Your loins, he didn’t add, though the thought of it put a grin on his face he didn’t even bother to hide. For all her weapons and warrior posturing, this Jane was a simple, naive thing, sensitive and overdeferential. She would think it a comforting smile, not a leer. And she would think him a friend—if not now, then one day. Hopefully, soon.
He was on the verge of risking a reassuring pat on the hand when Mr. Bennet and Ensign Pratt came back, and the baron was so piqued by the swiftness of their return he barely even noticed that they were now lugging huge, black-headed hammers.
“Thank you for your patience, My Lord,” Mr. Bennet said. “Our preparations are now complete. It’s on to the vicarage, where I hope the Reverend Mr. Cummings will prove as susceptible to your powers of persuasion as so many before him.”
The insufferable man offered up one of his little smirks, and it was for the baron now to guess what intent lay behind another’s smile.
The vicar they found preparing his Easter sermon, and he was displeased to be called away for anything of lesser importance. He was a meek, mewling sort generally, his rectoral style leaning more toward unctuous sanctimony than hellfire and damnation. It was one of the few reasons the baron had been able to tolerate the man: Anyone who took all that good-and-evil claptrap too seriously would’ve proved a thorn in his side.
Upon hearing what Mr. Bennet and the ensign proposed to do, however, Mr. Cummings unleashed a self-righteous rage the likes of which he’d never even hinted at from the pulpit.
“It’s abominable! Unspeakable! Sacrilege!”
“First and foremost, it is necessary,” Mr. Bennet replied coolly. “And, secondly, it is overdue. As for all those other things, I can but agree. Your complaint, however, would best be lodged in the form of prayer, for is it not a higher authority than any of us who has, for His own mysterious reasons, loosed ‘unspeakable abominations’ upon us first?”
“YOU BLASPHEME!”
“I apologize if I do,” Mr. Bennet said with a shrug. “I merely thought to observe.”
He glanced at Ensign Pratt, then Lord Lumpley, signaling that it was up to them now to help the vicar see the light.
“I tell you, Sir, this is of the highest strategic importance,” the ensign squeaked. (Though an officer, he was little more than a boy—and one so diminutive and baby faced he made the young troops he commanded look like a company of snowy-bearded Methuselahs.) “Captain Cannon absolutely insists that we proceed without delay.”
“I do not answer to Captain Cannon! I answer to almighty God!”
“As must we all, Mr. Cummings,” the baron said. “Yet I have no desire to stand before Him any earlier than I have to. If Captain Cannon and Mr. Bennet feel that this unpleasant necessity will delay that day for any of us, I think it prudent to see it through forthwith. And you can be assured that this is an attitude I will not keep to myself if any in the community raise objections.”
“Have you not heard a word I’ve said? I object!” Mr. Cummings roared. “I cannot allow you to defile hallowed ground!”
Lord Lumpley jerked back as if struck. Hang his “powers of persuasion.” This self-righteous upstart needed to be squashed like a bug!
“You cannot allow me?” he said. “Might I remind you, Mr. Cummings, that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been a guest in my home?” And nearly emptied my damned wine cellar! “That the Prince Regent is a close, personal friend?” Why, I’ve seen the man naked! “That I am the sixth baron of Lumpley and a knight of the Bath—which makes me the closest thing you grubby bumpkins have to royalty in this miserable backwater?”
Mr. Cummings, Mr. Bennet, and Ensign Pratt all popped their eyes wide in surprise.
Oh, the baron thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that last part out loud.
The vicar sucked in a deep breath, the scowl on his face making it plain how he intended to use it. It had been a long, long time since anyone had dared rebuke Lord Lumpley in public. Now his state of grace was about to end.
The baron steeled himself for thunder, but heard a soft, melodious whisper instead.
“Gentlemen, please,” Jane said, “if I may offer a suggestion?”
The girl was sitting in a corner of the vicarage’s cramped drawing room, so silent the men had, for a time, forgotten she was there at all. Though she’d asked for permission to address them, she didn’t wait for anyone to give it.
“It seems to me,” she said, her soft voice gaining strength without losing its gentle lilt, “that you are speaking of all or nothing when a compromise could easily be reached. The Reverend Mr. Cummings has his sacred duties to think of, and it does him credit that he takes them so seriously. Yet if he would consent to do as my father and Captain Cannon ask just once—simply in the way of a trial, without necessarily following through to the admittedly gruesome conclusion they seek—then we will know whether this course of action is truly warranted. If Papa and the captain are mistaken, we will quickly know, and the matter can be laid to rest permanently . . . so to speak. And it should be made clear to Mr. Cummings that arrangements have been made to ensure that, whatever we do, privacy and dignity will be maintained as much as possible and, of course, that the vicar himself isn’t just welcome to observe these proceedings but is respectfully entreated to oversee them.”
Her conciliatory tone, her well-chosen words, her obvious good sense, and, above all, her generous spirit—they worked a spell on Mr. Cummings that he couldn’t resist. By the time she was through, not only was his frown gone, he was smiling upon her pleasantly, utterly pacified.
Mr. Bennet, meanwhile, beamed with a pride tinged with regret. For all his efforts to turn Jane into a warrior, peacemaking clearly suited her better. She’d certainly done a better job of it than the baron had with all his bluster, and even he paused to appreciate her sweetness and sagacity—before being distracted by her décolletage as she rose to go.
The party left the vicarage to see her suggestion through. Once outside, they collected Ensign Pratt’s men, who were leaning against the stone wall that ran along the road, smoking pipes and grumbling amongst themselves.
“Pick up that gear and fall in!” the ensign roared. (Or tried to. It came out more like a mewl.) “Snap to it, now! Hut hut!”
The soldiers hopped up and grabbed the poles and rolled canvas and bags of tent pegs Lord Lumpley and the Bennets had brought from Netherfield Park. Yet one pile, the baron noticed, went untouched until all the other items had been claimed.
Only the slowest and unluckiest men ended up with the shovels.
“Come on!” the ensign yipped. “Look alive, look alive!”
Once Pratt had lined up his squad, the whole group—the soldiers, the Bennets, the vicar, and (because he’d been too slow thinking up a way to get out of it) the baron—turned and headed toward the cemetery.
CHAPTER 25
DR. KECKILPENNY did a few more spins—“This is the way, I’m sure of it. Then again . . .”—before Elizabeth could ask him where exactly he was trying to lead her.
“That little lake on the estate.” He turned toward Lord Lumpley’s manor house, then whirled round toward the forest, then back to the house, then back to the trees. “You know the one. Where the girl zombie came out of the water.”
Elizabeth nodded somberly, unsure which memory disheartened her more: a stricken Emily Ward shuffling toward her, bloated and rank, or her own failure to end the girl’s curse with a swift slice of the sword.
“I’m afraid you haven’t been right yet,” she said. “It’s this way.”
She led him up the lane that led to Longbourn, and Meryton beyond.