Hilde
“Ed,” she called, stepping out into the corridor. “Lord Elmwood’s not with him.”
“Right,” said Ed, pulling on his coat. “I’ll slip out the kitchen door and run over to Merewyth. Don’t worry, Lady Croft, I’ll find him.”
She grasped Ed’s arms, squeezing them. “Be careful. The Harrier may have left guards behind. When you see Elmwood…well, you know what to do. Tell him that the war has halted because of what he did. Tell him that the king may be considering a pardon.”
Ed nodded, and she kissed his cheek and let him go.
She made her way down to the Hall, bracing herself before entering. The Harrier had strolled in as if Croftholde were already his and taken a seat.
“You,” he said, and his voice was full of a new depth of loathing. It made her shiver. “Tell my brother I must speak to him at once.”
“I’m very sorry, Your Grace,” she said as reverently as she could manage, “but he is not here.”
“And where, pray tell, has he disappeared to this time?”
“He is out hunting, Your Grace,” she said.
It was the most plausible lie. Thorgoode, like his many ancestors before him, had loved hunting.
He had told her several times that it was the reason he had taken up residence at Croftholde.
Best of all, there would be no way for the Harrier to pursue him, short of haring off recklessly into the forest. His only real choice would be to wait.
“Hunting? This late in the day?”
“I expect him back shortly, Your Grace,” she said. “Would you care for some wine while you wait?” She said this very carefully, trying not to sound too eager for him to drink. “Shall I pour you a glass?”
“I am not interested in whatever swill you’ve decanted.” He studied her through narrowed eyes. “Where are Croftholde’s ledgers? I wish to see them.”
She hadn’t been expecting that. But perhaps the work of reviewing her account books might make him thirsty enough to drink the wine. Beyond that, she was proud of Croftholde’s ledgers. They balanced, and every number inside them was scrupulously accurate. He could find no fault with them.
“I can fetch them, Your Grace,” she said.
“No.” He gestured to the doorway, and she looked over her shoulder to see Francie peering around the corner of it. “She can fetch them.”
Hilde nodded at Francie, who ducked her head in a little bow and slipped away.
“Sit,” said the Harrier, gesturing at the chair across from his.
Hilde sat. They didn’t speak. The Harrier stared at her, blank of emotion. After a few unsuccessful attempts to find someplace innocuous to rest her eyes, she gave up and decided to stare back at him.
He was disheveled. No, not exactly disheveled, but he was certainly not as impeccably turned out as was his habit. He had the scruff of several days upon his chin—it was the same as Thorgoode’s—and there was something staining the sleeve of his pale coat. It was a sort of spatter or singe…
Oh, she realized with a jolt. Gunpowder burn.
There was only one person that he was likely to have fired a gun at.
Elmwood.
Dread flooded her senses.
Had he been shot? Had the Harrier murdered him? Was it already too late?
Her throat was so dry, she could hardly swallow.
“Here you are, Your Grace.”
Francie had returned and placed the Croft’s most recent ledger on the table before the Harrier.
“You’re dismissed,” said Hilde to Francie, wanting to send the girl as far away from the Harrier as possible.
Francie bobbed again, then fled.
Hilde watched as the Harrier began flipping through her careful notations.
She ought to be thinking about how to get him to drink. But all she could think was Elmwood, Elmwood, Elmwood, over and over, in frantic rhythm with her heart.
“This isn’t Thorgoode’s hand. Your steward’s?” he finally said.
“Mine,” she admitted.
“Yours?” He looked at her sharply. “I suppose I should have known. You really are running about doing all sorts of things behind my brother’s back, aren’t you?”
She bristled. How dare he say that, when he was the liar and fraud?
“Thorgoode is the one who asked me to keep the accounts.” Hilde had begun doing the accounting when his close-up vision had wavered, making tallying endless columns of figures difficult. Not that he’d ever been well suited to the task in the first place.
“Oh, I’m very certain you made it seem like it was his idea,” said the Harrier. He then went back to flipping through the book.
The minutes crawled by. Had it been half an hour? A full hour? With every second that passed, Hilde’s fear for Elmwood grew until it felt as though it were choking her. How could she ask about him without letting on that she cared or revealing that she had failed to inform on him to the Harrier?
“Did you…have any luck tracking down that man you were searching for?” she blurted out, then immediately regretted it.
He looked up at her, and it was clear as day that he knew. He knew about her and Elmwood. What had he done to Elmwood to get him to reveal what had passed between them?
Panic made the room spin.
She stood, blood pounding in her ears, and walked to the sideboard, where Cook had carefully poured the nicest bottle of wine they could find into a glass decanter and then added a healthy dose of mandrake and henbane tincture.
It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it was enough to put a horse to sleep.
If he wouldn’t drink, could she just bash him over the head with the decanter?
“I think you will find this wine acceptable, Your Grace,” she said, her voice wavering. “It is imported from Avengrace.”
She poured two glasses of wine. Then she turned to face him.
“Shall we drink a toast to your brother, Your Grace? To Thorgoode?”
The Harrier rose suddenly and crossed to stand beside Hilde.
She held out one of the wineglasses to him, trying not to let her hand shake, and to her immense relief, he took it.
She raised up her own.
“To Thorgoode,” she said. “A kind husband and a dutiful brother.”
The Harrier held his glass aloft, and she held her breath, waiting for him to drink.
His hand moved so quickly that she hardly saw it.
He slammed his glass onto the floor, and it shattered in an explosion of shards and wine.
Then he grabbed her by the braid, yanking her head back. She faltered and dropped her glass, but she hardly heard the breaking this time, the ringing in her ears was so loud.
A thousand pieces, all over the floor.
She had the revelation that Elmwood had been wrong. It was not the two of them who were broken. It was the world, with its cruelties and brutal unfairness. She wished she could tell him.
The Harrier’s breath moistened her neck and cheek as he pulled her close to him by gripping her hair tighter. He was one sharp tug away from ripping it right out of her scalp.
“How dare you put his name in your whore mouth?” he murmured into her ear.
“I know what you’ve been up to, fucking Elmwood and making my brother a cuckold.
We are going to wait right here, just like this, until he gets home, and then you’re going to describe every sordid act the two of you performed so that Thorgoode will finally see what a debased barn cat of a woman you are. ”
She struggled, trying to stomp on his foot and pull free, but her movements were wild, and he easily evaded her efforts and pulled her even closer, wrapping his free arm about her waist. Her back was now tight against him, and she could smell the gunpowder on his clothing.
The smell made her sick. Elmwood. Elmwood. Elmwood.
“Have you killed him? Is he dead?” she gasped, her voice strained from how tightly he was gripping her.
The Harrier’s mouth made a sort of clicking sound.
“If I have, will you finally be afraid of me?” he said.
Would she finally be afraid of him? She had been frightened of him since the first time Thorgoode said his name aloud with apprehension in his voice.
She had tried with all her might to craft a version of herself that would be palatable to him, and therefore be safe from him, but it had never been any use.
She was not afraid any longer. She was angry.
“No,” she spat. “Whatever you do, you will still be nothing but a vain and vindictive bully. You think that you could make Thorgoode hate me? He would never be able to hate me more than he hates you! You were cruel to him when you should have loved and protected him, and he will never forgive you for that. Never. That’s why he ran away to live out here in the Gaze with a farmer’s daughter.
It was the only way to get away from you. ”
His grip around her middle tightened so hard that she saw little stars at the edges of her vision.
“He was born weak. I remember studying him in the cradle, curled up like a little mewling grub. He should be grateful for my lessons in strength. If he isn’t, that is his failing, not mine.
” He pulled her head back farther by her braid, exposing her neck to him.
“If what you say is true, then perhaps I should give him a real reason to despise me.”
Then he wrapped his huge fingers around her throat.