The silence was finally broken by a smattering of uncertain applause.
“I don’t th-think that waaaaas c-called for,” Mr. Cummings said, but the clapping just grew a little louder.
The only other dissenting voice belonged to Jane’s own mother, who’d let loose with a disappointed “Ohhh!” as the favorite of all her daughters’ suitors was carved up like a roast duck.
Belgrave, of course, had a less than enthusiastic reaction, as welclass="underline" He simply started running. He seemed to have lost his senses, for he dashed toward what looked like solid wall—part of the paneling that ran along the underside of the staircase. When he reached it, however, a section of it slid back at his touch, revealing a black passageway into which he started to disappear.
There was a series of raps in quick succession—thup-thup-thup — and the tails of Belgrave’s topcoat were pinned to the wall by three throwing stars.
“La!” Lydia snorted from across the hall. “I knew these silly things would come in handy sooner or later!”
Mr. Bennet grabbed Belgrave by the shirt collar before he could shrug free of his sleeves and escape.
“A secret passage, eh? Would there be more of these?”
“Oh, yes, Sir!” Mrs. Hutchinson said. “All through the house. We weren’t supposed to know about them, but we used to hear Belgrave and His Lordship slinking around in the walls like rats.”
“Capital, capital,” Mr. Bennet said. “Belgrave, you have just won yourself a temporary reprieve. Mary, Kitty, Lydia—if you would be so good as to find the cellar and tidy it up in whatever way you find necessary. Elizabeth—you might want to attend to your elder sister. She’s looking a touch peaked.”
Indeed, Jane was staring at her handiwork—filet de noble—looking pale. Elizabeth hurried to her side expecting to arrive the same moment as the inevitable tears. Yet Jane’s eyes, though wide and full of confusion, remained dry.
“I was beginning to believe he actually cared for me . . . that perhaps he wasn’t the scoundrel you made him out to be. How could I have been so very, very wrong?”
“He thought he could take advantage because you have a good heart.”
“Had a good heart, perhaps.” Jane nodded at the baron’s crumpled, bloody form. “People with good hearts don’t do things like that.”
“Oh, Jane—your heart is still good. It’s just that it’s strong now, too. Hardened. Armored.” Elizabeth took her sister by the hand. “The heart of a warrior.”
Jane looked into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“Yes,” she said, speaking in the firm, unwavering way of someone making a vow. “And nothing shall ever pierce it again.”
“Ummm . . . should I have that beheaded and taken up to one of the windows?” a maid asked meekly, pointing at her former employer. “It might keep some of the unmentionables happy for a moment or two.”
“Breach! Breach!” someone shouted from the south wing.
Jane and Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet all started toward the sound of the call, but they weren’t needed: A cluster of men and women jumped in together to hack and slash at the zombie soldier trying to wiggle its way through a fresh gap in the plaster. Within a few seconds, the dreadful was in pieces and the hole in the wall blocked off with an upended chest of drawers.
“You were right, Father,” Elizabeth said. “We can’t keep them out forever.”
Mr. Bennet nodded. “The time has come, I think, to stop trying.”
CHAPTER 37
FIRST, THE THREE YOUNGEST Bennet girls had to clear the wine cellar of its dreadfuls. (There were two still squirming like worms from the packed-dirt floor, their progress slowed by the quicklime that had apparently eaten away most of their connective tissue.) Then it was time to clear the wine cellar of both its wines and its many rows of wine racks—all of which proved excellent fodder for zombie bombardment once it was hauled up to the second floor. After that, the packing began.
They started with the walls. The house, it was quickly discovered, was a Swiss cheese of secret passages and hidden vaults. With Belgrave’s reluctant help—which turned quite a bit less reluctant whenever Jane was in the vicinity—dozens of people were soon tucked away out of sight.
Which meant there were that many fewer to fight back the unmentionables breaking through. And there were steadily fewer still as more and more people were sent into the cellar to join the children and the elderly and the wounded already there. Eventually, there was no one left guarding the windows and doors at all, and the cellar was stuffed wall to wall.
“Time for you to go in, too,” Mr. Bennet said to his daughters. “Seal the door from the inside, as we discussed, and I’ll put the false wall in place out here. It won’t be pleasant down there in the dark, I’m sure, but the air holes should—where do you think you’re going?”
Lydia and Kitty were hurrying off down the hall, toward the sound of splintering wood and phlegmy moans.
“Our friends from outside are letting themselves in a trifle early!” Lydia called over her shoulder.
“We’ll just go and ask them to wait!” Kitty added.
They were drawing their swords as they darted around a corner.
“There’s no time for that now!” Mr. Bennet called after them.
“Well, there’s a little more time than you might have thought,” Elizabeth said.
“We’re not going down there, you know,” said Jane.
Mary hefted one side of the wood panel that had been hastily fitted to hide the landing before the cellar door. “This is really quite heavy, Papa. Together on the count of three . . .?”
Mr. Bennet looked at her, then Jane, then Elizabeth, and despite the bags under his eyes and the deep sadness within them, he seemed to be on the verge of cracking a smile. And perhaps he would have, if a familiar voice hadn’t called out from the darkness below.
“Mr. Bennet! You march those girls in here this instant!” Mrs. Bennet demanded. “You’re not going to leave me down in this filthy hole all alone!”
“Did you hear that?” one of the maids grumbled from under the stairs, where she stood stuffed in with the rest of the household staff. “The silly cow thinks she’s all alone.”
“Farewell, Mrs. Bennet. I . . .”
Whatever Mr. Bennet had been about to say went unsaid, and he instead stomped down the steps, met his wife at the bottom, and kissed her. Then he turned and marched back out of the attic, leaving Mrs. Bennet sobbing in the arms of her sister Philips.
When he reached the landing again, he couldn’t meet his daughters’ gazes: For once, he was the one blushing and looking away.
“Come now, all together,” he said, grabbing one side of the false wall. “One . . . two . . . lift!”
There was a distant clatter of boards falling to the floor just as he and the girls got the panel in place, and an otherworldly yowl echoed through the halls.
“That would be in the north wing, by the sound of it,” said Mr. Bennet. “Jane, run along and greet the new arrivals, hmm? I’ll join you shortly. Mary, go see what’s keeping Lydia and Kitty. And you—”
He turned toward Elizabeth and took in a deep breath as her sisters darted away. It almost seemed as if he was waiting for them to get out of earshot.
“We will be retreating to the attic at the first opportunity,” he said. “It is essential no unmentionables see us go up there, so it’s difficult to say when that opportunity might arrive. Hopefully, it will be a matter of minutes. When we get there, we will lock the door behind us and hope for the best. There can be nothing in that attic that might give us away, however. Even the slightest disturbance would spell our doom.”
“So Dr. Keckilpenny’s captives—”