Page 20 of Yearning

He talked about the dog he’d had as a child, the dog he had loved beyond all measure, who he had rambled with all over the country estate where he grew up, who he would feed from the table, to the dismay of his nursemaids. But that dog had died when he was a young man. “Likely when I was about your age,” he said to her, tilting his head.

“Likely,” she said, and she was flirting with him, which was madness, really, just madness. What did she want with flirting with a man who was too old for her?

He told her about the dog he’d had after that, a hunting dog who used to sleep at his feet in front of the fire, who would listen to all his problems with large, large eyes, wise eyes, he said, the wise doggy eyes of one who loves without question. “Of course, you would say that she never said anything back, I suppose.”

“I might,” she said. “But perhaps we don’t want conversation when we are telling our troubles. Perhaps we only want people to listen.”

“What does a young woman like you know of troubles?”

She sighed. “Perhaps nothing, really. They are perhaps not my troubles.”

“Now, I am curious,” he said.

“It is no secret, really. I am betrothed to a man who has been badly injured, and our lives together will not be anything like I imagined. We shall never have children. He will not walk again. We shall likely not be able to travel overmuch or to… to… well, anyway, it would be one thing if he weren’t so awful to me lately. He wishes rid of me, he says, and I think he is only saying cruel things to me because he thinks to save me from a life with him. But sometimes I wonder if he really is simply done with me, if he doesn’t want me at all anymore.”

Hellig regarded her, his gray-streaked brows furrowed. “You are Mr. Darcy’s intended then.”

She nodded. “You have heard about his accident.”

“I have heard,” said Hellig, and his lips turned white in the way that men did when they talked of him.

It made her want to laugh, really.

The dinner party devolved into a whist party, but Elizabeth was not interested in playing, because she did not have a great deal of coin to wager away on the activity, so she would have left, but Jane was eagerly betting away at a table along with her husband, so Elizabeth ended up going out on a terrace for a breath of fresh air.

Well, not fresh air, actually. It was London air. But she felt cooped up indoors, and she stayed out there, gripping a metal railing, trying to gather her thoughts.

“Miss Bennet?”

She looked up. It was the baron. “My lord.”

He stepped outside. “Am I intruding?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I find myself always a bit pleased to see you, I have to say.”

“Always? We have met but twice.”

“True,” she said. “I suppose you could quite surprise me soon with your sheer badness. Have you some hidden awful side to you?”

He let out a long, low laugh. “Oh, all of us do, I think. But I am not a young man anymore, and I have little to get excited about. Without excitement, there’s little disappointment, I find.”

She smiled. “That seems likely true.”

“I don’t know if anyone has told you this, but you are under no obligation to marry a man who is, by all accounts, rather mutilated.”

“Oh, trust me, I have heard this.”

“Of course you have. There must be all manner of men lined up, gazing upon you, saying, ‘Jilt him for me, Miss Bennet.’” He was implying that he was one of those men.

She didn’t want to acknowledge that there was any sort of anything between them, she found. She wanted to pretend it was not there. She could brush this comment aside, pretend it was not an undercurrent here. She could. But they were alone, and no one could even overhear. “I have considered ending it with him. But you see, sir, if I did, I should want children, and…”

“Well, how many?” he said.

Her lips parted.

He laughed. “I can still father children, Miss Bennet.”

“O-of course you can.” Had she known this about men? She supposed she had. She squared her shoulders.