pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 22

CHAPTER 22

For once, Kitty was glad that the closest thing "the Shevingtons" had to a dojo was the attic. Yes, it was hot and dusty and cluttered, and if she tried a Leaping Leopard or a Flying Dragon she'd probably brain herself on the low ceiling. Yet the fact that it was so cramped was an advantage now, for it discouraged anyone else from coming up to train with her.

She wanted to be alone with her thoughts. They weren't good company, but better them than her father or Lizzy.

The ride back from Vauxhall Gardens had been painful in a way none of her Shaolin training had prepared her for. Shove bamboo under her fingernails, and she would laugh. Slather her in honey and tie her over an anthill, and she would tap her toes and whistle "Oh Dear! What Can the Matter Be?" But thirty minutes in a carriage with two brooding MacFarquhars had proved sheer torture. There had been no more history lessons from Sir Angus, only scowls directed at the son who sat slumped in a corner sullenly stroking his rabbit.

That left it to the Bennets to smooth over the general unease with small talk. But Elizabeth hadn't been up to it. In fact, she looked no happier than Sir Angus. So, all the way from Section Four South to Section One North, Kitty had synopsized her favorite romance novel by the writer Mrs. Radcliffe (whom Mr. Bennet usually referred to as "the noted twaddlemonger Mrs. Rotwit"). The outing ended with cursory farewells and no mention—and little hope—of another engagement involving the MacFarquhars and the Shevingtons.

"Well, it didn't end on the best note," Kitty said, "but it could have gone worse."

"Indeed," her father replied. "At least none of us were eaten."

And then he and Elizabeth came at her in a crossfire.

"You couldn't steer Bunny away from that ridiculous brawl?" said Lizzy on her left.

"You simply had to thrash all those fops?" said her father on her right.

"You could think of nothing better to talk about than The Mysteries of Udolpho?"

"Didn't you notice me trying to change the subject? I think Sir Angus couldn't decide whether to hurl you under the carriage wheels or himself."

"I'm sorry I've ruined everything!" Kitty cried. "But what else would you expect from the silliest girl in all England?"

She ran into the house feeling sillier than ever. It was a good thing she didn't encounter Mary as she bolted for the stairs. One more condescending comment and someone was going to get a Striking Viper where it would hurt the most.

Once Kitty reached the attic, there was no dearth of distractions from which she could choose. Days before, when she and Lizzy and their father had first explored the house, they'd found an entire arsenal up there: ninjatos and nunchucks and hand claws carefully laid out on the floor, throwing stars and daggers pocking the walls. After rushing through a quick warmup, Kitty stalked over to a sword that had caught her eye that first day—a beautifully crafted katana with a white-oak grip and a gently curving Tamahagane blade inscribed with Japanese letters—and began practicing her slices and lunges and spins.

She was graceful, she knew. She was deadly. Yet did that make her any less silly? Perhaps it just made her more so. She tried to imagine her wizened old Shaolin master, the stern and imperious Liu, simpering and tittering and batting his eyes at ... well, whoever a one-hundred-and-five-year-old Chinese man would bat his eyes at.

She couldn't picture it. She couldn't even envision a young Liu doing it. Or a young Oscar Bennet or a young Lizzy Darcy, for that matter.

Perhaps it wasn't something a person grew out of. One was either silly or one wasn't, and Kitty would go from being the silliest girl in England to the silliest woman. No, more than that. She'd be the silliest spinster. One who not only frittered away her own chances for love, but helped doom her sister's as well.