Page 200 of Faceless

“That is a generous reading, my love. Miss Bingley exaggerated about a great many things. You shall have to forgive her now.”

“I shall forgive her one item per visit, beginning with this one. At the present rate, she may expect to be received at Pemberley in approximately fifteen years.”

He was still laughing as the carriage drew up at the front of the house. A footman handed her down. Her foot had been on the gravel perhaps three seconds when something large and dark came around the corner of the south wing at a speed that suggested several hours of waiting for the sound of wheels.

She gasped. “Falstaff!”

He was upon her before she had finished saying his name. He stopped just short of putting her on the ground — by training, or by sense, or by some last shred of the household manners he had once been able to manage — but he came up against her hard enough that Darcy had to fling an arm at her back to keep her from going down on the gravel.

His front paws went up against her hip. His great head pressed itself into the curve of her belly with the desperate proprietorship of an animal who had been required to live four months without his proper occupation and was at last permitted to resume it. He made a sound she had never heard from any dog in her life — a long, broken whine that started as a question, became a complaint, and ended somewhere in the neighbourhood of an open accusation that she had taken longer than was reasonable.

She bent over him with both hands buried in the rough at his neck.

“Falstaff. Falstaff, you wretched creature, you are absurd. Look at the size of you! You are entirely too large for this, and I am entirely too ungainly just now for this sort of nonsense. If you knock me to the gravel, your master shall blame you for it for the rest of your life. Stop. Stop, you ridiculous animal. Stop at once!”

The dog had, in the moment, no intention of stopping for any human reason whatever, and Elizabeth had no intention of meaning what she said.

Darcy was watching with the small alteration of his mouth that he had been wearing since the carriage had crossed the second bridge.

“Falstaff.”

The dog ignored him.

“Falstaff! You may be aware that I am also returned.”

The dog raised his head briefly, conceded the point in the most cursory possible manner, and put his face directly back against the curve of Elizabeth’s belly with the firm conviction of a creature who had located the centre of his universe and saw no reason to attend to its periphery.

Elizabeth tugged at the dog’s ears, then returned her hand to his. “Oh, I missed this ridiculous creature. I almost forgot how much when I was so busy missing you. How did you get him here?”

“I sent Angus an express the very morning I came back to you. They put him on a packet at Aberdeen, and he has been overland for four days, with two grooms in attendance and the kind of letters of introduction my uncle’s name has been known to procure. I think Mrs MacLeod was glad to be well rid of him, and I hope Mrs Reynolds does not leave over his arrival.”

Elizabeth raised up on her toes and kissed her husband’s cheek, then bent and kissed the top of Falstaff’s head between his ears.

“He will be a menace, and he will likely terrorise the house. I hope Mrs Reynolds is more patient than Mrs Hatchett might have been.”

Darcy laughed and gave her his arm again.

“I believe you will find her so. Come and see what she has prepared. She has been making the place ready for you for… well, far longer than was prudent, I daresay. Probably from the moment Georgiana wrote to her that I was not dead and that you existed, and I believe she is eager to meet you.”

They went up the steps together with Falstaff between them, the small white patch on the back of his head bright in the afternoon light, his entire enormous body angled against Elizabeth’s hip as though he had decided that this was now his place in the procession and would not be argued out of it.

EPILOGUE

Pemberley, November 1813

George Bennet Carlisle Darcy was nine weeks old when the first hard rains of November came.

Elizabeth had been at the window of the small parlour above the south lawn since the rain had started — not in the chair Mrs Reynolds had pressed her to take, but standing with her son in the curve of her arm and her hand on the small warm weight of the back of his head, which had become her preferred posture for considering weather. The fire had been built up. The rain was steady. The light at three in the afternoon had begun to go the colour of pewter.

The door opened behind her. She did not need to turn. She knew his step. She only touched her fingers to her lips. “He is asleep, Fitzwilliam.”

His steps softened as he approached. “I only came to look at him. To look at both of you, here in the light of the window. The most beautiful sight in the house.”

She turned then, slowly, because George was warm against her and she did not wish to disturb the warmth. Darcy came across the parlour and stood beside her at the window, and he rested his hand against the back of the child’s head, his fingers spread over her own where they lay against the small downy curve of the skull.

“How is he?”

“He has slept the entire afternoon and shall be awake the entire night, I am sure. I am, in consequence, considering being awake the entire afternoon and asleep the entire night, in defiance of him.”