Elmwood #2
But he understood that her approval of this plan was yet one more selfish thing to want, and it was not a burden he should place on her shoulders.
She would want him to save himself, because she was kind and good, and she didn’t know.
She didn’t know what he had done, and he couldn’t tell her.
That would be the only way to make her understand, and he was too much of a coward.
He would have to lie to her. It was the only way.
“Winthrop has found another loophole. Another idea for my salvation. He begged me not to speak of it to anyone, though, so please don’t ask me to tell you the details,” he said.
She released him and stepped back, turning away. Picking up a petticoat, she pulled it on over her shift and stays and tied it at her waist. Had she believed the lie?
“Will this new salvation…allow you to remain at Merewyth? Indefinitely?” she asked, still not facing him.
Several heartbeats passed before he realized what she was actually asking, and the understanding that she did not wish him to go made those heartbeats thunder more quickly.
He had the impulse to tell her that he would stay by her always, if she wanted him.
But that would also be a lie—and not one he was willing to tell, even to forward his cause.
“Most likely not,” he said. “I suspect that I have only a week remaining here, at most.”
To his surprise, Hilde let out a sad little laugh.
“I likely have only a little more time than that before the Harrier will arrive and begin to dismantle everything I’ve spent my life building. Isn’t it strange, that we are so aligned?”
“What will you do?” he asked, longing to offer her Merewyth but knowing he could not yet do it.
“I don’t wish to think about that.”
She picked up a dress and began pulling it over her underthings.
He went to help her, and she let him, watching his hands as he smoothed her woolen seams. What he wouldn’t give to have a million more exchanges like this, helping her to dress, watching her transform from soft, vulnerable Hilde into this pinned and girded lady of the manor.
He would never grow tired of it. He would never grow tired of her.
He might not be able to have her forever, but he could possibly have her for a little longer. A week, to be precise. Their time didn’t have to end just yet.
“Hilde, is it my turn to ask a question?”
“I’ll allow it,” she said.
He sat in the chair where she had laid out her clothing and pulled her down onto his lap. She gave him a surprised gasp, then shifted her weight so that it was not on his bad hip.
“What are you doing?” she said, her voice a little breathy. He loved that he could have that effect on her.
“I’m asking the question here!”
“Sorry,” she said. She leaned into him, resting her forehead against his. “Ask me, then.”
He took her hand in his and brought it to his chest.
“Hilde, do you want to spend a week with me?”
Her head pulled back from his. “What do you mean?”
“I want you to come home with me to Merewyth. You can tell your people whatever you choose about where you’re going.
I’ll send Nimsby away. For one week, it will be just the two of us.
We will cook eggs over the hearth, read books with our feet propped up on the grate, throw dismembered badger legs for Rollo to chase, and fuck ourselves into happy oblivion whenever we’re so inclined.
Oh, and I want to watch you paint me a mural, if there’s enough time for that.
I don’t know how long it takes to paint a mural. Perhaps a small one?”
“Elmwood, I…”
“It is a yes or no answer that I’m after, Hilde. I don’t wish to hear all of your very good and sensible reasons for why it would be wrong or impossible or irresponsible. I only wish to know if you want to do it.”
She seemed to get a little lost in her thoughts.
“What happens at the week’s end?” she finally said. “What happens when you must go on to whatever Winthrop plans for you next and my life falls apart because I’ve failed to find solutions for any of my problems?”
“That is not a yes or no. But fine, let me ask you another question: Can you solve any of those problems in a week, when you were unable to do so in the many that preceded it? Would you be any worse off for having spent that time being adored in the fashion that you deserve?”
She stared at him.
“Please, Hilde. Say yes.”
She once again lowered her forehead to rest against his. “Very well, then. Yes. Yes to one week together at Merewyth.”
Elmwood went looking for Winthrop. He found him in the Hall, sampling a buffet of breakfast foods that had been laid out on the sideboard.
How had Hilde managed to arrange all this, at such short notice?
She was a marvel, and it seemed like a crime that only Winthrop was enjoying it, so Elmwood grabbed a plate. He was famished.
He sat down at the table across from Winthrop, raised a cup of hot chicory in salute, and then tucked in. Winthrop watched him eat with raised brows and chewed his own food rather pointedly.
“Well,” said Winthrop after several minutes of judgmental masticating, “are you going to explain why Lady Isobel has asked me to escort her and Miss Floret back to Neck without delay?”
Elmwood studied the food on his plate. He couldn’t say too much. He couldn’t let Winthrop realize that this was goodbye.
He couldn’t believe this would be goodbye.
“I expect Lady Isobel has come to the inevitable realization that I would not make a suitable husband.”
Winthrop set down his knife and fork. “And what did you do to convince her of that, pray tell?”
“The lady possesses all five senses. I believe she finally made use of them,” said Elmwood.
Winthrop snorted. “Really? That’s all you have to say for yourself?”
“Suffice it to say that your marriage plan is regrettably off the table.”
“Yes, well, I’ve suspected it would be since you looked at me like a man caught pants-down when I turned up with her at Merewyth.”
“You do have lots of experience catching me pants-down.”
They both chuckled, and it was like someone had stoked the coals of Elmwood’s heart. He was going to miss Winthrop. More than he could possibly say, so it was just as well that he wasn’t trying to say it.
“I’m sorry I bungled this, Win. You know I’m sorry about all of it.”
Winthrop waved his hand. “I’ve already forgiven you,” he said.
Would he forgive him for what he was going to do?
“It’s important to me that you know how much I value our friendship,” Elmwood said, speaking carefully, trying desperately not to be too sincere, lest Winthrop get suspicious. “I have loved you since that first day when you yelled at me for not taking better care of my books.”
Winthrop smiled again, but ruefully. “Well, I hated you that day, for being so careless with the thing I desperately needed and had no idea how to afford. I hated you the next day as well, when you had a brand-new volume of every text we were to study that term delivered to my doorstep. You never did tell me how you knew where I lived.”
“I have my ways,” said Elmwood, letting himself grin. He had paid an urchin very handsomely to follow Winthrop home and then had hidden around a corner with a broadside held up as a disguise the following day while he watched Winthrop receive the books.
“It took me a while to love you, but it was inevitable,” Winthrop continued.
“You were so persistent, and for all that I was a poor lad from the country, son of a disgraced lady and the artist she ran off with and married, you treated me like I was someone worth knowing. You’re the reason that I made it through those years, every day a trial by social fire, facing down all the petty lordlings who wanted to chase me off. ”
“Bunch of snotty little shits,” said Elmwood. “You’re worth all of us petty lordlings put together and tied up in a bow.”
“All I mean is that there can be no debts between us. We are too good of friends for that, Elmwood. I may get frustrated with your penchant for self-destruction, but I never begrudge helping you.”
A lump rose in Elmwood’s throat. He must not cry. He must not let on. This was wretched, but it was for the best.
“I feel the same, my friend,” he managed to squeeze out.
“Good!” said Winthrop. He pushed back his chair.
“Now, I’d best prepare for three days banging my way to Neck in a rotten public coach.
I would have preferred to send for a private hire, but whatever you said to Lady Isobel, it has inspired her to flee with all due haste.
She’s somehow arranged for us to have a ride to Hawkmouth, which is the nearest village with a coach stop.
No, don’t apologize again.” He raised a hand to stop Elmwood as he opened his mouth.
“I am resigned to it. When I get home, I will go immediately to the court library and see what new scheme I can come up with to save your sorry skin.”
“Thank you, Win.”
They embraced, and Elmwood did his best not to cling too tightly to his friend as he bade him a silent farewell.
He found Lady Isobel in the stables. She was dressed in her dinner gown and beaded cape from the night before, incongruous against the rough wood and hay that surrounded her.
She stood by the door of one of the stalls, petting the nose of Hilde’s big charger, Ward.
He went over and stood near enough for her to see him, but not so near that he was looming. “I owe you an apology. I owe you a lot of apologies,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want your apologies.”
“All the same, I must offer them. I have no excuse, save that I am old and full of faults and I should never have dragged you into my ruin of a life.”
“I am not so innocent and good as you think,” she said, her lips in a tight line. “And you are not half so terrible as you think yourself to be. Yet…you are not the man that I loved all these years, either.”