“What’s this? Staring at the floor? Have I mistakenly brought Jane Bennet to the dojo?”
Elizabeth forced herself to look up and meet the Master’s stare.
He nodded once, brusquely. “There. Now I know I am looking at Elizabeth Bennet.”
“And you are grateful to see her?”
Master Hawksworth’s face took on the look of pained astonishment Elizabeth imagined he wore when he first felt the Fulcrum of Doom, and as he whirled away, putting his back to her, she cursed her own reckless presumption. It wasn’t Jane anyone would mistake her for now; it was foolish, imprudent Lydia.
“A student doesn’t—!” the Master began. “I am . . . I should . . .!”
Then he slumped and sighed and was silent. When he went on again a moment later, he sounded not outraged but resigned.
“Why should I be surprised that you would speak so boldly? You, who are the very model of . . .”
Whatever his last word was, it came out so softly Elizabeth couldn’t even hear it.
He turned toward her again, straightening his back and setting his legs apart as if facing a foe. Yet his expression remained wounded, torn.
“Yes,” he said, “I am grateful to see you. Grateful catastrophe did not befall you today. Very grateful to have you back in my dojo. Do you know why?”
Elizabeth fought to swallow a lump in her throat. It felt like it was the size of a baked potato, or perhaps even a smallish ham.
“No,” she croaked.
“You should know. You should feel it. For it was obvious to me the first time I laid eyes on you. You are special, Elizabeth Bennet.”
Master Hawksworth stepped up close to her again—so close, in fact, Elizabeth worried parts of their bodies she blushed to even think of would soon be rubbing up against each other.
The Master stopped just in time.
“At the lake. With the unmentionable. Your father ordered your sister to attack, yet it was you who took action. You, who are as much the lady as she, you could lay that aside and charge in and fight. Without much competence, perhaps, but with all the courage any warrior could hope for. The skills will come with time. That is why I push you so hard. The courage, though . . . at times I think it is something one must be born with. As you were.”
Elizabeth wondered if she should say “Thank you,” but found herself too flustered to speak at all. Before, the highest praise the Master had doled out to anyone was “Not bad,” a phrase that implied no matter how well one had done, he could do better blindfolded. Yet now it almost sounded as though he admired her.
“Elizabeth Bennet,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “I need you to teach me—”
And somewhere in that moment, as he either searched for the right word or the nerve to say it, it ended. Elizabeth saw it in his eyes. They went distant again. Dead.
“—how to fillet a spider!” Master Hawksworth barked, and he leapt aside, arm stretched out toward a fresh-spun cobweb in the corner.
“HAAAAAAAA-IIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Elizabeth cried, grateful for the excuse to move, scream, give her heart something to thump over other than feelings she didn’t understand.
She charged the web, unsheathed her blade and, with a few quick cuts, diced the spider. It was as close to “fillet” as she could get.
“Not bad . . . not bad,” Master Hawksworth mused as he leaned in to inspect the spider. He was careful to keep his distance now, and his hands were clasped behind his back. “Tell me, how is it you failed in the forest?”
Elizabeth kept her eyes on his as she told him of her brief battle with the zombie that afternoon. She was looking for some hint of the vulnerability, the humanity he’d allowed her to see just a minute before. But his armor was firmly back in place now, and she could see nothing beyond it.
“So, this doctor. He is a good shot?” he said when she was done.
“I very much doubt it. He was simply too close to miss.”
The Master shook his head. “An inelegant solution. A warrior prefers to deal death with his own hands.”
“Dr. Keckilpenny is not a warrior. He puts his faith in the sciences rather than the deadly arts.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of such men. They believe we can think our enemies away. Fools!”
“Is it not to a warrior’s advantage to understand his enemy?”
Hawksworth gave Elizabeth a long, hard look, and for a moment she feared she’d let this new, disconcerting informality between them loosen her tongue overmuch yet again. She had caught a glimpse of the real Geoffrey Hawksworth, yes, but it wasn’t to him she was speaking now. It was the Master.
She almost started shaking out her aching arms in preparation for the inevitable dand-baithaks.
“Do you truly think there is anything about the unmentionables one could understand?” Master Hawksworth finally said.
“That is what the ‘fools’ intend to discover,” Elizabeth might have replied, but she felt weary and wary now, and she said nothing.
The Master stared at her for a painfully long time before shrugging his own question away.
“No. Understanding didn’t stop the dreadfuls the last time. This—” He launched himself into the air, grabbed hold of a post, swung around it, then landed in a perfect Hour Glass Stance, fists up. “—is what stopped them.”
A Leaping Leopard brought him across the room, and he set down with surprising lightness inches from Elizabeth again.
“Yes, you are special, Elizabeth Bennet. Yet clearly you are not ready to face what awaits unaided. So we must focus, for the moment, on moves you can use in tandem with a more skillful ally. Pas de deux, you might call them—though these are dances of death. Natural stance!”
Elizabeth assumed the position, and Master Hawksworth took a step back and did the same.
“These moves will require us to act in unison, in harmony, as one,” he said. “So . . . no Fulcrum of Doom or Axis of Calamity from you. And I will not again allow myself to become careless or distracted. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” Elizabeth said, though it wasn’t entirely true.
“Good. Then take my hands.” Master Hawksworth reached out toward Elizabeth. “This move is called the Hawk and the Dove. It begins like this. . . .”
CHAPTER 20
THE BARON OF LUMPLEY awoke with his arms around one of his hounds and a pile of empty gin bottles nestled against his back. He felt blearily around the bed for the chambermaids, but the only naked rump to slap was his own.
Then he remembered.
He’d been wrestling around with Yvonne, Yvette, Ywhat-have-you, the French one, the night before. She was a slender little doe-eyed thing with dark curls and milky skin and, most appealing of all, an almost complete inability to speak English. Only the baron had rolled over her a little too roughly at one point, his lordly girth flattening her, forcing the air from her lungs, and she’d wheezed out a sound that needed no translation: “Ohhhh!” And when he’d glanced down at her, it hadn’t been Ywhoever he’d seen beneath him.
It was Emily Ward.
How easily he’d forgotten that name just a few weeks before, as he’d let so many names flit from his memory when they (and their bearers) no longer served a purpose. Yet now he couldn’t forget it no matter how hard he tried, and the same was true of the face that went with it. The faces, really—one pert and pretty, the other puffy, putrescent.
“Go! Get away from me! Leave me alone!” he’d howled, pressing his hands to his eyes, and the chambermaid had shrieked and snatched up her clothes and scurried from the room, leaving him to greedily glug down more gin until he collapsed into dreamless oblivion.