The baron might have beat a quick retreat, but a thought hobbled him. He had agreed to speak to c.u.mmings about a supposedly urgent matter-something that smug little n.o.body Bennet was insisting upon. The man actually wanted the vicar"s permission to... oh, it was simply too ghastly.
And even ghastlier-Mr. c.u.mmings was now upon him, and there was no escaping conversation.
"If I might have a word, My Lord."
"By all means, especially if it is good-bye."
Mr. c.u.mmings scowled.
The baron laughed as if he"d been joking. "You must forgive me my attempt at wit. Simply whistling in the dark. This matter with the dreadful... most disturbing, is it not?"
"It certainly is." The vicar threw a pointed look over at the youngest, drunkest members of the hunting party, who were now badgering Belgrave to break into the brandies. "And hardly a fit subject for levity."
Lord Lumpley shrugged. "Men keep their courage up however they must."
Mr. c.u.mmings tried to look shrewd. He had a round, bland face, best suited for displaying piety, mild reproach, and a hint of intestinal distress, and the expression didn"t suit him.
"They do not look much afraid to me, Sir. And what could they possibly have to fear from foxes, at any rate?"
The baron sighed, weighed his options, then simply walked away, heading across the foyer for the front doors. Unfortunately, the vicar a.s.sumed he was meant to accompany him, and did so.
"I said-"
"It is bigger game we are after today," Lord Lumpley grated out, resenting each word. He hated justifying himself to anyone, but a clergyman! If he"d had his way, there would be a season for hunting them, just as with the foxes.
"So it is as I suspected," the vicar said. "Well, it"s a good thing I came, then. Someone must endeavor to bring dignity to these proceedings."
The two had stepped outside now, and the baron found himself smiling despite the nasty little carbuncle he could not seem to excise from his side. On the lawn of his estate were more men dressed in red, some already atop their black or brown mounts. Grooms were bringing up more riderless horses from the stables, and the Master of the Quorn was surrounded by a pack of prancing, baying hounds.
The circ.u.mstances might have been a bit grotesque, but it was a hunt, and that was reason for cheer. A good belt of brandy and some fresh-spilled blood, and the day would turn out fine indeed.
"Mr. c.u.mmings," Lord Lumpley said, "I resent your implication that any endeavor of mine would lack dignity. I consider myself a paragon of-ooh la la!"
The baron"s eyes went so wide it was a wonder they stayed in his head, and though they didn"t pop out, the lowest knots in his truss did.
Riding toward him on a blinding white stallion was Jane Bennet. Her appearance was shocking, scandalous, sensational in every sense of the word-and Lord Lumpley loved it.
She was wearing a plain gray frock barely a notch above a shift, and at her side was what appeared to be the scabbard for a long sword graced with neither guard nor knucklebow. She was seated sidesaddle, as convention dictated, yet she"d pushed her steed up to a most improper gallop, and the sight of her bouncing up and down on its broad back left the baron woozy with desire.
The girl"s father and sister Elizabeth were riding alongside her, but Lord Lumpley paid them no heed until all three were reining up before him.
"My Lord," Mr. Bennet said with a bow of the head that struck the baron as a tad perfunctory. "Mr. c.u.mmings."
"Mr. Bennet. So good to see you again." Lord Lumpley turned to Jane. "And what a lovely surprise to see you-and on horseback, no less! If I may say so, Miss Bennet, you have an excellent seat."
Jane smiled demurely and averted her eyes.
"I can"t believe this is the first time you"ve noticed it, My Lord," her sister said. She, too, was wearing a scabbarded sword, though the baron hardly thought she needed it. Her tongue was sharper than any blade.
"I"ve never seen the young lady ride," Lord Lumpley replied. "At any rate, you"ll both want to keep back after the hounds are loosed. There will be a great excitement amongst the horses, and even the most skillful rider might find his mount bolting. Once the hunting party is a safe distance ahead, you can follow along the lanes until-"
"My daughters will not be following the hunting party," Mr. Bennet said. "They will be in it."
The baron was too astounded to even take umbrage at the interruption, and it was Mr. c.u.mmings who gasped and said, "You can"t be serious."
"I am. Deadly serious. Unlike some, it would seem."
Mr. Bennet threw a look toward the front steps, which was now clotted with guffawing men stumbling from the manor house with half-filled gla.s.ses in their hands. Several stopped to gawk as they caught sight of the Bennet girls with their austere gowns and sheathed swords.
Mr. Bennet turned back to Lord Lumpley. "Do they even know why they"re really here?"
The baron puffed himself up, breaking two more truss strings while he was at it. First the vicar dares question him, and now this two thousand per annum "gentleman"? If not for his designs on Jane, he would"ve put the upstart in his place right then and there.
"I"m sure many have guessed our true intentions, Bennet. I suppose it"s time we told the rest."
Lord Lumpley stalked away before he could lose his temper and insult the father of the woman he loved. Well, l.u.s.ted after.
"Belgrave!" he barked, and his manservant instantly appeared as if he"d hopped from his master"s pocket. "Escort the rest of our guests outside, if you please."
"I"m afraid a few have already pa.s.sed out, My Lord."
"Fine-the ones who can walk, then."
"Very good, My Lord."
Belgrave bowed and went back into the house. While he was gone, the baron positioned himself on the front steps, experimenting with various poses until he found one that struck the right balance of lordliness and sport.
"My friends," he said, once the last would-be huntsman had joined the crowd on the lawn, "welcome to Netherfield Park! Are you ready to slay your first dreadful?"
CHAPTER 9.
ELIZABETH, FOR ONE, was not ready to slay her first dreadful. Yet at least she knew it. Looking at the men gathered before the baron"s manor house, it was obvious most thought otherwise of themselves. They were laughing, c.o.c.ksure, anything but scared.
Perhaps it was the drink Lord Lumpley had obviously been so generous with that afternoon. Perhaps it was simply the confidence of youth, for the loudest merrymakers were invariably the youngest.
But most likely it was plain ignorance. The great, undead herds of The Troubles had never made it as far as Meryton. Here and there in the crowd, however, you could pick out the men who"d seen them. They were the ones with grim, pinched faces and haunted eyes. The men like Elizabeth"s father.
"We talked about quietly raising a militia," he spat as the baron brayed on with his welcome speech, "and the bloated dolt throws a party."
He got a few stares for that. It provided a moment of respite for Elizabeth and Jane, actually, for up to then the stares had been reserved for them. There had been a wave of whispers, too, and though Elizabeth did not catch any of the words, she knew exactly what was being said.
What are they wearing?
Are those swords?
The Bennets have always been eccentric, but now they"ve gone quite mad!
Holy Father, what hast Thou loosed on fair England?
This last wasn"t being said but silently prayed, to judge by the expression on Mr. c.u.mmings"s face. He"d looked only slightly more appalled when Mr. Bennet had splattered his pulpit with zombie gore.
Elizabeth did her best to block it all out with her mantra (smooth stone beneath still water, smooth stone beneath still water...), but nothing could blunt the piercing sting of shame. After Papa had announced that she and Jane were to accompany him that afternoon-were, in fact, to have their coming out as warriors-in-training-she"d felt queasy and faint, as if Kitty had accidentally thwacked her upside the head with her fighting staff. Which, in a very few minutes, she did. Now, however, the pain was far sharper, stabbing deep into her heart.
Her mother had told her more than once she was a headstrong girl, insufficiently concerned with the good opinion of her neighbors. And it might have even been true, back when her gravest offense was rolling her eyes at someone else"s foolishness or speaking with a tad more honesty than polite society permits. Yet that hardly mattered now, for no young lady"s good name could survive the spectacle they were making of themselves.
The proof of that was beside her. Her sister Jane was perfection, with a reputation as unblemished as any could hope for with the Bennets for a family. Yet that hadn"t turned aside any of the stares or stifled any of the snickers, and the demure, gentle-spirited girl listened in slump-shouldered silence atop her steed as Lord Lumpley did his best to rouse the crowd that found her so absurd.
"I"m sure you"ve all heard of the shocking incident in our very own St. Chad"s Church a few days ago. Well, we"ll have no more of that around here! We shall sweep the countryside clean of any such rubbish... then sleep sound in our beds tonight knowing the peril is safely behind us once again!"
"Imbecile," Mr. Bennet hissed so loudly his horse whinnied and pranced nervously beneath him.
"Are you ready to ride with me?" the baron cried.
"Ready!" called back a chorus of brandy-soaked voices.
"To your horses, then!"
There was a great commotion as drunken huntsmen staggered to steeds, tried to mount them, in many cases fell off, and then either lay on the ground laughing or berated some unlucky groom for his supposed incompetence in keeping the horse steady.
"Be ready with your steel, girls," Mr. Bennet said. "I don"t know if these fools are going to kill any zombies today, but it"s quite likely they"re about to create a few."
"Yes, Father," Elizabeth and Jane said together.
Lord Lumpley had better luck getting himself mounted than most of his friends, and soon he came trotting toward the Bennets on a sleek, brown mare.
"I would suggest that the ladies stay to the rear. I would hate to see either of them unhorsed in all the commotion of the hunt."
"You need not worry about my Jane," Mr. Bennet said. "A finer horsewoman you will never see."
He peeped over at Elizabeth, offering wordless apologies with a doleful look. A more awkward horsewoman than she one would never see, for anyone else with as little horse sense wouldn"t dare sit in the saddle. If her father had known of the baron"s plans, it very likely would have been Jane and Mary he"d brought with him to Netherfield.
"As for this idea of a hunt," Mr. Bennet said, looking at Lord Lumpley again, "we spoke of using the hounds, yes, but only after we"d organized a proper-"
The baron stopped him with a raised hand. "We can discuss that later, Bennet. Now is the time for action." He swiveled around, puffed out his chest (so much so that Elizabeth thought she heard a faint popping noise coming from the vicinity of his stomach), and boomed: "Produce the object!"
With a sigh of weary irritation, Mr. Bennet pulled a swaddle-wrapped handkerchief from one of the pockets of his greatcoat. This he gave to Lord Lumpley.
"Master of the Quorn!" the baron bellowed.
A small, lean man hustled over, and Lord Lumpley handed him the handkerchief. The man then sprinted away toward the milling, whimpering foxhounds cl.u.s.tered nearby. With each step he took, the dogs grew louder, wilder, until they were practically dancing on each other"s backs, barking madly.
The Master of the Quorn knelt before them, unwrapped the handkerchief, and let the dogs crowd in for a good sniff.
"Is that what I think it is?" Elizabeth asked.
Her father nodded.
In the church, after dispatching Mr. Ford, Mr. Bennet had collected a peculiar memento mori: the dead man"s ears.
The hounds, it seemed, didn"t like the smell of them. Their yips turned to whines, their tails curled between their legs, their ears flattened back on their heads, they cringed and wet the ground. One by one, however, they stuck their noses in the air, nostrils flaring.
When the Master of the Quorn stood up, they circled each other uncertainly for a moment, then slowly set off across the lawn. Once they were under way, they seemed to forget their fear. The barking began again, and their hesitant lope became a dash.
"They"ve got the scent!" someone called out.
"Tallyho!" Lord Lumpley shouted, and he gave his horse a hard slap of the crop to set her off. Within seconds, two dozen huntsmen were thundering away after him-and two of the more besotted ones quickly rolled backward off their charging mounts. Mr. Bennet and his daughters trotted over to make sure they were still alive.
They were... though to judge by their groans, they weren"t especially happy about it.
"So," Elizabeth said, "tallyho, then?"
Mr. Bennet nodded. "Jane, if you would please catch up with Lord Lumpley and see to it he doesn"t do anything too spectacularly stupid. Elizabeth..." Mr. Bennet reached over and patted her white-knuckled hands, which were wrapped so tightly around the reins that her fingernails bit into her palms. "Good luck."
They set off after the hunting party, but they didn"t remain together long. Within a minute, Jane had not just caught up with the other riders but was pa.s.sing most of them. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had to use all the skill and will at her disposal both to stay on her horse and to keep from screaming while doing so.
It didn"t help, of course, that she had to ride sidesaddle, an experience akin to sitting on a rocking chair with no back set adrift in a rowboat in stormy seas. She"d never had the best "seat" to begin with, and that had been when riding at a leisurely amble along smooth country lanes. Going at a gallop through field and brush-as the party was doing now-convinced her she soon would have no seat at all.
Elizabeth"s only consolation was the fact that she was doing better than many of the men. When she sent her horse flying over a narrow stream, she flashed past a red-coated fellow sitting in it shaking his head. When she took another leap over a low hedge, she noticed two huntsmen on the other side stumbling after the horses that had just thrown them. And when she rounded a stand of trees and barely avoided a gamekeeper"s cottage half hidden in the shadow, she saw a horse standing stock still before it-and its former rider hanging half on, half off the roof.
Nerve-racking as the chase was, Elizabeth would"ve realized she was grateful for the pure, thought-obliterating terror of it if she could"ve slowed down long enough to think at all. Better to worry about falling off a horse than ponder the unsettling question the ride itself presented.
What exactly were they chasing?
Eventually, however, Elizabeth could avoid the question no longer. From up ahead, she heard a strangled blast of the hunting horn and the sharp, yelping screams of injured dogs.
A moment later, she reined up her horse beside a small lake. The rest of the hunting party was already there, on foot now-except for the few who"d wheeled their mounts around and gone galloping in the opposite direction as soon as they saw what the hounds had found.
A dripping, bedraggled figure was struggling to pull itself out of the water. From its waterlogged dress and long, brown hair it was easy to see it had once been a woman. The rest of it, though, hardly even seemed human. The flesh was bloated and green, and a swollen tongue protruded obscenely from its mouth, giving the creature the look of a giant frog. It was trying to walk to the sh.o.r.e with outstretched arms, yet it seemed to make no progress, and Elizabeth didn"t understand why until she dismounted and forced herself to move closer.
A rope had been tied to the woman"s waist, and the other end was wound around a gray lump in the water just behind her: a stone the size of a Christmas goose.
"Oh, no," Jane whispered, voice choked with pity and despair. "Not her."
Bile burned the back of Elizabeth"s throat.
She was looking at her sister"s missing friend, Emily Ward. The girl had drowned herself. And now she was back.
Growling hounds ringed the sh.o.r.eline before the dreadful. A few had apparently braved the shallows to attack it, for the creature"s right sleeve was torn off, the green flesh beneath hanging ragged where it had been chewed and torn. In the brush some distance away were two dogs whimpering as they limped away from the trees the unmentionable had hurled them against.
"Good G.o.d," Lord Lumpley muttered, looking almost as green as the zombie. "Good G.o.d..."
"Not as sporting as you remember it, My Lord?" Mr. Bennet asked.