Chapter 21 #2
Elizabeth did not wait to see what emerged. Instinct sent her retreating at once—two quick steps back, blind and hurried—and her heel caught hard against a root that she could have sworn was not there a moment before. The ground tilted beneath her, sudden and absolute.
She gasped and pitched backward.
“Miss Elizabeth!”
Darcy broke through the brush at speed, branches snapping against his coat as he crossed the remaining distance in a stride and a half. His hand closed on her arm and drew her upright with a force that left no room for protest, his grip firm, certain, and gone almost as quickly as it came.
She found her footing again, breath stuttering.
He stood close—too close—his chest rising sharply, his coat tugged awry by thorns, his hair disordered, his face stripped of every careful reserve.
Only then did colour climb his cheekbones, as though awareness had arrived a heartbeat late. “I beg your pardon,” he said, releasing her. “I feared he had startled someone.”
“I was startled,” Elizabeth managed, still watching the dog, who continued to sit as though awaiting further instruction. “More by you than by him. But I do not appear to have suffered lasting harm.”
Darcy exhaled. His shoulders lowered a fraction. “He should not have run ahead of me. I hardly know what has come over him of late.”
Brutus glanced back at his master, then returned his attention to Elizabeth, ears flicking as though he were listening for something only he could hear.
Elizabeth’s heart began, belatedly, to resume its proper pace.
She released her skirts and straightened, newly aware of the space between them.
Her hand, where his had briefly closed about it, retained a faint, lively warmth, as though some quick current had passed and left her more wakeful than before.
Not a shock this time. Not a painful warning. Merely… a notice.
“No harm done. He did stop and sit. I had expected… well. Some sort of excitement.”
Darcy almost smiled. The expression did not complete itself, but it altered his face enough that she noticed. “He has his own mind, but is usually not inclined to mischief.”
“As I am relieved to discover.” She hesitated, then added, “He looks as though he expects me to say something.”
“He often does. Sometimes I think he speaks the King’s English.”
Elizabeth looked down at the dog again. “Good morning, then,” she said. “You gave me quite a fright.”
Brutus’s tail thumped once against the ground.
Darcy cleared his throat. “I am truly sorry to interrupt your walk, Miss Elizabeth. I had not realised anyone would be here.”
“Nor had I expected I would be discovered in so dramatic a fashion,” she replied. “We are even.”
He inclined his head, accepting the truce. “If you would prefer not to be disturbed further, I shall take him another way.”
She surprised herself by answering too quickly. “No—please. I mean—there is no harm done. And you may as well know that I have a particular fondness for dogs. The larger the better.” She smiled—small, reflexive—and let her hand fall to Brutus’s head before she had quite decided to do so.
The dog accepted the attention gravely, as though this were the proper conclusion to their meeting today. His ears flicked once; he leaned, just perceptibly, into her fingers.
Darcy watched the exchange with an expression of polite reserve that did not quite mask relief.
“He will take that as encouragement,” he said. “You may find him following you home.”
“I should be flattered,” Elizabeth replied. “Though I imagine he already has a home superior to anything I could offer.”
“He has nothing to complain of,” Darcy said, after a pause. “But he is… discerning in those he chooses to bestow his affections on.”
Elizabeth glanced up at him. “Then I am honoured,” she said, and bent again to the dog. “You see? I pass inspection.”
Brutus’s tail answered with another dignified thump.
Darcy cleared his throat. “If you were seeking solitude, I fear we have intruded upon it.”
“I was seeking air,” she said. “Solitude was merely its most agreeable companion.” She straightened and brushed her hands together. “Besides, I find interruptions less objectionable when they arrive on four legs.”
“Yes, well… as I have said, he is ordinarily better behaved.”
Elizabeth bent again to the dog, smoothing a hand along his neck as though this were the most natural continuation of the exchange. “I should hate him if he were. Perfection is tiresome in any creature. You walk him often?”
“When I can,” Darcy replied. “Today he was terribly… insistent.”
“So I observed.”
“He disapproves of prolonged confinement. And of certain kinds of company.”
Her hand stilled on Brutus’s head. “How very discerning indeed. If only we ladies could afford to be as discerning as a giant wolfhound!”
Darcy’s gaze sharpened, though his tone remained even. “You have been distressed by certain company? Shall I hope it was not my own?”
She tilted her head. “Yours? Not necessarily. But as for others… let us say I have learned to value distance.”
“Distance?”
“And silence,” she added. “In judicious measure.”
Darcy’s mouth screwed down to an unhappy frown. “You did not appear to value silence yesterday,” he said at last. “At the Lucases’.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Yesterday was an exercise in endurance.”
He scoffed. “Indeed, it was.”
“And one is tempted, after such exertion, to ask why it is so often demanded.”
Darcy looked away, toward the line of trees beyond them. “Some subjects,” he said, “are revived not because they merit attention, but because someone wishes them to.”
“Ah.” She considered this. “Then the fault lies not in the subject, but in the persistence.”
His eyes returned to her. “You sound as though you have been listening.”
“One cannot help overhearing when a gentleman speaks with such conviction, and another denies with even more vehemence.”
“It is nonsense, Miss Elizabeth,” he retorted quickly. “The vain and silly wishes of those whose minds have nothing else to engage them.”
“Ah. So, comforting nonsense, then?”
He snorted. “If one is inclined to be comforted by it.”
She tilted her head. “I should think nonsense loses its charm when so many people insist upon taking it seriously.”
His expression tightened a fraction. “Mr Collins is fond of… consequence.”
“He is devoted to it,” she agreed. “Particularly when it can be borrowed from someone he envies.” Then, because the thought would not let her alone, she added, lightly but not casually, “He spoke as though your family were burdened with some antique charge—something weighty, venerable, and entirely inconvenient.”
Darcy’s jaw set. He did not look as if he meant to answer her.
Elizabeth waited. She did not look at him. She busied herself instead with Brutus, who had resumed a thorough examination of her gown as though convinced a secret might be stitched into the hem.
“I have heard it called many things,” Darcy said at last. “Most of them imaginative.”
“So, it is not true?”
“It is old superstition,” he replied. “Which allows people to treat it as important, regardless of its substance.”
She glanced up at him then. “Well, if it is nothing but a folk tale fit for children and old women, perhaps you may indulge me. I have a fondness for silly things.”
Darcy’s jaw fairly rippled with reluctance, as if the words were simmering forth and he was still trying to clench his teeth against them.
“I remember being told,” he said carefully, “that there was once a story attached to my family. The sort that acquires embellishment simply by surviving long enough to be repeated.”
“A legend?”
Mr Darcy made a face of distaste. “If one insists upon the word. The kind of tale that encourages people to speak of duty as though it were an inheritance one might accept without question.”
“Indeed, what a horror! Why, it sounds perfectly scandalous, sir. A ruinous tale, to be sure.”
“It was never presented to me as truth,” he corrected her, his tone controlled, dry as toast. “Only as something one was meant to admire politely when dusting the library shelves. To acknowledge, and then put aside.”
“Put aside?” she echoed. “And yet it seems determined not to stay there.”
His mouth tightened. “Others have always found it more engaging than I ever did.”
“Because the old… tales, if you will… are false?” she asked.
“Because they invite interpretation.”
She smiled, but it did not soften the inquiry. “Interpretation is hardly a crime.”
“No,” he said. “But it does tend to produce expectations. Particularly in those who interpret with an eye toward self-interest.”
“Ah.” She nodded, as though that explained everything—and nothing. “Then it is expectation, not facts themselves, that troubles you. You, Mr Darcy, do not appreciate being fodder for the gossip of those who presume to know you better than you wish to be known.”
He only frowned.
Brutus chose that moment to wedge his head firmly beneath her knees, insistent, irrepressible. Elizabeth laughed under her breath and pushed him back, then obliged him with a good scratching as her fingers found the silky softness of his ears.
“You see,” she said, glancing at Darcy, “even he resists being told what he must be.”
“He seems to resist being told anything these days,” grumbled the gentleman.
She straightened, pushing the dog back at last. “I shall ask no more, since it is clearly a subject you do not enjoy. But you must forgive me if I find it difficult to ignore a mystery that everyone else insists upon parading.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
That answer surprised her. Enough that she laughed. “Well,” she said at last, “Good day, Mr Darcy. I do hope your handsome dog will remember me fondly if I should have the good fortune to encounter him again.”
Darcy inclined his head. “I suspect he will make that determination for himself.”
As she turned back toward the path, Brutus glanced after her, then looked up at his master with unmistakable reproach.
Darcy exhaled. “Come along,” he said, his tone dropping in command. “No more nonsense from you today.”