Only once, to her surprise, did thoughts of the ball occupy her, and even then there was a curiously inert quality to her musings. Coming out was supposed to change everything—childhood would end, a new future would unfold—yet Elizabeth couldn’t seem to make herself care anymore. Not with the dreadfuls likely to be in everyone’s future.

Once again, it was Jane she turned to, hoping her sister’s night was passing more peacefully than her own.

Eventually, Elizabeth gave up on sleep entirely. A faint orange glimmer had appeared around her curtains, and she rose and went to them and drew them aside.

Dawn was breaking, bringing the day that would, supposedly, make her a lady. A woman. As she stood there, staring out at the light that crept across the landscape, chasing back the shadows, another shape—that of her own face—slowly sharpened in the glass of the windowpane. At first, it was just a blur between her and the world, but with time and more light it became a reflection almost as clear as in a mirror.

“Good morning,” Elizabeth said to herself. “My, but don’t you look a fright.”

And then there was movement down below, and suddenly Elizabeth was looking through the glass once more.

Master Hawksworth was walking off toward the stables with his katana at his side and his warrior’s bedroll slung over his back.

Elizabeth threw on her dressing gown and dashed from the room, down the stairs and out the door.

“Master! Master, wait!”

Master Hawksworth stopped but didn’t turn around.

“Master?” Elizabeth said, coming closer. As she walked across the grass, her bare feet were quickly covered with cold morning dew she barely even noticed. “Are you going somewhere?”

The Master finally faced Elizabeth. When he saw she was in her nightclothes, he looked, for a moment, shocked—and then as though he might actually smile.

“No, Elizabeth Bennet. I am merely preparing for an important day. Your father and I have much we must do.”

“Then I should be doing it, too,” Elizabeth said. “All of us, I mean. Me and Mary and Kitty and Lydia. If it’s so important, we must every one of us do what we can.”

At last, the Master really did smile. It looked horribly small on such a big man, though, and it barely amounted to more than a slight, fleeting curl of the lips.

“You are an example for us all, Elizabeth Bennet. But no. Your father wanted you and your sister, Jane Bennet, to have this day for your country dance. It is, perhaps, the last chance for any of us to taste such unfettered pleasure. So I gave my consent.”

“You are growing soft, Master.”

It was meant as a jest, not reproof. Yet Master Hawksworth winced.

“No. It’s not that. The truth is, I’ve always—” He cut himself off and started to turn away again, then stopped with his side to Elizabeth, his fists clenched. “I have a shameful secret, Elizabeth Bennet. I believe your father suspects, yet I dare not speak of it aloud, even to you . . . though in you I have found my only hope of overcoming it.”

Elizabeth started toward him again. “Master . . . Geoffrey . . . what is it?”

She reached out, about to take one of his hands in hers.

“Ahh, Lizzy,” Mr. Bennet said as he came around the side of the house. He had a crossbow in his hands and a look of mild surprise on his face. “I thought I told you to sleep in. And here I find you on the lawn in your night things with the sun not up half an hour? Such shameful disregard for your father’s wishes! If it weren’t your special day, it’d be dand-baithaks till noon. Am I right, Master?”

Master Hawksworth stiffened—back and legs straightening, chest puffing out, chin jutting—until he looked like something out of a Grecian courtyard.

Mr. Bennet had the gaze of a Gorgon, it seemed: It had turned the man to stone.

“Indeed,” the Master said. “You rose early, too, Oscar Bennet.”

“Not at all. I never went to bed. ‘Eternal vigilance’—that is my credo now.”

Mr. Bennet and Master Hawksworth shared a long, silent look.

“Shall I have Hill bring out some hot coffee?” Elizabeth said. “You both seem to have fallen asleep standing up.”

“Not a bad idea, Lizzy. But it’s one, I’m afraid, for which we have not the time.” Mr. Bennet stepped swiftly up to Hawksworth and then swept past him, bound for the stables. “Come, Master. We must away to Meryton to collect Ensign Pratt and his men. We’ll need their help if we’re to see our plans through.”

“What of my help?” Elizabeth said. “Surely, there is some part in your plans for me.”

Her father stopped and turned toward her, nodding gravely. For the first time, Elizabeth noticed a red smear high up on his left cheek, and his hands and cuffs were speckled with tiny dots, as from a spray of crimson liquid.

He hadn’t just been watching for dreadfuls that night. He’d met with at least one.

“Of course. There is a task of vital importance that you and only you can undertake,” he said to her. “Go back into the house, go up to your room,” Mr. Bennet cocked an eyebrow, then grinned, “and lay out your best gown. Then let your mother and sisters spend the next twelve hours fussing over your hair. After that, you are to travel to Netherfield and dance the night away in the company of your sister Jane and whatever respectable gentlemen the two of you might coax into your webs.”

Mr. Bennet looked up at the second-floor windows—and the three young faces peering down from them—and threw his arms wide.

“On this, Elizabeth’s special day, I release all of my daughters! From this moment on, you are not warriors! You are again young ladies! Revel in it however you would!”

And with that he left.

“REVEL IN IT however you would.” That’s how Elizabeth’s father told her to spend the day of her coming out. Which was cruelly ironic, since it was he who’d cast a pall over the ball and all her preparations for it.

Mr. Bennet’s sudden, strange change of heart about his daughters—releasing them from their training just as the peril of the dreadfuls seemed about to peak—plagued Elizabeth the whole day. Was he doing them one last kindness before calamity struck? Was he shunting his loved ones out of harm’s way? Or was he simply trying to come between her and . . .?

Oh, bosh! There was nothing to come between.

Right?

Elizabeth’s misery was compounded by her mother’s bliss. If something made Mrs. Bennet happy, it was virtually guaranteed to be a disaster in the making. And Mrs. Bennet had never seemed happier.

She hummed as she and Lydia pinned up Elizabeth’s hair and wove in pearl beads and ribbon. She sang as she and Kitty laid out the necklace, earrings, bracelets, and brooch with which Elizabeth would soon be festooned. She giggled as she and Mary played tug-of-war with Elizabeth’s bodice, the mother pulling down in favor of “display,” the daughter pulling up in defense of “decorum.” And when all her labors were done and Elizabeth was at last a vision of loveliness—or Mrs. Bennet’s vision of loveliness, at least, for Elizabeth had taken no more of a role in her own dressing than would a porcelain doll—she laughed and clapped her hands and declared her to be “radiant, entrancing . . . why, almost as pretty as Jane!”

To Elizabeth’s relief, Mrs. Bennet was alone in her oblivious good spirits. It was nothing new to see Mary moping around looking sour, but eventually even Lydia and Kitty lost interest in their mother’s fussing over Elizabeth. By midafternoon, they were half-heartedly sparring with yari spears out on the front lawn. For weeks, the girls had longed for a day without training, a day they could devote to gossip and mischief and dreams of their own balls and gentleman callers. And now that they finally had such a day, they seemed so bored they’d welcome a horde of unmentionables with open arms.