And now he was awake again—sort of. But why why why? Being awake meant being aware, and that was the exact thing he didn’t want to be.
There was a soft knock on the door, and the baron lifted his head off his pillow—or was it another dog?—and spoke the first words of a new day.
“Hmf ibbit?”
“It’s me, Milord. Lucy. Belgrave sent me up to see if there was anything you’d be needing right about now. Or wanting.”
Ahhhhhhh, Lucy, she of the hips as wide and sturdy as the White Cliffs of Dover. She was an old favorite of his. Belgrave, God bless the man, was trying to cheer him up.
Yet for once the thought of her did nothing to rouse him, and he remained stretched across his bed like a beached whale.
“Guh awuh,” he said.
“As you wish, Milord.”
A while later—ten minutes, perhaps, or maybe two hours, Lord Lumpley neither knew nor cared—he pushed himself up and, resenting every second of his labors, pulled on a stained and wrinkled robe. Then he shuffled to a pair of double doors, threw them open, and stepped out onto a balcony overlooking Netherfield’s long, lush front lawn.
It was another bright-sunny day in what seemed like an infinite succession of them, and the baron knew he should be out and about making the most of it. There was so much he could be doing! Racing over the roads in his cabriolet, whipping his horses, terrorizing the locals. Wasn’t that just what he needed? Wouldn’t that bring him roaring back to life?
Lord Lumpley was still squinting, watering eyes adjusting to the light, when a shimmering figure moved out of the trees lining the lawn. With his first blink, it took shape: a girl in white, ghostly pale except for the scarlet splotches around her mouth and hands.
With his second blink, she was gone.
The baron cursed. He couldn’t even step outside without seeing things.
Blast those damned dreadfuls! They had him so unnerved he wasn’t having any fun!
After the debacle with the hunt, he’d written his old friend and mentor the Prince Regent asking for guidance—perhaps even protection. Yet he’d received no response, and Belgrave had informed him that the posts had grown exceedingly spotty of late, with no word from outside Hertfordshire in some days. He was tempted to hop into the cabriolet and make for London and never look back.
Everyone agreed there was no cause for alarm yet, though. (“Everyone” was Belgrave, whose job it was to agree.) A few dreadfuls had popped up and been handily dealt with. What of it? For that he was supposed to quit his estate when he could only barely quit his own bed? He lacked the energy to so much as stretch out his arms for a dressing, let alone brave the long ride to town.
He needed something to rouse him from his languor, cleanse him of the darkness that had become stuck to him like pitch the moment he saw Emily Ward walking out of that lake. The old pleasures wouldn’t do. New, fresh—that’s what he needed. Something unspoiled. Something alive.
And then there it was again: movement down by the lawn. It was on the road this time, though, and there was no mistaking those straight lines and bright red coats for anything but British soldiers.
Huzzah! The Prince Regent hadn’t abandoned him, after all! On your guard, trollops of London. The baron of rumpy-pumpy would soon be on your scent again!
But . . . what was that contraption those two soldiers were pushing? It appeared to be some kind of wheeled sedan chair, for riding upon it was a man: a stout, white-haired officer with his limbs contorted into such unnatural positions—arms tucked behind his back, legs disappearing into the straps and harnesses of his curious conveyance—it almost looked as though he didn’t have any at all.
And then the baron noticed the man walking beside the officer, a gentleman dressed not in red but in black and gray, and in an instant all his reborn joie de vivre collapsed like a punctured soufflé.
Oscar Bennet. The mere sight of him conjured up so much. The crushing burden of responsibility. The evil lurking in the woods. Emily Ward staggering out of the lake. Jane Bennet drawing a sword and stepping toward her. Jane Bennet weeping in the shallows, her thin white gown soaked almost to the point of transparency. Jane Bennet bouncing up and down atop a charging stallion.
Jane Bennet bouncing up and down atop a charging stallion!
The soufflé reinflated.
Lord Lumpley walked back to his bed and reached for the bell cord, but before he could even give it a tug Belgrave came sidling into the room.
“A troop of soldiers approaches, My Lord.”
“Yes, yes, so I have seen. And I suppose I can’t very well greet them like this.”
The baron swept a hand over his exposed pulchritude. He’d managed to put on a robe, but he refused to stoop so low as to tie his own sash.
“Shall I send up your dressers, My Lord?”
“Immediately! I find myself truly awake for the first time in days, Belgrave. I am refreshed! Rekindled! Roused!”
“I exult for you, My Lord.”
Belgrave bowed and started backing out of the bedchamber.
Lord Lumpley walked again to the balcony, chuckling, as his steward left.
“Thank you, Mr. Bennet,” he said to the small figure drawing nearer, the dark, straight line of a sheathed sword now visible at its side. “You give me fresh reason to live.”
When the baron finally came downstairs (after taking half an hour to decide which trousers and vest best suited his mood), he found his guests installed in the library. He also found that said guests were both larger in number and, in one case, shockingly smaller in stature than he’d anticipated.
Two infantrymen were standing at attention when he walked in. He was on the verge of taking offense—common foot soldiers stamping their common feet across his Turkish rugs?—when the officer spoke up from his wheeled chair-barrow.
“Limbs! Bow to His Lordship.”
The soldiers not only bowed, they reached over and tilted the officer toward the floor, as well.
“Egad!” Lord Lumpley blurted out. “You’re got no arms or legs!”
The officer peeped up at him with the sort of look that said, quite plainly, that he was well aware of this state of affairs and required no reminders.
The baron mumbled out a lame, not to mention somewhat puzzling, “Ummm . . . good for you.”
Introductions followed, facilitated by Mr. Bennet, who’d risen from a chair nearby to offer a (by Lord Lumpley’s estimation) rather shallow bow. Once the baron was settled on a loveseat, Mr. Bennet sat down again, as well, and Capt. Cannon’s Limbs propped him up straight and went back to attention.
“So, Captain,” Lord Lumpley said, “what brings you to Netherfield Park? Were it just you and your men, I might assume you’d been sent to see to my safe passage to London. Given Mr. Bennet’s presence, however, I presume you expect me to serve you in some fashion.”
Capt. Cannon’s face—what was visible of it through his thick, white whiskers—flushed pink. “Your service would be to the crown, Sir.”
“And the good people of Hertfordshire,” Mr. Bennet added.
“Yes, of course,” the baron said. “I’ve been sick with worry about them, every one. And on their behalf, you want me to do what, exactly?”
The captain and Mr. Bennet exchanged a glance, and the former forged on with an explanation, clearly by prearrangement.
Lord Lumpley had his own prearranged plan, mapped out as his dressers toiled over him upstairs. The first step: resistance to whatever Bennet and the soldiers might propose. To his simultaneous disgust and satisfaction, the baron found no feigning was necessary.
“Yes, enough, all right,” he said before Capt. Cannon was even done speaking. “Mr. Bennet tried to persuade me to aid him in this endeavor once before. It is beyond appalling.”