“I assume it would be your first request,” Mr. Bennet said to the captain, “that you be allowed to establish headquarters on good, defensible high ground, clear of any cover for an advancing enemy, close enough to town to defend it yet not so close as to draw unwanted attention, with plenty of ready shelter its master has, at present, no need for.”
“Yes, I suppose. . . .” Capt. Cannon finally caught on, and a huge grin pushed his white side-whiskers heavenward. “Netherfield Park would make the perfect base of operations. Limbs! To your posts! By jingo, if we move fast, we can break camp and be back this very day! I thank you, My Lord! The king thanks you! You are the very model of munificence, Sir!”
“Just a minute, now,” Lord Lumpley began limply, but in all the commotion of the Limbs quick-stepping in a pivot and wheeling the captain toward the library doors, nobody seemed to hear him.
“I daresay you were right about my daughter not wanting for chaperones,” Mr. Bennet said as he and the soldiers took their leave with jerky, hurried bows. “Before she even arrives, there will be all of a hundred of them billeted on your estate!”
CHAPTER 21
THERE HAD BEEN NO MORE late-night prowlings through the Bennet house since the girls had mistaken their mother for an unmentionable more than a week before. Whatever Mrs. Bennet had been after in Mr. Bennet’s room—and Elizabeth had worked very, very hard to convince herself she didn’t know what that was—she’d apparently given up hope of procuring it. So when Elizabeth once again heard shuffling steps and the creak of a floorboard outside her bedroom door, she stuffed her hand under her pillow and wrapped it around the hilt of a dirk.
It was the dead of night, yet her sleep had been light. Exhausted as her body was from another day of training, her mind remained restless, returning again and again to the same troubling thoughts. And feelings.
There was a light rap on her door, and it began to swing slowly open.
“Don’t shoot, Lizzy. It’s me.”
Elizabeth pushed herself up and smiled sleepily. “Oh, I wasn’t going to shoot you, Jane. I was about to stab you.”
Candlelight spread out into the room, and as Jane stepped in after it, Elizabeth could see her sister’s eyes glistening moistly in the dim flicker.
“I need help packing for Netherfield,” Jane said.
Elizabeth stood and started toward her. “But we finished that hours ago.”
“I know. And I finished again at midnight.” Jane’s lips trembled, and a single tear trickled down her right cheek. “I just can’t stop unpacking.”
“Dear, sweet Jane . . .”
Elizabeth wrapped her arms gingerly around her sister—careful not to brush against the candle—and held her for a moment. Then she hurried her across the hall to her room and quickly closed the door. (Lydia had grown altogether too fond of her throwing stars of late, and anyone or anything that startled or provoked her ran the risk of quick, painful perforation.)
“Oh, Lizzy,” Jane said after another hug, “I feel as if I’m being sent to Lord Lumpley as some kind of . . . you know. . . .”
Elizabeth did know. The gist anyway, if not the exact word Jane couldn’t bring herself to say. Concubine would have been her first guess.
The phrase Elizabeth had settled on in her own mind was virgin sacrifice.
She led Jane to the bed, sat her down, and kissed her on the forehead. Then she turned to a large (and empty) chest surrounded by stacks of neatly folded clothes.
“You must simply think of yourself as a special sort of governess.” She picked up a riding habit and put it in the trunk. “And of Lord Lumpley as a particularly naughty child.”
“Oh, it’s not him that I worry about,” Jane said. “You know I don’t share your misgivings about the baron. He’s always been a perfect gentleman with me. No . . . it’s what people will say that pains me.”
Elizabeth shrugged even as she kept loading the trunk. “Could it be any worse than what they’re saying already? And if His Lordship is to be believed, they won’t be saying it long—because he’s going to change their minds about it all.”
“Do you believe that, Lizzy?”
“Well . . . the baron might be right. But I beg you to be wary of anything else the man says. And I don’t just say that because I dislike him. You know there have been rumors . . . about Lord Lumpley and certain girls. . . .”
Such a flush came to Jane’s face, for a moment it seemed to glow as bright as the candle, and she reached out and snagged Elizabeth by the hand.
“Oh, please say you’ll come to Netherfield tomorrow! I simply couldn’t bear going there without you by my side to give me strength.”
“Of course, I shall go with you. Though . . .” Elizabeth gave Jane’s hand a squeeze and then, overcome by the sudden urge to turn away, went back to packing. “I suppose I shall have to ask the Master for permission, as well.”
“Surely, he’d excuse even his favorite pupil for just this one morning,” Jane said. She was obviously struggling to lighten her tone, brighten the mood, turn playful, yet Elizabeth found she couldn’t play along, and instead she changed the subject.
“Well, I can think of one person, at least, who will be absolutely enchanted by the idea.”
“Oh, goodness, yes. No doubt Mamma will want you to visit me at Netherfield often, so that you might secure for yourself whichever gentleman there I don’t entrap. Why, she and Aunt Philips are probably already planning a double wedding!”
Elizabeth let loose a very unladylike snort, sparking in Jane a burst of barely stifled giggles.
Their mother had, at first, reacted to news of the arrangement with Lord Lumpley with shocked silence—silence from her being so shocking that no one else there could speak for a full half minute, and the whole family simply sat around the drawing room watching matriarch gawk at patriarch with her mouth hanging open.
“One of our daughters? A bodyguard?” she finally said. “It’s outrageous. Disgraceful. Unheard of. We’ll be the laughingstock of all Hertfordshire.”
“As if we aren’t now,” Kitty grumbled.
“Actually, Mamma,” Mary said, nodding down at the thick book spread open in her lap, “according to this, Lady Catherine de Bourgh herself served as personal guard to the Duke of York during the Black Country Campaign of 17—”
“Sss sss sss,” Mrs. Bennet hissed, silencing Mary with waggling fingers. As always, she found facts antithetical to good conversation. “We’re talking about Jane’s reputation. And ours!”
“Lord Lumpley would tell you he’s rescuing our reputation, gallant gentleman that he is,” Mr. Bennet said. “At any rate, there can hardly be anything untoward about the arrangement if it’s been endorsed by a captain of the king’s army—and when he and his junior officers will ever be on hand. Why, I wager Jane will end up spending as much time with young Lt. Tindall as with the baron.”
Mrs. Bennet pondered this for a long, long time—for her. Meaning all of two seconds passed before she turned to Jane and said, “Don’t forget to take that lovely muslin gown Mrs. Gardiner bought for you in London. And we simply must do something different with your hair. Hill! Hill? Where is that infernal woman? She needs to run to town this instant if we’re to have a new bonnet before Mr. Ward closes shop. HILL!”
Soon she was hustling upstairs to go through Jane’s closet and dressers, with Kitty and Lydia skittering after her tittering. Jane remained behind, frozen in the armchair she’d been sitting in when she’d received the news.
Her father walked over to pat her on the back of the hand.
“I know, my dear. I am tossing you into the lion’s den. Please believe me, I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t more than a match for any wanton tom who sought to add you to his pride.”