Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a great warrior, a national hero, a living legend, and, by all accounts, a monumentally vindictive bitch. She was neither someone to be trifled with nor, given her bitterness toward Elizabeth, someone to be trusted. His daughter had married the man Her Ladyship had chosen for her own. Perhaps she intended to avenge herself with some perversely roundabout trap.

  But, if so, why bait him into it? With Kitty? In North London?

  In the end, two things decided him. One of Lady Catherine’s silent assassins had been in his dojo while he meditated, utterly oblivious, and had merely left him a message rather than take his life. If the lady had wanted him dead, there was no need to command him to London to see it done. And whether she was lying about the danger to Darcy, this much was certain: Elizabeth needed his help.

  He would do as the letter instructed.

  Once his decision was made, he found his concern for his favorite daughter tinged by something that felt very much like excitement. Ashamed by the emotion, not understanding it, he sought, in the best English manner, to ignore it. There were more important things to consider than his own mixed feelings—the campaign he had to plan, for instance. His foe would be wily and tenacious, yet it was crucial that he outwit her.

  How could he get Kitty to London without Mrs. Bennet learning of it and insisting on coming along?

  Mr. Bennet settled himself back on the floor, closed his eyes, and thought again of the soaring eagle seeing all and hearing nothing. He didn’t rise until he, too, was ready to soar once more.

  CHAPTER 7

  The first thing Darcy became aware of was the fact that he was aware. This was a change of pace.

  All was blackness and had been ever since … something. Somewhere. Somewhen. The difference now was that he knew the blackness for what it was. He remembered the possibility of light.

  His consciousness dragged itself from the abyss a little more, enough for him to feel surprise that he was alive. If this was living.

  A nameless dread stirred deep within him. If he wasn’t alive, then what was this? Damnation? Limbo? What else was there that wasn’t life but wasn’t death?

  An image flashed into his mind, obliterating all thought: a steak and kidney pie, the crust golden brown and steaming, the minced center bloody and raw and liberally garnished with … were those fingers?

  His stomach growled.

  His eyes opened.

  Still, all was black.

  No. Not all black. The more he stared into it, the more he could make out black-black and gray-black and brown-black in patterns that remained indistinct yet strangely familiar. There was a comforting quality to it all. It felt almost like home.

  Surely, he was home, for out of the corner of his eye he noticed the outline of a slender woman at his bedside. She had dark hair and dark eyes and seemed to be wearing the black mourning dress of a widow. Or a widow-to-be.

  “Elizabeth.”

  He reached out and took her by the hand … a cold, bony hand that could belong to his wife only if she’d spent the past week fasting in an ice house.

  Darcy tried to snatch back his hand, but skeletal fingers clamped tightly over his.

  “It’s all right, Fitzwilliam. You’re safe. You’re with me.”

  The woman leaned closer, her face piercing a stray shaft of moonlight cutting through the room, and Darcy found himself holding hands with Lady Catherine’s daughter, his cousin, Anne de Bourgh.

  She looked as gaunt and sallow as the last time he’d seen her. Exactly as gaunt and sallow, in fact. She hadn’t changed a bit in the past four years. She was a ghostly, ghastly, listless little thing, and at one time Darcy would’ve guessed that the slightest breeze from a drafty window would be enough to puff her into the afterlife. She’d obviously managed to survive if not thrive, however, carrying on in her immutable, enervated way, like an old tortoise or a spindly tree.

  “You have nothing to worry about anymore,” she said. “Nothing to fear.”

  Her words only served to remind him what he did have to fear, even if the details remained hazy. He brought his free hand up to his neck. The bandages were still there. “I wish I could agree with you.”

  “Oh, but you should. Even the strange plague is no match for Lady Catherine the Great.”

  “You know what’s happened to me, then?”

  Anne nodded, her eyes filled with compassion rather than the revulsion Darcy would have thought his due.

  “Yes. I know. It doesn’t bother me. We’re all family here.”

  At last Darcy realized where here was and why it had seemed so familiar. He had awakened in a bed he knew well—the one in his favorite guest room at Rosings. The memory of his last conversation with Elizabeth came to him then as well. Darcy found himself eager to forget it again.

  He managed to free his hand from his cousin’s icy grip. The fingers had gone numb.

  Anne retreated, and her features were swallowed by darkness, turning her again into little more than the muddled outline of a woman. In a way, that was how Darcy was used to seeing her—though the shadows in which his cousin eternally dwelled had, in the past, been cast mainly by her mother.

  “Is Georgiana here?” he said. “I … I seem to remember that she was with me during the journey from Derbyshire. I should very much like to speak with her.”

  “She’s asleep. She has been for hours.”

  “What time is it?”

  Anne’s silhouette shifted, seemed to grow and then contract.

  She was shrugging.

  “Three? Four? I can’t remember the last time I heard chimes from downstairs.”

  “Three or four? What are you doing in my room?”

  Anne giggled. The coquettishness of it caught Darcy off guard. He’d known this woman all her life, yet her laughter seemed like something new and strange to him.

  “I’m watching over you, silly,” she said.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Always … and never. Sleep hardly seems to make a difference. I certainly haven’t missed it tonight.”

  “It was very kind of you to keep vigil. You need not trouble yourself any longer, however. I think I’ll sleep all the more soundly in solitude.”

  “I understand.” Anne rose to go. “I will always be near if you need me. You can rest assured of that.”

  She bent over Darcy and brushed his forehead with lips that were as cold as her hands. It was like being kissed by a granite slab. Then she turned and left without making a sound.

  She was so quiet, in fact, and the room was so dark that Darcy couldn’t be sure she’d really gone. Indeed, her presence seemed to linger in the air, hovering like the must of mold and decay in a cobwebbed attic. No matter how long he lay there, perfectly still, perfectly silent, Darcy couldn’t quite feel he was alone.

  Anne had promised to stay near him, and somehow Darcy knew she meant it. It did not, however, help him “rest assured.”

  He didn’t sleep again all night.

  CHAPTER 8

  The worst thing about being a master of the deadly arts, Kitty Bennet thought, was the wardrobe. Sparring gowns, battle gowns, executioner’s gowns—it didn’t matter. They were all dull dull dull!

  A warrior’s clothes had to be sleek, simple, functional; she understood that. No one wanted to trip over their own train just as they were about to disembowel an enemy, and there was no way to justify white kid gloves when armored gauntlets would be more apropos. Still, what would be so wrong with a little color? A little allure? A little lace trim or show of décolletage? She’d put flowers in her hair the second morning of the Battle of the Cotswolds, and you’d have thought she’d reported for duty in nothing but her petticoat, her father was so furious.

  “If you want to keep these soldiers’ respect,” he’d growled, “you won’t go prancing up and down the lines looking like an Alsatian milkmaid.”

  “I’d have thought the number of notches on my sword hilt would be enough to ensure respect.�
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  “You have more kills than any one company here, it’s true.” Her father reached out, gently drew a daffodil from behind her ear, and then crumpled it, letting it fall to the blood-soaked ground. “Yet you’ll always have more to prove, too.”

  So here she was, on her way to London—during the Season, even!—and rather than a fashionable spencer and a new shawl, she was draped in plain, shapeless, gray muslin with a katana hanging at her side. Just when she should be turning heads, she was instead dressed for removing them with as little fuss as possible.

  To make matters even worse, she and her father were traveling by stagecoach rather than the family’s own carriage. The convention of crossbow manufacturers to which they were going was being held in the tiny village of Wapping-on-the-Dunghill in Lincolnshire, Mr. Bennet had explained, and he had it on good authority that there remained no reliable liveries in the area with room for their horses. (It was only later, once they’d left Hertfordshire, that Mr. Bennet discovered he’d misread the convention invitation and their destination should be, instead, London.)

  Not only was the coach cramped and crowded and stuffy, without even the ventilation to dispel the various smells generated by the other passengers, but each time a new spring flock of unmentionables staggered onto the road, all eyes turned to the Bennets. By the time they reached the city’s Northern Guard Tower, Kitty and her father had put down no fewer than thirty dreadfuls. And they were thanked for it, yes, but always a little stiffly, sometimes even begrudgingly, as one might thank an unexpected guest for a gift one doesn’t want. It had been decades since the first Englishman took up the deadly arts—and only slightly less since Kitty’s namesake, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, became the first Englishwoman to follow in his footsteps—yet the citizenry as a whole still seemed to need convincing.

  Even the handsome soldier who poked his head into the compartment to check for signs of the strange plague seemed to smirk when he saw her battle gown and sword, and as the coach rolled through the gate a moment later, Kitty began plotting ways to escape her father so that she might go shopping for real clothes in the fashionable boutiques of Four Central and Five East. She knew she wouldn’t follow through on such plans, though. Not without Lydia there to give her strength … and better bad ideas.

  Not thirty minutes after arriving in town, Kitty and Mr. Bennet were leaving their baggage at an inn and heading off to see the very latest in crossbows. To Kitty’s surprise, her father instructed her to take her throwing stars and nunchucks in addition to her katana, and he had upon him his sword cane, a brace of pistols, a stiletto, and an American tomahawk of which he’d grown especially fond.

  “Really, Papa. I don’t see the need for us to attend this convention of yours,” Kitty said as they walked up a bustling, storefront-lined road. “You’ve got a dozen perfectly good crossbows at home, and bolts enough to win Agincourt all over again.”

  “It was longbows that carried the day at Agincourt, my child.”

  “Longbows, crossbows, hair bows, rainbows—that’s not the point. You don’t need any new weapons, Papa. Why, just look at you. You’re already carrying such an arsenal I’m worried you’ll herniate yourself. La!”

  Mr. Bennet winced, as he so often did when Kitty let loose with the little bark of merriment that had been her sister Lydia’s sole contribution to the family (aside from acute dyspepsia).

  “I suppose you’d rather we just ducked into one of these nice little shops, hmm?” he said. “Maybe see what we can find you in the way of an evening dress?”

  “Oh, goodness, no! I was thinking nothing of the kind.”

  “I am relieved to hear it.”

  Kitty waved a hand at the haberdashery they were passing. “I couldn’t go back to Meryton and tell people I’d bought a new dress in One North! Everyone would think me a perfect fool!”

  “And they wouldn’t be wr—” Mr. Bennet cut himself off with a sigh. “That’s neither here nor there. We have more important things to discuss.”

  “Crossbows?”

  “No, my child. Not crossbows … though weapons may come into it. There is something I haven’t told you, and it can be put off no longer.”

  This proved to be untrue, however, for he stopped suddenly and stared in puzzlement at a black box about twenty yards ahead. It was waist high, with three wheels—two on the sides, attached by an axle, and a third protruding from the back. A small leather harness was bolted to the front, but it lay on the ground, limp and empty.

  Bookending the box were two mongrel dogs sitting with such perfect stillness it was only Kitty’s Shaolin-sharpened senses that allowed her to detect the shallow in and out of their breathing.

  “Odd sort of box,” Mr. Bennet said. “I could’ve sworn I saw one just like it at the gate as we entered the city.”

  “I didn’t notice anything.”

  “You were still leaning out the window to admire the captain of the guard at the time. You seemed to find him quite mesmerizing.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Papa! I was merely, ah, studying the fortifications thereabouts.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you were.”

  As they drew closer to the box, Kitty spied a narrow slot cut across the front, toward the top. A handbill, painted with such clumsiness it could barely be read, had been tacked crookedly beneath it. “VETERAN,” it read. “I LOST MY LIMBS. YOU CAN SPARE A SHILLING.”

  They were close enough to hear the rasps emanating from inside and see the rheumy, reddened eyes that peered out through the slit.

  Kitty had stood her ground before scores of putrid ghouls still chewing on their last victims. Yet now she wanted to flee.

  Her father stopped directly in front of the box.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  The voice that answered was whispery and sibilant, just as the serpent must have sounded when it tempted Eve.

  “If you say so,” it said. “I awake each morning dreaming that the dreadfuls had finished making a meal of me all those years ago instead of stopping at my arms, legs, ears, and nose. All that remains of me is a lumpy blob for which there is no use but this: sitting on street corners reminding children to say their prayers at night so that God, in His infinite mercy, might spare them the fate he didn’t spare me. Yet you, Sir, pause to wish me a ‘good afternoon’? Well, I shall try my best.”

  There was a thumping from inside the box, and the clink of metal on metal.

  “I have jumped for joy, Sir,” the man in the box said. “Please give generously.”

  Mr. Bennet removed a coin from his pocket and slipped it through the slot.

  “A sovereign, Sir? Indeed, the afternoon has improved. Ell, Arr—wag your tails for the gentleman and his lovely daughter.”

  The dogs did as they were told.

  “Come along now, Papa,” Kitty said, taking her father by the arm. “We don’t want to miss a single shooting demonstration, do we? They might run out of unmentionables before we get there.”

  Mr. Bennet carried on with her up the street, but his pace was slow, his expression troubled.

  “What is it, Papa?”

  “I don’t know. I have the nagging feeling there’s something I should be remembering, but I can’t think what.”

  “I know! You were about to tell me that we’re off to Four Central to shop for bonnets!”

  “Most assuredly not. It had something to do with …” Mr. Bennet glanced over his shoulder and then shook his head and shrugged. “At any rate, I was just about to tell you where we are going. I have good news and bad news, my child. Which would you like to hear first?”

  “Oh, always the good news, Papa! Always!”

  “Of course. Well, then … there is no crossbow convention.”

  “What? Then why are we here?”

  “That, I’m afraid, is the bad news.”

  Mr. Bennet stopped again. To their right was a winding street so narrow it could barely pass as a tunnel, let alone an alley. Unlike the broad, busy avenue the Benne
ts had been walking along, this one was dark and deserted, with rubbish heaped against the buildings like snowdrifts and but one shop sign poking out into the shadows about forty feet off.

  W.W. MASSINGBERD

  BUTCHER, POULTERER, PURVEYOR OF WILD GAME

  CAN’T AFFORD A PHYSICIAN?

  INFECTED LIMBS REMOVED AT HALF THE PRICE

  Mr. Bennet looked at the sign and sighed.

  “We came all this way to meet a butcher?” Kitty asked.

  “That remains to be seen,” her father said. “Here is our state of affairs: Either your brother-in-law Mr. Darcy is in some grave danger and we have been enlisted to help save him or we are in grave danger and will, quite soon, be fighting for our lives.”

  “You don’t know which?”

  “No.” Mr. Bennet raised his cane and pointed it at the sign. “But I do know where we’ll find out.”

  “All right, then,” Kitty said, and without a second’s hesitation she tugged her father toward the butcher’s shop. “Why didn’t you tell me about Mr. Darcy sooner?”

  “Because discretion was called for, and with some, the only way to ensure it is through complete ignorance.”

  “I resent that, Father.”

  “As well you should.”

  The old Kitty—the one who was but an extension of Lydia, a pale shadow cast by the stronger spirit—would have done more complaining. And the new Kitty did indeed put on a prodigious pout. Yet she did so silently. Unlike her younger sister, she didn’t enjoy the sound of her own voice so much that she couldn’t deprive herself of its mellifluousness, if need be. And something told her need was.

  At Shaolin Temple on Mount Song, she’d been taught to listen with such intensity that the falling of grains in an hourglass resounded like the cascade of a waterfall. She was used to the silences of the glens and meadows: It was easy to pick out the shuffle of a dreadful’s gait when all that might obscure it was the singing of starlings and the rustling of windblown leaves. But this was London, and echoing up and down the narrow lane were the sounds of clattering hooves and rumbling wagons and bellowing street peddlers.