pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 38

CHAPTER 38

Darcy's strength faded during the long walk back to Rosings, but his resolve did not. When he reached the manor house, he went straight to the trophy room and retrieved his aunt's hara-kiri sword—the one he would use to gut himself.

He would do it in his room, he'd decided. Immediately. Daylight was fading, and his aunt would be back any minute, covering the miles on her white charger much more quickly than he had on foot. He didn't want her or his cousin interfering.

Even with Lady Catherine's treatments, his world was lost to him forever, and if Anne was anything to judge by, his humanity would soon follow.

A "life" of half-death and obscene appetites ... and without Elizabeth? No. Time to die. It would be his final gift to his beloved wife: a widow's freedom to fight. Perhaps he could make her happier in death than he had in life.

He paused for one last look through the trophy room's long picture window. The grounds hadn't changed in nearly thirty years. He could almost see himself out there, engaged in a round of Stricken and Slayers with Anne. Even when they were children, she'd been good at playing dreadful. He never had any idea she was near until she leapt out from behind a stack of cannonballs or a topiary shogun and "ate" him.

And then there she was, doing it again. A glance away and back, and the grounds were deserted no longer: Anne was halfway to the house from the dojo. Perhaps she'd been visiting her zombie friends again, biding her time until her cousin chose to join her little salon of the undead. Darcy would see to it that she had a long, long wait.

He started to leave, intending to hurry to his room and do what he had to quickly, but a flurry of movement on the lawn turned him toward the window yet again.

A man on horseback had ridden around the side of the house and was approaching Anne. His presumption was extraordinary. His appearance was shocking.

He was a big heavy-featured man with a sweaty face, bristly chin whiskers, and fiery eyes. The luminosity Darcy could see around him seemed to ebb and flow, strobing from almost blinding bright to a dull gray glow.

As Darcy watched, the man slid from his saddle, shoved a hand under his dust-covered coat, and produced a stubby pepper-box pistol—which he proceeded to point at Anne.

Darcy raced from the room, and seconds later he was bursting out of the servant's entrance at the back of the house, his aunt's suicide sword still clutched in one hand. The man swung his gun on him as he came closer, and it occurred to Darcy that there might be no call for hara-kiri after all. Perhaps the stranger would spare him the trouble.

"Stay back!" Anne cried out when she saw Darcy. "This needn't concern you!"

She looked even paler than usual—a feat on order with the Atlantic growing wetter.

The woman could walk among unmentionables without a care, yet this man, whoever he was, seemed to fill her with fear?

Darcy kept approaching.

"What is the meaning of this?" he called to the man. "Who are you?"

"He is a lunatic, that is all," Anne said. "He rides out here from Sevenoaks from time to time to spew his fantasies of persecution. He's no danger as long as we—"

"I am Sir Angus MacFarquharrr," the man said firmly (and with a burr as thick as a Highlands porridge).

"I know that name." Darcy stopped just ten yards from the man, close enough that a lucky shot, even from his inaccurate little pocket pistol, might well kill him. "You're telling me that you're the physician in charge of Bethlem Royal Hospital?"