Chapter Seventeen
The winter night had the hush of a cathedral. Somewhere distant, a vixen let out a thin, ragged scream, and William’s fingers tightened around hers.
Waffles and Athena paused but didn’t bark.
Beside him, Elizabeth tucked her free hand into his.
He cleared his throat. “Elizabeth?”
“Mmm?”
The sentence he’d rehearsed all evening evaporated. “Might you . . . would you call me William?”
She stopped. Turned to face him. He braced, stupidly, as if he were about to catch a cricket ball.
Her eyes flashed. “Not Fitzwilliam?” she asked, all innocence.
He sighed, his long-suffering expression purely for show. “If you must.”
“William,” she said instead, and her smile gentled. “Thank you.” She squeezed his hand. “Truly. It’s the perfect present.”
For a moment he could only stare. Everything he’d put himself through trying to figure out what to give her for Christmas, and all she had wanted was this. Him.
“Is it?” he managed to ask. He hated how raw he sounded.
“Of course,” she said, in that practical, sensible tone that undid him.
“I’ve been falling for William all along.
Darcy’s very handsome and tidy and has an impressive wine cellar, but William is the one who carries dog biscuits in his coat, and lectures me about reflective leads, and pretends he didn’t nearly go over on the ice just then. ”
“I did not—” He had. “It’s dark. I didn’t see it.”
“All right, Mr. Safety Briefing. Didn’t you say ‘walk with care’ about three seconds before you skated on the ice like Bambi?”
He would have replied with something sensible and dignified, but she lifted herself up on her toes to place a kiss on his cheek, and that was that.
They set off again. The glow from Charles and Jane’s windows pooled across the snow-dusted gravel, which crunched under their feet.
“I ought to say,” he began, “I didn’t ask because I dislike being called Darcy. I like the name, always have. It’s only that you’re too close to me for that.”
Her expression positively glowed. “I understand.”
He felt it everywhere, that understanding. Like standing too near the fire and enjoying the scorch.
As they reached the car, Waffles leapt across Elizabeth and cannoned into Darcy, then sat with immense purpose on his foot, smiling up at her like a saint in a stained-glass window.
Elizabeth untangled herself from the leash and crouched to rub the dog’s chest. “What are you doing, you dreadful boy?”
Waffles wriggled with delight, and Athena stuck her muzzle in Elizabeth’s ear.
“Oh!” she cried and then laughed. “Your nose is cold, Athena. Do you want some attention, you beautiful girl?”
Athena did, and Elizabeth was happy to comply. But Darcy wanted to be on their way, so at last, he said, “Inside,” and the dogs, having achieved their objective, allowed themselves to be shepherded into the back seat.
Darcy clipped the dogs into their harnesses, Athena with uncomplaining acceptance, Waffles with the air of a man falsely accused.
“I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before,” Elizabeth said as she watched, “but these seatbelts for the dogs? Very sexy.”
“Safety first,” he said wryly, and earned a beaming smile.
He rounded to the driver’s side as she opened the passenger door and slipped inside.
The wind carried one last thread of the vixen’s cry across the fields, the night closing over it.
Inside the car, the world was warmed into domesticity by the dashboard's glow, the soft wheeze of the heaters working at the frost, Elizabeth’s hand over his.
They pulled away, tyres whispering on the road.
Elizabeth rested her head against the window and said “William.”
It was a glorious sound, as good as her singing. Better. “Yes?”
“Nothing. Just trying it on.”
He tightened his hands on the wheel to stop himself doing something idiotic like grinning at the roundabout. “How does it fit?”
“Suspiciously well,” she said. “Might keep it.”
Waffles whinged and leaned forward as far as his harness would allow.
“Leave it,” Darcy said mildly. Waffles stopped straining and tried to lie down instead.
The A-road unwound. He set the radio low. Somewhere south of Ware, near the Amwell Roundabout that always pretended to be two, a choir made a gentle hash of “The Holly and the Ivy.” Elizabeth hummed under her breath. Waffles joined, which ruined the song and improved the evening.
Elizabeth reached across and tugged the blue-grey loop where it had bunched beneath his seatbelt. “There. Is it strangling you?”
“It’s perfect,” he said, meaning the scarf and also not the scarf. He drove an unnecessary extra loop around to recover.
“And the headphones will be useful,” she said. “Which is the bit that matters. I’ll use them when the upstairs neighbour girl starts to Irish dance. But most of the time, I like hearing my life. The kettle. The post. Waffles instigating crimes. You, snoring in front of the telly like a foghorn.”
He huffed. “Unfair.”
“True.”
They slid onto the dual carriageway. Elizabeth’s fingers found his on the gear lever and stayed.
He didn’t tell her that he had been living in a long winter without noticing until the evening he’d seen her deploy her wit to fend off a man’s unwanted advances at Charles’s party.
The ridiculous bloke hadn’t even realised he was being fobbed off.
But Darcy had noticed everything: the way she’d tilted her chin up, the precision of her deflection, how she’d made the man feel clever while steering him away.
He’d watched from across Charles’s overcrowded sitting room and felt the fog of his life dissolve, leaving clarity, perhaps, or relief at finding someone who wielded words like she did, surgical and yet kind.
He hadn’t known, then, that he would lose his heart to her.
Now, months later, with her hand warm over his and the familiar weight of her presence filling the passenger seat, he marvelled at how thoroughly she’d rearranged his life without seeming to try.
His flat had acquired her books, dog toys in impractical colours, a second coffee mug that lived beside his in the dishwasher.
His weekend walks had become theirs; his careful solitude had given way to something infinitely more complicated and necessary.
The countryside slipped past the windows, hedgerows giving way to the first scattered houses, porch lights glowing like scattered coins.
Behind them, Waffles had begun that particular snuffling that meant he was dreaming of squirrels or stolen sandwiches.
Athena’s breathing had settled into the rhythm of the road.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” Elizabeth observed, not moving her head from where it rested against the window.
“Am I?”
“Mmm. I can practically hear the gears turning. Should I be worried?”
He glanced at her profile, softened by the dashboard light. “Just thinking about timing.”
“Timing?”
“How long I spent thinking I knew what I wanted. And how wrong I was.”
She turned then, eyebrows raised in that way that meant she was deciding whether to tease him or let him be serious. She chose mercy. “What did you think you wanted?”
“Quiet. Order. Routine.” He paused, negotiating a roundabout that had sprouted since he’d last driven this route. “Dogs that didn’t steal socks.”
“And now?”
Now he wanted Elizabeth humming off-key in his kitchen while Waffles performed grand larceny with the tea towels. He wanted her laughter, the way she argued with the radio during the morning news, how she’d somehow convinced Athena to play tug-of-war with a rope toy shaped like a fish.
“Now I think quiet is overrated,” he said.
She smiled, and he felt it like warmth spreading through his chest.
The A-road began its gentle curve toward the city, and ahead, the first orange glow of streetlights appeared on the horizon.
Soon they’d be swallowed by London proper, by traffic lights and late-night buses and the comfortable anonymity of the city.
But for now, they existed in this space between—countryside behind them, home ahead, the car full of soft breathing and the particular contentment that came from being precisely where you belonged.
Traffic gathered and broke around them; they drifted into a comfortable silence. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see Waffles slumped against Athena. She tolerated the contact like a woman allowing a stranger to sleep on her shoulder on the last train home.
“Tell me the plan,” Elizabeth said.
“Plan,” he said, obliging. “We get you home. I carry the bags up. We take the dogs out once more—quickly—to ensure nothing untoward occurs to the rug. We come back in. We put on the kettle. We sit. We do not talk to anyone named Kitty or Lydia after midnight.”
“Flawless,” she murmured. “Add: you continue answering to William.”
“Part of the package.”
The city lifted up around them, all familiar corners and foolish shortcuts, the stretch of river that always looked the same no matter what lights people hung around it.
He parked outside her flat and the car ticked as the engine cooled.
Waffles woke with a start and instantly strained towards the console to kiss him.
“No,” Darcy said, laughing despite himself. “Back.”
Unable to reach past the limits of his harness, Waffles wagged his tail so hard his entire back end participated. Athena nuzzled him, and he calmed.
Darcy walked round to Elizabeth’s side and opened her door.
“William,” she said again, small and pleased, as she unbuckled Waffles, who tried to exit the vehicle through her. “Help.”
He hauled five stone of delighted golden retriever out of the car and earned a face wash for his gallantry. Elizabeth took Athena, who pranced away from the car.
He had never seen Athena prance before.
On the pavement, Darcy hesitated.
“Stay,” he said. It came out rough. He cleared it. “I mean—stay. Often. Here or at mine. As you prefer. Bring the chaos. Bring the noise. Bring Waffles’s contributions. Bring you.”
She stood very still, lead looped in her hand, and the streetlight made a halo of the hair that had escaped her hat.
“That,” she said at last, “is an excellent plan.”
“Is it?”
“Mmm.” She stepped close, nose cold against his cheek, voice warm in his ear. “Truly.”
He took both dogs out himself, in the end.
Expedite the evening, he’d thought. But he’d promptly discovered a coalition government of paws.
Athena decided to inspect every blade of grass.
Waffles performed a sit-in at the park gate, eyes luminous with wrongful imprisonment.
By the time he herded them back upstairs an hour later, his ears were numb and his patience used up.
The flat was dim and warm. Elizabeth sat at her cluttered desk with the headphones—his headphones—snug over her ears, the room’s city-noise sealed out. She turned when he touched her shoulder, and her eyes lit up in a way that made his chest go strange.
She lifted the headphones off and placed them on the desktop. “Your very un-romantic present just made me cry,” she exclaimed, tossing her arms around his neck. “I finished the book!”
The dogs circled once and settled. He kissed the top of her head, hung the leads on the hook, and turned back to her. “Tea?”
“Tea,” she echoed, and when he moved toward the kettle, she caught his sleeve. “And you.”
It was better than the scarf, even.
“And me,” he confirmed.