Chapter Eighteen #2
Bruno stopped short at a cluster of leaves, snuffling with immense seriousness.
“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth murmured absently. “It is no doubt a matter of the greatest importance.”
The dog barely acknowledged her.
They turned along a less crowded path bordered by bare-branched trees whose shadows fell in delicate patterns across the ground.
The morning was cool enough to color the cheeks, but not unpleasant.
Riders passed at a distance; a nursemaid shepherded two children in the opposite direction; somewhere nearby a gentleman called to his groom.
Elizabeth scarcely heard any of it. Then, without warning, the lead was wrenched sharply from her hand. “Oh!”
Bruno bolted.
“Bruno!” she cried, startled into sudden motion. “Bruno, come back at once!”
He paid no attention whatever, launching himself forward with astonishing speed for so old a creature. Elizabeth gathered up her skirts and ran after him, alarm overcoming abstraction at once.
“Bruno!”
He was not running wildly, she realized after a moment, but with purpose. Ahead of him, some figure stood in the path, dark against the pale morning light.
A man. Elizabeth saw the man turn at the sound of the dog’s approach. He did not retreat. He did not exclaim. Instead, he spoke—one brief word she did not catch—and held one hand out, flat and commanding.
Bruno skidded to a stop.
It was almost absurd in its abruptness. One moment he had been all momentum and reckless enthusiasm; the next he had dropped neatly onto his haunches, tail thumping against the ground while the rest of him remained perfectly still.
Elizabeth slowed, breathless, astonishment joining her lingering alarm. Then she saw who it was. The Count of Vendicarsi. Or rather—Darcy. She came to a halt a few paces away, her pulse suddenly uncertain of its object.
“Count Vendicarsi,” she said, the title catching strangely in her throat.
He inclined his head, as though there were nothing remarkable in this encounter at all. “Miss Bennet.”
Bruno’s tail beat a more vigorous rhythm as Darcy reached into his pocket and withdrew a strip of bacon. He offered it to the dog with calm familiarity.
“Good dog,” he said.
Bruno accepted the treat with reverence.
Elizabeth could not help but stare. “He is rarely so responsive to anyone besides myself.”
Darcy’s mouth moved—not quite into a smile, but near it. “Then I am honored by his good opinion.”
He remembers him, Elizabeth thought, watching the easy certainty of the exchange. And Bruno remembers him. This is no fancy of my own. It cannot be.
Darcy laid a hand briefly against the dog’s head. “What is his name?”
Elizabeth almost laughed, so sure was she that he knew. “Bruno.”
“A fine dog,” he said, pretending he was hearing it for the first time.
“He was once less so.”
“That is often true of the best creatures.” His tone was light, but there was something beneath it that made Elizabeth’s breath catch again. Darcy looked at her then, meeting her gaze, and said, “Will you walk a little way with me?”
It was not quite a request and not quite an assumption. It was simply spoken with sufficient propriety that refusal would have required more firmness than she presently possessed.
“Yes,” she said.
He fell into step beside her, and Bruno, now restored to dignity and obedience, moved between and a bit ahead of them like an enormous, watchful escort.
For a few moments, they spoke only of the morning and the park, of the mildness of the air and the uncommon good behavior of dogs who ought by rights to know better.
Despite their seemingly commonplace nature, these remarks were imbued with the awareness that neither party articulated their most significant thoughts.
Elizabeth glanced at him once, then again.
He had changed. There could be no denying it.
Up close, the differences were clearer still—the leanness of his face, the severity lent by beard and haircut, the suggestion of old fatigue that no outward polish could entirely efface.
But he was no less himself for the change.
If anything, the man she had once known seemed burnished by suffering into something harder, more deliberate.
“London appears to suit you very well, Count Vendicarsi,” she said at last, choosing her words with care.
He looked ahead rather than at her. “Appearances are not always reliable.”
“No,” she said. “So, I have lately discovered.”
A brief silence followed.
“You are settled with your sister?” he asked.
“My sister and her husband are very good to me.”
“I am glad of it.”
“Are you?” she asked before she could stop herself.
He turned then, the look he gave her grave and searching. “Yes.” The answer was simple, but not light.
Elizabeth lowered her gaze. “Forgive me. That was impertinent.”
“No,” he said. “Only honest.”
She swallowed. “Honesty is not always easy.”
“No,” he agreed. “Nor prudence.”
There it was again—that careful edge, that suggestion of meaning beneath the surface of ordinary words.
Elizabeth dared a little further. “You speak as one acquainted with both.”
His expression altered, though not enough for anyone but her to notice. “More acquainted than I once expected to be.”
“And does prudence satisfy you?” she asked. “When honesty does not?”
He was silent for a time. “At present,” he said at last, “satisfaction is less important than necessity.” It was the nearest he had come.
Elizabeth’s heart beat faster. “Then things are not resolved?”
His gaze moved over her face, as though weighing what might safely be said. “Some are not.”
“You may confide in me,” she said, before caution could suppress the words.
He looked away first. “I know,” he said. The reply, so gentle and still so withholding, shook her more than any direct refusal might have done. They walked on.
The conversation shifted then, not because either wished it, but because it could not remain always poised so near confession.
He asked after the children. She answered.
She asked whether he had found England to his liking.
He replied with grave civility that some parts pleased him more than others.
They spoke of music, of the fatigue of constant social obligations, of the manner in which London consumed and reproduced gossip with astonishing efficiency.
There was more substance in it than mere banality, but not the intimacy she longed for. They moved close to it, circled it, almost touched it—and turned aside.
Too soon, Matlock House came into view. Elizabeth’s spirits sank at once.
He slowed. Bruno, sensing some alteration in the order of things, turned his great head and looked up at them both.
Darcy stopped at the edge of the pavement. “I will not intrude further.”
Elizabeth wished suddenly and painfully that he would. “Thank you,” she said, though for what precisely she could not have said.
He inclined his head. “Miss Bennet.”
“Sir.”
He turned to go.
Bruno whined. The sound, low and unmistakably reproachful, made Elizabeth close her eyes for the briefest instant. When she opened them again, Darcy had gone several paces, his figure already assuming once more the reserved distance of the Count of Vendicarsi.
Bruno looked from him to Elizabeth, his expression saying he found both humans unaccountably foolish.
“So do I,” she murmured, laying a hand upon his head. Then she turned toward the house, her heart no steadier than before, but her questions mounting.
He lived. That much was beyond dispute. What she still lacked was any understanding of why he had returned under another name, or what danger compelled him to maintain the deception.