When Mr. Bennet came to collect the girls, he looked as grim as Elizabeth had ever seen him.
“Come,” he said. “We return to Longbourn.”
“All of us?” Elizabeth asked.
The stranger was striding in the opposite direction, toward a large, black horse—practically a Clydesdale, it was so big. It stamped a huge hoof with impatience as it waited for its master, its reins wrapped around a low-hanging branch.
“Yes,” Mr. Bennet said. “All of us.”
During the ride back, Elizabeth had her best chance yet to make a thorough study of the mysterious young man from “the Order” (whatever that was). She and Jane were riding behind him and their father, yet she didn’t need to look the stranger in the face to read his character. The stiffness of his bearing, the long straight line of his broad shoulders, the stern snap of his tone when speaking to Mr. Bennet, even the peculiar way he wore his long, thick, shiny-black hair, pulled up in a queue that sprouted from just below his crown—all spoke of discipline and strength of will. And haughtiness and pride, as well.
Elizabeth knew she should resent his arrogance, especially his condescension to her father, yet she found she couldn’t. It was because he represented hope, she told herself. If, as Mr. Bennet insisted, she and her sisters needed to be molded into warriors, here might be the man to do it. After all, one doesn’t forge a sword on a blancmange. It takes an anvil of iron. And this young man certainly seemed hard and cold enough to pass for one.
Upon reaching Longbourn, they found the rest of the girls engaged in proper-ish ladylike pursuits under the unenthused tutelage of Mrs. Hill the housekeeper, who’d been temporarily drafted into service as a reluctant replacement for Miss Chiselwood. Mary was hunched over a book (her history of The Troubles, Elizabeth was pleased to see); Kitty was working on her poise by toying with nunchucks while the etiquette guide she was supposed to be reading sat balanced atop her head. Lydia, meanwhile, was honing her embroidery skills with a needlepoint portrait of Mary, complete with halo, pimples, fangs, and the words OUR LITTLE ANGEL—MAY GOD TAKE HER BACK SOON floating over her wispy hair. All were shocked into silence when the stranger marched in, boomed “To the dojo—now!” and immediately marched back out.
“Come along, girls, come along,” Mr. Bennet said, waving them toward the door.
“Who was that?” Lydia asked.
“Our new master of the deadly arts, apparently,” Elizabeth said.
“Our new—?” Kitty began. She looked over at Lydia, broke into giggles, and then both girls raced for the dojo with idiotic grins on their faces.
Even Mrs. Bennet was charmed by the stranger despite his best efforts to the contrary, asking “Who is that rude, handsome man?” after he brushed past her in the foyer.
He lost some of his comeliness, if not his rudeness, once he was in the dojo, for the state of the place puckered his perfect features into a prodigious grimace.
“Are those daffodils?”
Mr. Bennet peeped over at Elizabeth and jerked his head at the flower pots crammed into the corner.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone from the Order quite so soon,” he said as his daughter hustled the flowers out and tossed them over the nearest hedge.
The stranger let his scowl reply for him. When Elizabeth was back inside, he nodded at the floor and said, “Sit.”
Mr. Bennet and the girls seated themselves in the warrior way—legs crossed, spines straight—and though the stranger didn’t compliment them on it, he did allow his glower to fade.
“My name,” he said, “is Geoffrey Hawksworth. You will call me ‘Master Hawksworth’ or simply ‘Master.’ I have been sent by a party whose name your ears are, as yet, unfit to hear. Suffice it to say, I represent a fellowship to which your father, Oscar Bennet, once belonged—a secret league of warriors sworn to eternal vigilance and readiness. As part of his oath of fealty to the Order, he swore to raise all his progeny in the warrior way. But he broke that vow. He chose to live as a gentleman and bring you up to be ladies . . . and now you find yourselves helpless at the very hour The Enemy returns.”
The young man pointed a redoubled frown at Mr. Bennet.
It pained Elizabeth to see her father bow his head, looking cowed.
“I have been tasked with setting right your father’s failing,” Master Hawksworth went on. “You will become warriors. I will make you so through exacting instruction, unremitting discipline, and a complete and utter absence of mercy. Do not mistake any of this for cruelty. It is a mercy to you, one for which you should be thankful, for it might save your lives. You will show your gratitude—and your devotion to your training—through absolute obedience. Anything I say, you must do without question. This is the first step on the path to preparedness, and you must take it with me now.”
The young man paused then, and when he spoke again his voice was so soft it sounded almost tender.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the girls said.
“Yes, what?” Hawksworth prompted them gently.
“Yes, Master,” Elizabeth said.
The Master nodded and almost—almost—smiled.
“Good,” he said. And then suddenly he was spinning on his heel and stabbing at Kitty with an outstretched arm and a pointing finger, and everything mild or kindly or human about him was lost behind a mask of raw contempt. “YOU! Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow!”
Kitty blinked at him. “Ummm . . . Papa hasn’t taught us how to do that yet . . . Master.”
“I did not ask what Papa has taught you,” Master Hawksworth snapped back. “I told you to jump—and you did not.” He pointed at the floor now. “Fifty dand-baithaks.”
“Dandy-whats? Uhhh . . . Father hasn’t taught us about those, either.”
Master Hawksworth threw a quick, cold glare at Mr. Bennet, then shrugged off his coat and began unbuttoning his vest.
“Then I must demonstrate.”
His vest joined his coat on the floor. When he began untying his cravat, Elizabeth could actually feel the burn of the blush on her cheeks. For a moment, it looked as though he meant to take off his shirt, as well. He was merely loosening it, though, giving his broad chest room to do its work.
When he was ready, he threw himself facedown. Then he pushed up with his arms, and his body lifted, all his weight suspended on his palms and toes.
“One,” he said.
He lowered himself until his nose touched the floor, then pushed up again.
“Two.”
And so it went, all the way to fifty. It took him no more than half a minute.
He stood up again and looked at Kitty.
“Now you.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Kitty stretched out on the floor and attempted her first dand-baithak. Her arms shook under the strain of her weight, and by the time she could say “One” her face was as red as a beet.
“YOU!” Master Hawksworth barked, pointing at Mary this time. “Jump through the ceiling and catch me a swallow.”
It had always been one of Mary’s pleasures to learn from the mistakes of others, and this she tried to do again. She promptly got to her feet, stretched her arms out toward the ceiling, and hopped straight up with all her might.
Her feet made it all of four inches off the ground.
“I’m sorry, Master Hawksworth,” she said. “I missed.”
Master Hawksworth nodded. “But you did as I said without question.”
Mary smiled primly and began to sit down.