Chapter Thirty-Eight

Dearest Jane,

Though I suppose I should call you Mrs. Bingley now. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the gifts you sent from Ireland. I am so pleased you enjoyed your honeymoon. I must admit to my indecorous curiosity as to the joys of the married state, but I am not so far lost to propriety as to actually inquire. Instead I will retreat to the more prosaic question of how you have found life as the mistress of Netherfield. I’m sure you are endeavoring to put your own stamp on the place. I do wonder if Mother is often visiting to assist you in learning your new role. That might be a mixed blessing. One thing all the neighborhood can agree upon is that our mother is a fine hostess and sets a wonderful table. On the other hand, she may have some trouble realizing that you must stand on your own, beside your husband, and not as her daughter to shape and mold any more.

I have been enjoying my time at Gracechurch Street. My Aunt, I think, is determined that I will be a success on the social scene. We have had two solons and attended no fewer than four events in the last month. It is very different for me to be seen as a sought after match, though I wonder how many of these potential beaux look at me as a means to an end, as did Captain Hawthorne, rather than a person to be admired for my own character. As I have said so many times before, I would so wish to marry for love …

Your loving sister,

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

I must warn you that the evil that has plagued our family since Jane’s attack in November continues to actively seek to do us harm. A man whom Father assures me is associated with the false agents that freed the captives taken after the attack on the Red Lion has been attempting to work his way into my particular confidence by means of a false identity. Father has written to warn his contact in the government, but I felt it incumbent upon me to offer you a more personal warning. They continue to target the Bennets, for some unimaginable reason. You are unprotected in the midst of millions. You must take care to ensure your personal safety from threats both obvious and concealed. They struck at me through my greatest weakness, my unquestioning assurance in my own political rectitude. Only you may know what path they might take to assail you …

Your humbled sister,

Mary

“It has taken some time, but we have finally prepared for you to test your ability to remove these false gifts from an XO.” Mr. Graves stated. He had led Elizabeth to a different room than she usually visited when examining the prisoners. Strapped to a table was a battered middle-aged man with obvious signs of somatic manipulation. His arms were elongated and his body hirsute and muscular, making him resemble the hybrid mixing of a man and a great ape. He was conscious and struggling to break free of the shackles holding him to the table. Elizabeth reached out with her senses and was able to not only detect his giftedness at a distance, something she had only learned to do in the past weeks, but to determine his state was altered, rather than being a natural-born grotesque.

“Will Mr. Wickham be joining us?” Elizabeth asked. She was not over fond of the Superintendent, but thought he would wish to be present for such an important experiment.

“He may, but his calendar is terribly full. There has been a recent renewal of attacks. One additional question he has of you is whether you can determine how long ago a person was altered.”

“He wishes to determine if this new wave of attacks is due to a new group of people and animals being altered? If it is, that might imply that LaFontaine is back in town.” She noticed the man’s lips tighten and felt his heartbeat accelerate.

“Exactly,” he confirmed.

She wondered about him. Mary’s warning and reminder that there was a traitor in the Alien Office were fresh in her mind. Mr. Graves seemed harmless, but she wondered at the distaste she felt from him. Her ability did not extend to allow her to read a person’s emotions, but the physical reactions an individual had to a person or situation often gave her an idea of what they were feeling. She read his reactions to her as a subtle but persistent dislike.

“Shall I proceed?” she asked.

“Please.” He replied. Again, his heart rate increased.

She entered. There were two armed guards flanking the door inside the room. She nodded to them. She had seen them before, but had never been introduced. They returned the silent acknowledgement. She laid her hand on the struggling man’s arm and sent her awareness into his body. Before she could do more than locate the energy sphere that was her perception of the temporary gift that had been implanted in the man’s body, he had surged up from the table, the metal bands that held his arms immobile snapping open.

The gorilla-like man swept Elizabeth into his grasp with one arm and reached down to free his legs with the other. He tumbled off the table as the two guards opened fire, avoiding both shots. Elizabeth regained her faculties to find the hand about her throat was squeezing.

“Stay back or I’ll rip her head orf!” the ape man snarled. The guards had drawn swords, and each was pulling a pistol with his off hand. They hesitated, seeing Elizabeth in the brute’s clutches.

“I think not!” Elizabeth said, and grabbed both his wrists, pulling his hands from her neck. He resisted, but she was stronger. She slammed him into the wall and held him pinned. Ignoring the kicks his stunted legs landed on her abdomen, she reached into his body with her gift and ripped the sphere from its place, sundering all connections to his corporeal self. He screamed and collapsed.

Looking around the room, Elizabeth noticed that Wickham’s clerk was nowhere to be seen. “Where is Graves?” she demanded of the guards.

They looked around, then one raced to the door, only to find it barred from the outside. He pounded and yelled for their release. Elizabeth carried the unconscious man to the table, laid him back into his bindings, and bent the cuffs to enclose his wrists once more. The second guard began to examine the table, looking at the release mechanism.

“It’s been tampered with,” he said, pointing to a frayed wire that was part of the apparatus.

“With deliberate timing, I’m sure.” Elizabeth added.

By the time the door had been opened and the office searched, Graves was nowhere to be found. Later investigations proved that Elizabeth could remove the temporary gifts and that there was a second, more recent, wave of altered attackers. LaFontaine had returned, but remained elusive.

Not all of Elizabeth’s time was taken by her duties at the Alien Office. Mrs. Gardiner ensured that her evenings and days free were full of social engagements. It was on an afternoon excursion to the Royal Academy of Arts that the two ladies encountered Elizabeth’s new sister-in-law, Miss Bingley.

“Miss Eliza! How unexpected to see you. I had no idea you were interested in fine art.” Miss Bingley was accompanied by a youngish gentleman and another well-dressed lady. Miss Bingley did not introduce them.

“Indeed, while I am not a great aficionado, I do enjoy the arts in all their forms. May I introduce to you Mrs. Gardiner, my aunt. Aunt, this is Miss Bingley, one of Jane’s new sisters. My aunt is acquainted with several of the Academy’s members and was invited to the event. She graciously allowed me to accompany her.”

“Ah yes, of Cheapside, if I recollect what Dear Jane has shared.” Miss Bingley’s sniff of hauteur was a trifle overdone, Elizabeth thought. “How do you come to be acquainted with the members?”

“I sponsor several of the students and Mr. Fuseli has suggested I might be interested in a new young man named George Hayter, thus our presence here today.”

“You are a patron of the arts?” Miss Bingley tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her astonishment.

“Oh, you must be that Mrs. Gardiner,” said the lady at Miss Bingley’s side. “I’ve heard some good things about your artistic evenings from Mrs. Glynn.”

“Oh, I am pleased she has remembered me.” Mrs. Gardiner looked at Miss Bingley, obviously hinting for an introduction.

“This is Lady Sarah Spencer, and this is Mr. George Lyttelton, MP.” Miss Bingley offered eventually. Both Elizabeth and her Aunt curtseyed. Miss Bingley indicated Elizabeth, “This is Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire.”

“You family has a well-known history of supporting the arts, Lady Sarah. Do you often come to the Academy? This is my first visit.” Elizabeth said to relieve the awkwardness of the belated and reluctant introductions.

“Not very often. Father has always been more interested in books than paintings. As a matter of fact … are you any relation to Thomas Bennet, the antiquarian? I believe he is from Hertfordshire.”

“Indeed! He is my father.”

“I have seen my father reading his book on ancient Rome several times. If memory serves me, Father even invited him to Holywell House in St. Albans not too many years ago to discuss it.”

“That would make sense. Longbourn is outside of Meryton, not ten miles from St. Albans.”

“Far too close for two Antiquarians to not find each other. I’d imagine your father will be receiving an invitation to some book club my father is trying to form. Something to do with Roxburghe’s library.”

“I’m certain my father will be interested. I have heard him lament that those tomes have been out of circulation for so long.”

“And we all remember how well you like books, don’t we Miss Eliza?” Miss Bingley interjected herself back into the conversation. “Mr. Lyttelton was just pointing out to me how art is another example of a virtue not encompassed in our commonplace understanding of gifts.”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “I was just pointing out that our society’s preoccupation with gifts and the ranking thereof ignores the true accomplishments that can be gained, not through an accident of birth but through discipline and application, as well as innate aptitude.”

“I agree,” Elizabeth offered. “I recently read something very like that in a piece in the Register written by Lady Caroline Lamb. It is a cogent argument for the Ordinary philosophy.”

“Ordinary! I assure you, madam, I am no Ordinary. I’m a Whig!” He seemed totally affronted and, offering a stiff bow, took his leave, Miss Bingley trailing in his wake. Lady Sarah, hid her grin with her fan and handed Elizabeth a card before following her companions. Elizabeth saw that it held her address, an invitation for further contact.

She turned to her aunt, “I think I may have offended the gentleman.”

“He is one of the leaders of the Coterie, so you may well have mortally offended him by likening his argument to that of the best known Ordinary.”

“Opps?”

For the rest of her time in London, Elizabeth was openly snubbed by random people, who she later found out were members of the Coterie, a group of paltrys with whom Miss Bingley associated. She did not encounter her sister-in-law during that time, so never discovered if the proud lady would cut her or not. Thus, she avoided precipitating a rift in the newly extended family.

It was the middle of February when Elizabeth received a note from her father calling her back to Longbourn. Mr. Wickham was forced to agree to her departure. After so many weeks away, she was anxious to return to her home.