Page 98 of Honor Requires

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.