Dreadfully Ever After (28 page)

A second later, a hand, the skin hanging from it in green strips, stabbed into the muck, wrapped itself around the lobster, and raised it to broken yellow teeth that were already smeared with a film of minced flesh.

Dr. Sleaford let his pet dreadful nip at Hawksworth for a while, but after his sixth “And what if your friend were to be bitten
here?
” Mary realized it was all for show. Subject Seven wasn’t going to sink its teeth into anybody, anywhere. Not yet.

She returned her attention to a matter of real concern.

“You remain admirably composed,” she said to the man she’d known until minutes before as “Mr. Quayle.”

He hadn’t so much as glanced at the snapping skull as it was pushed within biting range again and again. He merely lay on the cart to which he’d been strapped, staring either at the stain-splattered ceiling or, from time to time, at Mary.

“When last I saw you,” she continued, “you seemed to find dreadfuls ... unsettling.”

“You are generous with your choice of words,” Hawksworth said. At the moment, he was in one of his ceiling phases. “Others might have said that I fled like a craven coward, abandoning you and your family to certain death.”

“Others
have
said that.”

“They were right to do so.” Hawksworth looked into Mary’s eyes. “It is true.”

Dr. Sleaford cleared his throat. “I said, ‘And what if your friend were to be—?’ ”

“My
friend
,” Mary said, still holding Hawksworth’s gaze, “is not going to be bitten anywhere until Sir Angus MacFarquhar has had a chance to interrogate us. No doubt your master will want the same power over us that you feign, and you could hardly spoil that for him by dooming us before he’s even arrived.”

“Oh, ho! You think so, do you? Well, what if your friend were to be bitten ... here!”

Dr. Sleaford leaned in to point a long chalk-white finger at a region of Hawksworth’s body that was never supposed to be acknowledged at all, let alone pointed at. His assistants, Turvy and Styles, obediently swung Subject Seven’s gurney toward the area in question.

“Sir,” Hawksworth said, turning away from Mary to glare at their captor, “as you can see, I have been bitten by dreadfuls before.” He waggled what was left of his arms and legs, which wasn’t much. “With enough repetition, even one’s greatest fear loses its hold. So have your creature bite me
there
, if you truly mean to. Otherwise, end this charade now.”

Dr. Sleaford glowered at the man a moment before blowing out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.

“All right, fair enough,” he said. “Turvy, if you would see Judith back to her closet, please.”

“Judith?” Mary asked as the slimy, sinew-covered skull and spine were wheeled out still wriggling and snapping.

Dr. Sleaford chuckled. “ ’Subject Seven’ sounds so much more ominous, don’t you think? ‘Ooooo, tell me what I want to know or I’ll sic Judith on you!’? It wouldn’t do at all.” His long, pale face turned solemn again. “Sir Angus
will
sic Judith on you, though, I assure you. Unless you tell me who sent you.”

He paused hopefully, but neither Mary nor Hawksworth were any more inclined to answer.

“Fine, I’ll stop,” Dr. Sleaford said with a shrug. “It’s just that we’ve never had prisoners of such obvious quality—not alive, at any rate—and it saddens me to think of what awaits when Sir Angus arrives.”

“And when might we expect that?” Mary asked.

“Oh, there’s no telling. He’s quite busy with the recoronation, you know—or I assume you know. We sent word that we’d captured more spies, but I can’t even be sure the messenger got through, with the streets as they are. Frightful out there, isn’t it?”

“No more than in here,” Hawksworth said.

Dr. Sleaford looked hurt.

“What we do, we do for England,” he said. “Styles, we’ll give the lady our deluxe accommodations, I think. The gentleman can wait here.”

Styles—an unshaven brute of a man who outweighed Mary by at last ten stone—blanched.

“You don’t mean for me to actually
untie her
, do you?”

“That was the idea, yes. Do you object?”

“You didn’t see her fight, Sir.”

“Would you feel better if I stood beside you with a pistol pointed at her?”

Styles stared down at his toes. “Yes.”

Dr. Sleaford rolled his eyes. “As if you’d do anything so uncouth as to attack your hosts,” he said to Mary.

“Perish the thought,” she replied.

The thought stayed very much alive, however, for Dr. Sleaford did indeed keep a flintlock trained on Mary as Styles wheeled her gurney down a short hallway to another chamber and, once inside, began loosening the straps around her wrists and ankles. Dr. Sleaford also had the good sense (or perhaps just the good luck) to keep himself half-hidden behind a formidable barrier—Styles—that would have slowed Mary had she lunged for the gun.

“Miss Bennet?” Hawksworth called out once Dr. Sleaford and his lackeys had left, closing and locking more than one heavy door behind them. “Miss Bennet, can you hear me?”

“Quite clearly.”

Mary stepped to the small, barred window in the door of her cell. Peering out, she could almost see the door to the laboratory/torture chamber Hawksworth had been abandoned in.

“I’m not far away.” She turned to take in her cell in its entirety and found she could no longer think of it as a cell. “In the most well-appointed dungeon I’ve ever been thrown in.”

It was true, for not many dungeons boast of thick, embroidered carpets and floral-patterned wallpaper and gas lighting and crisp white linens on a four-post bed. The last occupant had been quite pampered, and Mary had the feeling he or she had spent a long, long time here, whereas her own stay was unlikely to stretch beyond morning, one way or another.

Mary started to say, “Mr. Quayle?” But that wasn’t right. “Mr. Hawksworth” felt wrong, too. The man had always been “Master Hawksworth” to her. Yet he’d really only been her master a few weeks, years before. And the word itself—”master”—had a sour taste to her now.

“I don’t know what to call you,” she said.

“You may call me whatever you wish.”

Mary licked her lips and curled her fingers into fists.

“Geoffrey?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Yes, Mary?”

“You are Nezu’s agent. I understand that. Is it safe to assume that you told him everything I did yesterday? Everywhere I went and all I planned to do today?”

“No. That would not be a safe assumption. I told him nothing.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid he would order me to stop you. Or, worse yet, that he would decide to stop you himself.”

“I see. So Nezu has no idea where we are. We can expect no rescue tonight.”

“That is correct.”

Mary thought a moment, found her fists unclenching, and then said, “Thank you.”

Hawksworth coughed out a gruff chuckle.

“I am not being sarcastic,” Mary said. “You protected my freedom to act. Our freedom to act together. I am grateful for that.”

“Then you are welcome.”

“Geoffrey?”

There was another pause, this one agonizingly long.

“You have another question,” Hawksworth said finally, his voice even huskier than usual.

“Yes.”

“You want to know what happened eight years ago. How I could abandon your family during the Siege of Netherfield.”

“And what became of you afterward. Yes. Will you tell me?”

“I suppose I’d better. You’ve waited long enough for an explanation, and putting it off any longer might mean you will never receive it at all.”

Mary heard Hawksworth suck in a long, deep, raspy breath. He didn’t just sound like a man about to launch into a long story. He sounded like a man about to launch himself into battle. Or off a cliff.

“I’m sure you know how it began,” he said. “I was a vain man, but my pride was a pedestal of ash. For all my posturing, I was secretly terrified of the unmentionables, and even more terrified of my own weakness. So I gave in to it. I threw a soldier from his horse and fled. To my amazement, I made it through the stricken hordes surrounding Netherfield and Meryton. I’d almost left Hertfordshire altogether when I finally noticed the scratch on my left hand. I thought I’d escaped unscathed, untouched by the dreadfuls. I hadn’t. The skin was barely broken. There wasn’t enough blood to coat the head of a pin. Yet that was enough. The whole arm would have to come off. How I raged to find my perfection stolen from me ... even as you and your sisters were dying, for all I knew. And I realized then that it wasn’t just my flesh that had been poisoned. It was my soul. No doctor with his saw could save me from that. It would fester within me every day I remained on earth. Unless I cleansed it.”

“So you turned back.”

“I turned back. I rode again through the herds of unmentionables choking Hertfordshire, toward the battalion of His Majesty’s army we knew to be on the move from Suffolk. And this time, I received much, much more than a little scratch. I saw whole chunks of myself go down the gullets of the undead. But I found the column. And with it was my mistress, the head of the order that had given me my training: Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She attended to my wounds with her own sword. I’ve remained in her service ever since. Yet always I’ve dreamed that, one day, I might somehow redeem myself in the eyes of your sister Elizabeth and your father and you, too, Mary. For it was the Bennet girls of Longbourn who showed me what a true warrior is.”

“You already redeemed yourself when you rode back through the dreadful swarms. If you hadn’t done that, my entire family would have been wiped out.”

“And how many more might I have saved if I’d never fled to begin with?”

“None. You simply would have died with us when Netherfield was overrun.”

“Still—”

“You have no debt to repay,” Mary said firmly. “No lost honor to regain. You were defeated in the first battle against your fear, that is all. In the end, it is clear, you conquered it. The man I have come to know these past days is a brave and honorable one.”

Hawksworth said something so quietly Mary couldn’t make it out, and after a moment he cleared his throat and tried again.

“Thank
you
.”

“There is no need for thanks. It is simply the truth.”

At that, Hawksworth laughed.

“Oh, Mary. In some ways, it was you I dreaded facing again the most. You always seemed so certain about everything. So unwavering in your judgments. I did not think you would understand or forgive.”

“You changed, Geoffrey. We all can. Sooner or later, we all must.”

“You sound very sure of that.”

“Indeed, I am. Because, as always, I am right.”

They both chuckled softly and then fell quiet again for a long while. Mary didn’t find the silence awkward. It was merely a pause in a conversation she knew they would carry on again someday, provided they had other days.

“So,” she finally said, “I find I harbor an unsavory suspicion.” She surveyed the chamber again, noticing now how deep ruts had been worn in the carpeting. Someone had done much pacing here. “It is not particularly patriotic.”

“You are thinking of the other prisoners Dr. Sleaford mentioned.”

“Yes.”

“Some would be our predecessors, of course. Spies sent by my mistress.”

“Yes. But there was also the one who was kept
here
.”

And then another voice, squeaky and weak, chimed in from somewhere farther down the hallway.

“And there’s us,” it said.

Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet had no more luck with their search than Kitty had. They found (and did away with) two small flocks of unmentionables roaming freely through the darkened streets. They did not find Mary.

“Perhaps she and Nezu’s spy ran off together,” Mr. Bennet joked grimly. “I’d rather it were that than….”

He lapsed into silence, and Elizabeth placed a hand on his slumping shoulder.

“Remember the Second Battle of Bridlington? When all those drowned fishermen began marching out of the sea?”

Mr. Bennet smiled at the memory. “And Mary started trawling them up in their own rotting nets. How proud I was of her that day.”

“As you should have been. Mary is a skilled and resourceful warrior. What peril could London hold when she’s defeated the worst Hell has to offer?”

Mr. Bennet nodded, though Elizabeth could tell it took some effort for him to keep his smile in place. She was glad her words could comfort him, even if only a bit, for they did absolutely nothing for her.

When they returned to the house, Kitty came darting out of the drawing room.

“Oh,” she groaned when she saw them. “No Mary?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“And no Nezu?” Kitty asked.

“We didn’t know we were supposed to be looking for him,” Mr. Bennet said. “How is it you managed to lose the man?”

“I don’t know,” Kitty mumbled. “I mean ... he thought it best that we search separately.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him,” Mr. Bennet said, and Kitty brightened a bit, obviously anticipating the sort of reassurance Elizabeth had given their father not long before. “He is unworthy of your concern. Now, I’ll wait up for Mary. You two turn in. Tomorrow you’ll need to be at your best for the MacFarquhars ... not to mention the king.”

“I’ll wait with you,” Kitty said, walking with her father toward the drawing room.

He stopped, spun her around, and pushed her toward the stairs with a firm, “Good night.”

Then he was off.

“Kitty,” Elizabeth said, but it was too late. Her sister was already bustling toward the staircase.

“Good night, Lizzy,” she choked out without looking back.

Elizabeth knew it wasn’t just Mary her sister was worried about. She recognized the signs, and she would’ve liked to talk to Kitty about the risks she ran affixing any affection whatsoever to a man such as Nezu. By the time she reached the bottom of the staircase, however, her sister’s bedroom door was already slamming shut above.

It was for the best, perhaps. Their father was right: The next day would be pivotal. It wasn’t the time to stir up more turmoil. It was time to rest. If one could.