pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 10

CHAPTER 10

Of course, Georgiana Darcy was relieved to see how much her brother was improving. If only he'd stop talking in his sleep about lungs and livers and kidneys and brains ... and then licking his lips.

Whenever he awoke and found his sister sitting at his bedside, he would look abashed, and if she asked what he'd been dreaming of he deflected her questions with those of his own. About the bitter, crimson liquid their aunt poured down his throat twice a day. About Jane Bingham's supposed descent into dire illness. And, most of all, about Elizabeth and her decision to stay behind in Derbyshire.

Georgiana did her best to bat these queries aside with still more, but there are only so many times one can say, "Fancy another round of Crypts and Coffins?" or "I brought my Sun Tzu with me—shall I read another chapter?" Still, despite the awkwardness, she rarely left her brother's side. And she knew that, if she did, he would not be alone long, for their cousin Anne was ever ready to continue the vigil. Which made Georgiana uneasy. There was something about the way Anne watched over Fitzwilliam that reminded her of a vulture perched near a battlefield, waiting patiently for the moment when the fighting ended and the wounded stopped moving.

Anne had never been a favorite of either Georgiana or Fitzwilliam, though she'd been capable of a rousing game of Spank the Dreadful once upon a time and seemed destined for the same training in the deadly arts as they had received. Yet she'd changed drastically about age fourteen or fifteen, withdrawing into shadowy corners and dark moods and the black dresses of a Spanish contessa, sometimes even donning a veil. It was as though all vitality had been siphoned out of her, and Fitzwilliam once said he knew who the succubus was. While some—his Elizabeth, for instance—had the kind of strength that not only nourished but was nourished by the strength of others, Lady Catherine de Bourgh's strength fed on weakness.

Still, Anne seemed to have regained a measure of her old vigor, though she remained a quiet, lurky creature given to inexplicable smirks and cryptic comments.

"Ahhhh, fresh meat," she'd said when a servant entered Fitzwilliam's room bearing a bloody slab of undercooked beef that Lady Catherine had sent up. "Just what we've needed around here for so long."

Another time, Georgiana checked on her brother in the middle of the night only to find her cousin hovering over his bed, so motionless she could have been a dressmaker's mannequin.

"Back again?" she said as Georgiana stepped up to the bedside. She reached out and pressed a clammy hand to Georgiana's cheek, and it was hard to tell if Anne was gazing at her tenderly or trying, in her langorous way, to slap her. "What need has Fitzwilliam of anyone else when such a sister as you is with him?"

Then she'd turned and swept soundlessly out of the room.

The next day, Anne looked up from her breakfast—the same small dollop of red roe and salmon sashimi she took every morning—and said, apropos nothing, "How many unmentionables do you think you've killed?"

"Oh, not so many. Only two hundred and seventy-three." Georgiana thought a moment and then added: "And a half."

"Only?" Anne glanced at her mother, who was glowering at her from the head of the table. "Of course. Not so many when compared to some. Still, you've been in battle after battle, Georgiana, and your reflexes must be finely honed, indeed. So honed, in fact, it makes me wonder if you can entirely control them."

"I don't think I understand you."

"Anne," Lady Catherine said.

"It's just that you've been spending so much time with your brother," Anne went on. "Even as he improves, there will certainly be moments when he will behave erratically, alarmingly, perhaps even like a—"