Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 21

  “Yes, it will be an early night for her,” Mr. Bennet cut in. “You should be in bed within the hour, Lizzy, and I want you sleeping in late come morning, too. You have quite a day before you.” He looked at the Master and spoke in a voice that seemed less to state a fact than issue a command. “She’s coming out tomorrow. At a ball at Netherfield.” Then he smiled and went on lightly, “A pity she hasn’t had time to practice her dancing lately. But then again, I always found even the liveliest quadrille to be child’s play after mastering the Way of the Panther.”

  “Coming out?” Master Hawksworth said. “Indeed, you do have much to explain, Oscar Bennet.”

  He spoke sternly, like a man reserving judgment on some possible folly he could squelch with a single word, should he choose. Yet the look he gave Elizabeth before disappearing into the library with her father seemed doleful and thwarted. Longing, one could call it … and Elizabeth both did and didn’t want to.

  The library door was still swinging shut when Elizabeth’s sisters descended on her, Lydia and Kitty each taking an arm and dragging her into the drawing room demanding news of the day while Mary walked behind sharing some of her own.

  “I slew an unmentionable this afternoon. The Master seemed quite pleased.”

  “Oh, hush. No one wants to hear about that,” Mrs. Bennet said from her chaise longue. She sounded more affectionate than annoyed, though, and there was a look of contented ease upon her face that Elizabeth hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “Lizzy’s back—that’s what matters.”

  Mrs. Bennet turned her head and pushed an uncharacteristically rosy cheek upward, signaling Elizabeth to come plant a kiss upon it, which she did.

  “You must tell us all the news from Netherfield. Jane and Lord Lumpley are getting along famously, I trust.”

  “Well, there was nothing infamous about it. Though I don’t doubt the baron would change that, if he could.”

  Mrs. Bennet waved a languid hand in the air and replied with a simple “Ohhhhhhh.”

  “And Jane told me some of our neighbors were less than convivial when she and His Lordship went into the village together this morning.”

  Mrs. Bennet shrugged. “They’ll come around. We have a nobleman’s patronage. That more than compensates for the little quirks your father has foisted upon you.”

  Elizabeth could scarcely believe how at ease her mother seemed. It was almost as though some other woman had slipped into Mrs. Bennet’s skin—for which Elizabeth was glad, since this other woman was altogether more pleasant to be around.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Mamma,” she said. “We’ll certainly see that put to the test tomorrow. The spring ball is no longer to be held at Pulvis Lodge. It will be at Netherfield—and the Bennets are once again welcome.”

  Mrs. Bennet’s newfound tranquility was obliterated in an instant.

  “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” she cried. “At last, our luck has changed for the better! We are redeemed! We are redeemed!”

  Kitty and Lydia had hopped to their feet squealing with glee, and Mrs. Bennet actually jumped up and took them each by the hand and joined in. If there’d been a maypole handy, Elizabeth thought, they would’ve begun prancing around it.

  This near-hysterical excitement carried on through the rest of the evening, with Mrs. Bennet and her two youngest daughters giddily debating the merits of this gown or these gloves or that or the other way of wearing one’s hair. Elizabeth herself could only work in the occasional opinion (quite often getting no further than “I think that’s—” before being overruled by her mother) while Mary simply curled up in a corner with her history book and flintlock and gun oil and left the hullabaloo to the others.

  Eventually, however, Elizabeth was allowed to string enough words together to tease out the details of her sisters’ day with the master. He’d seemed restless and preoccupied, she was told, and he even let them end their training early so he could “patrol the grounds.”

  “Of course, ‘the grounds’ turned out to be a patch of clover down by the road,” Kitty giggled.

  “And it wasn’t unmentionables he was patrolling for!” Lydia chimed in. “It was his pet student!”

  “You don’t know that,” Mary grumbled from the corner. As usual, no one paid any attention.

  “Never you mind that Hawksworth,” Mrs. Bennet told Elizabeth. “He might be fine for teaching you the Strutting Rooster or the Preening Peacock or what have you, I don’t know. But it’s men of consequence you need to set your sights on, not long-haired savages who eat raw fish and live in a garden shed. Just take that smart young Lieutenant Tindall, for instance. He comes from good stock, that one. I can sniff them out like a pig finds truffles. It’s a good thing I’ll be with you tomorrow night to steer you toward the quality catches.”

  “Yes, Mamma,” Elizabeth sighed. “If I find myself in any doubt as to the truffles, I’ll simply turn to my pig.”

  Mrs. Bennet nodded firmly. “You do that.”

  Somewhere in the midst of all this, Master Hawksworth finished his meeting with Elizabeth’s father and slipped out of the house.

  “All right, all right—to bed with you,” Mr. Bennet said, shooing Lydia and Kitty from Elizabeth’s room (where they’d been helping her prepare for the ball by arguing about which of them looked better in her jewelry). “You, too, Mrs. Bennet. You know anything you decide tonight will be reversed in the light of day, anyway. Let the poor girl get her rest.”

  Yet there was little that was restful about the long night that followed. Elizabeth told herself it was concern for Jane that kept her up, and indeed that was what her sleepy, half-dreaming mind dwelled on most. It was almost as though she welcomed the worry, though, for she found herself shifting to it whenever certain other thoughts threatened to take root.

  If she should wonder why Master Hawksworth fixated on her so, she reminded herself that her sister was perhaps in peril just a few miles away.

  If she should find herself dizzied by the swirl of her own uncertain feelings for the Master—attraction shunted aside by respect giving way to … something else?—she anchored herself with Jane.

  Even if she should dwell too long upon Dr. Keckilpenny and his mad experiments and his open mind and his infectious smile, she pushed it aside in favor of Jane.

  Only once, to her surprise, did thoughts of the ball occupy her, and even then there was a curiously inert quality to her musings. Coming out was supposed to change everything—childhood would end, a new future would unfold—yet Elizabeth couldn’t seem to make herself care anymore. Not with the dreadfuls likely to be in everyone’s future.

  Once again, it was Jane she turned to, hoping her sister’s night was passing more peacefully than her own.

  Eventually, Elizabeth gave up on sleep entirely. A faint orange glimmer had appeared around her curtains, and she rose and went to them and drew them aside.

  Dawn was breaking, bringing the day that would, supposedly, make her a lady. A woman. As she stood there, staring out at the light that crept across the landscape, chasing back the shadows, another shape—that of her own face—slowly sharpened in the glass of the windowpane. At first, it was just a blur between her and the world, but with time and more light it became a reflection almost as clear as in a mirror.

  “Good morning,” Elizabeth said to herself. “My, but don’t you look a fright.”

  And then there was movement down below, and suddenly Elizabeth was looking through the glass once more.

  Master Hawksworth was walking off toward the stables with his katana at his side and his warrior’s bedroll slung over his back.

  Elizabeth threw on her dressing gown and dashed from the room, down the stairs and out the door.

  “Master! Master, wait!”

  Master Hawksworth stopped but didn’t turn around.

  “Master?” Elizabeth said, coming closer. As she walked across the grass, her bare feet were quickly covered with cold morning dew she barely even noticed. “Are you going somewhere?�
��

  The Master finally faced Elizabeth. When he saw she was in her nightclothes, he looked, for a moment, shocked—and then as though he might actually smile.

  “No, Elizabeth Bennet. I am merely preparing for an important day. Your father and I have much we must do.”

  “Then I should be doing it, too,” Elizabeth said. “All of us, I mean. Me and Mary and Kitty and Lydia. If it’s so important, we must every one of us do what we can.”

  At last, the Master really did smile. It looked horribly small on such a big man, though, and it barely amounted to more than a slight, fleeting curl of the lips.

  “You are an example for us all, Elizabeth Bennet. But no. Your father wanted you and your sister, Jane Bennet, to have this day for your country dance. It is, perhaps, the last chance for any of us to taste such unfettered pleasure. So I gave my consent.”

  “You are growing soft, Master.”

  It was meant as a jest, not reproof. Yet Master Hawksworth winced.

  “No. It’s not that. The truth is, I’ve always—” He cut himself off and started to turn away again, then stopped with his side to Elizabeth, his fists clenched. “I have a shameful secret, Elizabeth Bennet. I believe your father suspects, yet I dare not speak of it aloud, even to you … though in you I have found my only hope of overcoming it.”

  Elizabeth started toward him again. “Master … Geoffrey … what is it?”

  She reached out, about to take one of his hands in hers.

  “Ahh, Lizzy,” Mr. Bennet said as he came around the side of the house. He had a crossbow in his hands and a look of mild surprise on his face. “I thought I told you to sleep in. And here I find you on the lawn in your night things with the sun not up half an hour? Such shameful disregard for your father’s wishes! If it weren’t your special day, it’d be dandbaithaks till noon. Am I right, Master?”

  Master Hawksworth stiffened—back and legs straightening, chest puffing out, chin jutting—until he looked like something out of a Grecian courtyard.

  Mr. Bennet had the gaze of a Gorgon, it seemed: It had turned the man to stone.

  “Indeed,” the Master said. “You rose early, too, Oscar Bennet.”

  “Not at all. I never went to bed. ‘Eternal vigilance’—that is my credo now.”

  Mr. Bennet and Master Hawksworth shared a long, silent look.

  “Shall I have Hill bring out some hot coffee?” Elizabeth said. “You both seem to have fallen asleep standing up.”

  “Not a bad idea, Lizzy. But it’s one, I’m afraid, for which we have not the time.” Mr. Bennet stepped swiftly up to Hawksworth and then swept past him, bound for the stables. “Come, Master. We must away to Meryton to collect Ensign Pratt and his men. We’ll need their help if we’re to see our plans through.”

  “What of my help?” Elizabeth said. “Surely, there is some part in your plans for me.”

  Her father stopped and turned toward her, nodding gravely. For the first time, Elizabeth noticed a red smear high up on his left cheek, and his hands and cuffs were speckled with tiny dots, as from a spray of crimson liquid.

  He hadn’t just been watching for dreadfuls that night. He’d met with at least one.

  “Of course. There is a task of vital importance that you and only you can undertake,” he said to her. “Go back into the house, go up to your room,” Mr. Bennet cocked an eyebrow, then grinned, “and lay out your best gown. Then let your mother and sisters spend the next twelve hours fussing over your hair. After that, you are to travel to Netherfield and dance the night away in the company of your sister Jane and whatever respectable gentlemen the two of you might coax into your webs.”

  Mr. Bennet looked up at the second-floor windows—and the three young faces peering down from them—and threw his arms wide.

  “On this, Elizabeth’s special day, I release all of my daughters! From this moment on, you are not warriors! You are again young ladies! Revel in it however you would!”

  And with that he left.

  __________________

  CHAPTER 31

  “REVEL IN IT however you would.” That’s how Elizabeth’s father told her to spend the day of her coming out. Which was cruelly ironic, since it was he who’d cast a pall over the ball and all her preparations for it.

  Mr. Bennet’s sudden, strange change of heart about his daughters—releasing them from their training just as the peril of the dreadfuls seemed about to peak—plagued Elizabeth the whole day. Was he doing them one last kindness before calamity struck? Was he shunting his loved ones out of harm’s way? Or was he simply trying to come between her and …?

  Oh, bosh! There was nothing to come between.

  Right?

  Elizabeth’s misery was compounded by her mother’s bliss. If something made Mrs. Bennet happy, it was virtually guaranteed to be a disaster in the making. And Mrs. Bennet had never seemed happier.

  She hummed as she and Lydia pinned up Elizabeth’s hair and wove in pearl beads and ribbon. She sang as she and Kitty laid out the necklace, earrings, bracelets, and brooch with which Elizabeth would soon be festooned. She giggled as she and Mary played tug-of-war with Elizabeth’s bodice, the mother pulling down in favor of “display,” the daughter pulling up in defense of “decorum.” And when all her labors were done and Elizabeth was at last a vision of loveliness—or Mrs. Bennet’s vision of loveliness, at least, for Elizabeth had taken no more of a role in her own dressing than would a porcelain doll—she laughed and clapped her hands and declared her to be “radiant, entrancing … why, almost as pretty as Jane!”

  To Elizabeth’s relief, Mrs. Bennet was alone in her oblivious good spirits. It was nothing new to see Mary moping around looking sour, but eventually even Lydia and Kitty lost interest in their mother’s fussing over Elizabeth. By midafternoon, they were half-heartedly sparring with yari spears out on the front lawn. For weeks, the girls had longed for a day without training, a day they could devote to gossip and mischief and dreams of their own balls and gentleman callers. And now that they finally had such a day, they seemed so bored they’d welcome a horde of unmentionables with open arms.

  Elizabeth was tempted to grab a spear and join them, and her restlessness grew so acute she asked her mother again and again if they might set out for Netherfield early so as to check on Jane. Yet Mrs. Bennet poohpoohed the idea every time. “His Lordship doesn’t need us barging in just as he’s getting to know your sister,” she’d say. Eventually, however—when she had been stuffed into the last of the various layers a lady must keep between herself and all others—Mrs. Bennet announced that they’d be leaving Longbourn ahead of schedule, after all. Her old acquaintance Capt. Cannon had extended an invitation for a tour of his encampment, she said, and now seemed the perfect time to accept his gracious offer.

  Soon after, she and Elizabeth were waving good-bye to Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Mrs. Hill as the Bennets’ carriage rolled off. It was a bright, warm day, yet though Mrs. Bennet prattled on about its beauty, for Elizabeth the sunshine merely meant the shadows of the surrounding woods were all the darker and more impenetrable by comparison. Indeed, she couldn’t stop staring off into the trees and bracken, and several times she thought she caught a blurry flurry of movement and a whiff of putrescence upon the air. Once, when turning her head, she even got a glimpse of a small, childlike figure peering back at her from behind a tree. But by the time Elizabeth again focused on the spot where it had been, she saw nothing, and she could but conclude it had been a phantasm conjured up by her own overstoked imagination. All the same, her palms itched, and the back of her neck tingled with something that should have been dread, but was not.

  As they neared Netherfield Park, they could hear the occasional pop of a distant gunshot, and when they rounded the final bend before the main drive they found themselves confronted not by a single sentry but a picket line of five, all with their muskets raised.

  “Halt!” one of the soldiers shouted.

  The driver pulled back hard on the reins and the ho
rses reared, nearly sending Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet flying out of their seat.

  “Hello again, Private Jones!” Elizabeth called out. “Perhaps you might remind your friends that unmentionables don’t make a habit of traveling by coach.”

  “Hasn’t anyone told you there’s to be a ball tonight?” Mrs. Bennet added. “You can’t stand out here waving guns at the cream of Hertfordshire!”

  The soldiers lowered their Brown Besses and made way for the Bennets’ carriage.

  “Begging your pardon, Madam.” Pvt. Jones started to tip his black, tall-peaked cap, then seemed to realize this wasn’t something soldiers were supposed to do. “It’s just everyone’s a bit on edge around here. We’ve had three more of them on the grounds, y’see—and one even slipped through the lines last night and got into the house, though no one can guess how.”

  Mrs. Bennet gasped.

  “Was anyone hurt?” Elizabeth asked.

  The soldier shrugged. “They don’t share the details with the likes of us. We’re not even supposed to know that—”

  “Go on! Go on!” Elizabeth snapped at the driver, and with a crack of the whip the carriage jerked off toward the house. Elizabeth jumped out and ran inside before the wheels had even stopped turning.

  The baron’s gray, wraithlike steward, Belgrave, appeared out of nowhere to block her path as she crossed the foyer.

  “May I help you?”

  “My sister. Miss Jane Bennet. I must see her at once.”

  Belgrave took on the dead-eyed look of quiet condescension peculiar to servants in manor houses. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

  “Why? Is she—”

  “Lizzy? Is everything all right?”

  Elizabeth looked up and saw Jane and Lord Lumpley standing side by side at the top of the stairs.

  She heaved a sigh of relief, which turned to a cringe of embarrassment when her mother popped through the door after her.

  “Ah, there you are, Jane!” Mrs. Bennet said. She paused for a hurried curtsy. “So sorry to barge in like this, My Lord, but the soldiers out front put us in an absolute tizzy with their foolish gossip! I should have known they were talking nonsense. Just look at this house! Why, it seems a shame even to walk on the floors, they gleam so. No dirty old dreadfuls here. They wouldn’t match the décor, I imagine. La! Well, what are you waiting for, dear? Come down and give your mother a kiss before you show her the ballroom.”