His countenance somehow assumed a look of unashamed rakishness, though she could not see that he had moved a muscle. “Unfailing.”
“Which is yours?” she enquired upon entering the stables. Her eyes had yet to adjust to the gloom within; thus, she saw only the great looming silhouette of the steed to which Darcy led her—somewhat predictably the largest, blackest shadow in the stalls. “I ought to have guessed. Very impressive. He is obscenely fast, I presume?”
“He can be, though I rarely require any undue speed of him.”
She grinned at such an endearingly reasonable answer but concealed her amusement by turning to stroke the behemoth’s muzzle. “What is his name?”
The ensuing pause stretched long enough to prompt her to look askance at Darcy. He was regarding her as though she had enquired whether the creature wore a dress to church on Sundays.
“It does not have a name,” he stated. “It is a horse.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “You have not named your horse?”
“I have not.”
“How, then, do you refer to it?”
“AsMy Horse.”
“And my mount?” she enquired incredulously. “How ought I to refer to that?”
He shrugged, beginning to look a little offended. “The grey.”
“I see. And that one, I suppose, is the white?”
Darcy replied very concisely that it was.
“And that, I suppose, is the brown?”
“Chestnut. What point are you attempting to make, exactly?”
“None,” she replied with affected innocence. “I am only surprised. I thought all great men gave their horses grand, evocative names from antiquity.”
He huffed indignantly and reached to stroke His Horse’s muzzle. “It is a pretentious fashion. A horse is a horse.”
“What of your hunting dogs? Do they not have names?”
“Only such as were required by the kennel master for training—not mawkish sobriquets.”
Elizabeth smirked. “Your house has a name.”
He narrowed his eyes at her in a gesture that would have been alarmingly similar to his aunt’s were it not for the faint curl of his lips. “No, it has a description. Pemberley derives from The Barley Hill.”
“Of course it does. Silly me.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a groom and the general business of getting mounted and underway. About a half of an hour of comfortable conversation and uncomfortable riding passed, and they lapsed into blissfully contended, if contemplative, silence. Despite her undesirable perch, the scenery was every bit as spectacular as Darcy had promised, and Elizabeth beheld it all with delight. Left too long without occupation, however, her spirits soon returned to playfulness.
“Will you name our children similarly?’ she enquired presently.
Darcy made no answer but sent her a wry glance.
“The dark-haired one,” she continued, grinning. “The brown-eyed one. The tall one. God forbid we should have a short one, lest you label him Runt.”
“Perhaps you should walk, after all.”
Laughing heartily at being so advantageously vindicated, Elizabeth promptly slid from her saddle. Her feet had barely touched the ground before Darcy had leapt from his horse, crossed the several yards between them and snatched her into his embrace.
“God, I love you, woman!”
