Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  She was looking down at the barrel of a pistol.

  “I told you Ell and Arr could load a gun,” Mr. Quayle said (before adding a mumbled, “Just don’t ask how I fire it”).

  Then he did whatever it was he had to do, and there was a boom and a puff of smoke and a distinct “Ouch!” from inside the box.

  One of the zombie-boys pitched backward and lay still.

  The rest—half a dozen in all—kept coming.

  Mary had already drawn her own pistol, and she brought down another slavering waif just as the diminutive mob reached her. Using the cloud of gunsmoke as cover, she spun to the side and let the dreadfuls hurl themselves fruitlessly into the swirling gray haze. By the time the smoke began to clear, she’d swept the feet out from under two of the unmentionables and had sent the butt of her pistol smashing through their foreheads. Ell and Arr, meanwhile, had brought down another dreadful in tandem and were working with frenzied, frothing fervor to chew through its neck before it could rise again.

  Mary whipped around, looking for the last two zombies, and found them hunched over Mr. Quayle’s box, which they’d knocked backward onto the floor. Despite the clumsiness of their clawings, one or the other had managed to trigger some hidden spring, and the front of the black case swung open.

  “Uhhh, Miss Bennet. If you might oblige?” Mr. Quayle said.

  Mary was already moving. With a warrior’s cry so shrill it seemed to startle even the unmentionables, she hurled herself into a double-handspring, flipping end over end over end over end. She landed directly behind the dreadfuls, unleashed another screech, and then grabbed the tousle-haired heads and slammed them together. Three quick thumps and they cracked like eggs. With the fourth, black goo began to spew this way and that. By the seventh, there was little left for Mary to beat together, and she finally let the bodies drop to the floor.

  “Mr. Quayle, are you—?”

  “Ell! Shut!”

  Ell came bounding over and dipped her furry head under the door to Mr. Quayle’s case. Before the dog flipped it closed, Mary caught the quickest glimpse of a dark-haired man, impeccably dressed despite having no need for trouser legs or sleeves, his face turned to the side and pressed into the plush red velvet that lined the inside of the box.

  “You’re obviously a woman with a strong constitution, Miss Bennet,” Mr. Quayle croaked. “Gazing upon me, however, would no doubt sicken even you. Arr! Up!”

  Arr stopped chewing on the snapped zombie spine he’d been enjoying and padded over to join Ell. Through a series of complicated though clearly well-practiced steps—one dog nosing slowly under the back panel, the other pulling gently on the reins—they began righting Mr. Quayle’s box. Of course, Mary could have done it for them in seconds, yet, with an instinctive sensitivity that hadn’t before been her forte, she knew to leave them to it.

  “I do believe that was the finest example of Satan’s Cymbals I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Quayle said, his wheezy voice turning breezy in a way that suggested a desperate desire to change the subject. “Complete destruction of both crania and all their contents in less than ten blows. Superb, Miss Bennet. Simply superb.”

  Mary was grateful Ell and Arr hadn’t finished getting their master off his back. With his view-port pointed at the ceiling, he wouldn’t see her blush.

  “You know Satan’s Cymbals?” she said. “So you were trained in the deadly arts, then.”

  “Oh, yes. I once fancied myself quite adept … though the skills came more easily to me than the disciplines, if you follow me.”

  Rather than pause to see if she did, Mr. Quayle pressed on quickly.

  “And what of your training, Miss Bennet? What masters can claim credit for so skilled a student?”

  “I was introduced to the ways of death by my father and a man named Geoffrey Hawksworth. But the bulk of my training was in China, under the Shaolin master Liu.”

  “Liu. Yes. Of course. The man is a legend among those who follow the Shaolin path. This Hawksworth, however. What can you tell me of him?”

  Mary felt her blush deepen. There was what she could tell of Geoffrey Hawksworth, and what she would.

  “I don’t know much about him, really. Eight years ago, he came to Hertfordshire to train my sisters and me. He only stayed a matter of weeks. That was at the time of the Return, you see, and he … he seemed to abandon us to the dreadful hordes.”

  “Seemed to?”

  “He fled, yes, and my family has always taken that as proof of his cowardice. Yet Sun Tzu tells us of the importance of timing. The wise warrior strikes as the falcon swoops on its prey: only at the precise moment that action will lead to success. Without knowing what became of Geoffrey Hawksworth, I cannot say with certainty whether he was running away or merely seeking another, more prudent path to victory.”

  At last, Ell and Arr managed to right Mr. Quayle’s one-man carriage, and as the springs and wheels squeaked and creaked under the shifting weight of its occupant, Mary heard another sound coming from inside: a gruff chuckle.

  “You find my faith in my old master amusing?” she snapped with a vehemence that surprised her—and, even more surprising, seemed to please Mr. Quayle.

  “Not at all, Miss Bennet,” he said as soothingly as his sandpaper voice allowed. “Rather, I find it uplifting and inspirational. Now, we have work to do.” He gave a little two-note whistle, and Ell and Arr lifted their right front paws off the ground. “After you.”

  “Thank you,” Mary said, and she acknowledged the dogs’ good manners with a nod before starting up the stairs to the windows overlooking Bethlem Royal Hospital.

  CHAPTER 26

  It had been a quarter hour since Nezu dispatched the zombie family in the street, and Kitty Bennet’s heart was still pounding. Which she was beginning to find odd, since it took a lot to get her heart to pound. A three-mile sprint, say, or the slaying of two or three dozen dreadfuls.

  Yet there it was, thumping away in her chest as she thought of Nezu and his display of deadly prowess. He’d moved with such control, such economy, such grace, such beauty even, but with power, too. It didn’t just fill her with admiration. It excited her somehow.

  Yet why should it? Nezu hadn’t done anything she and her sisters couldn’t have done blindfolded. Just because now it was being done by a man—a lean, lithe, exotically handsome man—that shouldn’t have made any difference.

  She knew what Lydia would say. The Bennet women and their weakness for warriors! Both Lizzy and Mary had once developed an unhealthy attachment to their young master, Geoffrey Hawksworth, and of course Lizzy had gone on to marry one of the most skillful zombie killers in the home counties. Lydia, meanwhile, had flirted with half the officer corps of the King’s Army before settling on the worst of the bunch to run off with. Their mother was little different even as dotage approached, still going noticeably fluttery and flushed around every red tunic and shako hat. Only sweet Jane seemed to be immune, choosing for her mate a man so amiable and benign it was hard to imagine him taking a blade to so much as a grapefruit, let alone an unmentionable.

  Still … Nezu? Even Lydia wouldn’t stoop so low as to pine for a ninja. And the man was so unbearably humorless and stiff—not at all the sort she was supposed to be drawn to. Not at all, to be precise, like Bunny MacFarquhar. If her heart was going to pound, let it pound for him.

  She pushed aside all thoughts of Nezu, fixing Bunny’s image in her mind as she and Lizzy and their father walked up to the MacFarquhars’ door.

  Not only did Kitty’s heart stop pounding, it seemed almost to stop beating altogether.

  Just as Mr. Bennet reached for the knocker, the door swung open, and a burly bald man barreled out carrying a stopper-topped vase the size of a cannonball.

  “One side, old man,” he said as he pushed past the Bennets. “Lady comin’ through ’ere.”

  Another, even brawnier man was on his heels, this one grinning lasciviously at Kitty and Lizzy as he strutted out with Brummell cradled in his arms. />
  “Oi … anyone for hasenpfeffer?” he said with a wink.

  The two men were guffawing as they carried on up the street.

  “Whatever could that be all about?” Kitty said.

  There was a decorous clearing of the throat from inside the house, and a footman appeared in the doorway. He was a portly saggy-jowled man who carried himself with a great, grave dignity that was all the more impressive for the fact that his collar was half torn off and his powdered wig was on sideways.

  “Who may I say is calling?” he drawled.

  “Mr. Shevington and his daughters Miss Shevington and Mrs. Bromhead,” Mr. Bennet replied, offering a card supplied by Nezu. In no way did he acknowledge the servant’s disheveled appearance or the two callers who’d just made off with a smallish vase and a largish rabbit. As was so often the case, good manners demanded a certain judicious blindness.

  “If you would wait here,” the footman said. But before he could go see if anyone was at home (which is to say whether anyone chose to be at home for the likes of Mr. Shevington and company), Bunny poked his head into the foyer. His hair was tousled wildly, and the flesh around his left eye was bruised and swollen.

  “Ah! My dear friends the Shevingtons! What an unexpected pleasure! I feared you would never again grace us with your company—and you, the very people I most wished to see! Do show them in, Scroggs! Do, do!”

  Rather than step out to greet them, however, their host disappeared, and as Scroggs the footman led them across the foyer, Kitty could hear the sounds of frantic movement from the room Bunny had ducked back into: hurried footsteps, furniture being righted, hard shards of something or other scraping over floorboards, as if being kicked beneath a convenient settee.

  When Kitty and Lizzy and Mr. Bennet joined Bunny in the drawing room, however, they found him seated nonchalantly in an armchair, the only hints that he’d just hurled himself there being the beads of sweat on his forehead and the flattened flowers and shattered crystal he hadn’t completely succeeded in shoving under a rug. Like the rest of the house, the room was large and elegantly appointed—and grungy and musty, with that entropic air of decay that inevitably sets in when dusting and mopping stop but living carries on apace. Though they’d seen no more than a vestibule and some stairs and one room, Kitty could sense the vast cavernous emptiness of the whole house, and she knew then that Scroggs was the last servant the MacFarquhars had left.

  Bunny slowly rose to his feet and offered them a slight, almost blasé bow completely at odds with the anxiousness he’d displayed just a moment before. He was making a stab at decorum so transparent it only highlighted what he wished to hide: that he was desperately afraid the Shevingtons would turn and leave.

  Once all the usual greetings had been exchanged and everyone was seated and Scroggs was sent off to whatever dusty cupboard he kept himself in, Bunny favored his guests with a small smile and said, “Well.…”

  Then he hunched over, plunged his face into his hands, and started sobbing.

  Kitty sprang from her seat and rushed to his side.

  “Bunny! Bunny, what’s the matter?”

  Bunny howled out something that sounded like, “Tha too brummah a mutha!”

  He tried again as Kitty patted his back and his sobs subsided, and after seven or eight repetitions his words took shape.

  “They took Brummell and Mother!”

  “We saw those men leaving with Brummell,” Kitty said. “But … ‘Mother’?”

  “The vase,” Mr. Bennet whispered.

  Kitty glanced back at him blankly.

  “The urn,” Lizzy said.

  “Oh! Oh, my!” Kitty cried. “How horrible! Why would anyone do such a thing?”

  “Collateral,” Bunny said, wiping the tears from his face with the back of a hand. “Those men claim I owe them money. And if I don’t pay them.…”

  Bunny began sniffling again, but Kitty’s hand on his shoulder seemed to calm him.

  “These scoundrels burst into your home to extort money?” Mr. Bennet thundered. “Assaulted you and your servant? Made off with precious possessions they expect you to ransom back? It’s an outrage! You must take the matter to Bow Street immediately!”

  “Yes, well, I would, but … they do have some basis for their claim, I’m afraid. A chit I signed. For a friend, of course! For a friend! An old school chum with a fondness for faro and the rottenest luck. He reneged on his obligations, and now I—faultless, foolhardy, innocent me!—I have been left in the lurch.”

  “Oh, you poor, poor dear,” Kitty said, giving Bunny another pat. He looked up at her with eyes so round and moist and begging for affection, she almost expected him to purr. “All because you tried to help a friend.”

  “Yes. The purest of motives, and an example to the rest of us,” Lizzy said. She stood and turned to Mr. Bennet. “We must speak to those men.”

  “No, you mustn’t!” Bunny blurted out. “I mean—I doubt very much they are the kind to heed pleas for mercy.”

  “Then we will not plead with them,” Lizzy replied coolly. “We will talk terms.”

  Bunny blinked at her a moment, mouth agape.

  “But the debt. It is not insubstantial.”

  “Neither are our means. Right, Father?”

  Mr. Bennet came to his feet as well. “Indeed. I’m sure one way or another, we can persuade those men to end this insufferable harassment. Avis, you stay here with Mr. MacFarquhar. I think he is, quite understandably, too upset to be left alone.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Bunny was still gawping at Lizzy and Mr. Bennet as they strode from the room.

  “Come,” Kitty said, taking him by the hand, “sit next to me.”

  She led him to a nearby divan. When they settled themselves upon it, they kept holding hands and, even more scandalous, one of Kitty’s knees was touching one of his.

  Kitty waited for the thrill of illicit contact, the naughty tingle that would surely come from a stolen moment alone with a handsome young gentleman. This wasn’t just the opportunity for which her family had been so desperate—a chance for seduction, at last—it was, supposedly, the very thing she had been dreaming of for years. What Lydia would have done were she on that divan! Within a minute, there would have been fodder enough for the ruining of a dozen reputations.

  Yet Kitty couldn’t help but notice the errant locks of hair that sprouted at awkward angles from the young man’s head, the tear tracks that still glistened beneath the wet and puffy eyes, the faint snuffling sound coming from his thin nose, the general expression of simpering vacuity upon his face. And she felt nothing but disgust—though for Bunny or herself, she didn’t know.

  “You are so kind,” he said. “Too kind. That your family would go to such lengths on my behalf … it astounds me.”

  Kitty forced herself to smile. “It is, as you said, what one does for a friend.”

  “I have to be honest with you. The friend I mentioned …”

  Kitty nodded reassuringly, anticipating the words “he does not exist.” At the last second, however, Bunny seemed to reconsider: He didn’t have to be honest. Not completely.

  “I do not think he would do the same for me,” he said. “Nor would any of my other friends.”

  “What about your father? Surely, with all his connections, he could have dealt with this handily.”

  “Ah, yes! Sir Angus and his precious connections,” Bunny spat with a bitterness Kitty had not seen in him before. For a second, it almost made him seem interesting again. “He’s at St. James’s Palace this very moment, you know, making certain old George is ready for his recoronation. I’m sure those two have much to commiserate over together—them with their profligate sons. It is precisely because he’s allied himself with the king that father’s position is so precarious. How the Prince Regent and his toadies in court would revel in our downfall! That’s why I’m so blessed to have new friends like you. People of means but not—”

  Bunny stopped himself and of
fered an abashed grin that indicated he’d been about to say something even he knew was stupid. “Rank,” perhaps. Or, more likely, “importance.” Or even “quality.”

  He chose to paper over the resulting awkwardness in a surprising way: He took Kitty in his arms and kissed her passionately.

  Once again, Kitty waited patiently for the throb of pleasure, the raging inferno of ecstasy, the swoony blooming of forbidden bliss, anything. All she felt was a vague discomfort that grew greater in tandem with a single thought: “What is he doing with his tongue?”

  Kitty had been kissed before, of course. There was that peck on the cheek she’d allowed Ensign Denny after a Netherfield Park ball and the time another young soldier had taken a quick liberty—a hurried mashing of lips against hers—before marching off to be slaughtered in the Great Stonehenge Massacre. This, however, was something very different. Bunny’s mouth was so … active. He seemed to be trying to swallow her chin or perhaps clean her teeth. In the absence of actual gratification, it became almost comical, and Kitty had to distract herself to keep from giggling.

  I wonder if his father has a laboratory in the house, she thought. Or a study in which he keeps his medical journals. When Bunny’s done with his slurpings, I shall find a way to ask. Perhaps I could even get him to take me there. “For more privacy,” I could say. Why, by the time Lizzy and Papa return, maybe I’ll even have the cure, assuming there really is one. Wouldn’t that be a surprise for dour, disapproving little Nezu? I—the silly, reckless, irresponsible one—land the prize? No doubt he’s slinking around outside somewhere this very moment, keeping watch on the house. Lord knows you can’t keep a ninja from skulking and lurking and spying at any given opportunity. So much the better! I could saunter down the front steps and wave to him and say, “Did you get an eyeful through the drawing room window? What did you make of Mr. MacFarquhar’s technique? Perhaps you’d care to show me how ninjas do it? La!”

  And then, sweeping in like a sudden storm, there it was. More than a mere tingle or throb. A great thunderclap of pleasure, a swirling whirlwind of exhilaration.