Dreadfully Ever After (29 page)

As it turned out, she couldn’t. Elizabeth lay awake for hours, unable to sleep or even meditate. It was impossible to clear her mind with Mary still missing. And how could she worry about what Sir Angus would think when her connection to her husband—the man all this manipulation and duplicity was meant to save—felt so fragile?

There had been no response to the letters she’d sent to Rosings. Even if there had been, Darcy would have been replying to lies. He had no notion what she and her family were undertaking on his behalf. What would he make of the fact that she wasn’t by his side? Not knowing the truth, he might judge her ill. Yet knowing the truth (and hating, as he did, deceit of any kind), he might judge worse.

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever,” he’d said years before. And though he’d been a different man then—younger and prouder and more intractable—Elizabeth couldn’t help but wonder how much that old implacability might yet live in him ... and whether it could ever be directed at her.

As the night wore on, there were occasional distractions from these troubling thoughts, but none that Elizabeth welcomed.

Wails and shrieks in the streets. Someone barring the front door—and, in the process, locking Mary out, and perhaps Nezu, too. An hour or so before dawn, Elizabeth even heard a not-so-distant volley of musket fire. That was a sound that hadn’t rung through One North in many a year. The situation must be desperate indeed if an officer, in the process of saving the respectable classes, would risk upsetting them.

London was consuming itself from the inside, like a stillborn dreadful chewing its way through its mother’s womb. And that was the very image that haunted Elizabeth’s dreams when sleep did finally overtake her. It was almost a relief to awaken to the thumping boom of blasting cannons.

Elizabeth rushed to the window and threw aside the curtains. There was no zombie horde in the streets, however. No pitched battle being fought outside their door. Instead, Elizabeth saw the usual gentlemen and ladies and workmen and servants going about their business with, if anything, a merrier air than usual.

Then she heard the bells, and the cannons roared again.

It was Recoronation Day. George
III
was reclaiming his right to rule. The Regency was over—and maybe, just maybe, England would return to its former glory.

London wasn’t tearing itself apart. It was celebrating.

Yet the Shevington household remained immune to the festivity. When Elizabeth came downstairs, she found a subdued Kitty and a subdued Mr. Bennet at breakfast, while a subdued (though living) Nezu conferred in quiet tones with the staff (who were never anything but subdued).

Mary had never returned, nor had her escort.

Nezu was sending his fellow ninjas to scout for them, but no more was to be done just then. Elizabeth forced herself to drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of toast, and then it was time: The Bennets needed to dress for the recoronation.

Elizabeth took no pleasure in picking out her gown and gloves and slippers, beautiful though they were. Kitty emerged from her room looking resplendent in creamy white muslin and a feathered headdress, yet she seemed broody, too.

“Pearls would compliment that gown perfectly,” Elizabeth said to her in the hallway. “As would a smile. For Bunny’s sake, at least.”

“How can I smile when Mary’s disappeared? I wasn’t so worried last night, but now? That she hasn’t even sent word seems ...”

“I know. Yet we must retain our faith that she will return to us. We can’t give the MacFarquhars any hint that anything is amiss.”

“I understand.” Kitty put on a broad, ghastly grin. “Will this do?”

Elizabeth heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Nezu coming up the stairs.

“The MacFarquhars have arrived,” he said to Elizabeth alone. His eyes never strayed even that fraction of an inch required to take in Kitty as well.

So it had been all morning. Him never looking at Kitty. Kitty never looking at him. Any other time, Elizabeth would have wondered what had happened between them. Not now, though. Not today. There was no spare capacity in her for caring. It was all occupied elsewhere.

“We’ll be right down,” she said.

When she turned toward Kitty again, all trace of her sister’s mock grin was gone.

It was back a few minutes later, though, as Kitty and Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet climbed into the MacFarquhars’ landau. It even looked almost natural, especially after Kitty spotted Brummell adorned for the occasion with a huge red and white striped bow.

“And here I thought you were doing us a great honor,” she said, “when it turns out people are bringing their pets!”

“Oh, poor Brummell’s going to have to wait in the carriage.” Bunny threw an exaggerated sidelong glance at his father. “
Some people
don’t think it would be dignified to bring a rabbit into Westminster Abbey. Yet you’ll be seeing any number of lap dogs, leeches, and old bats in there!”

Kitty popped off with a dutiful “La!” while Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet put on identical looks of polite, tight-lipped pseudoamusement. Sir Angus was in no mood to tolerate his son’s foolishness, however.

“What you will be seeing—and mingling with—is the very crrream of Britain,” he said after a moment’s dour glowering Bunny’s way. “Just to be in such company when His Majesty is recrowned is enough to conferrr rank and respectability.”

This proved a little too blunt, even for one as fond of plain speaking as Sir Angus. He’d laid bare their quid pro quo—the Shevingtons’ financial help for a lift to the upper crust—and his broad face flushed as he cleared his throat and turned to the driver.

“To Westminsterrr!”

The driver cracked his whip, and the landau rolled off through streets that were alternately deserted and crowded with roisterers, splashed with bunting flapping in the breeze and scarlet splotches drying on the cobblestones. There were long lines at all the inner gates as Londoners and tourists by the thousands wound their way south toward Westminster and St. James’s Park. Yet the checkpoints all appeared undermanned, with but a handful of sentries to watch the masses pass.

As he had during their first carriage ride together, Sir Angus lectured the Shevingtons incessantly. But he wasn’t calling attention to points of interest this time. Instead, he seemed intent on distracting the party (or perhaps just himself) from the soldiers’ tense, sweaty expressions and the bloody Zed rods some of the hoi-polloi carried like canes and the occasional head lying on its side in the gutter. All this passed by unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon, as Sir Angus described the pomp and circumstance (and yet more pomp) to come: the coronation procession from Westminster Hall; the stately raiment of the king and Prince Regent and high steward and high constable and high this and high the other; the Ceremony of the Challenge with the king’s champion; the Ceremony of the Chop with the king’s slayer.

“You do us a great honor by escorting us to Westminster,” Elizabeth said to Sir Angus, cutting off a lengthy discourse on the wig the king had specially made from the flowing locks of slain girl-dreadfuls. “I’m surprised you are able to do so, given your special relationship with His Majesty. Doesn’t he need you at his side?”

“No. I was with the king all night, and when I left him this morning, I was satisfied that he was in perfect health. His recovery is complete. He stands as rrready to rule as everrr a man was.”

“How much do we have you to thank for that?” Mr. Bennet asked. “Until only a few months ago, the king was in complete seclusion.”

Sir Angus pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes.

“I cannot claim sole credit for His Majesty’s recuperation,” he intoned gravely. “Though perhaps I will find, one day, that the rrresponsibility is all mine.”

Elizabeth found the man’s words so cryptic, she wasn’t certain she’d heard them correctly. Indeed, it was becoming more difficult by the second to hear anything beyond the ringing of bells and the huzzahs of the throngs.

The carriage was pulling up in front of the long soldier-lined walk to the abbey’s main entrance, and covering the lawn and streets around it was a vast sea of people. Many waved red and white pennants, some appeared drunk, most were grinning, and every last one of them seemed to be bellowing, “Long live the king!”

It was a little shocking, all this enthusiasm. George
III
hadn’t been a particularly popular monarch, reigning as he did over the coming of the dreadfuls and the resulting isolation and chaos. England had lost its colonies, found its once-great navies unwelcome in any port, and could do nothing but watch as Napoleon Bonaparte put half the world under his little heel. The king’s one accomplishment had been siring a son—George IV, the Prince Regent—who would prove so debauched and profligate that his subjects would grow nostalgic for his father.

It was nothing Elizabeth felt like cheering. The rest of England clearly felt otherwise, however, and as she started toward the vaunted gray arches of Westminster Abbey, with Sir Angus on one side and her father on the other, the happy roar of the crowd grew so loud she almost worried it would deafen her.

“We must hurry,” Sir Angus said as they swept by the crimson-liveried guards keeping the mob at a respectable distance. “These accursed crrrowds have made us quite—”

A brown blur shot past at ankle level.

“No,” Sir Angus moaned.

His son said the same thing, only much, much louder.

Brummell was streaking up the red carpet toward the abbey.

“It’s the noise!” Bunny cried as he and Kitty dashed after the rabbit. “The poor darling’s terrified!”

“As he should be,” Sir Angus grated out, the look on his face making it plain that
he
was what Brummell should fear most.

The crowd noticed the chase now, and the din grew even louder, swollen by guffaws and catcalls. The clamor disoriented Brummell all the more, and the rabbit darted left, then right, before doubling back and streaking between Bunny’s feet.

Kitty, of course, was graced with quicker reflexes than young MacFarquhar, and she swooped down and snagged the rabbit by the tail before it could pivot and carry on again up the carpet. She promptly plopped Brummell into Bunny’s arms and then turned to beam at Sir Angus.

“Our engagements are always so invigoratingly
eventful
, aren’t they? I wonder what shall happen next?”

“Why, it can’t be!” a woman said.

Her voice filled Elizabeth with ice-cold dread.

A stately couple up ahead, nearly at the abbey doors, had turned to take in the confusion, and now they started back the other way, toward the Bennets and the MacFarquhars.

Elizabeth knew with the inevitability of death what two words the lady would say next. They were, in fact, the title the woman had once hoped to gain for herself.

“Mrs. Darcy?”

Walking toward them were the former Miss Caroline Bingley and her husband, the earl of Cholmondeley.

Mr. Bennet leaned in to whisper in Elizabeth’s ear.

“Should I kill her? I know you’ve always wanted to.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s over.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair that intriguing new shade,” Lady Cholmondeley said as she drew near. She glanced over at Kitty with the same malicious smile she’d once worn when finding every opportunity to slight Elizabeth before Darcy and her brother Charles. “There’s no mistaking your family, though. They’ve always been so very
memorable
. Where is your husband, pray? Escorting Lady Catherine, perhaps? Or is he still at Fernworthy, welcoming our newest niece into the world?”

“Lady Catherine ... de Bourrrgh?” Sir Angus said through teeth clenched so tightly it was a wonder they didn’t splinter.

“You mean Mrs. Darcy hasn’t mentioned her connection to such a lofty personage as Lady Catherine the Great?” Caroline said. “That is so like her. I’ve always known her to be humble. Perhaps the result of her humble upbringing.”

“That’s it,” Mr. Bennet growled. “I
am
going to kill her.”

But it was far, far too late for that.

“Guards!” Sir Angus stabbed a finger first at Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet and then at Kitty. “Arrest these imposterrrs in the name of the king!”

“Minoru!” Darcy called out as he backed away from his cousin.
“Kyabeji wo otose!”

Drop the cabbages!

There was a loud thunking sound as a shoot opened in the holding pen on the other side of the dojo and a load of blood-smeared cabbages dropped into the zombie trough.

Anne’s “friends”—Romeo and Juliet and Mercury and the rest—spun around howling and began staggering across the sparring floor toward their darkened paddock, which wasn’t so darkened anymore, Darcy noticed. Something within glowed with the soft white light of a living thing. Darcy took a step toward it, drawn half by worry that one of his aunt’s ninjas had fallen down the cabbage shoot, half by a hunger that suddenly stabbed his gut.

Anne reached out and clamped a hand to his arm.

“It’s the cabbages,” she said. “Everyone assumes the stricken are drawn to them because they look like brains, but that’s not entirely true. You see the luminescence, don’t you? It’s the same for turnips, potatoes, and carrots, too, I’ve found. They’re not really satisfying to eat, though, and mushrooms and fruits don’t have the spark you’d see in a handful of sand. It’s puzzling.”

When the last unmentionable was back in the pen, furiously stuffing cabbage into its rotting maw, a section of nearby wall rumbled and began sliding to the side. A moment later, the zombies were again sealed in their vault to await the next round of target practice or the next visit from Anne.

Darcy could hear the ninjas outside unbolting the dojo doors. He jerked his arm free and began moving toward the nearest one.

“I understand,” Anne said serenely. “It is a difficult thing, letting go of the past. Yet I know you will eventually come to accept the way of things. Accept
yourself
. And me. It is but a matter of time ... and we will have all of that we need.”