Dreadfully Ever After (17 page)

There was something different about this latest “No,” however. It came out as blunt and brusque as always, yet Lady Catherine’s gaze never met his. Instead, it jerked toward Anne. As the two women looked into each other’s eyes for all of a second, Darcy could sense a change in them he couldn’t put a name to. It was as if the light he sometimes saw in living things flared for a moment. Then Lady Catherine was turning her attention to Kochi, and the moment passed.

Darcy had suspected, and now he knew, though he couldn’t explain how. Something was being kept from him. Something to do with Derbyshire—and Elizabeth.

There was a yelp from the head of the table, followed by the sound of a man falling to his knees while gasping out apologies in Japanese. Yet Darcy didn’t even notice. He was carefully peeling a lump of eel from its bed of rice even as he began planning how to strip away the secrecy that surrounded him.

He was weakened, unsteady, confused. Yet he was still enough of his old self to get to the truth. Or so he had to hope.

He popped the raw meat into his mouth and tried very, very hard not to moan.

If someone had described Section Twelve Central as “hell” that afternoon, Mary could not have disagreed. Now that it was night, however, she was discovering an unpleasant truth: Even hell can get worse.

Her dealings at Bethlem had been brief yet promising, and afterward she’d lingered a while nearby, observing the comings and goings of the hospital staff. Nezu had suggested the place was heavily guarded, but the wooden watch towers at each corner of the grounds stood empty, and the only sentry was a jumpy old man at the front gate. Mary was hoping Sir Angus would drop in for an evening inspection (or whatever it is “administrators” do): If he did, she would accelerate her plan and follow him inside. Somehow. Yet he never arrived, and when at last it became too dark to see anything of Bethlem but candlelight shimmering dimly through a few barred windows, Mary started back toward One North—and began her second tour of Twelve Central.

As earlier, the streets were lined with bodies awaiting collection. With the corpse wagons gone till dawn, the piles were all the higher, and more of their jaundiced contents had begun to twitch and groan. Here and there, small groups of men attended to the newly awakened with Zed rods, and the cobblestones were slick with pulped brain glistening in the moonlight. For the most part, however, the living of Twelve Central had retreated into their filthy gin shops and tenements, and more than one leaned out an upper-story window to offer commentary as she passed below.

“Ooooo! Looks like a do-gooder went and stayed too long amongst the unwashed. I do hope she’s alive in the morning to bring us back more alms!”

“Could you tell the soldiers to pop ’round on your way out, Your Highness? I’ve a dead chimney sweep stuck up my flue, and he’s starting to make an awful fuss.”

“You don’t want to be out on them streets alone, Milady. Why not come up ’ere and spend the night safe an’ sound with ol’ Bill?”

Sometimes all Mary heard was a hiss or growl from the shadows, as if even the dreadfuls were heckling her. Yet despite the ghastliness all around, she walked on unafraid. It wasn’t just because she had supreme confidence in her own abilities—though that she did. She also knew she wasn’t alone. She had an escort, as she had on her way to Bethlem Hospital hours before. There would be a difference this time, though: Soon, she would know who that escort was.

Ambushes weren’t really Mary’s specialty. If she’d had one before then, it was noting the errors of others. Now, however, she intended to learn from her own experience.

She turned a corner and dodged a few steps down an especially narrow alley, much like the one in which she’d been waylaid earlier that day. Then she stopped and waited.

Within seconds, she heard the pitter-pat of clawed paws on pavement and the soft hum of well-oiled wheels. Both sounds grew louder, louder—and then broke off abruptly just as they seemed to be reaching a crescendo.

Years before, at Shaolin Temple, Master Liu had taught her to track the passage of a cockroach across the floor with a blindfold over her eyes and straw stuffed in her ears. So while the dogs were obviously well trained—there was no whining or whimpering, no fidgeting, no scratching at fleas—she could still hear their shallow pants as clearly as the ringing chimes of a London church bell.

“You can pretend you’re not there, and I can pretend I’m not here, but there’s really no point in it, is there?” Mary said. “Here we are, so we might as well acknowledge each other. At any rate, I merely wish to thank you.”

A dark snout slowly poked around the corner and took a tentative sniff before the rest of its face followed. It was by no means a pretty dog: The wiry hair was patchy, half of one ear had been sheared off clean, and a pink scar ran across its forehead. It inspected Mary with such wary intelligence, however, she almost expected it to speak.

Which, in a way, it did. The dog chuffed out a single, gruff, breathy sound—more than a snarl, less than a bark—and a moment later Mary heard the squeak of leather. Reins were being loosened.

The dog stepped into the alley with another, even scruffier dog at its side. With them came the small, black, coffinlike crate to which they were tethered.

“Why should you thank me?” said the Man in the Box.

He had a hoarse, gravely voice, yet underlying it was both a softness and a vitality. Whatever had happened to his throat (and the rest of him), he wasn’t old. Mary peered at the narrow slit that ran across the front of his little enclosed carriage, hoping for a glimpse of his eyes, but all she saw was darkness.

“You’ve been of such service to me today,” she said. “Sending your friends to help when I was delayed by those ruffians; escorting me back to One North now; seeing to it that the guards at the gate from Eleven Central let me pass on my way in. That last is an assumption, by the way. Please correct me if it is in error.”

The Man in the Box said nothing.

“Would you mind explaining
why
you’ve been helping me?” Mary asked him.

There was more silence. Then, eventually, “Yes.”

“Then I shall have to do more assuming. You are another agent of Lady Catherine, like Nezu, and have been tasked with aiding my family in its undertaking here in London.”

There was a raspy sound within the box—perhaps a husky sigh.

“You are as skilled with your assumptions as you are in the deadly arts,” the Man croaked. “You have the gist of things, if not all the particulars.”

One of the dogs—the one with the scar—perked up its ears and stared off into the blackness of the alleyway. The other dog quickly followed suit.

Mary heard footsteps shuffling somewhere far behind her, though not as far as she would have liked.

“Perhaps we should move on together,” she said.

She didn’t wait for the Man to agree. She simply started walking. Soon enough, the dogs joined her, bringing their master with them.

“As much as I respect your abilities,” the Man said, “I was about to suggest moving along myself. I have never seen Twelve Central so bad, and it is always abysmal. Even as seasoned a warrior as you might find herself inconvenienced.”

Mary felt an unaccustomed warmth rise to her cheeks. She resented it the second she realized what it was.

It wasn’t often—never, in fact—that anyone paid her a compliment. And this was a
Man
in a Box, not a Woman. And a Young Man at that.

Still, though ... ”in a Box”! And why should she care what any man, boxed or unboxed, thought of her?

So she did the English thing. She changed the subject.

“It is quite clever how you’ve trained your dogs. It reminds me of an army officer I once knew who was similarly unable to autolocomote. He got around with the help of two soldiers and a wheelbarrow.”

“Such a man was my inspiration. Only I, of course, have no privates at my command.”

“You have no—? Ah! Yes, of course! I see what you mean.”

Mary coughed, her cheeks not tingling now but burning. She found herself so desperate to change the subject (again) that she committed the sin she most frequently accused her sister Kitty of: lack of tact.

“Was it the dreadfuls who rendered you thus?”

“Oh, goodness, no. I cut myself shaving.”

A long moment passed in silence.

“You are being facetious,” Mary finally said.

“Indeed. I hope you will forgive me. It is a bad habit I have acquired in recent years. Since being
rendered thus
, you understand.”

“Now you mock me.”

“No, Miss Bennet. I
tease
you. There is a significant difference.”

“There is?”

Mary resolved to look it up when she got back to the house, assuming she could find a copy of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary. It seemed to her that she’d been mocked, teased, jeered, derided, scorned, disdained, and pooh-poohed her entire life, yet she’d never paused to separate one from the other or gradate them in any way.

A scream cut through the night, ending in the kind of choked gurgle that could mean only one thing: somewhere nearby was at least one happy zombie.

The dogs picked up their pace. Since the party was still more than a quarter mile from the gate to Eleven Central, Mary was in complete agreement with her canine companions.

She started walking faster, too.

“I am shocked to find any part of London in such a state,” she said. “I am not often in the city and don’t know it well, I admit, but never would I have imagined the dreadfuls could have such a toehold within the Great Wall.”

“London is walls within walls. A city of boxes. A person can stay safely in one and never fear—or know—what’s in the next. Or so those in the snuggest of such boxes like to think. It is my experience that what one hopes to lock away in a box will not be content to stay there if it has any kind of life left. Even the dead kind.”

The more the Man spoke, the more Mary began to find his throaty, warbly voice less grating than ... textured. Even pleasingly so.

“You are quite the philosopher,” she said.

“I have much time to think. For instance, this afternoon I had hours to ponder upon you and your journey to Bethlem Hospital. You set off for Twelve Central only after Nezu and your father and sisters had left the house. No one escorted you, you did not seem to know your way, and Nezu had made no arrangements for you to pass through the gate from One North. I could reach but one conclusion: You came of your own volition, without the permission or even the knowledge of Nezu or your family.”

“And you disapprove?”

“Not at all. I applaud your nerve. Metaphorically, of course. Courage is the trait I have always admired most in your ... sort.”

“My
sort?
”

“Warriors, I mean. True warriors. Those with not just the skills to deal death but the fortitude to face it unafraid.”

“You would pronounce me to be such a person after just one afternoon’s observation?”

“I have seen enough to judge.”

“I must say, you speak to me very freely, Mr….?”

There was a long pause—so long, in fact, that Mary threw a questioning glance over at the Man. All she saw, of course, was the flat black top of his box.

“Quayle,” he said at last.

“Well, I say again, Mr. Quayle: You speak to me very freely.”

“And you object?”

“No!” Mary replied with a fervor that both surprised and embarrassed her. “I mean, no. Why should a man and a woman not converse freely? If discourse were more open and minds less narrow, many an injustice might be undone. What I find surprising is that you should be so very complimentary, given your mistress’s feelings toward my family, which she has made plain through not only her statements but numerous assassination attempts as well.”

“I may be Lady Catherine’s creature, Miss Bennet, but I am not her,” Mr. Quayle said. “When men and women speak freely together, surely they are free to hold their own opinions of each other as well.”

“You are right, of course.”

“As I said, I have much time to think.”

They continued for a while without speaking. The only sounds were the
tap-tap-tap
of the dogs’ claws against the cobblestones, along with the occasional burst of distant laughter or screaming.

How long had she and Mr. Quayle been talking?
Mary wondered. Five minutes, at most. Yet she couldn’t remember the last time when a conversation with anyone outside the family had gone on so long. Once upon a time, she’d been able to take her thoughts to the local vicar, the Reverend Mr. Cummings. But then he’d thrown himself off Colne Bridge, and his replacement was always out when she called (even when she’d seen him scuttle into the vicarage just a moment before). Since then, her lengthiest and liveliest discussions had been between herself and whatever straw men she set up in her own mind.

She had the feeling things weren’t much different for Mr. Quayle. Once they’d moved past his initial reluctance, he seemed keen to talk—and did so with such quick (and, yes, presumptuous) familiarity. It was almost enough to make her think he’d
wanted
to be caught following her. If she had little experience talking to men, she could only imagine he had even less talking to women, at least since being boxed up in pinewood.

Why not gratify him? Wouldn’t that be the charitable thing to do? An act of compassion?

And anyway, she was rather proud of what she’d done. It would be a shame to tell no one.

“Do you know why I went to Bethlem Hospital today?” she said.

“I know what it is you seek there,” Quayle told her. “I have no idea, however, how you sought to attain it. Despite our obvious disadvantages, Ell and Arr and I can sometimes manage ‘inconspicuous’; ‘invisible’ remains beyond us. Once you walked through the gates of Bedlam, we could only wait for you to walk out again.”

“I see. And you have been ordered to assist my family?”

“I have been ordered to
watch
your family,” Quayle said, “but I wish to help.”

For some reason, Mary liked that answer far better than a simple, “Yes.”