“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. Somewheresouth 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 headphoneswillbe 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.
