Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  “Oh, ho! You think so, do you? Well, what if your friend were to be bitten … here!”

  Dr. Sleaford leaned in to point a long chalk-white finger at a region of Hawksworth’s body that was never supposed to be acknowledged at all, let alone pointed at. His assistants, Turvy and Styles, obediently swung Subject Seven’s gurney toward the area in question.

  “Sir,” Hawksworth said, turning away from Mary to glare at their captor, “as you can see, I have been bitten by dreadfuls before.” He waggled what was left of his arms and legs, which wasn’t much. “With enough repetition, even one’s greatest fear loses its hold. So have your creature bite me there, if you truly mean to. Otherwise, end this charade now.”

  Dr. Sleaford glowered at the man a moment before blowing out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.

  “All right, fair enough,” he said. “Turvy, if you would see Judith back to her closet, please.”

  “Judith?” Mary asked as the slimy, sinew-covered skull and spine were wheeled out still wriggling and snapping.

  Dr. Sleaford chuckled. “ ‘Subject Seven’ sounds so much more ominous, don’t you think? ‘Ooooo, tell me what I want to know or I’ll sic Judith on you!’? It wouldn’t do at all.” His long, pale face turned solemn again. “Sir Angus will sic Judith on you, though, I assure you. Unless you tell me who sent you.”

  He paused hopefully, but neither Mary nor Hawksworth were any more inclined to answer.

  “Fine, I’ll stop,” Dr. Sleaford said with a shrug. “It’s just that we’ve never had prisoners of such obvious quality—not alive, at any rate—and it saddens me to think of what awaits when Sir Angus arrives.”

  “And when might we expect that?” Mary asked.

  “Oh, there’s no telling. He’s quite busy with the recoronation, you know—or I assume you know. We sent word that we’d captured more spies, but I can’t even be sure the messenger got through, with the streets as they are. Frightful out there, isn’t it?”

  “No more than in here,” Hawksworth said.

  Dr. Sleaford looked hurt.

  “What we do, we do for England,” he said. “Styles, we’ll give the lady our deluxe accommodations, I think. The gentleman can wait here.”

  Styles—an unshaven brute of a man who outweighed Mary by at last ten stone—blanched.

  “You don’t mean for me to actually untie her, do you?”

  “That was the idea, yes. Do you object?”

  “You didn’t see her fight, Sir.”

  “Would you feel better if I stood beside you with a pistol pointed at her?”

  Styles stared down at his toes. “Yes.”

  Dr. Sleaford rolled his eyes. “As if you’d do anything so uncouth as to attack your hosts,” he said to Mary.

  “Perish the thought,” she replied.

  The thought stayed very much alive, however, for Dr. Sleaford did indeed keep a flintlock trained on Mary as Styles wheeled her gurney down a short hallway to another chamber and, once inside, began loosening the straps around her wrists and ankles. Dr. Sleaford also had the good sense (or perhaps just the good luck) to keep himself half-hidden behind a formidable barrier—Styles—that would have slowed Mary had she lunged for the gun.

  “Miss Bennet?” Hawksworth called out once Dr. Sleaford and his lackeys had left, closing and locking more than one heavy door behind them. “Miss Bennet, can you hear me?”

  “Quite clearly.”

  Mary stepped to the small, barred window in the door of her cell. Peering out, she could almost see the door to the laboratory/torture chamber Hawksworth had been abandoned in.

  “I’m not far away.” She turned to take in her cell in its entirety and found she could no longer think of it as a cell. “In the most well-appointed dungeon I’ve ever been thrown in.”

  It was true, for not many dungeons boast of thick, embroidered carpets and floral-patterned wallpaper and gas lighting and crisp white linens on a four-post bed. The last occupant had been quite pampered, and Mary had the feeling he or she had spent a long, long time here, whereas her own stay was unlikely to stretch beyond morning, one way or another.

  Mary started to say, “Mr. Quayle?” But that wasn’t right. “Mr. Hawksworth” felt wrong, too. The man had always been “Master Hawksworth” to her. Yet he’d really only been her master a few weeks, years before. And the word itself—“master”—had a sour taste to her now.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” she said.

  “You may call me whatever you wish.”

  Mary licked her lips and curled her fingers into fists.

  “Geoffrey?”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Yes, Mary?”

  “You are Nezu’s agent. I understand that. Is it safe to assume that you told him everything I did yesterday? Everywhere I went and all I planned to do today?”

  “No. That would not be a safe assumption. I told him nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “I was afraid he would order me to stop you. Or, worse yet, that he would decide to stop you himself.”

  “I see. So Nezu has no idea where we are. We can expect no rescue tonight.”

  “That is correct.”

  Mary thought a moment, found her fists unclenching, and then said, “Thank you.”

  Hawksworth coughed out a gruff chuckle.

  “I am not being sarcastic,” Mary said. “You protected my freedom to act. Our freedom to act together. I am grateful for that.”

  “Then you are welcome.”

  “Geoffrey?”

  There was another pause, this one agonizingly long.

  “You have another question,” Hawksworth said finally, his voice even huskier than usual.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to know what happened eight years ago. How I could abandon your family during the Siege of Netherfield.”

  “And what became of you afterward. Yes. Will you tell me?”

  “I suppose I’d better. You’ve waited long enough for an explanation, and putting it off any longer might mean you will never receive it at all.”

  Mary heard Hawksworth suck in a long, deep, raspy breath. He didn’t just sound like a man about to launch into a long story. He sounded like a man about to launch himself into battle. Or off a cliff.

  “I’m sure you know how it began,” he said. “I was a vain man, but my pride was a pedestal of ash. For all my posturing, I was secretly terrified of the unmentionables, and even more terrified of my own weakness. So I gave in to it. I threw a soldier from his horse and fled. To my amazement, I made it through the stricken hordes surrounding Netherfield and Meryton. I’d almost left Hertfordshire altogether when I finally noticed the scratch on my left hand. I thought I’d escaped unscathed, untouched by the dreadfuls. I hadn’t. The skin was barely broken. There wasn’t enough blood to coat the head of a pin. Yet that was enough. The whole arm would have to come off. How I raged to find my perfection stolen from me … even as you and your sisters were dying, for all I knew. And I realized then that it wasn’t just my flesh that had been poisoned. It was my soul. No doctor with his saw could save me from that. It would fester within me every day I remained on earth. Unless I cleansed it.”

  “So you turned back.”

  “I turned back. I rode again through the herds of unmentionables choking Hertfordshire, toward the battalion of His Majesty’s army we knew to be on the move from Suffolk. And this time, I received much, much more than a little scratch. I saw whole chunks of myself go down the gullets of the undead. But I found the column. And with it was my mistress, the head of the order that had given me my training: Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She attended to my wounds with her own sword. I’ve remained in her service ever since. Yet always I’ve dreamed that, one day, I might somehow redeem myself in the eyes of your sister Elizabeth and your father and you, too, Mary. For it was the Bennet girls of Longbourn who showed me what a true warrior is.”

  “You already redeemed yourself when you rode back through the
dreadful swarms. If you hadn’t done that, my entire family would have been wiped out.”

  “And how many more might I have saved if I’d never fled to begin with?”

  “None. You simply would have died with us when Netherfield was overrun.”

  “Still—”

  “You have no debt to repay,” Mary said firmly. “No lost honor to regain. You were defeated in the first battle against your fear, that is all. In the end, it is clear, you conquered it. The man I have come to know these past days is a brave and honorable one.”

  Hawksworth said something so quietly Mary couldn’t make it out, and after a moment he cleared his throat and tried again.

  “Thank you.”

  “There is no need for thanks. It is simply the truth.”

  At that, Hawksworth laughed.

  “Oh, Mary. In some ways, it was you I dreaded facing again the most. You always seemed so certain about everything. So unwavering in your judgments. I did not think you would understand or forgive.”

  “You changed, Geoffrey. We all can. Sooner or later, we all must.”

  “You sound very sure of that.”

  “Indeed, I am. Because, as always, I am right.”

  They both chuckled softly and then fell quiet again for a long while. Mary didn’t find the silence awkward. It was merely a pause in a conversation she knew they would carry on again someday, provided they had other days.

  “So,” she finally said, “I find I harbor an unsavory suspicion.” She surveyed the chamber again, noticing now how deep ruts had been worn in the carpeting. Someone had done much pacing here. “It is not particularly patriotic.”

  “You are thinking of the other prisoners Dr. Sleaford mentioned.”

  “Yes.”

  “Some would be our predecessors, of course. Spies sent by my mistress.”

  “Yes. But there was also the one who was kept here.”

  And then another voice, squeaky and weak, chimed in from somewhere farther down the hallway.

  “And there’s us,” it said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet had no more luck with their search than Kitty had. They found (and did away with) two small flocks of unmentionables roaming freely through the darkened streets. They did not find Mary.

  “Perhaps she and Nezu’s spy ran off together,” Mr. Bennet joked grimly. “I’d rather it were that than.…”

  He lapsed into silence, and Elizabeth placed a hand on his slumping shoulder.

  “Remember the Second Battle of Bridlington? When all those drowned fishermen began marching out of the sea?”

  Mr. Bennet smiled at the memory. “And Mary started trawling them up in their own rotting nets. How proud I was of her that day.”

  “As you should have been. Mary is a skilled and resourceful warrior. What peril could London hold when she’s defeated the worst Hell has to offer?”

  Mr. Bennet nodded, though Elizabeth could tell it took some effort for him to keep his smile in place. She was glad her words could comfort him, even if only a bit, for they did absolutely nothing for her.

  When they returned to the house, Kitty came darting out of the drawing room.

  “Oh,” she groaned when she saw them. “No Mary?”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “And no Nezu?” Kitty asked.

  “We didn’t know we were supposed to be looking for him,” Mr. Bennet said. “How is it you managed to lose the man?”

  “I don’t know,” Kitty mumbled. “I mean … he thought it best that we search separately.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about him,” Mr. Bennet said, and Kitty brightened a bit, obviously anticipating the sort of reassurance Elizabeth had given their father not long before. “He is unworthy of your concern. Now, I’ll wait up for Mary. You two turn in. Tomorrow you’ll need to be at your best for the MacFarquhars … not to mention the king.”

  “I’ll wait with you,” Kitty said, walking with her father toward the drawing room.

  He stopped, spun her around, and pushed her toward the stairs with a firm, “Good night.”

  Then he was off.

  “Kitty,” Elizabeth said, but it was too late. Her sister was already bustling toward the staircase.

  “Good night, Lizzy,” she choked out without looking back.

  Elizabeth knew it wasn’t just Mary her sister was worried about. She recognized the signs, and she would’ve liked to talk to Kitty about the risks she ran affixing any affection whatsoever to a man such as Nezu. By the time she reached the bottom of the staircase, however, her sister’s bedroom door was already slamming shut above.

  It was for the best, perhaps. Their father was right: The next day would be pivotal. It wasn’t the time to stir up more turmoil. It was time to rest. If one could.

  As it turned out, she couldn’t. Elizabeth lay awake for hours, unable to sleep or even meditate. It was impossible to clear her mind with Mary still missing. And how could she worry about what Sir Angus would think when her connection to her husband—the man all this manipulation and duplicity was meant to save—felt so fragile?

  There had been no response to the letters she’d sent to Rosings. Even if there had been, Darcy would have been replying to lies. He had no notion what she and her family were undertaking on his behalf. What would he make of the fact that she wasn’t by his side? Not knowing the truth, he might judge her ill. Yet knowing the truth (and hating, as he did, deceit of any kind), he might judge worse.

  “My good opinion once lost is lost forever,” he’d said years before. And though he’d been a different man then—younger and prouder and more intractable—Elizabeth couldn’t help but wonder how much that old implacability might yet live in him … and whether it could ever be directed at her.

  As the night wore on, there were occasional distractions from these troubling thoughts, but none that Elizabeth welcomed.

  Wails and shrieks in the streets. Someone barring the front door—and, in the process, locking Mary out, and perhaps Nezu, too. An hour or so before dawn, Elizabeth even heard a not-so-distant volley of musket fire. That was a sound that hadn’t rung through One North in many a year. The situation must be desperate indeed if an officer, in the process of saving the respectable classes, would risk upsetting them.

  London was consuming itself from the inside, like a stillborn dreadful chewing its way through its mother’s womb. And that was the very image that haunted Elizabeth’s dreams when sleep did finally overtake her. It was almost a relief to awaken to the thumping boom of blasting cannons.

  Elizabeth rushed to the window and threw aside the curtains. There was no zombie horde in the streets, however. No pitched battle being fought outside their door. Instead, Elizabeth saw the usual gentlemen and ladies and workmen and servants going about their business with, if anything, a merrier air than usual.

  Then she heard the bells, and the cannons roared again.

  It was Recoronation Day. George III was reclaiming his right to rule. The Regency was over—and maybe, just maybe, England would return to its former glory.

  London wasn’t tearing itself apart. It was celebrating.

  Yet the Shevington household remained immune to the festivity. When Elizabeth came downstairs, she found a subdued Kitty and a subdued Mr. Bennet at breakfast, while a subdued (though living) Nezu conferred in quiet tones with the staff (who were never anything but subdued).

  Mary had never returned, nor had her escort.

  Nezu was sending his fellow ninjas to scout for them, but no more was to be done just then. Elizabeth forced herself to drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of toast, and then it was time: The Bennets needed to dress for the recoronation.

  Elizabeth took no pleasure in picking out her gown and gloves and slippers, beautiful though they were. Kitty emerged from her room looking resplendent in creamy white muslin and a feathered headdress, yet she seemed broody, too.

  “Pearls would compliment that gown perfectly,” Elizabeth said to her in
the hallway. “As would a smile. For Bunny’s sake, at least.”

  “How can I smile when Mary’s disappeared? I wasn’t so worried last night, but now? That she hasn’t even sent word seems …”

  “I know. Yet we must retain our faith that she will return to us. We can’t give the MacFarquhars any hint that anything is amiss.”

  “I understand.” Kitty put on a broad, ghastly grin. “Will this do?”

  Elizabeth heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Nezu coming up the stairs.

  “The MacFarquhars have arrived,” he said to Elizabeth alone. His eyes never strayed even that fraction of an inch required to take in Kitty as well.

  So it had been all morning. Him never looking at Kitty. Kitty never looking at him. Any other time, Elizabeth would have wondered what had happened between them. Not now, though. Not today. There was no spare capacity in her for caring. It was all occupied elsewhere.

  “We’ll be right down,” she said.

  When she turned toward Kitty again, all trace of her sister’s mock grin was gone.

  It was back a few minutes later, though, as Kitty and Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet climbed into the MacFarquhars’ landau. It even looked almost natural, especially after Kitty spotted Brummell adorned for the occasion with a huge red and white striped bow.

  “And here I thought you were doing us a great honor,” she said, “when it turns out people are bringing their pets!”

  “Oh, poor Brummell’s going to have to wait in the carriage.” Bunny threw an exaggerated sidelong glance at his father. “Some people don’t think it would be dignified to bring a rabbit into Westminster Abbey. Yet you’ll be seeing any number of lap dogs, leeches, and old bats in there!”

  Kitty popped off with a dutiful “La!” while Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet put on identical looks of polite, tight-lipped pseudoamusement. Sir Angus was in no mood to tolerate his son’s foolishness, however.

  “What you will be seeing—and mingling with—is the very crrream of Britain,” he said after a moment’s dour glowering Bunny’s way. “Just to be in such company when His Majesty is recrowned is enough to conferrr rank and respectability.”