pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 27

CHAPTER 27

"It won't take both of us to deal with those ruffians," Elizabeth whispered as she and her father left Kitty and Bunny alone in the drawing room.

"I should hope not," Mr. Bennet whispered back. "And with Sir Angus gone—"

"My thought exactly. Do you have a preference?"

Mr. Bennet nodded. "The ruffians. I wish to show them what this 'old man' is still capable of."

He hustled out the front door at a pace just below a sprint. The thugs he was after had a significant head start, but Elizabeth was confident he'd catch them quickly enough. They didn't seem the types to have a carriage waiting, and there's only so quickly one can walk while cradling a giant rabbit.

Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the foyer and for the next minute did nothing, not even breath or blink, but listen. At first, she feared the sound of the door opening and closing would draw out the footman, Scroggs, to investigate. The servant never appeared, and eventually she satisfied herself (by the occasional squeak of a floorboard overhead) that he was occupied upstairs. Kitty and Bunny, meanwhile, were still murmuring in the drawing room. Otherwise, the house seemed to be empty.

Perfect.

Elizabeth moved swiftly yet silently through the first floor. It didn't take long. Though elegantly (if dustily) appointed, the MacFarquhars' town house wasn't large, and once she'd made a quick circuit of the dining room, kitchen, pantries, cloak rooms, and servants' quarters (abandoned but for one), she was back in the foyer having seen nothing that looked like a laboratory or study. She would have to try the second floor.

That was riskier. There would be no excuse if she was discovered.

Oh, I was just trying to get back to the drawing room and I guess I went up the stairs by mistake and then I stumbled into Sir Angus's chambers and—oopsy!—I seem to have begun accidentally rifling through his things....

So the first questions to settle: Where was Scroggs and what was he doing?

Elizabeth hopped atop the banister—in her experience, balustrades were far less likely to creak than steps—and glided up the spiral of the staircase as gracefully as a skater sliding over ice. She slowed as she approached the top, focusing all her Shaolin-sharpened senses on the hallway just beyond. The footman was up there somewhere ... as was, perhaps, the salvation she sought.

The rustling of fabric and the sound of someone humming told her where Scroggs was: in the first room to her right. The door was slightly ajar, and Elizabeth dropped soundlessly to the floor and crept toward it. When she reached the doorway, she peeked through into what looked like a lady's boudoir.

There was her dressing table topped with perfumes and powders and combs. There was her wardrobe, opened to reveal a veritable rainbow of gaily colored silk and muslin. There was her four-post bed, the white sheets so smooth and taut it would seem like sacrilege for someone to muss them by actually touching them.

And there was the lady herself, staring back at Elizabeth. She showed no surprise, however, as staring and being stared at were all she was capable of.

The portrait hung over the empty mantel that (Elizabeth assumed) had until recently held her urn. If the likeness was at all accurate, Mrs. MacFarquhar had been a slender raven-haired woman with rosy skin and sly, dark, wily eyes. Her full lips seemed to be tilting ever so slightly to one side, almost smirking, as if the painter had just offered her a cheeky wink.

Sir Angus had described his wife as "formidably silly," but Elizabeth found herself instinctively liking the woman. She looked like the kind who are so often dismissed as thoughtless merely because the follies of those around her move her to laughter instead of tears.