The captain, for his part, blew out a snort not unlike the whinnying of a horse. “There is nothing to excuse, Miss Bennet. I can but wish my own troops had half your sisters’ boldness!”
To a man, the foot soldiers cringed and drooped their shoulders, and as Elizabeth led them up the lane, they marched with such shambling, shuffling steps they seemed no livelier than a platoon of dreadfuls.
When they at last reached Longbourn, they found Mrs. Bennet wearing a groove into the lawn with her pacing, weeping and wailing as Mrs. Hill toddled along behind to keep her supplied with fresh hankies.
“Oh, I knew this day would come! Off they trot into the wilds without a care in the world what should happen to their poor mother, and now the unmentionables shall have their luncheon! Oh, my sweet girls! My sweet, tender, juicy girls! How could Mr. Bennet—Lizzy!”
Mrs. Bennet raced to her daughter and threw her arms around her.
“Oh, Lizzy! At least you are still alive! Oh, my dearest, my beloved, my—”
She pushed Elizabeth aside and stepped toward Capt. Cannon with wide, moist eyes.
“Cuthbert?” she whimpered.
“Prudence?” he replied.
“Oh, Cuthbert! It is you! After all these years!”
“Limbs! Embrace the lady!”
The captain’s attendants put down the wheelbarrow and stepped forward with obvious reluctance.
“Limbs! Halt!” Capt. Cannon choked out. “Pru, if I’d . . . The Troubles . . . I didn’t think you’d . . .” He cleared his throat and straightened his back and started over again, as if addressing the woman before him for the first time. “You are the lady of the house?”
“I am,” Mrs. Bennet said softly, eyes downcast, and for a moment, Elizabeth thought her mother actually looked diffident.
A very brief moment.
“I have come to see Mr. Bennet on a matter of great importance,” Capt. Cannon said.
Mrs. Bennet reached back so Mrs. Hill could slap a dry handkerchief into her hand.
“He has abandoned me!” Mrs. Bennet cried, pressing the linen to her quivering lips. “Left me here all alone while he gallivants about the ghoul-plagued woodlands searching for our wayward daughter!”
“Mamma! I am not ‘wayward’! It’s just that—”
“OH, CUTHBERT! IT IS YOU! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!”
Elizabeth clamped her lips together. The tale she had to tell—particularly injuring herself trying to kiss a deer and being set upon by dreadfuls not once but twice—would soothe her mother not a jot.
She opened her mouth again when she’d settled on the best possible distraction.
“Let us discuss all that later. Lydia and Kitty should be back shortly with Papa and the others. Until they return, we have guests to entertain, do we not?”
Mrs. Bennet shifted her gaze to Capt. Cannon and shoved her hankie back at Mrs. Hill, her tears instantly dried.
“So we do,” she said. “For surely these fine officers would consent to keep us company until they can see to their business with Mr. Bennet?”
“It would be an honor,” Capt. Cannon said. “Isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”
Lt. Tindall had been watching the various reunions—Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet, “Cuthbert” and “Prudence,” Mrs. Hill and the handkerchief—with something exceedingly close to a sneer. He answered the captain with a noncommittal noise halfway between a “Yes” and a growl.
“Right Limb!” Capt. Cannon barked. “Escort Mrs. Bennet inside!”
One of the soldiers marched up to the lady and offered her a crooked arm, which she accepted with a smile not for him but for the captain.
“Left Limb! Return to post and follow! Drawing room, ho!”
As Capt. Cannon’s wheelbarrow squeaked off toward the house, the lieutenant followed with all the enthusiasm of a puppy being dragged along on a leash. So out of sorts was he that he forgot to offer Elizabeth his own, very real arm. Or at least Elizabeth chose to believe he’d merely forgotten.
She herself was far more anxious to get inside. Not that entertaining guests with her mother was something she usually looked forward to. But when the caller was Cuthbert Cannon and the hostess his “Pru”—now that could prove interesting indeed.
CHAPTER 17
ONCE CAPT. CANNON had been wheeled into the drawing room, Left Limb was put at ease in the corner while Right Limb was kept busy sugaring tea and tilting the cup just so, to keep its contents from his commander’s voluminous whiskers.
“Tell me, Captain,” Elizabeth said before her mother could make the day’s temperature the principal topic of conversation, “you have been to Hertfordshire before?”
Capt. Cannon’s gaze darted to Mrs. Bennet, and he hacked out a jowl-quivering cough.
“Yes. I was stationed here briefly twenty-odd years ago. Of course, at the time I was but a reedy little ensign barely big enough to hold up my own epaulets.”
“Oh, pish tosh,” Mrs. Bennet chided. “You were the prettiest thing in Colonel Miller’s regiment!”
The captain turned the same shade of red as his uniform.
Lt. Tindall, on the other hand, went pale green. Elizabeth guessed he would’ve preferred a lively discussion about their chances for rain that week.
“Oh, how it broke my heart to see you go,” Mrs. Bennet went on, dreamy eyed. She awoke from her reverie with a little start and added, “All you fine young men, I mean. The regiment. As a whole. Altogether.”
“Yes, well, duty called,” Capt. Cannon said.
“You were sent away to fight the dreadfuls?” Elizabeth asked. Usually, she would’ve left it to Lydia or Mary to pose such a tactless question. But her sisters weren’t there, and she couldn’t resist.
The captain nodded. “Cornwallis’s Folly. The Sack of Birmingham. Wellington’s Last Stand. The Battle of Kent. I was at them all, though less of me made it to each in turn. A bite on the wrist, and my left arm had to go. A nasty scratch on the ankle, and the left leg went with it. A rotter ate my right hand before my very eyes. The company surgeon took the rest. And the right leg? That’s the one that almost got me. A break in the skin no bigger than a pinprick where a dreadful swiped at my thigh—that’s all it took. I didn’t even notice it for half a day, and by then the blight nearly had me. Another hour, the surgeon said, and he would’ve been sawing off my head, not my leg. And still I kept on fighting! By the end, I’d looked into the putrid eyes of so many unmentionables, I could truthfully say I feared neither Death nor Hell, for I’d grappled hand-to-hand against the one and marched time and again into the other. Somehow, I survived it all. But after leaving Hertfordshire lo those many years ago, I daresay I never again lived.”
As the man spoke, an air of gloom fell over the room as stifling as a London fog, and for a long while after he stopped, the only sound was that of Mrs. Hill’s heavy footfalls in the hallway.
“It must be said, though,” Lt. Tindall finally pronounced, “Hertfordshire certainly gets its measure of sunshine in the spring. I should think we had just made camp in the West Indies, to judge by the clime this day.”
“Oh, my, yes. It has been most unusually warm of late,” Mrs. Bennet said. Yet her voice was strained and quavery; she wasn’t seizing upon the change of subject with the greedy, grateful grasp Elizabeth would have normally expected.
Before the room could slip back into silence, however, there was a great commotion out in the foyer, and presently Elizabeth’s father burst in with all his other daughters.
“Lizzy, my dear, you had me worried sick!” Mr. Bennet exclaimed with uncharacteristic fervor. “I half-thought you’d joined the sorry stricken . . . and then I hear you’ve joined His Majesty’s infantry, instead!”
Jane simply rushed to Elizabeth’s side, threw her arms around her neck, and kissed her on the cheek, while Kitty and Lydia laughed and even dour Mary unleashed a grin.