Dreadfully Ever After (26 page)

She found herself in a dark, cell-like room. Along one wall was a long shelf topped with beakers and vials and what might have been either medical instruments or weapons, it was hard to tell which, for she saw the glint of metal blades both large and small, jagged-toothed and smooth. Across from all this was a squat door with a barred window through which passed the sounds of shrieking and moaning and insensible raving.

She remembered. She was in Bethlem Royal Hospital. And she wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

She was lying on a large tilted table, her wrists and ankles held tightly by leather cuffs bolted to the wood. She began testing her strength against the restraints, but they were too thick to snap and too tight to writhe out of, even with all her Shaolin training. As she struggled with the manacles and fetters, the table beneath her wobbled and even seemed to roll a few inches across the floor.

“I see you have returned to us,” someone said. “I am so glad.”

Dr. Sleaford walked around the table to face her. Here, out of the sunlight, he looked even more cadaverous, though he still wore the strained smile of a patronizing host.

“I’ve been anxious to continue our conversation,” he said.

“I can assure you that
this
is hardly necessary for conversation,” Mary replied, nodding at the strap around her right wrist.

“Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure. But would the conversation be forthright?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because we have friends inside the
SPCLVI
, and they’ve never heard of any Mary Godwin.”

“I am from the Hertfordshire branch. We are unaffiliated with the London office. Their standards have grown too lax, perhaps because they are overly friendly with the likes of you, Doctor.”

“An honorable parry, Miss, but not convincing. You wish me to believe that you are such a zealot, you would travel all the way here, to Section Twelve Central, and not be frightened all the way back to Hertfordshire by the bloody turmoil of our streets?”

“Yes. I
am
just such a zealot.”

“I do not believe you.”

“What an ungentlemanly thing to say.”

“Yet it is true, and I shall tell you why. It strikes me as odd—
very
odd—that a busybody spinster reformer should have mastered the so-called deadly arts.”

“What makes you think I have?”

“What my warders tell me, and the bruises and abrasions all over their bodies.”

Mary tried to shrug but found, with her hands pinned, that she could not.

“I resisted when your men first tried to net me, it is true, but any injuries they sustained were merely the result, I’m sure, of their own clumsiness.”

“Again, I might be inclined to believe you but for one thing. I have seen such injuries more than once in the past: on the soldiers who’d captured ninjas sent to infiltrate this hospital.”

“Soldiers? I have seen no soldiers here, though surely you could use a few, with Twelve Central in its current state. Why were they here before and where have they gone now?”

Dr. Sleaford’s gray eyes lit up with glee in a way that told Mary she had, once again, walked into a trap of his setting.

“
I
am asking the questions here!”

The way the man said it, it was obvious he enjoyed it—and that he’d had some practice at it.

“Now,” he went on, “we know that someone has taken an untoward interest in us. What we do not know—and what you must tell me—is who that someone is.”

“I will not,” Mary said simply. She’d never much cared for amateur theatrics, and anyhow, the time for keeping up pretenses seemed to have passed.

Dr. Sleaford leaned in close (though not close enough for Mary to butt him or bite off his nose). “It would be so much more pleasant for everyone if you told me.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Really. Please. I beg you.”

“No.”

Dr. Sleaford straightened again. “Well, I did ask nicely.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I’m afraid I must be a little less than nice now.” Dr. Sleaford turned toward the door. “Turvy! Bring in Subject Seven, if you please!”

Turvy had apparently been waiting in the hall, for the door immediately opened, and a man came in pushing a small cart upon which was strapped a glistening red skull and spine—both writhing.

Subject Seven was a zombie stripped to its essence. Just the central nervous system and some muscle and bone to hold it together. No hair, no skin, no organs but for the brain. It didn’t even have a tongue, though Mary suspected that was by its own doing. The thing was madly gnashing its teeth, snapping at everything, as if it wished to devour all the world.

Turvy steered the cart to Mary’s side. When he stopped, she and Subject Seven were only inches apart.

The dreadful locked its lidless eyes on Mary and began chomping at her frantically. Just one more push, the most minor adjustment of its trolley, and the thing’s big yellow teeth would be sinking into Mary’s hand or thigh or head.

“Anything to say?” Dr. Sleaford asked.

Mary considered for a moment and then nodded at the zombie.

“I should think that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Zed-dash-dash-dash-dash-dashes would object to this. It is lucky for you that I am not a member.”

She knew it wasn’t as clever as whatever Elizabeth would have said in the same situation. Yet still she derived some satisfaction from it. If these were to be her last words, they were brave enough, if rather fatuous, and her only disappointment was that no one whose good opinion she valued was nearby to hear them. Mr. Quayle would have been particularly appreciative, she thought, and it saddened her that by the time he returned to rescue her with her sisters and father, she would be on her way to becoming a drooling ghoul capable of no speech at all.

“You do not relent?” Dr. Sleaford asked.

Mary just shook her head. Her last words were said.

“I anticipated as much,” Dr. Sleaford said, sighing. “None of your predecessors were any more inclined to cooperate. You’re all so anxious to ‘die with honor,’ you people! Fortunately, this time I have a little extra leverage. Styles! Our other guest, thank you!”

The door opened again, and in came the burly unshaven warder who’d managed to capture Mary not so long before. He, too, was pushing a small gurney upon which was secured a limbless form. This one, however, was graced with a full torso, clothed—not to mention skin and hair and a face that it seemed at pains to keep turned toward the far wall.

“Mr. Quayle!” Mary gasped. “Is that you?”

So much for her cool and composed final words. She’d never gasped in her life, and now her spotless record was spoiled with, most likely, just minutes to go.

“Over here, I think,” Dr. Sleaford said, stepping away from Mary. “Both of them, lined up together. Where she can see.”

As Turvy and Styles situated the trolleys side by side, Subject Seven took to nipping at Mr. Quayle’s stubby body. Mr. Quayle, for his part, merely kept his face pointed away and said nothing.

Mary found herself straining to get a look at the man who had, till then, been just a voice from a box. She’d expected him to be scarred, disfigured, but the chin and temple and ear she saw seemed flawless—and strangely familiar. A band of white stretched from his mouth over his cheek.

He’d been gagged.

“Your friend made the most foolhardy attempt to come after you,” Dr. Sleaford said. “If you care for him half as much as he apparently cares for you, then you’ll tell me what I want to know, and quickly. I think the poor fellow’s already lost every protuberance a man can lose ... with one exception, perhaps. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see Subject Seven make a meal of
that
, now, would you?”

“Oh ooh ee, Ahhee,” Mr. Quayle said.

“Oh, capital. Capital! Styles, Turvy. Do remove the gentleman’s gag so that his pitiful pleas for mercy will provide further persuasion for the lady. You
are
offering up a pitiful plea for mercy, aren’t you, Mr…. Quayle, was it?”

Being careful to keep himself from Subject Seven’s snapping jaws, Styles slowly moved in and lifted Mr. Quayle’s head. As he held it steady between his big hairy hands, the other warder worked to unknot the strip of linen tied tightly around the prisoner’s mouth.

For the first time, Mary was able to look straight into Mr. Quayle’s eyes. And before the gag even came away, she knew that they weren’t Mr. Quayle’s eyes at all. Because she recognized those eyes, and there was no Mr. Quayle.

When Styles and Turvy darted away again, it was Geoffrey Hawksworth, her first master, who gazed back at her.

“I was saying, ‘Don’t do it, Mary.’ ” Hawksworth smiled sadly. “As you know so well, I am not worth it.”

As Mr. Bennet and Lizzy and Sir Angus finished making arrangements for the next day—arrangements that would bring the Bennets into the presence of the loftiest lords and ladies in the land—Kitty sat silently beside Bunny and Brummell and brooded. Her soul was roiling, and though it was good to know she had a soul to roil (she’d sometimes wondered), it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Nor was it entirely a new one. Her soul had stirred first, if not churned, when Lydia ran off to become Mrs. George Wickham, leaving her sister with no clear idea who Miss Kitty Bennet was. And now Bunny MacFarquhar, of all people, had provided an answer. One she didn’t like.

Miss Kitty Bennet was the kind of woman who kissed men she didn’t love and loved men she couldn’t kiss.

Well, “loved” was too strong a word. How could she love a man she barely knew? How could she love a man she could never know?

She was mistress; he was servant. She was Shaolin; he was Shinobi. She was English; he was Other. There were so many walls between them, she shouldn’t have even noticed that she was a woman and he was a man. Yet notice she had, apparently, for when she’d been kissed by Bunny MacFarquhar—just the sort of fool she would have expected to fall for—she’d found herself thinking of Nezu.

Little Nezu, of all people! Even beyond the scandalous fact of his race, any match would be absurd. Love blossomed between kindred spirits. Lizzy and Darcy, Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Wickham—all were perfectly suited for each other because they
were
each other (with the necessary exception of certain anatomical details). One didn’t add oil to water or axle grease to tea or zombies and ninjas to a romance. Like belonged with like.

And Nezu couldn’t be more unlike Kitty. The man was stiff, distant, humorless, haughty. And agile, exotic, handsome, and very, very
standing right in front of her
.

Kitty was so lost in thought, she barely registered that goodbyes were being spoken or that she was walking out of the MacFarquhars’ and up the street with her sister and father. Not until Nezu joined them, gliding out of whichever shadowy corner he’d been hiding in, did she stop brooding and start hearing and seeing again.

“One of you I saw flipping out of a window,” the ninja said as he fell into step with the Bennets. “Another maiming two men in order to retrieve a rabbit and an urn. With such indiscreet public displays, I fear to even ask what went on inside.”

“Well, don’t then!” Kitty blurted out. “What matters is that Sir Angus is taking us to the recoronation tomorrow!”

“And he definitely has a cure for the strange plague,” Lizzy added. “I saw a letter that confirmed it.”

“So we may have been indiscreet, Nezu, but, more important, we were successful,” Mr. Bennet said. “We can now be certain that Sir Angus has what we want—and trusts us enough to offer an opportunity to take it.”

Nezu nodded solemnly. “That is progress. You’re right. It should not matter how it was achieved.”

He gave Kitty a long look that made her suspect—or perhaps merely hope—that it did matter. To him, anyway. As they carried on back to the Shevington residence, only Mr. Bennet and Lizzy continued talking, debating in low tones how best to steer Sir Angus toward a tour of Bethlem Royal Hospital, while Kitty and Nezu strolled with an abstracted air, saying nothing.

Upon reaching the house, they found to their surprise that Mary hadn’t yet returned from the mysterious errand she’d slipped off to attend to that morning. Twilight was fast approaching, and the graying horizon was striped black here and there by ominous columns of dark smoke. They waited for Mary for a time in the drawing room, but at last Mr. Bennet could sit still no longer. He hopped from his chair and began pacing around the room.

“Perhaps your afternoon would have been better spent searching for Mary rather than spying on us,” he barked at Nezu.

It had been years since Kitty had seen her father so much as cock an eyebrow when she and her sisters charged in to battle hordes of the undead. Yet he seemed shaken now. Perhaps it was because Mary had chosen her own battle, for once.

“I did not think it necessary to look for your daughter,” Nezu said. “She would not have left the area unobserved or unescorted.”

“In other words, you had someone spying on her, too,” Lizzy said.

“Watching the house, yes. With orders to accompany any of you who struck off on your own.”

“ ’Accompany,’ ” Mr. Bennet snorted. “You mean follow. Your trust in us is truly an inspiration, Nezu.”

“It is not necessarily a sign of mistrust to take precautions.”

“No. Not necessarily,” Mr. Bennet replied. “Just usually.”

“Nezu,” Lizzy said, “if you’ve had someone watching us, then surely you know where Mary disappeared to yesterday. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that she went back there today?”

“Indeed, it would ... except that apparently she went nowhere. According to my agent—”

“Spy,” Mr. Bennet said.

“—Miss Bennet simply visited a book shop and then spent the rest of the day aimlessly wandering the streets of One North.”

“Indeed?” Lizzy said. “That doesn’t sound like Mary.”

“Oh? Who knows what she’s capable of now?” Mr. Bennet muttered. “I should have known that Wellstonecroft woman’s ramblings would lead her astray.”

“Wollstonecraft,” Lizzy corrected.

“Yes, of course. How could I forget, after hearing the wretched bore quoted ten times an hour for the past year? I tell you, I’d have rather seen Mary turn her mind to mush, like Kitty with her novels and fashion plates, than convince herself a young lady has the right to go charging off without so much as—”