Dreadfully Ever After (12 page)

“I suspect MacFarquhar the Younger will have business to attend to in the tents before he comes in,” Mr. Bennet said. “If so, so much the better, for we will find him all the more pique-able.”

“Whatever do you mean, Papa?”

“Ah,” her father said, looking away. “Our master of ceremonies.”

Kitty turned to see a hulking, florid-faced figure entering one of the center boxes. There was a smattering of tepid applause, which the man acknowledged with the hoisting of a single hand. (The gesture was too apathetic to be called a wave.) The object of the crowd’s not-quite adulation looked exactly like one of the men Kitty had mistaken for the Prince Regent in Hyde Park the day before, but this time there could be little doubt it was indeed George IV. His elegant clothes, his regal bearing, his sagging jowls and enormous protruding gut—all fit the descriptions Kitty had read in the ladies’ journals and fashion magazines.

The man sat. Trumpets blasted a fanfare. There was a flurry of activity down on the track, and a great huzzah went up from the crowd.

The first Irishman of the day was off and running. Seconds later, the gates opened, and out charged the dreadfuls.

As always, a few zombies, catching sight of the great buffet arrayed in the stands, turned and rushed the high walls protecting the spectators. This was met with boos from those who’d wagered on them to win. The rest of the pack, meanwhile, galloped after the Irishman, their colorful silk tunics flapping as they ran. Kitty picked out an unmentionable to root for—a young female dressed in pink gaining quickly on the frantically fleeing bait. She cheered it on until it tumbled clumsily over a hurdle and impaled itself on the spikes on the other side. Soon after, the Irishman was scrambling up the rope that had been lowered for him at the finish line as the winner swiped and roared at him in futile frustration. After that, the unmentionables that could walk were lured back into their pens with fresh cabbages pulled on lengths of twine, while the rest (including Kitty’s favorite) were put down with quick pistol shots to the head.

“Somehow I find all this less entertaining than I once did,” Mr. Bennet said.

“I never found it entertaining at all.” Lizzy stretched her already strained smile a little wider. “Now, however, is not the time to show it. Not if we are to entice—”

There was a knock at the door.

Nezu turned, slipped from the booth, and exchanged quiet words with someone just outside. When he returned a moment later, he was carrying Brummell the rabbit.

“
THE
GATES
OPENED
,
AND
OUT
CHARGED
THE
DREADFULS
.”

“I asked the gentleman to present his card,” Nezu said. “He gave me this.”

“Bunny!” Kitty exclaimed. “Come in here this instant, you rascal!”

Bunny MacFarquhar popped through the door, grinning. Kitty liked his smile. There was no guile about it whatsoever. Here was a man who smiled not to please those in his company but because he simply couldn’t help it.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he had perfect teeth and an equally perfect face to frame them.

“You don’t mind?” he said. “This is terribly forward without proper introductions, I know, but when I saw you up here I just had to ... I say! How did you know my name?”

“Oh!” Kitty swiped a hand at him. “What a question!”

She turned toward Lizzy and her father, eyes wide.

“It was your calling card,” Lizzy said with a nod at Brummell (who was now sniffing around her feet as Nezu retreated discreetly to the corner to brush several small brown pellets off his jacket).

“When one is the victim of a prank perpetrated by a man about town given to the company of rabbits, it is not altogether difficult to divine his identity,” Mr. Bennet explained.

Bunny’s eyes lit up with delight. It obviously pleased him to hear he had a reputation.

“Then you have the advantage of me.” He tried to put on a serious expression but, lacking practice, failed miserably. “Which means I do not even know to whom I should be offering my most abject apologies.”

“My name is Shevington,” Mr. Bennet said, “and these are my daughters, Miss Avis Shevington and Mrs. Matthias Bromhead.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” MacFarquhar offered the family a bow. “I hope you can forgive me for my lapse of judgment yesterday. There was no malice intended. It was merely a lark carried too far.”

“A lark to you—a humiliation to us,” Mr. Bennet replied coldly. “We are new to London and eager to make the best possible impression on its leading lights. Yet I can’t imagine anyone yesterday saying, ‘Just look at the delightful way that old stranger screams and cowers. Let us have him and his lovely companions to dinner!’ ”

Kitty was caught off-guard by her father’s gruff talk until Bunny showed it for what it was: bait. He took it.

“Your point is well taken, Sir,” MacFarquhar said. “I believe there is but one thing to do: You must allow me to make amends for my thoughtlessness by offering entrée into the very circles you aspire to. I am not without connections, some extending to the very pinnacle of not just London society but of all the empire, if you take my meaning.”

Just in case they didn’t, he threw an insinuating nod at the royal box.

“Ahh,” MacFarquhar said, shifting his attention to the track below. “They’re loading the gates for the next race. I must say, you have here one of the finest spots for taking it in.”

“And it would be rude to keep it to ourselves,” Mr. Bennet said. He held out a hand to an empty chair beside Kitty. “Would you care to join us?”

“I should be delighted.” MacFarquhar scooped up Brummell and seated himself with his furry mascot on his lap. “Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve admired this particular view. I’ve been in this box before. Did you know it’s usually reserved for Lord Guernsey?”

“I did not,” Mr. Bennet replied. “All I know is that I demand the best and pay accordingly.”

“Ho! A capital policy, Sir! I subscribe to it myself ... though I daresay I don’t always manage the second p—”

MacFarquhar cut himself off with a cough and focused on the scraggly line of unmentionables that was now lurching around the turf after another Irishman.

“Better pick up your pace, Paddy!” MacFarquhar called out. “You’ve got one gaining on you!”

“La!” Kitty chirped.

“Ho!” MacFarquhar hooted.

They looked into each other’s eyes, smiling.

Could it really be this easy to land a handsome man?
Kitty thought.
If so, why didn’t I try it ages ago?

Then she remembered (Oh,
yes. The zombies. And Mother
.), just as movement in one of the other boxes drew MacFarquhar’s attention away.

An old gray-wigged man, stout yet seemingly frail, was easing himself onto a thronelike chair beside the Prince Regent as beribboned attendants fluttered around him anxiously. Once the man was safely seated, the crowd broke into cheers as if he’d just won a great victory. Neither the old man nor the prince acknowledged the applause, the former because he seemed to take no notice while the latter scowled as if it were beneath his.

“Goodness!” Kitty exclaimed. “Is that the king?”

“It isn’t the winner of the last race,” her father said.

Kitty joined the applause ... until she glanced over and saw that the man beside her hadn’t.

MacFarquhar was gaping at the royal box as though a dreadful
had
just been seated there. Even Brummell seemed to sense something was amiss: The rabbit hopped off its master’s lap and hid under his chair.

“Is everything all right, Mr. MacFarquhar?” Kitty asked.

“Yes ... yes, of course. Why do you ask?” MacFarquhar said.

His face had lost all color.

There was a knock at the door, three quick and insistent raps, and MacFarquhar went practically translucent.

Nezu slipped outside again but was back almost instantly, trailing the tall broad-shouldered man who’d just pushed past him.

“No calling card is needed, forrr this is no social call,” the man said in a heavy Scottish brogue. Though he was dressed as a gentleman, he had wild, graying hair, even wilder gray eyes, a thick mustache, and chin whiskers.

“Out,” he said to MacFarquhar.

“But—”

“Out.”

“But—”

The man didn’t bother with another “Out.” He simply took a step closer.

MacFarquhar jumped up and started for the door.

“Pleasure meeting you terribly sorry must dash thank you goodbye!”

“Don’t forget your rrrrrrrrabbit,” the man growled.

“Again, pleasure meeting you et cetera et cetera!”

MacFarquhar spun around, snatched up Brummell by the scruff of the neck, and scurried from the box.

“Who are you? What is the meaning of this?” Mr. Bennet blustered.

The man just stared at him a moment and then turned and stalked out.

“I can tell you what it means,” Elizabeth sighed.

Her father slumped in his seat. “You needn’t bother.”

“Well, I wish someone would,” Kitty started to say. To her surprise, however, she found that she could work it out all by herself. All it required was something both Lydia and her mother had often counseled her against: thought.

“So,” she said, “we have been snubbed by Sir Angus himself.”

“So it would seem,” Nezu said.

Kitty pretended to interest herself in the race, which was just then concluding with the Irishman hanging from the rope by the finish line while the winner hung from
him
. There were both cheers and boos as track attendants leaned out to poke away the dreadful with pikes before it could get a bite.

Despite all the excitement, Kitty noticed that part of the crowd wasn’t paying any attention. Most of the people in the boxes near theirs were looking—and snickering—at the Bennets. The uppity nobodies had been put in their place.

They stayed for only one more race.

It was a very long, very quiet ride back to Section One North. They’d taken a bold step to attract the MacFarquhars’ interest, and they’d been just as boldly and baldly slapped down. It was hard to imagine how the day could have gone any worse.

They pulled up in front of their house just as one of the servant/ninjas came flying out the front door. He rolled to a stop on the walkway and lay there in a bloodied, groaning heap.

A woman stepped out of the house after him but stopped when she saw the carriage.

“Oh, God,” Mr. Bennet groaned.

“I doubt that He had anything to do with this,” Elizabeth said.

They both looked over at Kitty.

Kitty cringed.

“So there you are. I was concerned,” Mary Bennet said to them. “Now, would you be so good as to tell me what is going on?”

Elizabeth had always been glad to have Mary with her in battle. Her sister was bold, fearless, the epitome of rectitude and unwavering self-assurance.

Which was exactly why Elizabeth was
not
glad to see her now, when boldness and rectitude might well ruin everything.

Take the bruised, moaning ninja-butler sprawled in front of the house, for instance. Here was Mary’s handiwork, and already passersby were beginning to stop and stare.

“Oh, my! Poor Arnold’s tripped down the front steps again!” Mr. Bennet cried as he hopped from the barouche. “Come, Nezu. Help me get him inside.”

“It is good to see you again, Miss Millstone,” Elizabeth called to Mary. “I apologize for the confusion about the timing of our outing. Our trip to Ascot was
today
, you see, and it is tomorrow that we will be accompanying you and Colonel Plimmswood to Almack’s.”

Her steady stream of chatter worked. As she scrambled from the carriage and hurried toward the house, her sister never had the chance to say what she was obviously thinking:
Have you all gone mad?
When Elizabeth reached her, she hooked her by the arm and jerked her through the door.

There were two more battered ninjas lying in the foyer, and another hung over a nearby banister.

“Really,” Elizabeth said, “did you have to thrash the whole household?”

“They wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

“Mary, I don’t think any of them speak English.”

“Ah. That would explain why the conversation was going so poorly.”

“The drawing room!” Mr. Bennet barked. He let his half of “Arnold”—the top half—plop unceremoniously to the floor. “Now!”

When everyone was gathered in the drawing room a moment later, it wasn’t Mary on whom Mr. Bennet fixed his glare. It was Kitty.

“All right, yes! I sent her a letter!” she blubbered. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help myself. I just had to tell
someone
. I was discreet, though, really! All I said was that our plans had changed and we were in London and awful and exciting things were happening.”

Elizabeth turned to Mary and braced herself for an answer she didn’t want to hear.

“Did Mother see the letter?”

“No.”

Elizabeth and her father heaved identical sighs of relief. If Mrs. Bennet knew they were secretly in London, the “secretly” would only apply for roughly five more minutes.