He needed a new truss, and only the best would do.
He stood and admired himself in the full-length mirror strategically placed near the bed. True, his manly pear-shaped form had been swelling of late—it was now more like a gourd mounted on the twin stickpins of his legs. But, oh, his regal brow! His piercing eyes! His lordly chins! His soft, pale, pillowy arms unsullied by sinew or muscle! It was, in all respects, not just his mirror image he beheld, but that of his friend and fellow master of the bacchanal arts, the Prince Regent.
What woman could resist such a man? What female—be she girl, matron, or crone—would not fling aside her dignity and self-respect like so many hastily discarded underthings at his first wink? What delicate beauty could he not gently coax into his tender embrace … and then give the old how’s your father?
Well, there might be one: fair Jane of the golden hair and the milk-white skin and the inviting décolletage and the horrid, horrid family. But he had reason to hope her virtue wasn’t long for this earth.
And then the Baron of Lumpley groaned, for he remembered at last that he had work to do. Actual work! Damn the incessant burdens of noblesse oblige.
Without dressing (how could he without the usual retinue of six to help him?) he walked to the study and wrote the following note:
Hunt today—3 o’clock—come!
L.
Then he rang the bell and sat back, wrist aching from the strain of unaccustomed toil, and waited for his man Belgrave.
“My Lord?” Belgrave said blandly when he walked in a moment later. He was a studiously stoic little fellow of forty-and-some years with gray at his temples and a pale gray complexion and a gray, gray soul. If he noticed that his employer was lolling about without a stitch on, he didn’t show it. He never seemed to notice anything, which was one of the reasons Lord Lumpley depended on him so. As a test, the baron had once strutted around an entire morning with half an apple clinched between his naked cheeks, and when at last Belgrave commented upon it, it was only to say, “Pardon me, My Lord, but you seem to have bruised your fruit. Shall I fetch something fresh?”
“Take this.” Lord Lumpley held out the note. “Make copies, stamp them with my seal, and have them dispatched immediately to … oh … everyone.”
“Everyone, My Lord?”
“Everyone within a twenty-mile radius.”
“Everyone within a twenty-mile radius, My Lord?”
The baron heaved a sigh. Work, work, work!
“Everyone who matters.”
“Ahhhh.” Belgrave nodded. “The gentlemen of the area.”
“Yes, yes. The usual bunch, you know who. Oh, and alert the Master of the Quorn. I’ll be needing all his dogs this afternoon. We’re to have one more hunt before The Season!”
“Very good, My Lord.”
Belgrave began backing toward the door.
Lord Lumley cleared his throat.
“Tell me, Belgrave … what do you think of my riding attire?”
Belgrave regarded the baron with cool, pale blue eyes that never blinked. Ever.
“His Lordship is, as always, the very picture of virile English manhood. Though I might point out that the traditional color for the hunt is red.”
“Ahhh, right you are, Belgrave. Make it so.”
A few minutes later, the baron’s dressing team arrived to begin stuffing him into his clothes. As the sockman worked on his left foot and the drawersman fussed over the fit of his trousers and the trussmen strained to stitch him up from behind in his fraying, crack-ribbed girdle, Lord Lumpley set his mind to the hunt.
How to snare Miss Jane Bennet?
Young ladies were always the most difficult quarry to corner, for they were ever surrounded by protectors: parents, patrons, governesses, guardians, chaperones. That’s why he loved orphans and working girls so—and so often! Like that milliner’s daughter, Emily What-Have-You. One day she was delivering him some new hats; practically the next, unfortunately, she was threatening to deliver a lot more than that. Such naifs were his bread and butter.
Yet a gentleman cannot survive on bread alone, even buttered. He must have fine caviar. Champagne. Fresh meat. Like Jane Bennet.
He even thought he might make a full meal of her instead of the usual snack. She was so very, very proper—and so wonderfully passive. Just what he needed in a wife. An impenetrable veneer of propriety, and not a lot of questions.
Of course, she was miles beneath him, but who above would have him? He was, after all, only a baron—enough to impress the rustics thereabouts, but barely a step above a peasant so far as dukes and earls were concerned. Even a viscount outranked him. A bloody viscount!
It would have been possible, once, to marry an equal. But that had its disadvantages, seeing as he was related to most of them. His family used to push cousins on him all the time: Keep it in the family, Dickie. Why marry an outsider? He’d seen where that lead, though. It had been the Lumpley way for generations, and now his relations were as inbred as a pack of shipwrecked poodles. It was a miracle he’d turned out as well as he had.
Of course, that hadn’t kept him from flirting with the idea—and doing much more than flirting with a few of his cousins. Which was why the rest of the family liked to pretend he was dead, and now he had this big old house all to himself.
“Fini, My Lord,” his topsman said upon setting the hat just-so upon his head.
The baron’s dressing team waited with bated breath as he took his time inspecting himself in the mirror. At long last, he nodded with satisfaction, and the dressers tried to hide their sighs of relief. As one, they bowed and began backing toward the door.
“Not just yet,” the baron said, and he tapped a finger against his lower lip in a way his servants had all learned to dread. “It shall be quite some time before my guests arrive. I think I shall have a bath in the meantime.”
He held his arms out straight to the sides and waited for his dressers to begin his un dressing. He didn’t have to wait long. Thirty minutes later, he was naked again.
The rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity. Bath, dressers, meal, chambermaid, bath, dressers, meal, chambermaid (a different one), bath, dressers. And then at last it was time to head back downstairs and greet his guests.
He found his favorites—the young bounders, rakes, and scoundrels—redcoated and, having already polished off enough of the baron’s port to float a small boat, rosy-cheeked. An assortment of stickin-the-muds, some dressed for the hunt, some not, stood around trying to hide their disapproval with varying degrees of success. In their midst, Lord Lumpley noted with an annoyance he certainly didn’t try to hide, was the stickiest stick from the muckiest mud: the local vicar, the Reverend Mr. Cummings. And—damnation!—the vicar noted him noting and headed his way.
The baron might have beat a quick retreat, but a thought hobbled him. He had agreed to speak to Cummings about a supposedly urgent matter—something that smug little nobody Bennet was insisting upon. The man actually wanted the vicar’s permission to … oh, it was simply too ghastly.
And even ghastlier—Mr. Cummings was now upon him, and there was no escaping conversation.
“If I might have a word, My Lord.”
“By all means, especially if it is good-bye.”
Mr. Cummings scowled.
The baron laughed as if he’d been joking. “You must forgive me my attempt at wit. Simply whistling in the dark. This matter with the dreadful … most disturbing, is it not?”
“It certainly is.” The vicar threw a pointed look over at the youngest, drunkest members of the hunting party, who were now badgering Belgrave to break into the brandies. “And hardly a fit subject for levity.”
Lord Lumpley shrugged. “Men keep their courage up however they must.”
Mr. Cummings tried to look shrewd. He had a round, bland face, best suited for displaying piety, mild reproach, and a hint of intestinal distress, and the expression didn’t suit him.
“They do not look much afraid to m
e, Sir. And what could they possibly have to fear from foxes, at any rate?”
The baron sighed, weighed his options, then simply walked away, heading across the foyer for the front doors. Unfortunately, the vicar assumed he was meant to accompany him, and did so.
“I said—”
“It is bigger game we are after today,” Lord Lumpley grated out, resenting each word. He hated justifying himself to anyone, but a clergyman! If he’d had his way, there would be a season for hunting them, just as with the foxes.
“So it is as I suspected,” the vicar said. “Well, it’s a good thing I came, then. Someone must endeavor to bring dignity to these proceedings.”
The two had stepped outside now, and the baron found himself smiling despite the nasty little carbuncle he could not seem to excise from his side. On the lawn of his estate were more men dressed in red, some already atop their black or brown mounts. Grooms were bringing up more riderless horses from the stables, and the Master of the Quorn was surrounded by a pack of prancing, baying hounds.
The circumstances might have been a bit grotesque, but it was a hunt, and that was reason for cheer. A good belt of brandy and some fresh-spilled blood, and the day would turn out fine indeed.
“Mr. Cummings,” Lord Lumpley said, “I resent your implication that any endeavor of mine would lack dignity. I consider myself a paragon of—ooh la la!”
The baron’s eyes went so wide it was a wonder they stayed in his head, and though they didn’t pop out, the lowest knots in his truss did.
Riding toward him on a blinding white stallion was Jane Bennet. Her appearance was shocking, scandalous, sensational in every sense of the word—and Lord Lumpley loved it.
She was wearing a plain gray frock barely a notch above a shift, and at her side was what appeared to be the scabbard for a long sword graced with neither guard nor knucklebow. She was seated sidesaddle, as convention dictated, yet she’d pushed her steed up to a most improper gallop, and the sight of her bouncing up and down on its broad back left the baron woozy with desire.
The girl’s father and sister Elizabeth were riding alongside her, but Lord Lumpley paid them no heed until all three were reining up before him.
“My Lord,” Mr. Bennet said with a bow of the head that struck the baron as a tad perfunctory. “Mr. Cummings.”
“Mr. Bennet. So good to see you again.” Lord Lumpley turned to Jane. “And what a lovely surprise to see you—and on horseback, no less! If I may say so, Miss Bennet, you have an excellent seat.”
Jane smiled demurely and averted her eyes.
“I can’t believe this is the first time you’ve noticed it, My Lord,” her sister said. She, too, was wearing a scabbarded sword, though the baron hardly thought she needed it. Her tongue was sharper than any blade.
“I’ve never seen the young lady ride,” Lord Lumpley replied. “At any rate, you’ll both want to keep back after the hounds are loosed. There will be a great excitement amongst the horses, and even the most skillful rider might find his mount bolting. Once the hunting party is a safe distance ahead, you can follow along the lanes until—”
“My daughters will not be following the hunting party,” Mr. Bennet said. “They will be in it.”
The baron was too astounded to even take umbrage at the interruption, and it was Mr. Cummings who gasped and said, “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. Deadly serious. Unlike some, it would seem.”
Mr. Bennet threw a look toward the front steps, which was now clotted with guffawing men stumbling from the manor house with half-filled glasses in their hands. Several stopped to gawk as they caught sight of the Bennet girls with their austere gowns and sheathed swords.
Mr. Bennet turned back to Lord Lumpley. “Do they even know why they’re really here?”
The baron puffed himself up, breaking two more truss strings while he was at it. First the vicar dares question him, and now this two thousand per annum “gentleman”? If not for his designs on Jane, he would’ve put the upstart in his place right then and there.
“I’m sure many have guessed our true intentions, Bennet. I suppose it’s time we told the rest.”
Lord Lumpley stalked away before he could lose his temper and insult the father of the woman he loved. Well, lusted after.
“Belgrave!” he barked, and his manservant instantly appeared as if he’d hopped from his master’s pocket. “Escort the rest of our guests outside, if you please.”
“I’m afraid a few have already passed out, My Lord.”
“Fine—the ones who can walk, then.”
“Very good, My Lord.”
Belgrave bowed and went back into the house. While he was gone, the baron positioned himself on the front steps, experimenting with various poses until he found one that struck the right balance of lordliness and sport.
“My friends,” he said, once the last would-be huntsman had joined the crowd on the lawn, “welcome to Netherfield Park! Are you ready to slay your first dreadful?”
__________________
CHAPTER 9
ELIZABETH, FOR ONE, was not ready to slay her first dreadful. Yet at least she knew it. Looking at the men gathered before the baron’s manor house, it was obvious most thought otherwise of themselves. They were laughing, cocksure, anything but scared.
Perhaps it was the drink Lord Lumpley had obviously been so generous with that afternoon. Perhaps it was simply the confidence of youth, for the loudest merrymakers were invariably the youngest.
But most likely it was plain ignorance. The great, undead herds of The Troubles had never made it as far as Meryton. Here and there in the crowd, however, you could pick out the men who’d seen them. They were the ones with grim, pinched faces and haunted eyes. The men like Elizabeth’s father.
“We talked about quietly raising a militia,” he spat as the baron brayed on with his welcome speech, “and the bloated dolt throws a party.”
He got a few stares for that. It provided a moment of respite for Elizabeth and Jane, actually, for up to then the stares had been reserved for them. There had been a wave of whispers, too, and though Elizabeth did not catch any of the words, she knew exactly what was being said.
What are they wearing?
Are those swords?
The Bennets have always been eccentric, but now they’ve gone quite mad!
Holy Father, what hast Thou loosed on fair England?
This last wasn’t being said but silently prayed, to judge by the expression on Mr. Cummings’s face. He’d looked only slightly more appalled when Mr. Bennet had splattered his pulpit with zombie gore.
Elizabeth did her best to block it all out with her mantra (smooth stone beneath still water, smooth stone beneath still water …), but nothing could blunt the piercing sting of shame. After Papa had announced that she and Jane were to accompany him that afternoon—were, in fact, to have their coming out as warriors-in-training—she’d felt queasy and faint, as if Kitty had accidentally thwacked her upside the head with her fighting staff. Which, in a very few minutes, she did. Now, however, the pain was far sharper, stabbing deep into her heart.
Her mother had told her more than once she was a headstrong girl, insufficiently concerned with the good opinion of her neighbors. And it might have even been true, back when her gravest offense was rolling her eyes at someone else’s foolishness or speaking with a tad more honesty than polite society permits. Yet that hardly mattered now, for no young lady’s good name could survive the spectacle they were making of themselves.
The proof of that was beside her. Her sister Jane was perfection, with a reputation as unblemished as any could hope for with the Bennets for a family. Yet that hadn’t turned aside any of the stares or stifled any of the snickers, and the demure, gentle-spirited girl listened in slump-shouldered silence atop her steed as Lord Lumpley did his best to rouse the crowd that found her so absurd.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard of the shocking incident in our very own St. Chad’s Church a few days ago
. Well, we’ll have no more of that around here! We shall sweep the countryside clean of any such rubbish … then sleep sound in our beds tonight knowing the peril is safely behind us once again!”
“Imbecile,” Mr. Bennet hissed so loudly his horse whinnied and pranced nervously beneath him.
“Are you ready to ride with me?” the baron cried.
“Ready!” called back a chorus of brandy-soaked voices.
“To your horses, then!”
There was a great commotion as drunken huntsmen staggered to steeds, tried to mount them, in many cases fell off, and then either lay on the ground laughing or berated some unlucky groom for his supposed incompetence in keeping the horse steady.
“Be ready with your steel, girls,” Mr. Bennet said. “I don’t know if these fools are going to kill any zombies today, but it’s quite likely they’re about to create a few.”
“Yes, Father,” Elizabeth and Jane said together.
Lord Lumpley had better luck getting himself mounted than most of his friends, and soon he came trotting toward the Bennets on a sleek, brown mare.
“I would suggest that the ladies stay to the rear. I would hate to see either of them unhorsed in all the commotion of the hunt.”
“You need not worry about my Jane,” Mr. Bennet said. “A finer horsewoman you will never see.”
He peeped over at Elizabeth, offering wordless apologies with a doleful look. A more awkward horsewoman than she one would never see, for anyone else with as little horse sense wouldn’t dare sit in the saddle. If her father had known of the baron’s plans, it very likely would have been Jane and Mary he’d brought with him to Netherfield.
“As for this idea of a hunt,” Mr. Bennet said, looking at Lord Lumpley again, “we spoke of using the hounds, yes, but only after we’d organized a proper—”
The baron stopped him with a raised hand. “We can discuss that later, Bennet. Now is the time for action.” He swiveled around, puffed out his chest (so much so that Elizabeth thought she heard a faint popping noise coming from the vicinity of his stomach), and boomed: “Produce the object!”
Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 5
