pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 26

CHAPTER 26

It had been a quarter hour since Nezu dispatched the zombie family in the street, and Kitty Bennet's heart was still pounding. Which she was beginning to find odd, since it took a lot to get her heart to pound. A three-mile sprint, say, or the slaying of two or three dozen dreadfuls.

Yet there it was, thumping away in her chest as she thought of Nezu and his display of deadly prowess. He'd moved with such control, such economy, such grace, such beauty even, but with power, too. It didn't just fill her with admiration. It excited her somehow.

Yet why should it? Nezu hadn't done anything she and her sisters couldn't have done blindfolded. Just because now it was being done by a man—a lean, lithe, exotically handsome man—that shouldn't have made any difference.

She knew what Lydia would say. The Bennet women and their weakness for warriors! Both Lizzy and Mary had once developed an unhealthy attachment to their young master, Geoffrey Hawksworth, and of course Lizzy had gone on to marry one of the most skillful zombie killers in the home counties. Lydia, meanwhile, had flirted with half the officer corps of the King's Army before settling on the worst of the bunch to run off with. Their mother was little different even as dotage approached, still going noticeably fluttery and flushed around every red tunic and shako hat. Only sweet Jane seemed to be immune, choosing for her mate a man so amiable and benign it was hard to imagine him taking a blade to so much as a grapefruit, let alone an unmentionable.

Still ... Nezu? Even Lydia wouldn't stoop so low as to pine for a ninja. And the man was so unbearably humorless and stiff—not at all the sort she was supposed to be drawn to. Not at all, to be precise, like Bunny MacFarquhar. If her heart was going to pound, let it pound for him.

She pushed aside all thoughts of Nezu, fixing Bunny's image in her mind as she and Lizzy and their father walked up to the MacFarquhars' door.

Not only did Kitty's heart stop pounding, it seemed almost to stop beating altogether.

Just as Mr. Bennet reached for the knocker, the door swung open, and a burly bald man barreled out carrying a stopper-topped vase the size of a cannonball.

"One side, old man," he said as he pushed past the Bennets. "Lady comin' through 'ere."

Another, even brawnier man was on his heels, this one grinning lasciviously at Kitty and Lizzy as he strutted out with Brummell cradled in his arms.

"Oi ... anyone for hasenpfeffer?" he said with a wink.

The two men were guffawing as they carried on up the street.

"Whatever could that be all about?" Kitty said.

There was a decorous clearing of the throat from inside the house, and a footman appeared in the doorway. He was a portly saggy-jowled man who carried himself with a great, grave dignity that was all the more impressive for the fact that his collar was half torn off and his powdered wig was on sideways.

"Who may I say is calling?" he drawled.

"Mr. Shevington and his daughters Miss Shevington and Mrs. Bromhead," Mr. Bennet replied, offering a card supplied by Nezu. In no way did he acknowledge the servant's disheveled appearance or the two callers who'd just made off with a smallish vase and a largish rabbit. As was so often the case, good manners demanded a certain judicious blindness.

"If you would wait here," the footman said. But before he could go see if anyone was at home (which is to say whether anyone chose to be at home for the likes of Mr. Shevington and company), Bunny poked his head into the foyer. His hair was tousled wildly, and the flesh around his left eye was bruised and swollen.