“Papa!” Jane cried, horrified.
Mr. Bennet gave her another pat. “That’s the way, child, that’s the way. Just keep blushing like that—with your katana at the ready—and you’ll be all right. Now, I suppose I must go to the dojo and inform Master Hawksworth.”
“Are you sure he’ll approve?” Elizabeth asked.
She certainly didn’t, but there was little she could do about it. The Master, on the other hand . . .
“Our training has brought us so far so fast, but this?” she went on. “The Master might not think Jane’s ready.”
“I am beginning to wonder,” Mr. Bennet replied, one eyebrow arching high, “if our young master is truly the best judge of what my daughters are and are not ready for.”
It was Elizabeth’s turn to blush. Her sisters’ teasing she could tolerate, but from her father it was something else entirely. Though, really, how could he have missed Master Hawksworth’s attentions? The Master was forever creating excuses for them to be alone to work on their pas de deux moves: At one point, every other Bennet in the dojo was accused of bad posture and sent off for a dozen laps around the estate. And he continued to give Elizabeth looks that lingered so long that Mary even asked him once if he were attempting some Oriental form of mesmerism. Yet it wasn’t yearning that Elizabeth saw in his gaze; it seemed more like a perpetually unquenched curiosity. What he was so curious about, though, she didn’t know, and even when they were together, just the two of them grappling and tussling and clasping hands, she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Mr. Bennet paused a moment, waiting to see what reply his daughter might make to his observation about the Master. Yet Elizabeth found herself, for once, at a loss for the right words, and her father simply grunted and left the room.
“Well, come along, Jane,” she said brightly, trying to cover with false cheer as she grabbed her sister by the arm and tugged her toward the door. “Knowing Mamma, we will find her stuffing a trunk with evening dresses, slippers, and gloves—and not so much as a butter knife for you to guard a body with!”
And so it had been, of course. Eventually, Mrs. Bennet moved on to other matters: Jane’s hair, the new bonnet, experimenting (over Kitty’s howls of protest) on Jane’s already perfect complexion with the French rouge Mrs. Hill had found hidden in the younger girl’s dresser. Which was all well and good, from Elizabeth’s perspective, for at last she could slip in and pack a few things that might actually be of some use.
And now, hours later, here she was doing it all over again.
“Do you really think there’s need for that?” Jane asked as Elizabeth picked up her sparring gown. “I can’t imagine I’ll be doing many dandbaithaks while at Netherfield Park.”
“Perhaps we might do some sword work together during one of my many visits,” Elizabeth replied. “It would be wise, I think, to remind the baron what you’re capable of with a katana . . . though I will admit, I would be happier packing a chastity belt.”
“Lizzy!”
“For Lord Lumpley, of course,” Elizabeth said. “I suspect the man already wears a truss. A chastity belt would require but the tiniest bit of extra—”
“Elizabeth Bennet, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Jane said. But she was grinning as she said it. “You say the most awful things!”
Elizabeth smiled back, pleased to see she’d lifted her sister’s spirits. Yet it would take a lot more than naughty quips, she knew, to actually keep Jane safe.
She put a pair of tekko brass knuckles in the trunk. Then an ivory-handled push dagger. Then her sister’s nunchucks. Then her flintlock pistol and powder horn. Then a bag of shot. Then a retractable bo staff and ninja hand claws and a battle-axe and . . . and . . . and . .
CHAPTER 22
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the Bennets lined up outside the house to bid Jane adieu.
“I’m sure you will acquit yourself well,” said Mary.
“Just you with a baron and a hundred soldiers—I’m so jealous!” said Kitty.
“I should be so lucky when I’m your age!” said Lydia.
“Be careful, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet. “But not too careful.” And she gave Jane a broad wink.
Master Hawksworth watched all the proceedings from the doorway of the dojo. The only farewell he offered to Jane was a solemn bow. Yet this, in its own way, seemed as heartfelt as anything the Bennets had to say.
As Jane returned the bow, the Master’s eyes flicked, for just an instant, to Elizabeth and her father.
Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth noticed, was watching the younger man with a look of dry disdain. When the Master noticed it as well, he abruptly spun on his heel and stalked back into the dojo.
Something had shifted between her father and Master Hawksworth—something, Elizabeth feared, that had to do with her. Just that morning, when she’d asked if she might accompany Jane to Nether-field, Mr. Bennet had said, “That’s a splendid idea. I’ll tell Hawksworth you shall be gone for the day.”
Not “ask the Master.” “Tell Hawksworth.”
Whatever it meant, she had no chance to ask about it, however slyly she might have gone about it, for when they left Longbourn, her father suddenly began acting like her mother. He’d decided that they should walk (an armed servant in a dogcart having been dispatched with Jane’s trunk at first light), and all the way to Netherfield Park he kept up a stream of nervous chatter. Fortunately, it wasn’t the need for an heir or rich sons-in-law or the certainty of his own encroaching doom that occupied him: He was reviewing fighting techniques, tossing out bits of zombie lore (“Have I mentioned their fondness for cabbage patches?”), and reminding Jane, not once but twice, of the efficaciousness of the Fulcrum of Doom and its sundry variations.
It was as if all their father had learned through months of study in the Orient and years battling the unmentionables might be imparted to his daughters in one fifty-minute walk, provided he talked quickly enough. He barely paused for so much as a breath until he spotted something by the side of the road that, for a moment, seemed to take it away entirely.
“Well, well, well . . . and I was just about to get to this, too,” he muttered, and he slowly approached a small mound of what looked like mincemeat or the contents of a particularly lumpy haggis. “It appears Fate has taken an interest in your education.”
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked.
“Zombie droppings.”
“Zombie . . . droppings?”
“Oh, my,” Jane said. “I didn’t think unmentionables would need to, um, you know. . . .”
“They don’t. Not the way the living do, at least.” Mr. Bennet pulled out a dagger, knelt down beside the gloppy mess, and began sifting through it with the tip of the blade. “It moves through their bodies without being digested and then eventually just . . . falls out. That’s how you can tell it’s from a dreadful.”
He stabbed something, brought it up to his nose, and gave it a sniff.
It was a finger. A wedding band was still attached just above the exposed knuckle bone.
“Fresh. We must be doubly wary,” Mr. Bennet said. Then he flicked the finger into the brush, stood up, and started off again up the lane. “Now where was I? Oh, yes! Eyes! Always a nice, soft, vulnerable target in a human foe, but don’t bother with them when you’re up against a dreadful. They seem to see without the things, somehow. . . .”
He carried on along this line for only another minute or so, for soon the lane curved around to the baron’s estate and a shrill voice squeaked out, “Who goes there?”
About fifty feet ahead, a young solider stood in the middle of the road, his wobbling Brown Bess pointed at the Bennets.
“Friends, lad!” Mr. Bennet called out. “Living, breathing friends, as you can tell from the fact that I’m answering you at all! I commend you on your caution—keep it up, by all means—but if you could stand down for now, it would be appreciated!”