Elmwood
Nerves were for fighting battles where people tried to rip you to shreds with flying lead balls and extremely pointy sticks.
Nerves were for fording rivers of uncertain depths on horseback.
Nerves were for openly defying your commanding officers when their orders were insupportably cruel and stupid.
Nerves were manifestly not for tidying up your house in expectation of a romantic dalliance, especially for someone you had already very contentedly dallied with.
Yet he felt as though someone were trying to squeeze his heart into sausage casings.
Hilde would arrive at Merewyth, take one look around, and immediately realize he was a useless ass.
She wouldn’t want to spend one hour with him, let alone a whole week!
“Use these to pay for a room at an inn for a week. Or pocket the money and stay wherever it is you disappear to when you’re tired of dealing with me. Don’t tell me you’ll be homesick; you haven’t spent two consecutive nights here since I arrived.”
Nimsby inspected the spoons. “Going to get arrested for thieving if I try to sell these,” he said, sounding annoyed.
And now Rollo was barking. His antics were going to annoy her so much that she’d turn right around and walk back to Croftholde before he could say—
“Elmwood?”
Fuck, it was her.
Elmwood made his way to the front hall, where he found Hilde.
She was wearing the same dress he’d helped her into earlier that morning, and the intimate knowledge of every garment that stood between him and her bare skin made him almost dizzy with longing.
Her hair was pulled back into a single thick braid that hung over her shoulder like a rope, and as he watched, she unpinned her straw hat and set it on the table by the door, along with a large basket that she carried.
He was struggling to find the right words to greet her when Rollo burst forth, beside himself with excitement to see Hilde, and wriggled around the hem of her dress, his tail flailing. Indeed, he was so excited to see her that he pissed a little on the floor. Elmwood sympathized.
“Sorry about that. We’re very pleased you came. I mean, he’s excited that you’re here. I’m excited that you’re here! Not as excited as Rollo. I mean, I’m as excited, but I wouldn’t piss on your shoes.”
He stopped talking. What was wrong with him?
He wished she would laugh at him. If she did, he’d know things were well between them.
She stood there, clasping and unclasping her hands. Was she nervous, too? It should have comforted him, but for some reason, it only terrified him more.
“Well, I suppose we should clean it up,” she said.
“What?”
“The dog’s mess.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t even occurred to him, but there was certainly no one else to do it. “I’ll see if I can find a cloth.”
There was an awkward shuffle where he tried and failed to find one, and in the end, he used an old raggedy shirt that was probably an antique, fumbling with it as he struggled to bend down with his bad hip.
Then, to his absolute horror, she took the shirt out of his hands and finished the job for him.
Next, it had to be decided what was to be done with the soiled shirt, and in short, it was the least romantic series of events to ever transpire.
She was so quiet. Away had flown their easy rapport, and the painful silences stretched between them and made Elmwood want to throw himself off the roof. Did she wish she hadn’t come?
“You don’t have to stay,” he blurted out.
“I…” she said, staring at him like a hare in a trap.
“I only mean to say…I won’t insist that you stay. You can go, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want that,” she said quickly, stepping closer to him. Her breath teased at his neck, and his body remembered with a shiver what it felt like to have her mouth on his skin.
“You don’t want that?” he repeated foolishly.
She moved even closer, so that her cheek pressed the edge of his jaw and her long eyelashes grazed his skin. Then she whispered, very close to his ear, “Is there nothing you want, Lord Elmwood?”
He wrapped his arms around her, then took two steps forward, moving her with him.
She came to an abrupt stop, her bottom hitting the edge of the table.
She pulled back a little, then hopped up to sit on top of it.
Her legs emerged from under her skirts, and he ran his hand up one perfect, wool stocking–encased calf.
Her thighs twined around his, pulling him forcefully to her. He gasped.
“Too rough?” she asked, brow crinkling.
“Not too rough,” he replied, and then kissed her. Her lips were so perfectly soft that it felt as if Merewyth spun around him. His mind was addled with need for her. He ought to focus, to anticipate her desires and give her what she wanted.
But she made him too wild. All he could think about was how much he wanted to have his mouth on her again. It drove every other thought out of his head.
Quite overcome, he lowered himself, ignoring the pain that rasped through his hip.
It was easy to ignore in favor of the softness of her bare thighs.
He rubbed his cheek along one, relishing the little moan she made.
She had walked through fields and forest to get to Merewyth, and she smelled beguilingly of green and growing things and the musky spring earth.
She moaned again, louder, as he buried his face in her.
“Do you think,” she gasped, her fingers tangling in his hair, “that if I ask you to take me to your bed, Mr. Winthrop will turn up again and try to marry you off to someone else?”
He reluctantly withdrew his mouth.
“I’ll bar the door.”
Hilde fell back onto his bed, her dress discarded on the floor, her petticoats bunched up to her thighs.
He followed her, prowling between her legs and then stopping to lift one of her feet and unlace her boot.
He pulled it gently from her foot, tossing it over one shoulder, and then reached up to the plump and pliant skin above her knee and untied the twine—she ought to have ribbons—that she had used as a garter, then rolled the stocking down her calf, kissing the flesh revealed in its wake.
Her fingers were clutching at the bedclothes, he noticed with satisfaction.
He did it again to the other leg, and then her hands abandoned the bedclothes in favor of his shirt, using her grip to pull him up her body.
He made to loosen the ties of her stays, but she grabbed at his wrist. He grunted in protest. When she didn’t release him, he sought out her eyes and found that she was looking at him with a hungry expression that made his pulse throb in several locations.
“You’ve already seen me. I want to see you now,” she said.
Was it going to be this maddening every time she told him what she wanted?
He slowly leaned back, sitting between the peaks of her knees. There was only his shirt to manage on top. He slid off his braces, then unbuttoned the falls on the front of his breeches so that he could untuck the long hem of his shirt. Using both hands, he pulled it up and over his head.
He waited, letting her inspect him. She seemed to be enjoying it.
“Should I continue?” he asked. Unable to resist the urge to touch her, he ran his fingers down the insides of her thighs on either side of him. She shivered.
Then she sat up, tucking her knees underneath her, and knelt next to him so they were face-to-face.
She placed her hands on his bare chest and ran them down his front, lingering on his stomach and the pale hair that swirled there.
He closed his eyes, because her touch overwhelmed him, and he didn’t know what to do about that.
“It’s strange,” she said. “I had assumed that touching you would be less maddening once the Charm thrill wore off. I even thought that maybe it was the reason that I wanted so badly to touch you in the first place, against all my better sense. Some sort of Charmer madness. Now the thrill is quite dead, and yet I find that I want to touch you more and more, and it addles me increasingly each time. Can you explain that?”
He lifted her hands to his shoulders, then brought his own to the back of her stays and began once again to unlace them. This time, she let him.
“I’m afraid I cannot, but I propose we investigate the matter together.
” Pulling out the ends of the laces, he let the stays fall to the bed.
He drew her down onto her back and settled himself over her, feeling the press of her nipples through the thin linen of her shift, and then the paltry amount of blood that had been operating his brain was rushing to his—
“Wait,” she gasped, pushing at him, her whole body suddenly rigid.
He immediately withdrew. She lay there, her breath fast and shallow.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry, I…” She sat up, pulling away from him further.
What had he done?
“Please, Hilde. Don’t apologize. Just tell me what I did wrong.” He hated how desperate he sounded, but he was desperate!
“It’s foolish,” she said, rubbing at her face.
He risked clasping one of her ankles in his hand and stroked it with his thumb, relieved that she didn’t pull away.
“If it was something I did…”
“It’s not you,” she said. He remained silent but continued rubbing her ankle, trying not to go half-mad with worry over how he had managed to bungle this.
She seemed to struggle with what to say, then blurted out, “I was reminded of him. Of Thorgoode.” Her voice cracked, and his heart cracked along with it.
“I felt angry that I was thinking of him when I didn’t want to, and also…
Oh, Elmwood, I think I must be the most terrible widow in all the long history of widows.
My husband has not even had a proper burial, yet here I am. ”