“Oh! Yes! I’m sorry. I forgot all about it. And I’m afraid I broke the decanter, too. So careless of me.”

Lord Lumpley waved away Jane’s apologies with a strained smile. “Think nothing of it. I’ll have someone sent along to tidy up . . . and to bring you another glass of brandy, of course.”

“That’s really not necessary, My Lord.”

“But I insist.” The baron bowed. “Au revoir, Miss Bennet.”

“Good night, My Lord.”

When the door was closed again, Jane shrugged off her dressing gown and climbed back into bed, certain now that she’d never fall asleep. Not only was a maid on her way, there was even more to think about now.

The baron. Lizzy and Father seemed to consider the man barely one step up from a dreadful—and perhaps even less preferable, as hosts go. Yet he’d been nothing but polite and attentive all day. Yes, it was beyond brazen, his creeping into a young lady’s bedchamber. But how different was that, really, from what Lt. Tindall had done? And hadn’t it been motivated by the most admirable of interests?

Though, come to think of it, Lord Lumpley had left without any Bible, nor had he mentioned where he was off to search for it next. Strange how thoroughly he seemed to forget about it once he’d offered his excuse for being in the room.

It wasn’t often Jane acknowledged the possibility of duplicity. It was so much simpler, so much nicer, to take everyone at his or her word without complicating matters with guile or suspicion. Yet could it be, she wondered, that the baron had indeed been doing just what the lieutenant had—assuring himself of her well-being—because he was . . . oh, it was embarrassing simply to think it!

Was he really in love with her?

Even sitting alone in bed, Jane looked down and blushed.

A thump on the door roused her from her reverie. The chambermaid was already back with a new decanter of brandy, it seemed, and Jane, feeling guilty about the mess she’d made for the girl, hopped out of bed to let her in.

The girl Jane found standing outside wasn’t the servant she’d expected, though. She wasn’t a servant at all, in fact.

Nor was she alive.

It was a dreadful, long dead but fresh from the grave to judge by the black earth still caked to its dress and withered flesh and patchy blonde hair. In spots—the tips of the fingers, on and around the teeth no longer covered by lips or gums—the dirt had been smeared away with something new: a paste of jellied brain.

The unmentionable’s hands were flapping at waist level, gaze tilted downward, as if the creature had been fumbling clumsily with the door-knob. When it looked up and saw Jane frozen pop-eyed before it, it hissed like an angry cat and lunged forward.

Jane ducked to the side and gave the thing a shove as it hurtled past. But the dreadful stumbled only a few steps before it whipped around and charged again, hands slashing.

Jane hopped onto her bed, grabbed one of the posts, and launched herself up atop the canopy frame. She meant to try a Panther’s Bound down again, hopefully within grabbing range of one of the weapons strewn about the room—a battle axe propped up beside the bedside table was particularly tantalizing. The unmentionable didn’t give her time, though. It began jumping up swiping at her, tearing down ragged strips of cloth as Jane scuttled this way and that to avoid its raking nails.

Looking down on the zombie’s upturned, hideously decayed face, Jane thought she saw a flash of something familiar—although with no nose or mouth or eyelids to go by, and the ears dangling from flaps of loose flesh like grisly jewelry, recognition was impossible. Still, Jane began to feel she might have known this girl.

If only she’d stop jumping around for a second. If only she’d stop trying to kill her. . . .

“Oooo, I hope I’m not interrupting any-AHHHHHH!”

Both Jane and the dreadful turned toward the doorway. Standing there, the tray in her hands loaded with another bottle of brandy, was the plump chambermaid.

The unmentionable rushed toward her with a snarl. So shocked was the girl she didn’t even turn to flee but simply stood there, motionless, as if calmly offering the thing a drink.

Jane flipped down from the canopy, snatched up the battle-axe, and used all her momentum to bring the blade down into the zombie’s skull.

The chop split the dreadful down the middle like a rotted-out log.

The two halves splayed out on the floor at the chambermaid’s feet.

“Ahh . . . ahh . . . ahh . . .,” the maid spluttered, too breathless even to scream. Her hands were shaking so violently the decanter danced around on her tray, rattling and sloshing and threatening to topple over.

Jane tried to think of something comforting to say. To her surprise—and vague consternation—she realized that she needed no comfort herself, and in fact she found it difficult, for once, to commiserate with someone who did.

She searched for words another moment, then put down her axe and placed a firm hand on the girl’s trembling, fleshy-soft arm.

“Why don’t you take that back downstairs?” she said, nodding down at the tray. “I don’t even like brandy, you know.”

ELIZABETH AND MR. BENNET spoke not a word to each other until they were almost back to Longbourn. The parting with Jane had been painful for each of them, Elizabeth knew, yet she couldn’t bring herself to console her father in any way. Leaving her sister at Netherfield for the night was no better than abandoning her in a nest of vipers, and if he felt guilty about that, well, that was the least he could do after the fact. So they’d stalked toward home side by side, each scanning the opposite side of the lane, hand on hilt, saying nothing.

It was Elizabeth who finally broke the silence.

“Zombie droppings?” she asked, jutting her chin out at a glistening red mound of pulp beside a low stone wall just off the road.

Mr. Bennet crossed over to kneel down beside it.

“Zombie droppings,” he said.

“Fresh?”

“Fresh.”

Mr. Bennet stood up and swiftly carried on toward Longbourn. Yet as he did so, he finally defended himself against the rebuke his daughter had never put into words—because she didn’t have to.

“The stakes we play for are the highest, and if I must put up my own flesh and blood as collateral, I will do so.”

“You have done so,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes. And you, my favorite, I would gladly sell into a sultan’s harem if it gave the living even the slightest advantage over the dead.”

They walked a little farther without speaking or looking at each other.

“Of course,” Mr. Bennet eventually said, “I would fully expect to find you on my doorstep the next morning with the sultan’s head on a pike.”

Elizabeth glanced over at her father and found him watching her with a sheepish smile. She didn’t quite smile back, but she did allow the tight, hard line of her mouth to loosen just a bit.

“Is that what you expect to find when you awake tomorrow?” she said.

“I hope not. Not tomorrow, at any rate.” Mr. Bennet looked away again. “If Jane could stay her hand at least a day, it would suit my plans better.”

“And which plans are those, exactly?”

“Ah,” Mr. Bennet said, nodding ahead. “It appears someone has been anxiously awaiting our return.”

By the pink-gold glow of twilight, Elizabeth could see a lone figure standing to the side of the lane just where it curved past Longbourn’s front lawn.

A big, brawny figure that put a flutter in her stomach.

Master Hawksworth was watching their approach silently, motionless. All the same, he somehow projected an air of nervous anticipation. It reminded Elizabeth of a chained dog, of all things—a pet sensing its owner’s approach yet unable to dart up for the pat on the head it yearned for.