pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 30

CHAPTER 30

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.