Page 97 of Honor Requires

When she had returned home, she had not gone first to bed. Instead, she had gone to the drawer where she kept his miniature. The small likeness lay where she had left it, protected from light and casual handling, its painted features so familiar that for years it had been both a comfort and a torment. She took it out and held it near the candle.

The younger face looked back at her—unshadowed by beard, fuller in cheek, gentler perhaps in outward aspect. But the eyes, the brow, the line of his mouth when at rest—

“There is no doubt,” she whispered.

She sank into the chair by the fire, the miniature still in her hand.

A faint sound at the door of her chamber made her lift her head.

Bruno.

The great dog ambled toward her with the solemnity age had not entirely diminished, his brindled coat gleaming in the firelight. Though no longer quite the unruly giant puppy he had once been, he had retained enough of his old affections to know when his mistress was distressed. Without ceremony, he came to her side and placed his head upon her lap.

Elizabeth’s expression warmed at once.

“Oh, Bruno,” she murmured, setting the miniature aside and laying one hand against his broad head. “You are wiser than most of the world.”

His tail thumped once against the carpet.

She stroked him slowly, feeling the warmth and reassuring weight of him, and for a little while she spoke as though to a friend who might answer if only he possessed words enough.

“I think he lives,” she whispered. “No—I know he lives. I know it, and still, I scarcely dare believe it.”

Bruno’s ears shifted at the sound of her voice.

“What has happened to him?” she asked. “Where has he been all these years? And why should he come back in such a guise, unless something dreadful lies beneath it?”

The dog sighed and settled more heavily against her.

“I am afraid to hope too much,” she confessed. “Do you understand? I thought my grief settled. I thought I knew the shape of my life. And now he stands before me, changed and unchanged, and I do not know whether I am meant to rejoice or tremble.”

Her hand paused against the dog’s head.

“He looked at me with the familiarity of a man who knew me well. Like someone who remembered. But he said so little.”

Bruno whined low in his throat.

“Yes,” she said, with the faintest broken smile. “You think I ought to demand the truth at once. You always were a creature of action.”

She bent and rested her cheek briefly against his head.

“I cannot. Not now. He is hiding something, and I think he has reason.” She closed her eyes. “I only pray it is not too terrible to be borne.”

The fire burned lower, and the shadows danced around her. At length, Elizabeth replaced the miniature and rose. Bruno followed, unwilling to let her go unguarded even within her own chamber. When she at last prepared for bed, she did so with the strange sensation that sleep belonged to some lesser, more ordinary soul than the woman she had become in the space of two days.

Fitzwilliam Darcy lived. And the certainty of it had made the whole world unfamiliar.

The following day dawned bright and deceptively peaceful. Elizabeth had slept little, and the air outdoors seemed preferable to confinement within walls where every object reminded her of what she could not resolve. She had taken Bruno out herself, preferring the exercise and solitude of an early walk in the park to the cheerful bustle of the household. The dog, delighted by any excursion, investigated everything within reach of his nose with grave enthusiasm, pausing at intervals to inspect shrubs, boots, carriage wheels, and whatever traces the morning had left upon the paths.

Elizabeth, however, saw almost none of it. Her thoughts were elsewhere, circling the same questions with no more success in daylight than they had found in the dark. She walked with one hand upon the lead and the other tucked into the folds of her pelisse, her gaze unfocused and her mind full.

If he wished me to know him, surely he would have spoken. If he did not, why meet my eyes so plainly? And what, in Heaven’s name, am I to do with this knowledge?

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.