Jane could guess how Elizabeth might reply to that: “Not unless I’m talking in my sleep.” (Jane wasn’t without wit herself. It just rarely seemed charitable to wield it, and charity for Jane always came first.)
“Yes, I am,” she said.
Her bedroom was blessed with its own hearth, and by the orange glow of the dying embers within, she saw the knob on the door begin to turn.
“I brought you something, Miss.”
As the door swung slowly open, a new light spread into the room—the dull yellow gleam of a candle. It sat upon a tray being carried by a roly-poly young chambermaid.
On one side of the candle was a decanter of amber liquid. On the other was a single crystal goblet.
Jane slipped the dagger back under her pillow before the girl spotted it. She didn’t want it spreading through the household staff that she was the sort of person who’d pull a knife on a servant.
“Thank you. That is so kind,” she said. “What is it?”
The maid toddled over to a table and set down her tray. “Our Mr. Belgrave—he’s His Lordship’s steward, you know—he was worried you might have trouble sleeping, this being your first night in a strange place. So he sent up a splash of medicinal brandy. The baron swears by it. Always does the trick when he’s having trouble abed.”
The girl made an abrupt hiccup of amusement not unlike Lydia and Kitty’s chirpy “La!”
“Shall I bring you a glass?” she asked, already reaching for the brandy.
“Well, I don’t usually—”
“Oh, but tonight’s different, isn’t it? Hardly usual.” The maid half filled the goblet, then turned and started toward Jane with it. “Go on. Do yourself a kindness.” She didn’t stop coming until she was pushed up against the side of the bed with the glass practically thrust under Jane’s nose. “Just a little nip, and before long you’ll be having such sweet, sweet dreams.”
“But I—”
“Oh, go onnnnnnnnnnn.”
Jane took the goblet and sipped.
The maid smiled.
“Good, good. Now how about a nice big gulp to bring the Sandman calling?”
“Mmmmmmm,” Jane said.
She tried to hand the goblet back to the chambermaid, but the girl backed away, still grinning.
“Oh, you keep that for now. Drink your fill, and there’s plenty more over there if you want it.”
“Mmm mmm,” Jane said, nodding.
“Good night, then, Miss. And if there’s anything you need, just ring. Someone will get it up for you quick.”
“Mmm mmm!”
Jane waved as the maid slipped out the door. Then she leaned forward and spat the brandy back in the glass.
Not only did she not care for spirits in general, the one brandy she’d ever tried had struck her as particularly repulsive. To her surprise, the baron’s was even worse. He was well off enough to afford only the best, yet there was a gritty quality to the drink the girl had brought, and a faint aftertaste of licorice.
Jane got out of bed and walked the goblet across the room.
Now, where was I? she thought as she settled the glass on the tray beside the decanter. Oh, yes. Alone. Forever.
Something thumped directly above her head, and she whipped into the sumo stance so quickly she knocked the carafe of brandy into the fireplace. The glass shattered, there was a burst of here-and-gone flame, and a billow of black, spice-scented smoke plumed into the room.
Jane didn’t even notice. She was staring at the ceiling.
There was another thump, then a pause, then—so muffled they were little more than a drone, at first—words. Jane had to strain to make them out.
“Down, Mr. Smith! Smithy, down!” a man seemed to be saying. “Bad zombie! Bad, bad zombie!”
Jane assumed she wasn’t hearing correctly.
There was one more thump, then silence. Jane stood there, staring up, still in her stance, for a long, long time.
She heard nothing more from above, though eventually she did detect the creak of a floorboard just outside her door. She waited for the chambermaid to come barging back in with a glass of milk or a bed warmer or some other unwanted succor she’d insist on foisting on her. Yet no one entered, no one knocked.
The floorboard creaked again.
Jane picked up the nearest weapon—a mace she’d left propped up against the table—and slipped silently across the room. With a sudden jerk and a half-hearted battle cry, she yanked the door open and brought the mace up high.
Lt. Tindall threw up an arm to block her blow. “It’s just me! It’s just me!”
He was standing outside the door in full uniform.
“I do beg your pardon!” Jane lowered both her mace and her gaze, and she felt her cheeks flushing with a blush she prayed it was too dark for the handsome young officer to see. “I heard a noise and … oh, Lieutenant, I’m so sorry!”
“There is no need for you to apologize, Miss Bennet. The fault is entirely mine. If I hadn’t been dawdling out here in the hall like a fool …”
Jane peeped up quizzically.
“I couldn’t bring myself to knock, you see,” the lieutenant explained. “I knew it was most improper, coming to a young lady’s room like this. Yet still, I felt compelled to assure myself of your safety.” He looked down at Jane’s mace, and his expression soured. “I suppose I need not have bothered.”
“Yet you did,” Jane said. “And your consideration touches me deeply. I know that you put great stock in what is proper, so for you to come here, at night, on my account … I … I find it quite admirable, actually. It was a fine thing to do. The gesture of a true gentleman!”
This last ejaculation used up Jane’s meager store of forwardness, and she could say no more. Lt. Tindall seemed truly pleased to see her so overcome, however. The pinched look to his face faded away, and his eyes seemed to gleam brighter than the dim light could account for.
“That anyone would wish to extinguish such delicacy …,” he began. Then he, too, couldn’t go on, and he took his leave with a muttered “Good night” and a bow so deep it brought his head almost even with Jane’s knees.
Jane returned to her bed and lay down, though she knew she may as well be doing dandbaithaks for the Master. Sleep would be coming no time soon. Now she had the lieutenant to think of, too.
That morning, he’d made his disapproval of her plain, and the rebuke hurt her deeply. What salve it was—and what a puzzlement—to find that he harbored such concern for her. And such tenderness. He seemed so stern, so stiff, yet perhaps this was but the shield he wielded to protect a vulnerable, more sensitive self. With a little careful coaxing, maybe that gentler spirit could be drawn out from—
There was a soft, shushing sort of sound and what might have been the squeak of a hinge, and one of the shadows in the darkest part of the room began moving toward the bed. By the time Jane realized it was Lord Lumpley, she already had her dagger at his throat.
“Ah, you are awake, I see,” the baron croaked. “So very, very awake.”
“My Lord! I’m sorry! I didn’t know it was you!”
Jane scurried back to the bed, tossed her dirk on the pillow, and snatched up a dressing gown to cover the white chemise in which she slept.
As she pulled her nightgown on, Lord Lumpley averted his eyes. (A little. Until he thought Jane wasn’t looking.)
“Perhaps I did doze off,” Jane said. “I didn’t even notice you come in.”
“Oh, that shouldn’t surprise you. Netherfield has been in my family for years. I know where all the squeaky floorboards and rusty hinges are!”
“Still …” Jane peered into the gloom across the room. “What were you doing over there, if I may ask?”
“Of course, you may—and I pray you’ll forgive me the unpardonable liberty I was taking. It’s just that I misplaced my favorite …”
The baron must have been awfully tired himself, Jane thought, for he had to think a moment before dredging up the word he sought.
“… Bible,” he finally said. “I keep some of my most cherished volumes in this room, so—seeing as you were surely asleep—I thought I’d just pop in and look for it. Abominably overfamiliar, I know, but we barons are generally allowed our little eccentricities.”
When he wasn’t eyeing Jane, Lord Lumpley had been eyeing the room, as if searching for something—the Bible, Jane assumed. His gaze finally settled on the goblet the maid had left. It had tipped over when Jane knocked the carafe into the fire, and the pool of brandy around it sparkled dully in the firelight.
“I see that someone brought you my favorite sleeping draft,” the baron said. “Pity it spilled.”
“Oh! Yes! I’m sorry. I forgot all about it. And I’m afraid I broke the decanter, too. So careless of me.”
Lord Lumpley waved away Jane’s apologies with a strained smile. “Think nothing of it. I’ll have someone sent along to tidy up … and to bring you another glass of brandy, of course.”
“That’s really not necessary, My Lord.”
“But I insist.” The baron bowed. “Au revoir, Miss Bennet.”
“Good night, My Lord.”
When the door was closed again, Jane shrugged off her dressing gown and climbed back into bed, certain now that she’d never fall asleep. Not only was a maid on her way, there was even more to think about now.
The baron. Lizzy and Father seemed to consider the man barely one step up from a dreadful—and perhaps even less preferable, as hosts go. Yet he’d been nothing but polite and attentive all day. Yes, it was beyond brazen, his creeping into a young lady’s bedchamber. But how different was that, really, from what Lt. Tindall had done? And hadn’t it been motivated by the most admirable of interests?
Though, come to think of it, Lord Lumpley had left without any Bible, nor had he mentioned where he was off to search for it next. Strange how thoroughly he seemed to forget about it once he’d offered his excuse for being in the room.
It wasn’t often Jane acknowledged the possibility of duplicity. It was so much simpler, so much nicer, to take everyone at his or her word without complicating matters with guile or suspicion. Yet could it be, she wondered, that the baron had indeed been doing just what the lieutenant had—assuring himself of her well-being—because he was … oh, it was embarrassing simply to think it!
Was he really in love with her?
Even sitting alone in bed, Jane looked down and blushed.
A thump on the door roused her from her reverie. The chambermaid was already back with a new decanter of brandy, it seemed, and Jane, feeling guilty about the mess she’d made for the girl, hopped out of bed to let her in.
The girl Jane found standing outside wasn’t the servant she’d expected, though. She wasn’t a servant at all, in fact.
Nor was she alive.
It was a dreadful, long dead but fresh from the grave to judge by the black earth still caked to its dress and withered flesh and patchy blonde hair. In spots—the tips of the fingers, on and around the teeth no longer covered by lips or gums—the dirt had been smeared away with something new: a paste of jellied brain.
The unmentionable’s hands were flapping at waist level, gaze tilted downward, as if the creature had been fumbling clumsily with the door-knob. When it looked up and saw Jane frozen pop-eyed before it, it hissed like an angry cat and lunged forward.
Jane ducked to the side and gave the thing a shove as it hurtled past. But the dreadful stumbled only a few steps before it whipped around and charged again, hands slashing.
Jane hopped onto her bed, grabbed one of the posts, and launched herself up atop the canopy frame. She meant to try a Panther’s Bound down again, hopefully within grabbing range of one of the weapons strewn about the room—a battle axe propped up beside the bedside table was particularly tantalizing. The unmentionable didn’t give her time, though. It began jumping up swiping at her, tearing down ragged strips of cloth as Jane scuttled this way and that to avoid its raking nails.
Looking down on the zombie’s upturned, hideously decayed face, Jane thought she saw a flash of something familiar—although with no nose or mouth or eyelids to go by, and the ears dangling from flaps of loose flesh like grisly jewelry, recognition was impossible. Still, Jane began to feel she might have known this girl.
If only she’d stop jumping around for a second. If only she’d stop trying to kill her… .
“Oooo, I hope I’m not interrupting any-AHHHHHH!”
Both Jane and the dreadful turned toward the doorway. Standing there, the tray in her hands loaded with another bottle of brandy, was the plump chambermaid.
The unmentionable rushed toward her with a snarl. So shocked was the girl she didn’t even turn to flee but simply stood there, motionless, as if calmly offering the thing a drink.
Jane flipped down from the canopy, snatched up the battle-axe, and used all her momentum to bring the blade down into the zombie’s skull.
The chop split the dreadful down the middle like a rotted-out log.
The two halves splayed out on the floor at the chambermaid’s feet.
“Ahh … ahh … ahh …,” the maid spluttered, too breathless even to scream. Her hands were shaking so violently the decanter danced around on her tray, rattling and sloshing and threatening to topple over.
Jane tried to think of something comforting to say. To her surprise—and vague consternation—she realized that she needed no comfort herself, and in fact she found it difficult, for once, to commiserate with someone who did.
She searched for words another moment, then put down her axe and placed a firm hand on the girl’s trembling, fleshy-soft arm.
“Why don’t you take that back downstairs?” she said, nodding down at the tray. “I don’t even like brandy, you know.”
__________________
CHAPTER 30
ELIZABETH AND MR. BENNET spoke not a word to each other until they were almost back to Longbourn. The parting with Jane had been painful for each of them, Elizabeth knew, yet she couldn’t bring herself to console her father in any way. Leaving her sister at Netherfield for the night was no better than abandoning her in a nest of vipers, and if he felt guilty about that, well, that was the least he could do after the fact. So they’d stalked toward home side by side, each scanning the opposite side of the lane, hand on hilt, saying nothing.
It was Elizabeth who finally broke the silence.
“Zombie droppings?” she asked, jutting her chin out at a glistening red mound of pulp beside a low stone wall just off the road.
Mr. Bennet crossed over to kneel down beside it.
“Zombie droppings,” he said.
“Fresh?”
“Fresh.”
Mr. Bennet stood up and swiftly carried on toward Longbourn. Yet as he did so, he finally defended himself against the rebuke his daughter had never put into words—because she didn’t have to.
“The stakes we play for are the highest, and if I must put up my own flesh and blood as collateral, I will do so.”
“You have done so,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes. And you, my favorite, I would gladly sell into a sultan’s harem if it gave the living even the slightest advantage over the dead.”
They walked a little farther without speaking or looking at each other.
“Of course,” Mr. Bennet eventually said, “I would fully expect to find you on my doorstep the next morning with the sultan’s head on a pike.”
Elizabeth glanced over at her father and found him watching her with a sheepish smile. She didn’t quite smile back, but she did allow the tight, hard line of her mouth to loosen just a bit.
“Is that what you expect to find when you awake tomorrow?” she said.
“I hope not. Not tomorrow, at any rate.” Mr. Bennet looked away again. “If Jane could stay her hand at least a day, it would suit my plans better.”
“And which plans are those, exactly?”
“Ah,” Mr. Bennet said, nodding ahead. “It appears someone has be
en anxiously awaiting our return.”
By the pink-gold glow of twilight, Elizabeth could see a lone figure standing to the side of the lane just where it curved past Longbourn’s front lawn.
A big, brawny figure that put a flutter in her stomach.
Master Hawksworth was watching their approach silently, motionless. All the same, he somehow projected an air of nervous anticipation. It reminded Elizabeth of a chained dog, of all things—a pet sensing its owner’s approach yet unable to dart up for the pat on the head it yearned for.
Which made no sense. It was supposed to be she who craved his approval. Who was the Master here, after all?
Elizabeth assumed it was the presence of her father that held Hawksworth back, and indeed he addressed himself only to Mr. Bennet as they approached.
“It is good you chose to return before nightfall, Oscar Bennet,” the Master said. He’d relaxed as they drew near, spreading his legs and clasping his hands behind his back and studiously composing his features until they were so immutably cool they could have been chipped from a block of ice. “Today we encountered The Enemy again not two hundred paces from this very spot.”
“Did you, now? Where were you going?”
There was a pause before Master Hawksworth answered.
“To the west along the lane. The dreadfuls seem drawn to that stretch of road, and I thought it time to take the young ones out of the dojo, into the field. Their performance was … not bad.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mr. Bennet said, nodding in a wry, knowing way that called into question what it was that didn’t surprise him.
Elizabeth fought to keep her face as frozen as Master Hawksworth’s.
He’d been heading toward Netherfield Park when he “encountered The Enemy.” Toward her.
“Come,” Mr. Bennet said. “Let us retire to my library, and you may tell me the whole story. I have much to tell you, as well.” He started for the house, then slowed a moment and added as an obvious afterthought: “If that meets with your approval, Master.”
“It does.” For the first time, Master Hawksworth let his gaze settle fully on Elizabeth. “As for you, Elizabeth Bennet—”
Dawn of the Dreadfuls Page 20
