Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Part 14

"You should know. You should feel it. For it was obvious to me the first time I laid eyes on you. You are special, Elizabeth Bennet."

Master Hawksworth stepped up close to her again-so close, in fact, Elizabeth worried parts of their bodies she blushed to even think of would soon be rubbing up against each other.

The Master stopped just in time.

"At the lake. With the unmentionable. Your father ordered your sister to attack, yet it was you who took action. You, who are as much the lady as she, you could lay that aside and charge in and fight. Without much competence, perhaps, but with all the courage any warrior could hope for. The skills will come with time. That is why I push you so hard. The courage, though... at times I think it is something one must be born with. As you were."

Elizabeth wondered if she should say "Thank you," but found herself too fl.u.s.tered to speak at all. Before, the highest praise the Master had doled out to anyone was "Not bad," a phrase that implied no matter how well one had done, he could do better blindfolded. Yet now it almost sounded as though he admired her.

"Elizabeth Bennet," he said, voice barely above a whisper, "I need you to teach me-"

And somewhere in that moment, as he either searched for the right word or the nerve to say it, it ended. Elizabeth saw it in his eyes. They went distant again. Dead.

"-how to fillet a spider!" Master Hawksworth barked, and he leapt aside, arm stretched out toward a fresh-spun cobweb in the corner.

"HAAAAAAAA-IIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Elizabeth cried, grateful for the excuse to move, scream, give her heart something to thump over other than feelings she didn't understand.

She charged the web, unsheathed her blade and, with a few quick cuts, diced the spider. It was as close to "fillet" as she could get.

"Not bad... not bad," Master Hawksworth mused as he leaned in to inspect the spider. He was careful to keep his distance now, and his hands were clasped behind his back. "Tell me, how is it you failed in the forest?"

Elizabeth kept her eyes on his as she told him of her brief battle with the zombie that afternoon. She was looking for some hint of the vulnerability, the humanity he'd allowed her to see just a minute before. But his armor was firmly back in place now, and she could see nothing beyond it.

"So, this doctor. He is a good shot?" he said when she was done.

"I very much doubt it. He was simply too close to miss."

The Master shook his head. "An inelegant solution. A warrior prefers to deal death with his own hands."

"Dr. Keckilpenny is not a warrior. He puts his faith in the sciences rather than the deadly arts."

"Yes, I've heard of such men. They believe we can think our enemies away. Fools!"

"Is it not to a warrior's advantage to understand his enemy?"

Hawksworth gave Elizabeth a long, hard look, and for a moment she feared she'd let this new, disconcerting informality between them loosen her tongue overmuch yet again. She had caught a glimpse of the real Geoffrey Hawksworth, yes, but it wasn't to him she was speaking now. It was the Master.

She almost started shaking out her aching arms in preparation for the inevitable dand-baithaks.

"Do you truly think there is anything about the unmentionables one could understand?" Master Hawksworth finally said.

"That is what the 'fools' intend to discover," Elizabeth might have replied, but she felt weary and wary now, and she said nothing.

The Master stared at her for a painfully long time before shrugging his own question away.

"No. Understanding didn't stop the dreadfuls the last time. This-" He launched himself into the air, grabbed hold of a post, swung around it, then landed in a perfect Hour Gla.s.s Stance, fists up. "-is what stopped them."

A Leaping Leopard brought him across the room, and he set down with surprising lightness inches from Elizabeth again.

"Yes, you are special, Elizabeth Bennet. Yet clearly you are not ready to face what awaits unaided. So we must focus, for the moment, on moves you can use in tandem with a more skillful ally. Pas de deux, you might call them-though these are dances of death. Natural stance!"

Elizabeth a.s.sumed the position, and Master Hawksworth took a step back and did the same.

"These moves will require us to act in unison, in harmony, as one," he said. "So... no Fulcrum of Doom or Axis of Calamity from you. And I will not again allow myself to become careless or distracted. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," Elizabeth said, though it wasn't entirely true.

"Good. Then take my hands." Master Hawksworth reached out toward Elizabeth. "This move is called the Hawk and the Dove. It begins like this..."

CHAPTER 20.

THE BARON OF LUMPLEY awoke with his arms around one of his hounds and a pile of empty gin bottles nestled against his back. He felt blearily around the bed for the chambermaids, but the only naked rump to slap was his own.

Then he remembered.

He'd been wrestling around with Yvonne, Yvette, Ywhat-have-you, the French one, the night before. She was a slender little doe-eyed thing with dark curls and milky skin and, most appealing of all, an almost complete inability to speak English. Only the baron had rolled over her a little too roughly at one point, his lordly girth flattening her, forcing the air from her lungs, and she'd wheezed out a sound that needed no translation: "Ohhhh!" And when he'd glanced down at her, it hadn't been Ywhoever he'd seen beneath him.

It was Emily Ward.

How easily he'd forgotten that name just a few weeks before, as he'd let so many names flit from his memory when they (and their bearers) no longer served a purpose. Yet now he couldn't forget it no matter how hard he tried, and the same was true of the face that went with it. The faces, really-one pert and pretty, the other puffy, putrescent.

"Go! Get away from me! Leave me alone!" he'd howled, pressing his hands to his eyes, and the chambermaid had shrieked and s.n.a.t.c.hed up her clothes and scurried from the room, leaving him to greedily glug down more gin until he collapsed into dreamless oblivion.

And now he was awake again-sort of. But why why why? Being awake meant being aware, and that was the exact thing he didn't want to be.

There was a soft knock on the door, and the baron lifted his head off his pillow-or was it another dog?-and spoke the first words of a new day.

"Hmf ibbit?"

"It's me, Milord. Lucy. Belgrave sent me up to see if there was anything you'd be needing right about now. Or wanting."

Ahhhhhhh, Lucy, she of the hips as wide and st.u.r.dy as the White Cliffs of Dover. She was an old favorite of his. Belgrave, G.o.d bless the man, was trying to cheer him up.

Yet for once the thought of her did nothing to rouse him, and he remained stretched across his bed like a beached whale.

"Guh awuh," he said.

"As you wish, Milord."

A while later-ten minutes, perhaps, or maybe two hours, Lord Lumpley neither knew nor cared-he pushed himself up and, resenting every second of his labors, pulled on a stained and wrinkled robe. Then he shuffled to a pair of double doors, threw them open, and stepped out onto a balcony overlooking Netherfield's long, lush front lawn.

It was another bright-sunny day in what seemed like an infinite succession of them, and the baron knew he should be out and about making the most of it. There was so much he could be doing! Racing over the roads in his cabriolet, whipping his horses, terrorizing the locals. Wasn't that just what he needed? Wouldn't that bring him roaring back to life?

Lord Lumpley was still squinting, watering eyes adjusting to the light, when a s.h.i.+mmering figure moved out of the trees lining the lawn. With his first blink, it took shape: a girl in white, ghostly pale except for the scarlet splotches around her mouth and hands.

With his second blink, she was gone.

The baron cursed. He couldn't even step outside without seeing things.

Blast those d.a.m.ned dreadfuls! They had him so unnerved he wasn't having any fun!

After the debacle with the hunt, he'd written his old friend and mentor the Prince Regent asking for guidance-perhaps even protection. Yet he'd received no response, and Belgrave had informed him that the posts had grown exceedingly spotty of late, with no word from outside Hertfords.h.i.+re in some days. He was tempted to hop into the cabriolet and make for London and never look back.

Everyone agreed there was no cause for alarm yet, though. ("Everyone" was Belgrave, whose job it was to agree.) A few dreadfuls had popped up and been handily dealt with. What of it? For that he was supposed to quit his estate when he could only barely quit his own bed? He lacked the energy to so much as stretch out his arms for a dressing, let alone brave the long ride to town.

He needed something to rouse him from his languor, cleanse him of the darkness that had become stuck to him like pitch the moment he saw Emily Ward walking out of that lake. The old pleasures wouldn't do. New, fresh-that's what he needed. Something unspoiled. Something alive.

And then there it was again: movement down by the lawn. It was on the road this time, though, and there was no mistaking those straight lines and bright red coats for anything but British soldiers.

Huzzah! The Prince Regent hadn't abandoned him, after all! On your guard, trollops of London. The baron of rumpy-pumpy would soon be on your scent again!

But... what was that contraption those two soldiers were pus.h.i.+ng? It appeared to be some kind of wheeled sedan chair, for riding upon it was a man: a stout, white-haired officer with his limbs contorted into such unnatural positions-arms tucked behind his back, legs disappearing into the straps and harnesses of his curious conveyance-it almost looked as though he didn't have any at all.

And then the baron noticed the man walking beside the officer, a gentleman dressed not in red but in black and gray, and in an instant all his reborn joie de vivre collapsed like a punctured souffle.

Oscar Bennet. The mere sight of him conjured up so much. The crus.h.i.+ng burden of responsibility. The evil lurking in the woods. Emily Ward staggering out of the lake. Jane Bennet drawing a sword and stepping toward her. Jane Bennet weeping in the shallows, her thin white gown soaked almost to the point of transparency. Jane Bennet bouncing up and down atop a charging stallion.

Jane Bennet bouncing up and down atop a charging stallion!

The souffle reinflated.

Lord Lumpley walked back to his bed and reached for the bell cord, but before he could even give it a tug Belgrave came sidling into the room.

"A troop of soldiers approaches, My Lord."

"Yes, yes, so I have seen. And I suppose I can't very well greet them like this."

The baron swept a hand over his exposed pulchritude. He'd managed to put on a robe, but he refused to stoop so low as to tie his own sash.

"Shall I send up your dressers, My Lord?"

"Immediately! I find myself truly awake for the first time in days, Belgrave. I am refreshed! Rekindled! Roused!"

"I exult for you, My Lord."

Belgrave bowed and started backing out of the bedchamber.

Lord Lumpley walked again to the balcony, chuckling, as his steward left.

"Thank you, Mr. Bennet," he said to the small figure drawing nearer, the dark, straight line of a sheathed sword now visible at its side. "You give me fresh reason to live."

When the baron finally came downstairs (after taking half an hour to decide which trousers and vest best suited his mood), he found his guests installed in the library. He also found that said guests were both larger in number and, in one case, shockingly smaller in stature than he'd antic.i.p.ated.

Two infantrymen were standing at attention when he walked in. He was on the verge of taking offense-common foot soldiers stamping their common feet across his Turkish rugs?-when the officer spoke up from his wheeled chair-barrow.

"Limbs! Bow to His Lords.h.i.+p."

The soldiers not only bowed, they reached over and tilted the officer toward the floor, as well.

"Egad!" Lord Lumpley blurted out. "You're got no arms or legs!"

The officer peeped up at him with the sort of look that said, quite plainly, that he was well aware of this state of affairs and required no reminders.

The baron mumbled out a lame, not to mention somewhat puzzling, "Ummm... good for you."

Introductions followed, facilitated by Mr. Bennet, who'd risen from a chair nearby to offer a (by Lord Lumpley's estimation) rather shallow bow. Once the baron was settled on a loveseat, Mr. Bennet sat down again, as well, and Capt. Cannon's Limbs propped him up straight and went back to attention.

"So, Captain," Lord Lumpley said, "what brings you to Netherfield Park? Were it just you and your men, I might a.s.sume you'd been sent to see to my safe pa.s.sage to London. Given Mr. Bennet's presence, however, I presume you expect me to serve you in some fas.h.i.+on."

Capt. Cannon's face-what was visible of it through his thick, white whiskers-flushed pink. "Your service would be to the crown, Sir."

"And the good people of Hertfords.h.i.+re," Mr. Bennet added.

"Yes, of course," the baron said. "I've been sick with worry about them, every one. And on their behalf, you want me to do what, exactly?"

The captain and Mr. Bennet exchanged a glance, and the former forged on with an explanation, clearly by prearrangement.

Lord Lumpley had his own prearranged plan, mapped out as his dressers toiled over him upstairs. The first step: resistance to whatever Bennet and the soldiers might propose. To his simultaneous disgust and satisfaction, the baron found no feigning was necessary.

"Yes, enough, all right," he said before Capt. Cannon was even done speaking. "Mr. Bennet tried to persuade me to aid him in this endeavor once before. It is beyond appalling."

"That is as may be, yet it must be done," Mr. Bennet replied. "And quickly, My Lord. Our time runs short. I do not know if word has reached you, but yesterday another unmentionable was found on the prowl not two miles from here. It nearly did in one of my own daughters."

"Jane?"

"Elizabeth."

"Oh."

Even to Lord Lumpley's ears, his "Oh" sounded a little too relieved-not that Elizabeth had lived, but that it had been she and not her elder sister who'd been attacked.

"I'm so happy to hear the young lady managed to escape," he added quickly. And then he carried on just as fast, for he'd stumbled upon the path to take him where he all along intended to go. "I a.s.sume it was the training you've insisted on for your daughters that made the difference. That was quite a display they put on during the unpleasantness at the lake. Oh, I know some were scandalized by it. That tongues have been wagging from here to Wales. 'Unladylike,' 'uncivilized,' 'un-English,' they say. I've even heard that your Jane and Elizabeth have been asked not to attend the spring ball at Pulvis Lodge! But no such flighty flibbertigibbet am I. I've come to see the need for these special skills, barbarous though they are. During the hunt, you and your daughters spared me the need to wade in and do battle with that foul creature myself, as surely I would have done had you not been present. And imagine the tragic turmoil if a person of such far-ranging influence as I should fall victim to an unmentionable. Why, a man of my importance owes it to his countrymen to protect himself any way he can, wouldn't you say?"

The baron pretended to muse a moment, tapping a finger against the uppermost of his chins.

"I say... I seem to have struck upon a notion there."

"Oh?" Mr. Bennet said, and like the baron's "Oh" of a moment before, it seemed to convey much for what's basically one step up from a grunt. It was a wry and weary "Oh," slightly sad and entirely unsurprised.

"Imagine, Mr. Bennet," Lord Lumpley said, "what a boon it would be for your daughters-and all who might emulate them-should a person of standing be seen to take them to his bosom not in spite of their unconventional ways but because of them. Socially, they could be redeemed, and it would be all the easier for you to accomplish whatever you think necessary."

Mr. Bennet sat stock still as he listened, and even when he spoke he somehow looked less like a flesh-and-blood man than a portrait of himself, the expression on his face painted after a particularly long day.