Mr. Bennet blocked the door. “For Heaven’s sake, he’s a baron, not the king. Keep your seats, all of you. I’ll bring him in once we’ve had our talk.”
Lord Lumpley’s proximity actually made Mrs. Bennet worse, and she spent the next half hour telling her daughters not to fidget while doing that very thing to such an extent she appeared to be having some sort of seizure. She blinked, she tapped her feet, she jumped at every step in the hall, she squirmed, she coughed. The only symptom absent was frothing at the mouth.
Kitty and Lydia found it endlessly comical, Mary asked if she should run upstairs and fetch the laudanum, and Jane simply weathered it with quiet, forlorn fortitude.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, attempted to preserve her peace of mind with a concentration aid her father had spoken of that afternoon: a mantra, he’d called it.
Smooth stone beneath still water, Elizabeth said to herself. Smooth stone, still water, smooth stone, still water, smooth EGAD HOW I WANT TO THROTTLE THAT WOMAN!
At long last, her mother could take the suspense no longer, and she sprang from the chaise longue she’d been in danger of fainting upon and blurted out, “I swear, if His Lordship isn’t in here in the next ten seconds, I’m going to drag him in by the ear like the naughty little boy he is!”
It was at this precise moment, of course, that the door to the drawing room opened and a half-amused, half-mortified Mr. Bennet stepped in to announce their guest, the Baron of Lumpley.
“Oh, My Lord!” Mrs. Bennet said, and it was unclear to all whether she was blaspheming or offering a greeting.
“Oh, My Lady,” Lord Lumpley said with an elegantly arched eyebrow, and he slid smoothly across the room to press his lips to her trembling fingers. He was long accustomed to the awe he could inspire, no doubt, and he seemed to relish a fresh opportunity to be magnanimous about it.
Elizabeth fancied the man brought a whiff of sulphur in with him, though more likely his dressers had simply gone a little heavy on the eau de cologne. Certainly, they had labored long over him, for his girth—and he had plenty of it—had been packed into a black suit that, though beautifully cut, appeared to be on the verge of bursting at the seams any second. Around his neck, tied high enough to hide some if not all of his jowls, was an extravagant cravat such as to make Beau Brummell blush.
“My daughters,” Mr. Bennet said, preparing to make introductions.
“Oh, I remember them well, Sir. The beautiful Jane and Elizabeth and . . .” The baron flicked his gaze quickly over the younger girls. “Myrtle and the rest.” He resettled his stare on Jane. Jane alone. “It is a pleasure to be in your company again. I have so longed to see more of you.”
Jane attempted to deflect his attentions with averted eyes and a small, demure smile, as it was not in her nature to be so flirtatious or brazen.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was of a very different inclination: one the day’s training had, somehow, tilted her toward all the more. She was readying what she considered a suitable reply, but only got as far as a sardonically cocked eyebrow when her mother spoke first.
“But His Lordship needs a place to sit! Lizzy, why don’t you come over here next to me?”
“Oh, I would not dream of evicting a young lady from her seat,” Lord Lumpley said.
He and Mrs. Bennet then waited for Elizabeth to make the appropriate reply: “It is no inconvenience, Sir. Pray, do sit.”
“Thank you,” she said instead, making no move to leave her place by Jane’s side.
Mrs. Bennet scowled at her behind the baron’s back, then turned and shooed “Myrtle” from her plush wing chair.
“But he said—,” Mary began.
“Come and sit with your beloved mother!” Mrs. Bennet snapped.
Mary slouched over and slumped down beside Mrs. Bennet, while Lord Lumpley, with no more thanks to her than a silent nod, settled himself in her spot. He was only a few feet from Kitty and Lydia now, and when he noticed them admiring him, wide eyed, he flashed them a devilish grin that had both hiding behind their hands, giggling madly.
Mrs. Bennet cleared her throat and began conversation in the approved manner: with the most boring topic imaginable.
“It is quite an uncommonly warm spring we’re having, is it not?”
Lord Lumpley acknowledged the comment with a benevolent nod. “It is indeed.”
“Do you think that’s why the unmentionables are back?” Mary asked.
Mrs. Bennet started as if she’d been pinched. Then Mary did the same—because she had been pinched.
“They’re called unmentionables for a reason, my dear,” Mrs. Bennet said.
“But it’s what he came here to talk about, isn’t it?”
“Not . . . to . . . us.”
“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Bennet,” Lord Lumpley said. “I don’t mind addressing the subject, now that it’s been broached. It’s quite natural, I suppose, that it should be foremost on everyone’s minds.”
He looked over at Mary, opened his mouth to speak—then abruptly lost interest in her and turned to Jane, instead.
As far as Elizabeth was concerned, there could be no question what was foremost on his mind.
“Your father and I have had the most productive conversation on the matter, and tomorrow steps will be taken to ensure the safety of all. As for why Mr. Ford should have succumbed to the plague now, when it hasn’t been seen in these parts for so long, I cannot say. I will venture, however, that one unmentionable does not a plague make. There have been isolated incidents in the past. I see no reason why this wouldn’t merely be another.”
“Isolated incidents?” Elizabeth asked. She looked over at her father, who was still standing just inside the doorway.
He gave his head the smallest of shakes.
“But we do not know there are not others,” Jane said softly. “There is, for instance, a girl who disappeared from Meryton but two weeks ago. Emily Ward. Would that not suggest that the menace wasn’t limited to Mr. Ford?”
The baron put on a condescending smile. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being frank, but the young lady’s ‘disappearance’ is nothing new. It rather happens on a regular basis, and has more to do with coxcombs bound for Scotland than the supernatural. And even if unmentionables were to blame, perish the thought, remember we are speaking of a lone girl . . . and next the filthy rotters will be facing men. Trust me, dear lady: If—and I say again if!—there are more dreadfuls in Hertfordshire, they will be dealt with handily.”
As the nobleman blathered away, Elizabeth kept her eyes on her father, gauging his reaction. Though Mr. Bennet was usually a master of droll dispassion, Elizabeth detected a seething uneasiness beneath his cultivated blankness. Before she could stop herself, she found herself giving voice to the words she guessed he was thinking.
“So you had dealings with zombies during The Troubles, then?”
Lord Lumpley, Mrs. Bennet, and even Jane flinched. The Zed Word wasn’t supposed to be spoken in polite company.
The baron took a moment to compose himself before making his reply.
“I am but six-and-twenty years of age, so obviously I took part in no battle lo those many years ago. Yet I have faced the creatures. Before they became extinct—if something already dead can be said to do so!—my father used to import some from the north for the shooting season. Pathetic, shambling things, they were. It didn’t even make for good sport.”
“I would guess it is a bit more sporting, My Lord, if they outnumber you and there are no shotguns at hand,” Elizabeth said. “Would you not agree, Father?”
“I might choose a word other than sporting,” Mr. Bennet replied.
“Papa saw a zombie eat a Scotsman once!” Lydia threw in, oblivious, as always, to subtext and nuance in conversation or anything else. “Mary told me he said . . . what?”