“He will take that as encouragement,” he said. “You may find him following you home.”
“I should be flattered,” Elizabeth replied. “Though I imagine he already has a home superior to anything I could offer.”
“He has nothing to complain of,” Darcy said, after a pause. “But he is… discerning in those he chooses to bestow his affections on.”
Elizabeth glanced up at him. “Then I am honoured,” she said, and bent again to the dog. “You see? I pass inspection.”
Brutus’s tail answered with another dignified thump.
Darcy cleared his throat. “If you were seeking solitude, I fear we have intruded upon it.”
“I was seeking air,” she said. “Solitude was merely its most agreeable companion.” She straightened and brushed her hands together. “Besides, I find interruptions less objectionable when they arrive on four legs.”
“Yes, well… as I have said, he is ordinarily better behaved.”
Elizabeth bent again to the dog, smoothing a hand along his neck as though this were the most natural continuation of the exchange. “I should hate him if he were. Perfection is tiresome in any creature. You walk him often?”
“When I can,” Darcy replied. “Today he was terribly… insistent.”
“So I observed.”
“He disapproves of prolonged confinement. And of certain kinds of company.”
Her hand stilled on Brutus’s head. “How very discerning indeed. If only we ladies could afford to be as discerning as a giant wolfhound!”
Darcy’s gaze sharpened, though his tone remained even. “You have been distressed by certain company? Shall I hope it was not myown?”
She tilted her head. “Yours? Not necessarily. But as for others… let us say I have learned to value distance.”
“Distance?”
“And silence,” she added. “In judicious measure.”
Darcy’s mouth screwed down to an unhappy frown. “You did not appear to value silence yesterday,” he said at last. “At the Lucases’.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Yesterday was an exercise in endurance.”
He scoffed. “Indeed, it was.”
“And one is tempted, after such exertion, to ask why it is so often demanded.”
Darcy looked away, toward the line of trees beyond them. “Some subjects,” he said, “are revived not because they merit attention, but because someonewishesthem to.”
“Ah.” She considered this. “Then the fault lies not in the subject, but in the persistence.”
His eyes returned to her. “You sound as though you have been listening.”
“One cannot help overhearing when a gentleman speaks with such conviction, and another denies with even more vehemence.”
“It is nonsense, Miss Elizabeth,” he retorted quickly. “The vain and silly wishes of those whose minds have nothing else to engage them.”
“Ah. So, comforting nonsense, then?”
He snorted. “If one is inclined to be comforted by it.”
She tilted her head. “I should think nonsense loses its charm when so many people insist upon taking it seriously.”
His expression tightened a fraction. “Mr Collins is fond of… consequence.”
