“My word!” the housekeeper cried. “I think she went and fainted for real, this time!”
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t know! Mrs. Goswick’s man Bridges showed up with a letter, and she’d barely opened it before she was flat on her back!”
Mr. Bennet reached down and took the paper Mrs. Hill was using as a fan. She kept flapping her hand over Mrs. Bennet as he read the letter for all.
Mrs. Bennet,
It has come to our attention that your daughters, Miss Jane Bennet and Miss Elizabeth Bennet, have, of late, and at the behest of your husband, Mr. Bennet, become engaged in most remarkable, and one could even say shocking, activities (of a martial nature—I trust you will know what I mean). As the girls have, apparently, committed themselves to these brutal pursuits, we would not, of course, and with regrets for the invitation previously extended, expect to see them at so genteel an occasion as the ball we will be hosting, Thursday next, at Pulvis Lodge.
Yours etcetera, etcetera, Mrs. J. Goswick.
“By gad,” Mr. Bennet sighed when he reached the end. “The wretched woman does love her commas.”
“Well, I think it was very kind of her to write as she did,” Mary said. “To be thinking of Jane and Elizabeth’s training when—”
“Oh, you stupid cow!” Lydia howled at her. “Don’t you see what this means? Jane and Elizabeth aren’t welcome at the spring ball. They’ve been told not to come! We’re ruined!”
“Now I’ll never get to go to a dance!” Kitty wailed. “Not even one!”
As Lydia and Kitty fell into each other’s arms weeping, Elizabeth simply waited for whatever her own reaction might be. Tears, anger, bitter laughter … what was it to be? And why didn’t it come more quickly?
Before she had her answer, Jane whirled around and ran up the stairs, her face in her hands. Elizabeth turned to go after her and found herself facing Master Hawksworth. He was about forty feet off, on the lawn, watching through the open front door. Yet the intensity of his gaze made her feel they were face to face, uncomfortably close.
Elizabeth stood there frozen, staring at the brawny, dark-haired man framed in the doorway, and the answer she’d been awaiting—the certainty she longed for—seemed to come nearer in that moment.
Then she heard the first of Jane’s sobs upstairs, and she had, if not an answer, at least a purpose, and one she couldn’t ignore.
She turned her back to the door and went after Jane. Yet even when she was on the stairs, well out of the Master’s line of sight, she could feel him watching her. It was as if he were searching for his own answer—one that lay buried somewhere, somehow, within her.
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CHAPTER 12
EACH NIGHT, as had long been their custom, Jane and Elizabeth ended the day before the mirror in Jane’s room, talking and brushing each other’s hair. The only difference after nearly a week of training in the deadly arts was that now they were dressing each other’s wounds, as well.
That morning, their instruction under Master Hawksworth had reached a new stage. The girls weren’t merely practicing anymore. They were fighting—not just each other, but their father, too. Which meant they’d done a lot of losing, and losing a sparring match with a mace or a practice sword or even bare hands is bruising work.
Elizabeth winced as Jane ran the comb over a spot where her father had rapped her with his bo staff. “A little tap,” he’d called it at the time, “to remind you to keep your guard up.” When she’d wobbled and feigned light-headedness, luring Mr. Bennet in for a (missed) lunge, she didn’t just get the usual “Not bad” from the Master, who watched the matches, arms crossed, in a corner. She actually saw a hint of satisfaction crack the granite hardness of the young man’s face.
“Ow!”
Jane’s comb had caught on the dressings wrapped round her head.
“I’m sorry, Lizzy. Why don’t we stop?” Jane moaned, settling onto her bed. “I feel as though my arms are about to fall off, anyhow.”
“It’s all right. It hardly matters if I have a tangle or two, does it? It’s not as though Mrs. Goswick will be dropping by.” Elizabeth smiled at her sister in the mirror. “Though I almost wish she would. I might not be able to beat you or Father, but I’d love the chance to spar with her. She’d come out of it with more than one ‘little tap’ to bandage, I’d wager.”
“Lizzy, you must learn to be more forgiving,” Jane said gravely. Yet she seemed to savor the image, and a moment later she returned her sister’s smile—to Elizabeth’s relief.
Master Hawksworth’s resistance to the ball had been a disappointment, but it lacked the sting of a slight. So Mrs. Goswick’s un vitation (as Elizabeth had dubbed it) had hurt Jane far more deeply. It had been four days since they’d received the lady’s letter, and with each Elizabeth had tried a new tack with her brooding, wounded sister.
The first: enfolding arms and soft, soothing words.
The second: bitter recriminations and seething.
The third: refusing to speak of it.
The fourth: laughing about it.
This last had proved by far the most effective. She might have tried it first, only it had taken her all those days to be able to laugh again. She’d been in no hurry to marry, despite her mother’s shoves toward the altar, yet to know that now a respectable marriage was forever denied her—that she and her sisters were, thanks to their father, outcasts—seemed to dry up every smile inside her. She’d been shocked to awaken that morning ready to make light of it all.
“It’s not true, though,” Jane said, and her smile turned sly in a way that was rare for her. “That it doesn’t matter what you look like anymore, I mean. Someone notices.”
“Et tu, Jane?” Elizabeth gasped in mock exasperation. “For Lydia and Kitty to indulge in such fantasies hardly surprises me: They need some outlet now that they have no coming-out balls or suitors to look forward to. But you—?”
Jane shook her head. “It is no fantasy. Master Hawksworth looks at you in a way he doesn’t look at the rest of us.”
“If he does, it is merely because he thinks me a promising student.”
“I agree.” Jane cocked a delicate eyebrow. “But promising what, I think, would be a fair question.”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Elizabeth laughed. “Salaciousness doesn’t suit you.”
“You’re right,” Jane sighed, collapsing onto her back. “And at any rate, I’m too tired for it.”
Yet Elizabeth, despite her protestations, was not. She retrieved another brush from the bureau and continued working on her dark, gently curling hair, brushing out knots as she sought to unsnarl her own thoughts.
Yes—she had noticed how the Master looked at her. Not with the dewy eyes of the pitifully smitten. His gaze was sharper than that, piercing, as if he were straining to see something hidden behind her eyes.
And he wasn’t the only one to lapse into the occasional stare. More than once, Elizabeth had found herself gazing upon him with what was, for her, an unfamiliar muddling of her thoughts. As a teacher, he was demanding, condescending, aloof. Yet he was also, without doubt, the most fascinating man she’d ever met.
It was more than his strapping handsomeness (though she had to admit, that counted for something). He was just so … different. And so unashamed about it. Elizabeth admired his confidence, even if it edged toward vanity. How he seemed to relish every opportunity to strip off coat and vest so as to demonstrate some new move. But perhaps such pride was simply the armor one needed to withstand the scorn of the Mrs. Goswicks (and, alas, the Mrs. Bennets) of this world.
If only there were some way she could strip away that armor and reach the man trapped within. He might be very different, underneath it all. Perhaps even as pleasing as his looks.
And his looks—they were pleasing indeed. So very, very pleasing …
“Lizzy, did you hear that?” Jane said.
Elizabeth blinked her eyes, and again she was seein
g herself in the mirror instead of Master Hawksworth.
“Hmm, what, hear something?”
Jane was sitting up stiffly on her bed, and she turned toward the door and pointed. “Out there. In the hall.”
Elizabeth listened. Then listened some more. And just when she was about to say “I don’t hear anything,” she did.
A soft, clacking sort of sound it was, like fingernails rapping lightly against glass or a fork tapped against a tabletop.
“You hear it?” Jane asked, voice low.
Elizabeth nodded.
“What do you think it is?”
“I … I don’t know. I thought everyone else was asleep.” Elizabeth attempted a nonchalant shrug, yet when she went on talking she did it at a whisper. “Perhaps it’s a branch brushing against one of the windows.”
“I don’t think so.”
Jane nodded at her own window. Outside, dark shapes loomed in the dim moonlight—the silhouettes of the nearest trees.
They were perfectly still. There was no wind that night.
The quiet clicking continued.
Then a floorboard creaked.
Elizabeth turned to the bureau, put the hairbrush upon it, and slid off the stiletto knife she’d left there earlier.
Jane reached under her pillow and pulled out her nunchucks.
Master Hawksworth had insisted that the girls begin sleeping with their weapons. “So that even in your dreams, you will remember you are warriors,” he’d said. None of them had appreciated this much at first—particularly Lydia, who almost strangled herself with her own garrote one night as she dreamed she was putting on a new diamond choker. But Elizabeth was grateful for the edict now.
Slowly, she rose and crept toward the doorway. Moving silently was something they’d spent hours practicing that very day, walking again and again over a bed of twigs, dried leaves, and shards of shattered glass, doing laps and dandbaithaks by the score until they could all get across without making a sound. So there was no squeaking of old wood beneath their feet as they gathered together by the door.
The creaking outside, however, continued, as did the muffled rattle.
“I will go first.”
Whisper soft as Jane’s words were, Elizabeth could still hear the tremble in them.
“We will go together,” she said, and without waiting another moment—for what could waiting do but give fear more time to take root?—she opened the door.
Side by side, Jane and Elizabeth stepped forward, weapons at the ready. They found themselves in a soft, low light flickering along the hall—the glow of a single candle resting on the floor at the end of the corridor. Beside it in the dim light was a hunched form in a shroud-like gown, its back to the girls.
There was another rattle, and the thing at the end of the hall shifted its weight and moaned softly.
“It’s trying to get into Father’s room,” Jane whispered.
Elizabeth started down the hall. “The stiletto would be best.”
“No.” Jane caught Elizabeth by the arm. “The nunchucks.”
“Don’t be a fool. This is work for a blade.”
“That little thing? It has no range. With these, at least, I can stun it before—”
“You can’t stun a zombie.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“We must ask Papa.”
“Well, I hardly think now is the time.”
“I didn’t mean now.”
Both girls raised their weapons and readied themselves for a charge. They froze, however, when the creature pressed itself to Mr. Bennet’s door and spoke.
“Mr. Bennnn-nnnnnet … Mr. Bennnnn-nnnnnnet … open uuuuuu-uuuuuup.”
“I’m exhausted, woman,” Elizabeth heard her father say. “Let me rest.”
SIDE BY SIDE, JANE AND ELIZABETH STEPPED FORWARD, WEAPONS AT THE READY.
“Oh, I won’t disturb you. I just want a little company.”
“You just want a male heir, you mean. And I’m too tired to give you one.”
Jane gasped.
“Oh, my,” said Elizabeth.
This was worse than finding a zombie in the house.
Mrs. Bennet finally heard the girls behind her and turned and screamed.
“What’s going on?” cried Mary, bursting from her room clutching a trident.
Kitty and Lydia stumbled into the hall next, the former holding a battle-ax, the latter brandishing a chamber pot (for she’d ignored the Master’s order and had left her cutlass out in the dojo).
“Who screamed? Who screamed?” Kitty panted.
Elizabeth nodded toward the far end of the hall.
“Oh, ummmm … I’m afraid that was me, dearest,” said Mrs. Bennet, and she straightened up and started smoothing out the wrinkles in her nightgown. “Your sisters startled me, that’s all.”
“What were you doing out here, Mamma?” Lydia asked blearily, eyes half lidded.
Many’s the time Elizabeth had thought her mother impervious to shame, but now, at last, she saw a blush on the lady’s face.
“Just saying good night to your father.”
“But you said good night to us all hours ago,” Mary pointed out.
“Oh, hang it all! We’re doomed! Doomed!” Mrs. Bennet blubbered, and she dashed down the hallway to her bedchamber, knocking her daughters aside like so many skittle pins.
“Good night, Mrs. Bennet!” Mr. Bennet called after her from behind his firmly locked door.
Mary, Kitty, and Lydia lowered their weapons and began shuffling wearily back to their beds.
“If these are the fruits of matrimony,” Jane said softly, “we owe Mrs. Goswick a letter of thanks.”
Elizabeth trudged down the hall to retrieve the candle her mother had thoughtlessly left behind on the floor.
“Indeed,” she sighed. “‘Wedded bliss’ would seem to be entirely overrated.”
Countless times, she and Jane had exchanged similar sentiments after witnessing some unseemly scene between their parents. Yet, for the first time, the words felt strangely hollow to her.
She raised the candlestick to her face and puffed on the wick, but the little flame didn’t go out.
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CHAPTER 13
THE NEXT MORNING’S training began with the usual laps and dandbaithaks for everyone: for mustering on time instead of showing their devotion by arriving early; for breathing too loudly during morning meditation; for having their sparring gowns laced too tight; for having their sparring gowns laced too loose; for, in short, whatever Master Hawksworth could think up. The flimsiest of all the infractions was assigned to Mr. Bennet, who was sent outside to run a hundred sprints across the grounds—backward—for supposedly blinking too frequently.
“Remember: Even one wink of the eye gives The Enemy time to strike,” the Master said. “Now, go!”
Mr. Bennet had lingered a moment, expressionless, before bowing and heading for the door.
It seemed to Elizabeth that Master Hawksworth relaxed a bit whenever her father wasn’t around. He was less likely to dole out punishments from a corner of the dojo, leaving most of the actual demonstrations to Mr. Bennet, and more likely to take off his coat and vest and move. Sometimes, he merely demonstrated new stances. But other times—the times Elizabeth and her sisters loved most—he flew around the room showing off “ninja fighting styles” with names like the Striking Viper and the Tiger’s Claw.
So it was to be this day.
“The time has come for the Way of the Panther,” the Master said, stripping down to his shirt sleeves. “The panther is powerful, but supple. Quick, but controlled. Fierce, but poised. You, too, must be all these things. Like so.”
He bounced off the walls demonstrating the Panther’s Pounce. He sprang up into the rafters demonstrating the Panther’s Bound. He whirled in blurred circles demonstrating the Panther’s Swipe. And the girls watched in awe. His movements were so graceful, so beautiful, Elizabeth could i
magine them more on the stage of a French ballet than in the middle of any battlefield.
And then the Master stopped dead in the middle of the dojo, suddenly still and stiff, not even breathing hard, and announced that it was time for the death move: the Panther’s Kiss.
He looked into each of the girls’ faces, lingering longest on Elizabeth before moving on to Jane.
“You,” he said, and his eyes went sliding back to Elizabeth even before his head turned toward her, as well. It was as if the two parts of him weren’t quite in alignment—clockwork gears no longer in mesh. “Up.”
“Yes, Master.”
Elizabeth stood, stepped forward, and let Hawksworth take her by the arm and spin her around so she was facing her sisters. Then he let go and slipped back behind her.
“The Kiss begins like this,” Elizabeth heard him say. “Notice how I move slowly, smoothly. Not lunging but sliding—gliding in, so as not to startle my prey.”
Something squeezed Elizabeth’s waist, hard, like a corset being over-tightened. By the time she realized it was one of the Master’s muscular arms wrapping around her, pinning her own arms to her sides, she felt his chest—his whole torso—brush up against her back.
“The left arm first, here, to prevent escape,” Master Hawksworth said, pulling Elizabeth tightly against his body.
Elizabeth saw Mary stiffen and lean forward, taking in the demonstration with a peculiar intensity. Lydia and Kitty, meanwhile, were stifling grins, and even sweet Jane had a wicked gleam in her eye. It had been a hard time for them all, with many a tear, and Elizabeth would’ve been glad for the chance to give them some amusement if she hadn’t been so mortified.
“Then the right arm,” Hawksworth said. “Like this.”
He stretched his other arm out straight over Elizabeth’s shoulder, then bent it back, back, back until it was wrapped around her neck. Her whole body was pressing into his now, from her head to her heels. It almost felt as though he were a heavy cloak draped over her, or a bed upon which she was lying.
“Then,” he said, “you squeeze.”
The pressure on Elizabeth’s waist and throat grew, escalating from (she had to admit) pleasant but discomfiting to simply uncomfortable. Instinctively, she tried to squirm, to loosen the grip ever tightening around her, but Master Hawksworth was too strong.
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