Elmwood #3
“Do try not to find some new way of endangering yourself,” Elmwood called after him. “If you fall into another crevasse, I’m going to leave you there.” The dog did not appear to have heard him and disappeared around the other side of the wall. Elmwood shook his head and followed.
Rollo had discovered the structure’s door. It was hanging ajar, so Elmwood gave it a shove and let the both of them inside, rather hoping he’d been wrong about the badgers and stoats.
Inside, the building was even more peculiar.
Rather than the bare stone he expected, the rounded walls of the tower were riddled with a series of holes that wound round and round, from floor to ceiling.
It gave him a shiver, as he had the sudden impression of a thousand eyes regarding him and finding him wanting.
He went over and peered into one of the holes. Rollo had the same idea and stuck his entire snout into one close to the floor. Seeing nothing inside, Elmwood put his hand in, discovering that it was a small compartment with a rounded back.
“Did they store something in these, I wonder?” said Elmwood. Rollo snorted.
The mystery of the holes being unsolvable, Elmwood took stock of the room. It was dry, protected from the wind, and not full of people who had rented his bed. He dearly wished he had a bed that he could return to with all haste. His head ached, his hip throbbed, and he longed to close his eyes.
“This will do,” he said to Rollo. There was even a pile of straw in one corner.
So Elmwood laid his coat down upon it to protect his lamentably bare ass and legs from scratches, then gingerly lowered himself onto it.
Rollo sat down beside him and cocked his head skeptically.
“In the war, we learned that when the enemy routs you from your camp, you sleep when and where you get the opportunity.” Rollo leaned his head to the other side and wagged his tail. “Fine. You take first watch.”
Elmwood woke for the second time that morning, disoriented by the rows of holes in the tower’s walls above him.
It was still light outside, which he knew from the sunlight filtering down through the little windows way up at the tip-top of the tower.
Rollo was sound asleep at his feet, clearly having abandoned his watch. Outside, someone was…swearing.
He nudged Rollo with his foot. The dog opened one eye, gave him a withering look, and then closed it again.
“Some watchdog you are,” Elmwood whispered. “Very well, I’ll investigate myself.”
He crept toward the door, listening more closely to the voice. It was feminine, low and pleasant, even as it proclaimed the most appalling and unintelligible curses with a faint country drawl.
“Bloody saints and kings and all their fucking fingers and asses put together!”
Very curious indeed, he peered around the edge of the door.
Leaning against the side of the tower was a ladder. Halfway up the ladder, skirts hiked up and showing a good deal more than a flash of thighs, was Lady Croft. She had an enormous pair of shears that she was operating with both hands, madly hacking at the overgrown vines that covered the tower.
“Seven shitting Charmers and their mothers’ curly—”
He never got to find out what was curly, because Rollo chose that moment to come bursting out from behind him, yapping madly.
Several things happened all at once. Lady Croft jumped in surprise, pulling the ladder dangerously far away from the wall.
It then caught in the vines she had half trimmed, and for a breath, it seemed as though she might right herself, but then the whole thing tipped again and she went tumbling off the ladder.
Elmwood, forgetting his hip as well as his state of undress and his senses, rushed forward to catch her.
It was not as bungled a rescue as it might have been, given the circumstances.
The shears went flying but didn’t impale either of them.
He managed to reach her in time, and she fell mostly into his arms, but he staggered back as her full weight hit him.
His injury aside, he didn’t have the sort of build that lent itself to catching falling women who were nearly his equal in height.
He might have fallen himself then, taking Lady Croft down with him, but as they tipped, the force of her weight pushed him about and back against the stone wall, catching them both.
The pain of thumping into the stone would have bothered him, but he was too distracted by the excruciating stabbing in his hip as he struggled to brace himself and keep them from tumbling any further.
Then, somehow, all pains fled from his mind when he realized that Lady Croft was now sprawled in his arms, shoving him against the wall with the soft press of her body.
His mind focused intently on the way her hands grasped at his arms and her breath came in little surprised gasps against his neck, where her cheek had come to rest. His own hands were wrapped about her waist. Her breasts and stomach were pushed firmly against his front, and he might have paused to fixate on that, but then he realized her bare thigh, exposed by the twisting of her tucked-up skirts, was pressing oh so warmly against his own, the Charm thrill fizzing ebulliently between them.
What a time to not be wearing breeches.
“Ow,” said Lady Croft, pulling back slightly from his accidental embrace.
Involuntarily, he gripped her waist harder, as if they were still in danger of falling.
Her braids had tumbled down from their crown, and she seemed younger with them framing her lovely face.
“What are you…wait, are you naked? Unhand me at once!”
Anger flared up deep inside him, which was curious.
He didn’t often get angry. But right now, he was very angry indeed at this righteous, vexing woman.
She had rejected him most coldly, threatened to blackmail him, then proceeded to keep him in suspense for a week, and now she was accusing him of being untoward when he’d only been trying to prevent her from breaking her silly neck.
What was she doing halfway up a ladder in the first place?
He quickly released her waist. It didn’t really do anything to dislodge her, as their legs were still twined together.
“That’s the best I can do, Lady Croft,” he said crossly, “for you are on top of me.”