“I exult for you, My Lord.”
Belgrave bowed and started backing out of the bedchamber.
Lord Lumpley walked again to the balcony, chuckling, as his steward left.
“Thank you, Mr. Bennet,” he said to the small figure drawing nearer, the dark, straight line of a sheathed sword now visible at its side. “You give me fresh reason to live.”
When the baron finally came downstairs (after taking half an hour to decide which trousers and vest best suited his mood), he found his guests installed in the library. He also found that said guests were both larger in number and, in one case, shockingly smaller in stature than he’d anticipated.
Two infantrymen were standing at attention when he walked in. He was on the verge of taking offense—common foot soldiers stamping their common feet across his Turkish rugs?—when the officer spoke up from his wheeled chair-barrow.
“Limbs! Bow to His Lordship.”
The soldiers not only bowed, they reached over and tilted the officer toward the floor, as well.
“Egad!” Lord Lumpley blurted out. “You’re got no arms or legs!”
The officer peeped up at him with the sort of look that said, quite plainly, that he was well aware of this state of affairs and required no reminders.
The baron mumbled out a lame, not to mention somewhat puzzling, “Ummm . . . good for you.”
Introductions followed, facilitated by Mr. Bennet, who’d risen from a chair nearby to offer a (by Lord Lumpley’s estimation) rather shallow bow. Once the baron was settled on a loveseat, Mr. Bennet sat down again, as well, and Capt. Cannon’s Limbs propped him up straight and went back to attention.
“So, Captain,” Lord Lumpley said, “what brings you to Netherfield Park? Were it just you and your men, I might assume you’d been sent to see to my safe passage to London. Given Mr. Bennet’s presence, however, I presume you expect me to serve you in some fashion.”
Capt. Cannon’s face—what was visible of it through his thick, white whiskers—flushed pink. “Your service would be to the crown, Sir.”
“And the good people of Hertfordshire,” Mr. Bennet added.
“Yes, of course,” the baron said. “I’ve been sick with worry about them, every one. And on their behalf, you want me to do what, exactly?”
The captain and Mr. Bennet exchanged a glance, and the former forged on with an explanation, clearly by prearrangement.
Lord Lumpley had his own prearranged plan, mapped out as his dressers toiled over him upstairs. The first step: resistance to whatever Bennet and the soldiers might propose. To his simultaneous disgust and satisfaction, the baron found no feigning was necessary.
“Yes, enough, all right,” he said before Capt. Cannon was even done speaking. “Mr. Bennet tried to persuade me to aid him in this endeavor once before. It is beyond appalling.”
“That is as may be, yet it must be done,” Mr. Bennet replied. “And quickly, My Lord. Our time runs short. I do not know if word has reached you, but yesterday another unmentionable was found on the prowl not two miles from here. It nearly did in one of my own daughters.”
“Jane?”
“Elizabeth.”
“Oh.”
Even to Lord Lumpley’s ears, his “Oh” sounded a little too relieved—not that Elizabeth had lived, but that it had been she and not her elder sister who’d been attacked.
“I’m so happy to hear the young lady managed to escape,” he added quickly. And then he carried on just as fast, for he’d stumbled upon the path to take him where he all along intended to go. “I assume it was the training you’ve insisted on for your daughters that made the difference. That was quite a display they put on during the unpleasantness at the lake. Oh, I know some were scandalized by it. That tongues have been wagging from here to Wales. ‘Unladylike,’ ‘uncivilized,’ ‘un-English,’ they say. I’ve even heard that your Jane and Elizabeth have been asked not to attend the spring ball at Pulvis Lodge! But no such flighty flibbertigibbet am I. I’ve come to see the need for these special skills, barbarous though they are. During the hunt, you and your daughters spared me the need to wade in and do battle with that foul creature myself, as surely I would have done had you not been present. And imagine the tragic turmoil if a person of such far-ranging influence as I should fall victim to an unmentionable. Why, a man of my importance owes it to his countrymen to protect himself any way he can, wouldn’t you say?”
The baron pretended to muse a moment, tapping a finger against the uppermost of his chins.
“I say . . . I seem to have struck upon a notion there.”
“Oh?” Mr. Bennet said, and like the baron’s “Oh” of a moment before, it seemed to convey much for what’s basically one step up from a grunt. It was a wry and weary “Oh,” slightly sad and entirely unsurprised.
“Imagine, Mr. Bennet,” Lord Lumpley said, “what a boon it would be for your daughters—and all who might emulate them—should a person of standing be seen to take them to his bosom not in spite of their unconventional ways but because of them. Socially, they could be redeemed, and it would be all the easier for you to accomplish whatever you think necessary.”
Mr. Bennet sat stock still as he listened, and even when he spoke he somehow looked less like a flesh-and-blood man than a portrait of himself, the expression on his face painted after a particularly long day.
“And how would you propose to take them to your bosom, exactly?”
“Well, what if I were to accept the services of one of your daughters as a sort of . . .” The baron shook his head, laughing. “It sounds ridiculous saying it, but . . . as a bodyguard. It might add fuel to the flame of scandal, at first, yet with time it would be accepted. And, at any rate, perhaps a little tonguewagging’s just what we need to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation. ‘If even the baron of Lumpley is again embracing the old Orientalism that held such sway during The Troubles . . .!’ That sort of thing.”
“I see,” Mr. Bennet said, inflectionless. “And which of my daughters did you have in mind?”
“I suppose the eldest would make the most sense. Jane. Despite all the hysterics at the lake, she did slay a dreadful. And she’s already out, so it wouldn’t be that shocking for her to spend her days in the company of a gentleman. Of course, we couldn’t be alone together. That would never do! Fortunately, there is no lack of chaperones around Netherfield. Though I have no relations or guests with me, at the moment, there are always servants about . . . not to mention uninvited callers.”
“You ask for one of Mr. Bennet’s daughters as a bodyguard?” Capt. Cannon spluttered. “With your servants as chaperones?”
The man looked as though he’d never missed his arms more—for before him was a rascal in desperate need of thrashing, rank be damned.
Mr. Bennet grunted out a little cough and finally shifted in his seat. “Actually, Captain, I find the proposal rather appeals to me. Do I take it, My Lord, that—if I agree to the course you’ve put forth—you will do everything in your power to aid our friend here?”
He nodded at Capt. Cannon.
Lord Lumpley put on an expression suggesting mild indignation. “You make it sound like a quid pro quo, Mr. Bennet . . . although I certainly will feel safer remaining in Hertfordshire to assist the captain if some gesture is made toward ensuring my safety.”
“Everything in your power,” Mr. Bennet pressed. “Whatever the captain needs. On your word of honor.”
Damnable nerve, the baron thought.
“Of course,” he said.
Mr. Bennet nodded, then had the impudence—what reserves the man had!—to stand up first.
“Jane will be here tomorrow noon.”
“Excellent! I’ll have a room prepared for her in the south wing.”
“Yes, do. And you might want to alert your steward and groundskeeper and stable boys and all the rest, too.”
“Oh?” Lord Lumpley and Capt. Cannon said together, and this time the word’s meaning was as simple as its sound. Pure surprise, nothing more.