“You mean Meryton?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Charming hamlet, that. A shame about the zombies.”
“Yes. It is.”
Elizabeth looked the man up and down again. Though he was tall and lean—clearly full grown, if nowhere near aged—there remained something childlike about him. Perhaps it was his natural exuberance, perhaps the wide, brown eyes so full of wonder. Perhaps it was the leaves and twigs in his dark hair, and the fact that he didn’t appear to mind them in the slightest. Whatever it was, it made him seem both irrepressibly curious and achingly vulnerable, and Elizabeth felt the strange urge to take him by the hand and ask if he’d like a piece of candy.
“Did you bring more shot and powder for your pistol?” she asked.
“What? Oh. Powder?” The man stared at his flintlock as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “No. If I did need this, I assumed, there’d hardly be time to reload for a second shot.”
Elizabeth turned back to the dead dreadful stretched out on the ground and took hold of the dagger jutting from its forehead. After a little tugging, the blade popped free with a sickening slurp.
“I think it might be best if I were to escort you back to Meryton.” She wiped the knife on the ground, then slid it back into its ankle scabbard, careful to keep any exposed leg hidden from the gentleman. “We can’t have you wandering lost alone in these woods.”
Elizabeth waited for those big, brown eyes to blink, for the ebullience to be replaced by indignation.
“You . . . escort me?” she expected to hear.
“Splendid!” the man said instead. “That’ll give me a chance to ask about the zombies hereabouts. Was this the first one you’ve seen yourself?”
Elizabeth answered as she led the stranger out of the woods to the nearest lane, telling him about Mr. Ford’s funeral and Lord Lumpley’s dreadful (in every sense) hunting party. He showed no sign of surprise when she mentioned her own role in both events, merely asking when she was done, “Are all Hertfordshire girls so intrepid?”
“Only my sisters and myself, so far as I know.”
“Ah. More’s the pity . . .” The stranger had been wiping his face as they walked, and now he waved his green-smeared handkerchief the way they’d just come. “And what of that poor soul back there? Did you recognize him?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “There wasn’t much left one could recognize.”
“True. Yet from his clothes and what was left of his hair, I fancy we could whip up a hypothesis, or make a decent guess, at least. Now . . .”
The young man—for such he turned out to be when the paint came off his face—tapped a long finger against his chin.
“When I came across him in that clearing, he was crawling around stuffing voles in his mouth. I saw no sign of fresh soil upon him, nor was that a shroud he wore—it was shabby, worn clothing. A wild-haired, bearded fellow, he seemed to be, as well. So. Supposition: He was a nomadic peddler or vagabond who died in the woods some time ago, perhaps at the hands of a gentleman of the road, perhaps lost in foul weather, perhaps . . . oh, I don’t know. Perhaps he was eaten by voles. It would explain his lust for revenge upon them. At any rate, he was never buried—which would be in keeping with the other zombies seen in the vicinity of late, as none so far have dug their way from an actual grave.”
The man looked over at Elizabeth, obviously eager for her thoughts on his theory. He quickly furrowed his brow and brushed at his beak of a nose.
Without meaning to, she’d been giving him that look again.
“May I ask you a few questions?” she said.
“Certainly . . . so long as ‘Were you dropped on your head as a child?’ isn’t among them. I’ve grown rather tired of that one.”
“It’s actually The Zed Word I’m wondering about.”
“Zombie? What of it?”
“Well, there it is again. You use it. Quite liberally.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s not polite.”
The young man threw his arms out and railed up at the heavens. “Oh, we can’t have that, can we? We can’t go around being impolite when we’re about to be overrun by reanimated cadavers! Egad—the English! How can we face a problem squarely when we can’t even bring ourselves to name it?”
And just as suddenly as it had begun, the tirade ended, and the man looked into Elizabeth’s eyes and smiled.
“What else were you wondering about?”
“Who are you?”
The question popped out with far less subtlety than Elizabeth would have preferred, and the man opened his eyes wide again, clapping a hand to his cheek as if he’d just been slapped.
“Oh, dear me! I’ve done it again! I am forever forgetting the importance of proper introductions. As there is no one here to do the honors for us . . .” He cleared his throat and, without missing a step, offered Elizabeth a bow. “Dr. Bertram Keckilpenny, at your service.”
Elizabeth hoped her eyebrows didn’t fly up too high at that “Doctor.” Keckilpenny’s intelligence was obvious, but he hardly seemed old enough to be anything but a particularly gifted (and eccentric) second-year at Cambridge.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Elizabeth Bennet.”
It seemed horribly forward, introducing herself like that, and she felt all the more self-conscious when Keckilpenny goggled his eyes at her yet again.
“Bennet, you say? Bennet, Bennet, Bennet. Hmm. It seems to me that name’s ever so important, somehow. You’re not famous are you, Miss Bennet?”
“Me?” Elizabeth laughed. “No, I should think not.”
The laughter died on her lips when she saw what stood in their path.
Up the lane a way was one of her neighbors—a gossip-prone crone by the name of Mrs. Adams. The old woman was watching their approach with a mix of horror and exhilaration on her face. She obviously couldn’t wait to tell someone, anyone, of what she’d seen, and she wouldn’t have far to go to do it, either: Meryton was just around the next bend.
“Good morning, Mrs. Adams!” Elizabeth called to her.
The woman managed a brusque nod, then turned and scurried toward town.
“Your question has proved prophetic, Doctor,” Elizabeth said. “I believe I soon will be famous in these parts. Notorious, even . . . if I’m not already.”
It took Keckilpenny a moment to grasp her meaning, so far removed were his thoughts from propriety and the need to keep up appearances.
“Ahhhhh.” He looked over at Elizabeth’s dirty, blood-speckled sparring gown, then down at his own shabby attempt to dress like a moldy old dreadful. “Well, I should think any young lady able to face a zombie without flinching wouldn’t have any trouble facing her neighbors.”
And he offered Elizabeth his arm.
She smiled gratefully and accepted, and the two of them strolled into Meryton with the stately grace of a lord and his lady about to be announced at a court ball. Elizabeth kept up conversation with Dr. Keckilpenny all through town, singling out points of particular interest to him (St. Chad’s Church, the adjacent graveyard, the haberdashery where Emily Ward had once worked), the better to blot out the titters and whispers from all around. The shock and shame of being uninvited to the ball had nearly killed her mother, and now this scene—when, inevitably, relayed back to Longbourn by her Aunt Philips—might well finish the job.
Elizabeth silently castigated herself for thinking of this, even ever so briefly, as a possible silver lining to her humiliation.
She finally found refuge from her neighbors’ reproachful stares when they reached the village green, for here it was soldiers doing all the staring. Some were putting up white-peaked tents, others were in the midst of marching drills complete with fife and drum, yet all (it seemed to Elizabeth) had their eyes on her.