the comment with a benevolent nod. “It is indeed.”

“Do you think that’s why the unmentionables are back?” Mary asked.

Mrs. Bennet started as if she’d been pinched. Then Mary did the same—because she
had
been pinched.

“They’re called
unmentionables
for a reason, my dear,” Mrs. Bennet said.

“But it’s what he came here to talk about, isn’t it?”

“Not . . . to . . . us.”

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Bennet,” Lord Lumpley said. “I don’t mind addressing the subject, now that it’s been broached. It’s quite natural, I suppose, that it should be foremost on everyone’s minds.”

He looked over at Mary, opened his mouth to speak—then abruptly lost interest in her and turned to Jane, instead.

As far as Elizabeth was concerned, there could be no question what was foremost on
his
mind.

“Your father and I have had the most productive conversation on the matter, and tomorrow steps will be taken to ensure the safety of all. As for why Mr. Ford should have succumbed to the plague now, when it hasn’t been seen in these parts for so long, I cannot say. I will venture, however, that one unmentionable does not a plague make. There have been isolated incidents in the past. I see no reason why this wouldn’t merely be another.”

“Isolated incidents?” Elizabeth asked. She looked over at her father, who was still standing just inside the doorway.

He gave his head the smallest of shakes.

“But we do not
know
there are not others,” Jane said softly. “There is, for instance, a girl who disappeared from Meryton but two weeks ago. Emily Ward. Would that not suggest that the menace wasn’t limited to Mr. Ford?”

The baron put on a condescending smile. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being frank, but the young lady’s ‘disappearance’ is nothing new. It rather happens on a regular basis, and has more to do with coxcombs bound for Scotland than the supernatural. And even if unmentionables were to blame, perish the thought, remember we are speaking of a lone girl . . . and next the filthy rotters will be facing men. Trust me, dear lady: If—and I say again
if!
—there are more dreadfuls in Hertfordshire, they will be dealt with handily.”