Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Of course,” Elizabeth said, leading the way inside.

  “What is his condition?” Lady Catherine asked. She was looking at the top of the staircase now, and she kept her gaze there as they started up the steps.

  “He has shown little improvement since the accident,” Elizabeth said. “He remains extremely weak, and consciousness comes and goes. When he is sensible, he has great difficulty speaking.”

  “He seems to be plagued by horrible nightmares,” Georgiana added, keeping her voice low to avoid being overheard by the genuflecting servants down in the foyer. “He sometimes struggles and cries out in his sleep.”

  “So,” Lady Catherine said, “it has begun.”

  As they approached Darcy’s bedchamber, she slipped nimbly around Elizabeth and darted through the door.

  “I will speak to you in the drawing room,” she said, whirling around to look Elizabeth in the eye at last. “Alone.”

  Then she firmly closed the door, leaving Elizabeth and Georgiana in the hall.

  “She has not forgiven us,” Georgiana said as they walked away.

  “Forgiveness, I suspect, is one of the few things her ladyship is incapable of. As is mercy.”

  “Yet here she is.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. She couldn’t help feeling, however, that forgiveness and mercy had little to do with Lady Catherine’s decision to come.

  After sending Georgiana off to Pemberley’s Shinto shrine to meditate and pray, Elizabeth settled in the drawing room and waited. And waited. And waited.

  The last few days had been torture. Keeping her impassive mask in place, hiding her torment from Georgiana, lying to the household staff and the worried friends who’d come to call. “Disguise of every sort is my abhorrence,” Darcy once said to her, and now his final days might be nothing but disguise, untruths, deception.

  And the biggest lie of all, Elizabeth feared, was the one she kept telling herself: that, should Lady Catherine fail her, she would end her husband’s fall into darkness with the stoic calm of a warrior. That her heart wouldn’t shatter forever as she put her sword through his neck.

  It occurred to her, as she pictured that moment against her will, that Darcy’s aunt might have taken the responsibility upon herself—might in fact, at that very moment, be revenging herself upon the nephew who’d disobeyed and disappointed her. The old woman was a widow and thus free to walk about with her sword at her side. She’d gone into Darcy’s room with a katana. Is that why she’d insisted on going in alone? Would she come downstairs and announce that she’d done what Elizabeth, ever the unworthy wife, had foolishly put off?

  To look at Elizabeth, one would never have known this tempest of doubt raged within her. She merely sat upon a divan, eyes closed, hands clasped in her lap, and tried to focus on the image that most soothed and centered her ch’i: her darling Darcy on their wedding day. When even that brought only more heartache and agitation, she instead pictured Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s bloody, broken body at her feet. It proved a more comforting thought.

  Eventually, the real Lady Catherine appeared. Elizabeth rose and stood silently while the old woman claimed the room’s largest, most thronelike bergère. Once she was sitting, she signaled, with a downward jerk of the chin, that Elizabeth could seat herself as well. Then she spoke.

  “I am most displeased.”

  To Elizabeth’s relief, her self-control was complete. She did not raise an eyebrow. She did not say what first leapt to mind: Aren’t you always? She’d been waiting for more than half an hour to learn what the future held. She could wait another few seconds.

  Lady Catherine gave her a long, imperious glare before continuing.

  “My nephew was once one of the greatest warriors England has ever produced. Then he spurned me. Spurned my daughter, his true intended. And what comes of it? He is laid low by a stricken child.”

  Elizabeth had to suppress a flinch. Her letter hadn’t mentioned the specifics of the attack that had—perhaps—damned her husband to living death. She’d simply said he’d been infected and time was of the essence. Lady Catherine must have examined the wound and somehow seen the truth. Say what one would about her (and there was much Elizabeth could never say, inappropriate as such language was for a lady), few people in the world knew the dreadfuls better than Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

  The old woman shook her head in disgust.

  “I told him the path he chose would end in ruin.”

  “Must it, though?” Elizabeth said quietly, careful to sound neither too demanding nor too weak. Both could bring the full weight of Lady Catherine’s considerable contempt down upon her. “Years ago, you were able to help my friend Charlotte Collins after she contracted the strange plague. You delayed her dark descent by months. I pray that you have since perfected the serum you once used on her.”

  “I have not. I have no cure.” Lady Catherine paused, lips pursed, obviously gauging Elizabeth’s reaction.

  Elizabeth refused to give her one. Here was one butterfly who wouldn’t writhe for her ladyship’s pleasure, no matter how cruelly pinned.

  “However …,” Lady Catherine finally said.

  Thank heavens! thought Elizabeth, though her face remained as still as a stone Buddha’s.

  “… that does not mean no cure exists. I merely lack access to it at the moment. Procuring it would require me to extend myself. Substantially. And I’m not certain I should make the effort on behalf of those who have treated me with such insolence and disrespect.”

  “What must I do to sway you?”

  Beg, that was what Elizabeth expected to hear in reply. But Lady Catherine had something else in mind. Something more.

  “You know that I have always considered you an exceptionally presumptuous and obdurate creature,” the old woman said. “So I must ask myself whether your pride will allow you to save the man whom you have seduced into dishonor and disaster. If I told you there was but one path to his salvation—and it was also the path to your utter degradation—would you, I wonder, be able to bend that stiff neck of yours and do what you must?”

  “What is it you propose?”

  Lady Catherine was silent. And so she remained until Elizabeth realized what she was waiting for.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I will do whatever you ask, if it might save my husband.”

  A look of grim satisfaction came over Lady Catherine’s wrinkle-creased face, and her puckered lips spread slightly into what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

  “Good,” she said. “Then the first thing you must do is give him to me.”

  CHAPTER 4

  For days, Darcy dreamed of sausages. Blood sausages packed with pig meat straight from the grinder. Uncooked. In his mouth.

  He dreamed, too, of liver pâté. And haggis, of all things. And oysters he slurped from the shell, one after another. And sashimi from his beloved Japan served so fresh it was spongy with blood.

  He dreamed he was a wolf eating a man alive.

  He dreamed he was a man eating a wolf alive.

  He dreamed he was a man eating … oh, now his skin really crawled! His dream had shifted in that sudden, lurching way of the worst nightmares, and everything had changed.

  He found himself in his bed, his neck and left shoulder burning as his fearsome old aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, sprinkled crimson liquid on him from a small glass vial. Then she was bringing the little bottle to his lips, pouring an acidic trickle down his throat, saying as he coughed, “Not so bitter as what I’ve had to swallow from you.”

  Then it was back to the haggis, only the stomach it was being served in wasn’t a sheep’s. It belonged to his wife … and it was still attached to her by slimy ropelike cords of flesh. “Eat up, my dear,” Elizabeth said as he chomped in, and she reached into her abdomen and pulled out a glazed ham. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  Darcy felt as if he would throw up. Yet, in his dreams, he kept eating and eating and never was full.

&n
bsp; Eventually, the queasiness subsided and he stopped dreaming about food; his eyes fluttered open. He was in his bed, as in his nightmare, and his neck and shoulder hurt in just the same way, too. He reached up and touched the side of his neck and found what felt like bandages there.

  Then he remembered.

  “Oh, thank God,” someone said.

  He turned—how difficult it was just to swivel his head a few inches to the left—and saw Elizabeth kneeling next to him.

  “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 unreassuring. 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.

  CHAPTER 5

  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 t
o 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!”