Hilde #2
“Thank you. News of his death has not been…widely circulated. You see, in the wake of it, I became acquainted with Lord Elmwood. He and I have come to…something of an arrangement. Do you understand my meaning?” She wondered if she ought to be blunt and come out and say that Elmwood had agreed to resurrect Thorgoode, but it seemed somehow improper to say it out loud.
The honesty with which she and Elmwood had shared the truth of their Charms was an anomaly, prompted entirely by Elmwood’s brazenness.
One condemned Charms or one looked the other way, but one certainly didn’t discuss them casually with a person one had only just met and hoped to engage as a solicitor.
Surely, he would understand what she meant.
He knew about Elmwood’s Charm, after all.
Winthrop pinched the bridge of his nose and frowned. That seemed like a good sign that he had understood her. Undoubtedly, he was not keen on the idea of Elmwood using his Charm.
“May I be frank, Lady Croft?” he said.
“Of course.”
“I must admit that I find this conversation a bit…distasteful. I understand that in the case of the sudden death of a loved one, people sometimes make rash decisions.”
“Oh no, please understand that this is not a rash decision on my part. Not at all. It is carefully considered.”
Winthrop sighed.
“Regardless, I don’t understand why you are informing me of it, or what legal support I could possibly provide to such an escapade!”
She knew she needed to proceed tactfully. “You are, I assume, familiar with Lord Elmwood’s…ability.”
“Of course I am aware of his ability. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times it has inconvenienced me or the number of scrapes I have had to extricate him from as a result of it. What surprises me is that a nice country widow like yourself is not shocked by the idea of it!”
She had no wish to explain that she was not shocked because she herself had a Charm.
“Mr. Winthrop, have you never been in a situation where the only recourse is to do something that perhaps doesn’t align with conventional moral standards but is ultimately for the greater good?”
“The greater good?” He sounded appalled.
This was what came of discussing Charms with someone who didn’t have one.
To people who feared and hated the very existence of such power, there was no reason good enough to use it.
“I don’t know what to say, Lady Croft. I wish you wouldn’t entangle yourself with Elmwood.
He is in a precarious position, and I can’t endorse you encouraging him to indulge in old habits that will place everything I am trying to do to help him at risk!
He is my oldest and dearest friend, and my priority is to protect him, even from his own imprudent impulses. ”
“I think that your friend is a man grown, and capable of deciding for himself the path that he wishes to take.”
“You don’t know him very well if you think he is capable of choosing any but the most disastrous path. His decisions are constantly compromised by his emotions.”
“His actions may seem wrong to some, but I for one will not condemn him for them. I don’t wish to beg you, Mr. Winthrop, but I am quite determined. You see, to complete the deed in full, we will require your assistance…”
“Lady Croft!”
“I assure you, we would keep the matter quite secret. Just between the three of us.”
“The three of us?” He was looking at her with an appalled expression. “Lady Croft,” he said finally, in a firm tone, “I know that Elmwood can be quite…magnanimous with his abilities, as you refer to them, but…”
It was at this inopportune moment that Elmwood returned to the study. Winthrop stood abruptly, and Hilde jumped. Elmwood seemed too preoccupied with his own thoughts to notice how suspiciously they were behaving.
“Lady Croft. Are the other ladies…?”
“They’re in the kitchen taking some refreshment.”
“Curse it all, where did Nimsby get to? I haven’t the faintest idea how to make the house suitable to host them. I went to see if I could hunt down any clean linens, but I can’t find so much as a handkerchief.”
“My sister saw Nimsby in the village earlier,” said Hilde. “Odds are good he’ll make it back here eventually, but in the meantime, you’ll need help. When I get home, I will send over my footman, Ed.”
Elmwood scowled at Winthrop. “You see, this is why you don’t turn up in the middle of the night with unexpected ladies!”
Winthrop immediately strode past them both, making for the doorway. He stopped in it to look back at them, a stern expression on his face. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something, then closed it again, shook his head, and departed.
Hilde clenched her jaw as she watched him go. Why was she constantly falling short at enlisting the help she so badly needed?
“I didn’t think that scolding him would drive him out of the room,” said Elmwood. He looked pained. She wondered if it was his hip bothering him and fought the urge to suggest he sit down. She turned a chair toward him instead.
He crossed to her, but instead of sitting in the chair, he leaned back onto the desk, as he had done the last time they’d been alone in this room, and the impulse to once again press him against it was deeply vexing.
“Your Lady Isobel is very beautiful,” she blurted instead.
To her surprise, he reached out and took her hand in his. There was no Charm thrill between them at all now, only the skin of his palm against her own, and somehow, the sensation was more thrilling than any Charm could ever be.
What was the matter with her?
“I didn’t know I was betrothed,” he said softly. “She doesn’t…I want to express to you that whatever feelings she has for me, I do not share them.”
“What a cruel thing to say, Lord Elmwood,” she said, the skin on her chest and face burning. “She seems like a sweet girl.”
“I’m sure she is a sweet girl, but I barely remember meeting her, let alone proposing.
” He ran his free hand through his disheveled curls.
“What I mean to say is that regardless of how it looks, I was not planning to make love to you while knowingly engaged to another. I wish Win had not brought her here, but he says marriage to her is to be the remedy for my banishment. Marriage, can you imagine it?”
His words rattled around unpleasantly inside her chest. She had no desire for him to know that, so she pulled her hand out of his grasp and backed away, putting the chair between them.
“Lord Elmwood, your marital status is of no significance to me, I assure you.” She could tell that hurt him by the way his chin tucked back. “I wish you and Lady Isobel much happiness.”
He made a dismissive noise in his throat. “As if marrying a girl like that could bring me any happiness.”
“She’s hardly a girl. She’s four-and-twenty, at the least. I married Thorgoode when I was nineteen, and he was older than you are now.”
“Well, unlike some people, I have no desire to wed someone more than a decade my junior. How could that possibly be a good match?”
“You didn’t seem to have had these compunctions about wooing her in the first place.”
“Seducing someone when you’re drunk off your tits and grieving your horrible father is quite different from marrying them sober to escape the consequences of your own poor decisions!”
He had the decency to blush, at least, as they both soaked that in.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know, Lord Elmwood.
I can only assure you that Thorgoode was the best of husbands, and our age difference was of no consequence.
I hope for Lady Isobel’s sake that you can rise to the occasion as he did.
” For some reason, it felt as though she were lying, even though she most definitely was not.
“I don’t wish to talk about your dead husband!” growled Elmwood, throwing up his hands.
“It is the only subject I wish to discuss with you henceforth, Lord Elmwood. You had finally agreed to help me by using your Charm on him, but now it wouldn’t be right to hold up my…
part of the bargain. I cannot go to your bed knowing you are betrothed.
It was one thing to compromise myself, but we must agree that Lady Isobel deserves better. ”
“I see,” he said. “So you were not opposed to fucking me to coerce me into doing what you want, despite the fact that I have told you repeatedly that what you want is abhorrent, but now that I have a fiancée, you’d prefer I jump straight to the abhorrence without the benefit of the fucking first. Do I have that right? ”
Hilde drew back, physically repelled by his words.
“I wasn’t suggesting that…I only mean…perhaps if you told me what happened in Relance, I might understand why…”
“I have told you why I’ve refused you, again and again and again, but you will not listen!”
He was not shouting, but his hands were shaking.
She felt as though she were shredding around the edges, like an unraveling tapestry. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to touch his face and tell him that she understood, that she would never ask again. She wanted to kiss him.
Clutching the back of the chair in front of her was all that was stopping her, and she clung to it for dear life. The only thing that truly mattered was Croftholde.
“Will you do it anyway?” she asked him, squeezing the chair so hard that one of her fingers ripped through a thin spot in the fabric. “Please?”
He pulled away from the desk, drawing himself up to stand straight.
“No, Lady Croft. I will not.”
“Then…then we have no further business.”
He nodded, slowly, and she still could not read his face.
“I will bid you good night. And farewell.”
There was nothing more to say, so she left Merewyth with as much dignity as she could muster.