Presently, Lord Lumpley returned with what proved to be impeccable timing: He came downstairs after all the necessary arrangements had been made and just before the arrival of the first guests. Elizabeth thought he actually looked rather good in his black coat and breeches and silvery silk vest, though he moved with a stiff-backed stiltedness that suggested his corset strings had been pulled especially tight for this night. Mrs. Bennet and Capt. Cannon reappeared then, as well, both of them looking cheery and flushed from their tour of the grounds.
This, then, was the de facto receiving line when Belgrave escorted the Goswicks into the ballroom. Mr. Goswick was actually able to bluff out an almost-convincing show of gratitude to the baron for “assuming patronage of the ball.” But Mrs. Goswick and her daughter Julia—who, like Elizabeth, was to have her coming out that night—looked as though they could barely resist pinching their noses.
“You’ve taken off your scimitars, I see,” Mrs. Goswick sniffed to Elizabeth and Jane. “Well . . . I suppose they would get in the way during the dancing, wouldn’t they?”
She led her daughter and husband off to the opposite side of the room, where they could keep company with the only truly respectable people present. Themselves.
More familiar faces soon followed, and the expressions upon them quickly grew quite familiar: strained graciousness for Lord Lumpley and Capt. Cannon, ill-concealed disdain for all the rest. Even Elizabeth’s own aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Philips, were less than warm, and the couple quickly scurried away to the refreshments table, where they pretended to admire the tasteful arrangement of the cheeses.
“So this is to be my coming out,” Elizabeth said to her sister. “It appears our neighbors would have preferred it had I stayed in.”
“Don’t worry, Lizzy. The mood will brighten once the music starts. Then you’ll need a card to keep track of all the gentlemen asking for a turn around the floor.”
Yet when the baron called for a Scotch Reel—which he proceeded to lead with Jane as his partner—no one came to Elizabeth to ask for a dance or offer an introduction to a willing partner. Even her mother, to her horror, was soon whirling this way and that with Capt. Cannon, his Limbs and wheelbarrow scattering the other dancers (when not crushing their toes).
“He’s a blackguard, you know,” someone said, and Elizabeth turned to find an eligible gentleman at her side at last—an eligible gentleman who was staring enviously at her sister and Lord Lumpley as they pranced, hand in hand, down the line.
“I do know it, LieutenantTindall,” Elizabeth said. “But my sister insists on seeing the best in everyone, including those who have none.”
“That is what makes her so special. Even the savagery your father has subjected her to could not snuff the light that shines within her lovely heart. She may parody a man when she straps on a sword, but without it she is everything any Englishwoman could hope to be.”
“How flattering,” Elizabeth said dryly. “For my sister.”
The lieutenant nodded without taking his eyes off Jane. He cut quite a figure in his red regimentals, and Elizabeth could see Mrs. Goswick and her daughter across the room watching him with nearly the same intensity he focused on her sister.
“She represents everything I fight for,” Lt. Tindall said. “I have vowed not to allow any harm to befall her.”
“Oh? I hope you won’t construe this as a criticism, but if that’s true, why are you here attending a ball instead of outside hunting dreadfuls?”
This was a criticism, of course, and it came out even more sharply than Elizabeth had intended. So sharp, in fact, that the lieutenant winced as if stung and finally faced her fully.
“Night has fallen, Miss Bennet. There is little my men can do but guard the roads and the manor house—and that they are doing already. I will rejoin them in time. For now, however, there is danger of a different sort to be dealt with right here.”
He turned back toward the dance floor and grimaced at the sight of Jane and the baron’s carefree smiles.
“I intend to have the next dance with your sister . . . and however many more after that I can,” he said. “May God strike me down dead if I allow her to be his partner twice in a row.”
Elizabeth stared at the young officer a moment, amazed by how handsome, how pure hearted, how incredibly thick he was. She looked around the room at the other men and saw none to match the lieutenant on the first two counts, and many who far surpassed him on the last.
She was supposed to be introducing herself this night, making herself known to society. Yet she felt, instead, that society was making itself known to her.
Somewhere outside lurked a menace as close to pure evil as God or Satan could possibly produce, and only a few brave souls—men like her father and Geoffrey Hawksworth—were out in the darkness to face it. Meanwhile, here were Hertfordshire’s leading lights laughing and skipping in circles under the glimmer of crystal chandeliers.
“Why are you at a ball instead of out hunting dreadfuls?” she’d asked the lieutenant. And it was a good question. For everyone.
Especially herself.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I find there’s something I’ve forgotten to attend to.”
Lt. Tindall turned to her just enough to offer a perfunctory bow. His gaze never left Jane.
As she walked from the ballroom, Elizabeth was acutely aware how her sudden departure must look. “There goes poor, perverse, ruined Elizabeth Bennet—snubbed by every man in the place, now she flees to cry her tears of humiliation alone.” And the beautiful thing about it was that she didn’t care.
“Belgrave,” she said, though the man was nowhere in sight. “Bel-grave.”
She didn’t need to say it a third time. He appeared at her side, matching her stride for stride.
“Yes, Miss Bennet?”
“There is a package in my family’s carriage. Beneath the backseat. Would you send someone out for it, please?”
“Right away, Miss.”
The servant fell away, then somehow managed to beat Elizabeth to the foyer.
He was waiting for her with the package in his hands. It was long and narrow, wrapped in rough hessian.
Elizabeth took it and cradled it and folded back the burlap covering, gazing down like the Madonna on her wrapped katana.
“Thank you, Belgrave,” she said. “I won’t be needing anything else.”
CHAPTER 32
ELIZABETH HAD ONE CALL to make before she went out to find Master Hawksworth and her father and whatever dreadfuls they’d managed to find. There was someone she wished to say hello to and, depending on how things went, perhaps good-bye as well.
The guard outside the door to the attic was as quick to level a Brown Bess as Pvt. Jones, only he had even more reason to do so. Elizabeth could deduce as much from the dark stains the maids hadn’t quite managed to scrub from the floor and wall.
“Good evening,” she said, and that was enough for the soldier to lower his musket, sighing with relief. No passwords were needed to tell friend from foe in this war. Any word—that was enough.
“Evening, Miss. Here to see His Queerness, are you?”
“Dr. Keckilpenny. Yes.”
“Need an escort up?”
“No,” Elizabeth said firmly. “That’s quite all right.”
“Suit yourself. It certainly suits me. Oooo, the awful sounds his pet makes. If I had to actually see the thing . . .”
The soldier shivered, then stepped aside to let Elizabeth pass.