Elmwood
The evening had been going so well.
Then he’d been taken aback by her murals.
He’d never seen anything quite like them, and she seemed unaware of how extraordinary they were.
Or indeed, how extraordinary she herself was.
There was something about her—beyond her obvious attractiveness—that he found deeply compelling, and it wasn’t only that she was rather awkwardly trying to seduce him.
She was so forthright with what she wanted, but also so nervous.
The contradiction intrigued him. She simmered, like a pot of mulling wine that was almost ready to drink. He was suddenly very, very thirsty.
When she disclaimed how strange and immoral her desires were, he was so delighted that it took all his self-control to continue following her lead instead of ravishing her immediately, laying her body out upon the table like a feast. When she led him out into the yard, he was amused.
Did she truly think that lovemaking out of doors was so scandalous that she had to warn him first?
Then she took him to the root cellar.
Elmwood had always prided himself on being game for anything, and while the prospect of making love among the winter vegetables was not precisely an impediment to his enthusiasm, he did wonder about the nature of her proclivities.
Was there such a thing as an anti-exhibitionist?
An inhibitionist, who could climax only in the darkest underground chamber, away from all prying eyes and ears?
He’d decided he must get to the bottom of this quandary immediately.
When he touched her, there was the initial shock of Charm meeting Charm, and then there was simple pleasure at the feel of her pressed against him and the sweetness of her lips.
All of that was gone now, like he’d been awakened from a fleeting, pleasant dream to find himself in a tent at the edge of a battlefield.
Lady Croft’s dead husband was enormous. She was a tall woman, but this man would dwarf her.
He was clearly not the sort of fellow whose wife it was wise to bed on the sly, though Elmwood probably would have done it anyway.
As a matter of fact, the enormous husband was attractive in a well-designed, virile sort of way, and Elmwood would not have been entirely averse to bedding the both of them together, if circumstances had been different—though the longer he studied the dead man, the more Elmwood realized he greatly resembled his horrible brother.
Being game was one thing; fucking someone who looked like the Western Harrier was another entirely.
Not that it mattered, given that Lord Croft was dead as a rock and Lady Croft hadn’t even briefly considered Elmwood as a lover.
The only thing she wanted from him was to use his Charm to resurrect her huge, handsome husband.
Now she was biting her lip and gazing at him hopefully.
Moments ago, he’d been biting that lip. Now his sole ambition was to extricate himself from this tomb as quickly as possible.
“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I can’t help you,” he said, turning away and making for the stairs. He needed to get out of this root cellar immediately. It was as though he could feel the press of earth around him.
“You can, and you will,” she said, stepping between him and the stairs. “Did you not hear me?”
“I heard your threat,” snapped Elmwood. This whole ordeal was beginning to chafe the tattered remains of his pride, and this proximity to a corpse was making his heart beat erratically. The image of dead limbs twitching and then lifting flooded his mind.
“I normally wouldn’t try to blackmail someone,” she said, “but I’m quite desperate. You see, with Thorgoode dead, I don’t have any claim on Croftholde.”
“Ah, so it’s a matter of property and not of undying love, then.”
She drew back as if he’d slapped her, which only stoked his aggravation. He refused to feel sympathetic when she was attempting to blackmail him!
“Some of us don’t have the luxury of putting our emotions before practicality.
People depend upon me. Please,” she said, grasping his arm with her hand.
The Charm thrill crept through his thin linen shirt, making all his arm hairs stand on end.
They were so close that her breath misted gently upon his neck.
“Lady Croft,” he said softly, “a word to the wise. You can only blackmail someone who still has something to lose.”
“A man of your position always has something to lose, even if he takes it for granted.”
He forced himself to disengage from her grasp, addressing her with all the sincerity he could muster.
“You do not know me very well, Lady Croft. If it were within my power to help you, I would, but I cannot do as you ask, no matter what you threaten me with.”
“I know you can resurrect the dead. I know they’re punishing you for doing it in Relance, but I don’t share the common belief that a Charm is inherently wrong to use. Surely you can find it in your heart to bring back a good man for a good cause.”
The sound of horses screaming filled Elmwood’s ears. He tried to steady himself on a nearby shelf, but his hands were shaking too badly.
“I must get out of here,” he gasped. He shoved the rest of the way past her, ignoring her protestations, and stumbled his way up the stairs and out into the yard. He inhaled the fresh night air deeply.
“Are you well?” she whispered, coming up behind him.
“That’s a strange thing to ask someone you’re in the middle of blackmailing.”
“Please, not so loud.”
He turned to consider her again. She was as beautiful in the moonlight as she had been in the candlelight.
“If you must give me up to the authorities out of spite, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, Lady Croft. I can’t bring your husband back to life, and nothing will change that. Now I must bid you good night.”
“But—”
He turned before she could make her objections and walked as quickly as he could manage, away from Lady Croft, her dead husband, and all the trouble they would undoubtedly bring down upon him.
Elmwood spent the next week waiting for the authorities to turn up at Merewyth and drag him away to face his banishment. Lady Croft seemed like a woman capable of whatever she set her mind to, and he had no doubt that after that humiliating incident, her mind must be set on destroying him.
But destruction didn’t come. Had her better nature won out over her desperation?
More likely she had realized that turning him in wouldn’t solve her problems—and indeed would only bring them under scrutiny, as he was fairly certain that Lord Croft’s family would be none too pleased to learn that his widow was hiding his corpse in the root cellar in hopes of resurrecting him.
Not to mention the fact that she possessed a Charm of her own.
Still, he stuck to the overgrown gardens when out walking the dog and resigned himself to having only Nimsby for company.
It left him nothing but time in which to simmer in his own regrets, and he wished with every fiber of his being that Lady Croft had wanted anything—anything—from him other than what she had asked.
His main problem at present, thwarted longings aside, was that the suggestion of him using his Charm and the resolute deadness of Lord Croft’s corpse had brought to the surface things that Elmwood had been trying very hard to shove down into oblivion.
Upon purchasing his commission in the cavalry, it had not taken long for Elmwood to realize that he was woefully lacking in any traits that might make him a good soldier, aside from the base prerequisite of having a horse and a sword and an unhealthy disregard for his own mortality.
He’d signed up because workingmen of his age were being drafted, and he’d gotten into a heated argument with his father about whether lords should be exempt, as they currently were.
To drive home his position on the matter, which was that a lord should be willing to do whatever he asks his men to do, he’d bought his commission the very next day with the empty bravado and the desire to spite his father that had accompanied all his youthful decisions.
It took very little time to understand that he had made an enormous mistake. The true weight of it came to bear the first time he ran a sword through another man and realized in an instant that all the petty slights and hurts of his youth meant nothing. His true ruination was now upon him.
That first man he killed was on foot, running madly at Elmwood’s horse.
The man’s helmet came clean off with the force of Elmwood’s blow, and his bald head—it had looked so vulnerable as the man fell to his knees—had startled Elmwood.
The entire encounter lasted a minute at most, and yet the image of that smooth, bare head came to Elmwood at the most unexpected times.
The terms of Elmwood’s commission were set for ten years.
The fact of it was, most of fighting a war was riding from one place to another, squatting in miserable, muddy tents, and waiting.
He killed as little as he could to avoid being killed himself, and he did his best to prevent the small number of men he commanded from coming to harm.
Then his company had moved under the direct command of the Western Harrier.
It was possible that there existed a more detestable man, but Elmwood doubted it.
The Harrier was cruel, bloodthirsty, and extremely tiresome.
He’d immediately reminded Elmwood of a much worse version of his father, and as such, Elmwood’s instinct was to annoy him as much as possible and generally be a thorn in his side.
That had not gone well. It had not gone well at all.