pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 34

CHAPTER 34

Elizabeth had just been exposed as the fraud she was before what seemed like half of England, and a part of her didn't mind. In fact, that part of her—it felt like a very large part, actually, perhaps as much as ninety-nine percent—wasn't simply ready for the yeomen of the guard outside Westminster Abbey to throw themselves on her. It was anxious for it. Anxious to fight.

There was just one problem: The guards weren't obliging. Even as Sir Angus railed on about the charlatans in their midst, the nearest soldiers just peeped at each other sheepishly around their pikes.

"If these people are imposters," one of them said to Sir Angus, "who the flippin' heck are you?"

"I am Sirrr Angus MacFarquharrr, personal physician to His Majesty the king."

"Poppycock!" Mr. Bennet roared. "You're nothing of the kind, you rascal!" He stretched out an arm and pointed at Sir Angus just as Sir Angus had pointed at him and his daughters a moment before. "He's the imposter! Seize him!"

"But—," Bunny began.

Mr. Bennet swung his arm toward Sir Angus's son. "And his accomplices!"

"A-a-accomplices?" the young man stuttered. He looked down at the squirming rabbit he was clutching in his arms.

But it wasn't Brummell Mr. Bennet was accusing.

He jabbed his finger at Lord and Lady Cholmondeley next.

"They're the frauds here, not us!"

Lord Cholmondeley puffed up his chest—which took much doing, it being a slight and concave little thing—and demonstrated why his speeches had become such favorites of both the Whigs and the more waggish Tories in the House of Lords.

"Thith ith outrageouth! Thethe people theem to be here under falthe pretentheth, tholdier, and I demand that you theithe them thith inthant!"

The nearest guard served as spokesman for all.

"Huh?" he said.

"Arrrrrest them!" Sir Angus translated.

The guards shared more miserable glances.

"I'm sorry," one of them said. "I don't think we can arrest anybody without orders."

"We're from the 36th Foot Infantry," another added. He sneered down at his puffy-sleeved gold-trimmed tunic. "We ain't used to all this beefeater rot."

" 'Today, you are a fence,' the color sergeant told us," yet another soldier threw in. " 'So much as bat an eye as the toffs trot by, and you'll be digging latrines,' pardon mon Français, 'until it's George the ruddy Fortieth mincing into Westminster.' "

Elizabeth despaired of ever being attacked.

Sir Angus and Bunny also seemed to give up hope that the guards would actually guard anything other than the perfect straightness of the lines in which they stood. Each MacFarquhar turned to the woman he'd been escorting toward the abbey not long before.

"Who are you?" Bunny asked Kitty, looking hurt.

"How darrre you?" Sir Angus asked Elizabeth, looking like he wanted to hurt her.

Before either sister could reply, there was a blast of not-so-distant trumpets and the rumble of approaching drums, and the mob sent up a deafening cheer.

The king's procession had almost completed its short march from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey. The guards wouldn't be able to play fence much longer: Any second, George III and the Prince Regent and two hundred assorted nabobs and attendants would start down the very path the Bennets and the MacFarquhars and Lord and Lady Cholmondeley were clogging.