pride And prejudice And zombies: dawn of the dreadfuls

Chapter 31

"REVEL IN IT however you would." That's how Elizabeth's father told her to spend the day of her coming out. Which was cruelly ironic, since it was he who'd cast a pall over the ball and all her preparations for it.

Mr. Bennet's sudden, strange change of heart about his daughters—releasing them from their training just as the peril of the dreadfuls seemed about to peak—plagued Elizabeth the whole day. Was he doing them one last kindness before calamity struck? Was he shunting his loved ones out of harm's way? Or was he simply trying to come between her and . . .?

Oh, bosh! There was nothing to come between.

Right?

Elizabeth's misery was compounded by her mother's bliss. If something made Mrs. Bennet happy, it was virtually guaranteed to be a disaster in the making. And Mrs. Bennet had never seemed happier.

She hummed as she and Lydia pinned up Elizabeth's hair and wove in pearl beads and ribbon. She sang as she and Kitty laid out the necklace, earrings, bracelets, and brooch with which Elizabeth would soon be festooned. She giggled as she and Mary played tug-of-war with Elizabeth's bodice, the mother pulling down in favor of "display," the daughter pulling up in defense of "decorum." And when all her labors were done and Elizabeth was at last a vision of loveliness—or Mrs. Bennet's vision of loveliness, at least, for Elizabeth had taken no more of a role in her own dressing than would a porcelain doll—she laughed and clapped her hands and declared her to be "radiant, entrancing . . . why, almost as pretty as Jane!"

To Elizabeth's relief, Mrs. Bennet was alone in her oblivious good spirits. It was nothing new to see Mary moping around looking sour, but eventually even Lydia and Kitty lost interest in their mother's fussing over Elizabeth. By midafternoon, they were half-heartedly sparring with yari spears out on the front lawn. For weeks, the girls had longed for a day without training, a day they could devote to gossip and mischief and dreams of their own balls and gentleman callers. And now that they finally had such a day, they seemed so bored they'd welcome a horde of unmentionables with open arms.

Elizabeth was tempted to grab a spear and join them, and her restlessness grew so acute she asked her mother again and again if they might set out for Netherfield early so as to check on Jane. Yet Mrs. Bennet poohpoohed the idea every time. "His Lordship doesn't need us barging in just as he's getting to know your sister," she'd say. Eventually, however—when she had been stuffed into the last of the various layers a lady must keep between herself and all others—Mrs. Bennet announced that they'd be leaving Longbourn ahead of schedule, after all. Her old acquaintance Capt. Cannon had extended an invitation for a tour of his encampment, she said, and now seemed the perfect time to accept his gracious offer.

Soon after, she and Elizabeth were waving good-bye to Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Mrs. Hill as the Bennets' carriage rolled off. It was a bright, warm day, yet though Mrs. Bennet prattled on about its beauty, for Elizabeth the sunshine merely meant the shadows of the surrounding woods were all the darker and more impenetrable by comparison. Indeed, she couldn't stop staring off into the trees and bracken, and several times she thought she caught a blurry flurry of movement and a whiff of putrescence upon the air. Once, when turning her head, she even got a glimpse of a small, childlike figure peering back at her from behind a tree. But by the time Elizabeth again focused on the spot where it had been, she saw nothing, and she could but conclude it had been a phantasm conjured up by her own overstoked imagination. All the same, her palms itched, and the back of her neck tingled with something that should have been dread, but was not.

As they neared Netherfield Park, they could hear the occasional pop of a distant gunshot, and when they rounded the final bend before the main drive they found themselves confronted not by a single sentry but a picket line of five, all with their muskets raised.