The shyest, gentlest of the Bennet girls was on her way to a town filled with disapproving prudes, a lecherous nobleman on one side, a sword on the other.
Elizabeth found herself worrying far less about the unmentionables lurking along the road than the possibility that her sister might very soon die of embarrassment.
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CHAPTER 23
“I MUST TAKE MY LEAVE as well, Miss Bennet,” Capt. Cannon said as the baron’s carriage rolled off up the drive. “But I find your father’s suggestion an excellent one, and I leave it to the lieutenant here to arrange for musketry instruction, if you so choose. Limbs! Bow to the lady!”
The Limbs did as they were told, then whisked the captain away as he barked out “Hut two, hut two—on the double now!”
Elizabeth and Lt. Tindall stood silently for a moment in the shadow of the great house.
“Well,” the lieutenant said.
“Well,” said Elizabeth.
Another moment passed.
“Miss Bennet?”
“Lieutenant?”
“Would you be offended if I were to speak frankly?”
“That depends on what you might say.”
“I see.”
Another long pause followed.
Eventually, Lt. Tindall drew in a deep breath, as if gathering his strength for some powerful exertion. Which he was.
With an effort so apparent Elizabeth thought at first he was about to sneeze, the young soldier forced himself to speak.
“I apologize for my earlier coldness, which was not intended as a slight, only I find myself, in all honesty, distressed, having discovered your sister to be, in the brief time I had to become acquainted with her, a young lady of exceptional qualities, none of them having anything to do with fighting and killing, and it pains me quite deeply to see her forced into a role so alien not just to her whole sex but to her tender spirit in particular, and it is, in addition, galling to find that your father’s obsession with the unmentionables and the savageries of the East should result in your sister’s most intimate connection with a man of such patently low morals as the grotesque satyr who owns this estate, and furthermore … have I said something amusing?”
Elizabeth, to her own surprise, was smiling. For the first time, she found herself almost liking the man.
“No, nothing amusing,” she said. “Gratifying. Perhaps you could show me the way to the gunnery or whatever you call it, and we might talk further.”
The lieutenant nodded and stretched out an arm toward a row of tents lining one side of the lawn. “This way.”
They walked away from the house side by side.
“I appreciate your candor, Lieutenant,” Elizabeth said. “Actually, I find myself in accord with your sentiments in one or two respects. Yet I must trust in my father, as you must trust your captain. They lived through the worst of The Troubles. Whatever they think necessary, I am inclined to do, and I know Jane feels likewise.”
“That would seem sensible,” the lieutenant said, looking straight ahead.
He didn’t sound convinced. There was altogether too much emphasis, Elizabeth though, on the word seem.
“And might I point out,” she pressed on, “that what my sisters and I are doing is hardly unprecedented. No less a personage than Lady Catherine de Bourgh once took up the sword to meet the threat of the dreadfuls.”
“Yes, Lady Catherine … our own Joan of Arc,” Lt. Tindall said. If he didn’t seem to be wishing a bonfire upon Lady Catherine, he clearly didn’t mean the analogy as a compliment, either. “At least she had the good taste to go into seclusion after the Battle of Kent and leave the defense of the realm to the king’s army.”
“And you think Jane and I should do likewise? Simply stand aside while all we hold dear is imperiled?”
“Yes,” the lieutenant said without hesitation.
A little high-pitched “hmf!” of irritation escaped Elizabeth’s lips, and she had to clamp her teeth to keep from saying more.
Almost! Almost she’d allowed herself to think well of the man! She was growing as soft-hearted as Jane!
“You think me a prig,” Lt. Tindall said rather ruefully. “But what I am is a soldier who loves his country. Its traditions. Its values. Everything it stands for. And if we destroy the unmentionables but allow them to destroy all that—including our ideal of genteel English womanhood—can we even say we’ve truly won?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, pleased to throw the word back in the lieutenant’s face with certitude equal to his own. “And if you preserve genteel English womanhood while serving up genteel English women as so much steak tartare, I would say that you have most definitely lost.”
“You must keep faith in those things that have made England great, Miss Bennet.”
“Those were General Cornwallis’s sentiments, too, Lieutenant Tindall. And the last time he was seen, I believe, he was feasting upon one of his own dragoons.”
In her pique, Elizabeth had sped up her pace considerably, so much so that the lieutenant had to scurry to keep up with her. But now she came to such a sudden stop the young man shot past her by several steps.
“Ah!” she said. “Muskets! Who’s going to teach me to shoot, then? You, Lieutenant?”
Before them were a dozen soldiers, each with a Brown Bess in his hands. They looked tentative and bewildered to Elizabeth—not like fierce warriors at all. They were watching a tub-gutted sergeant as he held up his own musket with one hand and reached down to a black box at his side with the other.
“CarTOUCHE!” the sergeant boomed.
The soldiers groped at identical boxes hanging at their hips.
The sergeant pulled out a small, yellowish tube.
“Paper CHARGE!”
The soldiers pulled out their own charges with much fumbling and furrowing of brows. More than one dropped the little tube and had to bend down and pick it up off the lawn.
“Bite top off CHARGE! Keep ball in MOUTH!”
The sergeant put the tube up to his teeth, ripped off the top, and spat away a loose wad of paper.
The soldiers struggled to do the same, many of them grimacing. Apparently, paper charges didn’t taste particularly good.
“Powder in PAN! Lock pa—SimmmmmmmMONS! What is the probLEM?”
One of the soldiers had gone pop-eyed.
“Cuuuuuuuuu cuuuuu cuuuuuuu,” he wheezed.
“I think he swallowed his musket ball, Sergeant,” the soldier next to him said.
Simmons nodded emphatically.
“Dammit!”
The sergeant stomped over and swatted Simmons on the back until a small gray ball exploded from the man’s mouth with such force he could have almost served as a musket himself.
“All RIGHT! Begin aGAIN!”
“With all due respect, Lieutenant,” Elizabeth said, “after seeing this, not to mention the incident upon the road the other day, I’m not especially inclined to return to my needlework and let the king’s army attend to anything.”
Lt. Tindall snapped up to his full height as if something very sharp had just been poked into something very tender.
“These are new recruits, conscripted in London little more than a week ago. They still need much in the way of training. And, I might add, it doesn’t help matters much when that training is disrupted by the presence of a young lady. To allow you to actually join in … it’s madness.”
Elizabeth straightened up as tall as she could, too, lifting her chin high. “So you refuse to teach me to shoot?”
The lieutenant shook his head. “No. I have orders and I will follow them. If you insist on this frivolous exercise, I will find someone who might be spared to indulge you. I would ask, however, that you remove yourself to the back lawn so as not to create a spectacle and further distract the men.”
Elizabeth found herself gripping the hilt of her katana. The sword might have even slid an inch or two from its scabbard by the time she noticed.
“Fa
r be it for me to wreck the morale of the whole English army,” she said. “You need not worry about further distractions on my account. Good day to you, Sir.”
She whirled around and headed for the trees on the far side of the lawn.
“Miss Bennet! Wait! Where are you going?”
Elizabeth stopped and looked back just long enough to say, “Home. And no, I will not require an escort. This sword is all I need!”
Then she was off again. She didn’t slow down until she was on the path that led to Longbourn—and she was certain she was out of sight.
“Yes, that’s the way to prove you wouldn’t be a distraction,” she fumed. “That’s how to prove your mettle. Throw a tantrum and stomp off like a child!”
She knew she should go back. To do as her father asked. To learn to use a musket. To apologize to the lieutenant for causing a scene. To avoid the unmentionable eager to refill its belly with fresh meat.
Yet though she slowed, she couldn’t turn herself around. She was grateful to be heading back to Longbourn, she realized. Perhaps she was even excited. But why?
Could it be something as foolish as, as improper as, as hopeless as—?
A tall, thin figure came bounding out of the brush by the road, and Elizabeth whirled on it, blade already flashing brightly in the sun.
“Ahhhh, Miss Bennet!” Dr. Keckilpenny said, his toothy grin undimmed by the katana poised to slice through his scrawny neck. “I’m so glad I caught up to you! Good morning! Sorry to startle you! My, what an exquisite piece of cutlery!”
Elizabeth resheathed her sword and heaved a sigh heavy with both embarrassment and thwarted bloodlust. “Good morning, Doctor. I’m honored to find that you remember me. When we first met, you said you had to know someone at least ten years before you could recall their name.”
Dr. Keckilpenny furrowed his brow and frowned. “Did I? I have no memory of that, of course, but it’s certainly true enough. Only … yes. Elizabeth Bennet.”
The doctor was in proper (if wrinkled and rumpled) clothes this day, and his dark hair, though free of the leaves and twigs he’d sported in his zombie disguise, was as wild as the thicket he’d just crashed through.
In his hands was something that looked very much like a butterfly net.
“Well,” he said with a shrug of his bony shoulders, “how could I forget after our first meeting proved so memorable?”
He planted the long pole he was carrying in the ground and leaned against it. Straps and buckles ringed the inside of the netting, Elizabeth now saw, and it didn’t hang limp but rather jutted out stiffly, as if the mesh had been woven from copper wire. If this were a butterfly net, it had been designed for butterflies the size and strength of eagles.
“I say, Miss Bennet,” Dr. Keckilpenny said, “are you engaged?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Are you engaged, at the moment? Occupied? Busy? Unavailable? Spoken for? I was just about to head off into the woods again when I spied you up this way, and I thought to myself, ‘Ooooo, I’d really rather not be eaten. I wonder if the young lady would care to join me. I’m no duke or earl or what have you, but if I’m lucky, perhaps I’ll rate my own Bennet as a bodyguard!’”
“Oh. Of course. So you’ve heard about that. Well …”
Elizabeth looked away, facing again the winding lane to Longbourn, feeling again the tug that drew her on—a pull that intrigued and confused and perhaps even frightened her.
She decided to test her strength against it.
“I would be delighted to accompany you.”
Elizabeth turned toward Dr. Keckilpenny, putting the road behind her.
“Splendid! Come along, then! This way!” The doctor went striding back into the trees, then spun around before Elizabeth could follow and marched in the opposite direction. “Or was it this way?”
“Um … and what exactly are we doing?”
“Why, isn’t it obvious?” Dr. Keckilpenny gave his net a shake as he shot past Elizabeth, bound for the other side of the lane and the murky woods beyond. “We’re off to catch ourselves a zombie!”
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CHAPTER 24
TO SAY THAT LORD LUMPLEY had beguiled more than one young lady under her father’s nose would, by the baron’s own reckoning, grossly underestimate his verve, nerve, and skill. Several of his seductions had been conducted in such plain sight they weren’t so much under a parent’s nose as dancing atop it, right between the eyes.
Wooing Jane Bennet in the presence of her father, however, presented challenges of a sort he’d never before encountered, and though he spent the entire ride to Meryton trying to work his charms on her, he ended the trip quite certain he’d have met with more success making love to an unmentionable.
There was, for one thing, Jane’s demure-unto-nonexistent personality. If Lord Lumpley smiled at her, she blushed and looked away. If he tried to talk to her, she blushed and looked away. If he ignored her, she blushed and looked away. If the girl hadn’t looked so incredibly fetching blushing and looking away, he would’ve tired of the whole enterprise and told her father to go stuff himself.
There was, in addition, the fact that both Bennets were armed with swords half again as long as the baron was tall. He’d endured many a slap to the cheek in his time and found every way possible to dodge a duel, but this was the first time he’d had to worry about disembowelment.
Yet instead of cooling his ardor, all this merely fanned it to a higher flame. The thrill of the hunt had taken on a very real hint of danger, and what’s more … well, it was strange, but Lord Lumpley was finding the sight of a beautiful woman wielding a deadly weapon to be almost unbearably arousing.
If anyone in Meryton had the same reaction, they did a good job hiding it. Smirks, leers, sneers, glowers—that was all he saw as they rode into town. And though most everyone was careful to greet him with smiling civility after he and his party climbed down from the carriage, the Bennets were acknowledged with no more than stiff nods, when they were acknowledged at all.
Mr. Bennet, inscrutable old rogue that he was, bluffed indifference, but his daughter’s response was predictable. She blushed. She looked away. At one point—after a gaggle of young girls broke into giggles upon spotting Jane’s sword—Mr. Bennet lay a hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said seemed to give her strength, for she nodded and, for the moment at least, kept her gaze up, proud and straight. But Lord Lumpley could see the barely checked tears glistening in her eyes.
Which was all fine by the baron. A woman armed might have been exciting, but a woman wounded presented opportunity. Whatever respectability the Bennets had left flowed solely from their new connection to a nobleman—a connection he could sever at his leisure. So Jane and her father had reason to fear him, too: They could take off his head, yes, but he could cut the whole family off at the knees.
Lord Lumpley occupied himself with these thoughts (along with idle imaginings about Jane that need not be described) as Mr. Bennet led them here and there around the village. First they collected Ensign Pratt and his pitiful little “garrison” of seven rather shabby-looking soldiers, pausing to suffer through the innkeeper’s complaints about bad business. The regular hackney runs from London had been mysteriously suspended, there were no other travelers upon the roads, deliveries of ale and cheese from neighboring towns were long overdue, etcetera. Naturally, the baron found it hard to keep his eyes open while a tradesman wound out his woes, but Mr. Bennet listened to the fellow’s grumblings with grim attentiveness.
While the innkeeper prattled on, Ensign Pratt dispatched his troops to collect the cargo that had (at Capt. Cannon’s insistence) been hauled to town in the back of Lord Lumpley’s fine phaeton as though it were a common lorry. And if that hadn’t been indignity enough, it was then on to see a blacksmith, of all things. The baron refused to set foot inside the establishment, of course, and actually managed a minute alone with Jane while Mr. Bennet and the ensign disappe
ared into the smithy’s dark, smoky shop.
“I have not had a chance to tell you, Miss Bennet, how smart you look with a sword at your side. It is quite unconventional, I’ll grant, yet also, in its own way, quite uncommonly fetching. I fancy it will be all the rage for the ladies at court come autumn!”
“Thank you, My Lord,” Jane said, face reddening, gaze falling to a spot just to the left of the baron’s boots. The girl was nothing if not consistent.
“I hope you’ll offer a demonstration later of your skills with a blade. You see, I fancy myself a swordsman, of sorts, and I’d very much like to see how you handle yourself with one.”
The girl looked up, fixing her sky-blue eyes on him at last, and the baron feared she might remind him that no such demonstration was necessary: He’d seen her wield a sword once already, when she’d dealt with poor Emily Ward back at the lake.
At just that moment, though, a studiously respectable couple came by—a Mr. and Mrs. Beechman, it seemed from Jane’s greeting—and though they gave Lord Lumpley a smile and a nod, the girl they ignored, sweeping past her with their noses so high in the air it was a wonder they could see where they were going.
Jane reverted to her customary pose, head hanging even lower, blush even deeper.
“You mustn’t let the snubs of the small-minded upset you, my dear,” the baron said. “Live as I do. Follow your conscience. Your heart.”
Your loins, he didn’t add, though the thought of it put a grin on his face he didn’t even bother to hide. For all her weapons and warrior posturing, this Jane was a simple, naive thing, sensitive and overdeferential. She would think it a comforting smile, not a leer. And she would think him a friend—if not now, then one day. Hopefully, soon.
He was on the verge of risking a reassuring pat on the hand when Mr. Bennet and Ensign Pratt came back, and the baron was so piqued by the swiftness of their return he barely even noticed that they were now lugging huge, black-headed hammers.
Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 15