Hilde
When she took in the picture of him, the embarrassed flush heating her cheeks began to creep down her neck to her bosom.
He was pressed against the wall with his gold curls wild around his head, looking even more like an image of a Myran saint than he had the last time she’d seen him, except she’d never seen a Myran saint depicted without his breeches, or at least some all-encompassing robes.
She shook herself.
“Are you hurt?” she asked him.
He gave his own body a curious glance.
“Yes. Would you…mind helping me?” He gestured to a little bench that was set into the wall that buttressed the dovecote.
She offered him her uninjured arm and helped him over to it. He sank down with a wince.
Over the past week, she had gone back and forth about whether to make good on her threat and tell someone that he was hiding at Merewyth. She even considered writing to the Harrier. Perhaps if she did as he had asked, he would be more kindly disposed to her when he found out about Thorgoode.
It would serve Lord Elmwood right. Men like him always thought that the world existed solely for their pleasure and that they could do exactly as they pleased without any concern for anyone else.
He thought he could resurrect some dead people, refuse to resurrect others, kiss married women, and swan around with no regard for law or reason!
But then she thought about how shaken he had seemed.
If it was fear that was preventing him from helping her…
it could potentially be conquered. Maybe she could help him find his courage.
Perhaps, rake and blaggard though he undoubtedly was, he could be convinced to help her if she won him over to her cause.
She had convinced Thorgoode to share in her convictions, after all. Eventually.
The main problem was that she’d had no earthly idea how to reopen the conversation between them. It wasn’t as though she could march over to Merewyth and knock on the door. Yet now here he was, lacking breeches, studying her with an expression that was both pained and earnest.
Was this another attempt to bed her? The thought annoyed her beyond all measure, though she could not reasonably put her finger on why the idea of it was setting her insides on fire. With aggravation.
“If you have the impression that you can seduce me by knocking me off a ladder and onto your naked lap, you are greatly mistaken,” she said.
He had the good grace to look abashed. “I assure you, Lady Croft, I had no such intention. You made your feelings on that matter very clear, and I make it a point of pride to only bed enthusiastic parties.”
He sounded sincere, and her annoyance faded, though it was replaced by some other uncomfortable sensation that she didn’t care to examine.
“Well, then, what are you doing here?”
He sat up straighter, clearly mustering his dignity, though it was severely compromised by the lack of breeches and the straw in his hair.
“If you must know, I was having a nap in your tower,” he snapped.
“Do you mean my dovecote?”
“Is that what it is? Huh. Mystery solved.”
This last bit he seemed to be saying to his dog, who was snuffling around at his feet.
“Have you never seen a dovecote before?” she asked, baffled as to how such a thing was possible. Croftholde’s may have fallen into disuse, but other estates must still have them, surely.
He shrugged, then winced, shifting his position on the bench.
“I was never really one for country walks, in my former life. I’m afraid I don’t know a dovecote from a chicken coop.
” He pressed one hand to his hip, rubbing it tentatively.
He must have been hurt rather badly, and no wonder, when she had landed on him like a falling tree.
“Where is your cane, Lord Elmwood?”
He gestured to the dovecote with his chin.
“In there, along with my coat and my dignity.”
She smiled at his comically beleaguered tone without meaning to.
“And your breeches?”
He raised a rueful eyebrow.
“They’re back at Merewyth. And, now that I think on it, perhaps I left my dignity there as well.”
“I think we both misplaced that the last time we met,” she said, meaning it as a truce, and then she went and retrieved his things from the floor of the dovecote. As she handed them to him, he frowned at her.
“I liked it better when you were implying I was a lecher and telling me to unhand you. How am I supposed to stay angry with you when you’re fetching me things and being kind?” he said.
“Why do you want to be angry with me?”
“Well, I generally make it a principle to be angry at people who blackmail me.”
He did have a point. She dropped down next to him on the bench.
“I haven’t told anyone you’re at Merewyth,” she confessed.
“Why not?”
“I suppose…I didn’t want to.”
“I must tell you, no amount of fetching me things and being kind will get me to change my mind about using my Charm. So if you’re going to give me up, I’d rather you just did it and put me out of my misery.”
That last bit he said so plaintively that a wave of sympathy swelled up inside her, but it was chased by annoyance. He was far too privileged a man to indulge in self-pity.
“I’ll take that under consideration,” she said. “If I may offer some advice in return, you might try being appreciative for what you have instead of dwelling on how miserable you are about what you’ve lost.”
He ran his hands through his curls, brushing out several stray pieces of straw.
She thought he’d lost the black velvet ribbon that had barely tied them back at dinner, but then he reached into his coat pocket and produced it, attempting to apply it to his hair.
Unfortunately, his hands were shaking badly, and he couldn’t seem to tie the ribbon.
Was he in so much pain, after catching her, that it made him shake?
Without thinking, she reached over and took the ribbon from him, and with a swift and competent movement, she wrapped it around the unruly ends of his hair and bound them up with a knot. She ignored the Charm thrill as her fingertips brushed the nape of his neck.
He was so close and intent, she found she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“You don’t know what I’ve lost,” he said very quietly.
She withdrew and scooted farther away on the bench.
“The midwife in the village is very good with herbs,” she said. “She might be able to give you something for the pain you’re in.” She hoped he wouldn’t be offended. Some men were, in her experience, reluctant to discuss their ailments.
He didn’t seem offended. “They gave me some sort of syrup for my hip, but it made the nightmares worse, so I stopped taking it,” he said, his serious tone replaced with something lighter, even though what he was saying seemed no less dire.
He surprised her with his frankness. Most people did not mention having nightmares to near strangers.
“You accuse me of ingratitude, but I do not think you understand the depths to which I have fallen. I am a creature to be pitied. All I have left is Merewyth, and even that technically belongs to this intolerable dog and apparently is to be rented out from under me with no notice whenever it pleases my steward, whom I’m frankly slightly afraid of.
I had to flee my chambers as you see me, lest I be recognized by a pack of fortune-climbing merchants and lawyers who fancy sleeping in my bed while they play at being lords, and now here I am, spilling my guts out to a woman who’s blackmailing me. ”
“Merewyth belongs to your dog?”
“Technically, yes. And he is my ward.”
“So your ward, the dog, allowed Mr. Nimsby, whom you are pretending is your steward, to rent out Merewyth, unbeknownst to you?”
“He’d better not have been in on it, the ungrateful wretch.”
He said this last bit looking down at the dog rather fondly, she thought, while the little beast wagged his entire body and gazed back up at him with an expression of complete devotion.
“Goodness. So that’s why you were sleeping in my dovecote?” she said.
“Yes.”
She eyed the dovecote. It was practically a ruin, and she could tell from the towering clouds forming in the east that it would rain that night.
It would be cruel to leave anyone to rough it in such weather, even a rakish, insufferable, self-pitying earl.
If she helped him…well, as Cook always said, if you want the cat to stay and catch mice for you, first you have to ply him with some cream.
“I think I can be of assistance in regard to your lodgings, at least,” she said. “Unless sleeping in the ruined dovecote is fulfilling some sort of pastoral longing?”
He grinned.
“Pastoral longings? Why, Lady Croft, are you flirting with me again?”
“I have never flirted with you.”
“I was only jesting.” His expression sobered. “I appreciate your offer of assistance, but I still won’t Charm your husband, even if you go on being kind to me.”
“Calm yourself,” she said. “I haven’t switched from blackmail to bribery.” She didn’t owe him the truth of her intentions. And if her kindness made him reconsider…well, wouldn’t everyone be getting what they wanted?
He sighed.
“Even if you had, I’m in no position to refuse.”
Rud and Janey’s cottage was empty, as Hilde knew it would be.
A few strategic words from her had put a stop to Rud’s grief-stricken drinking and fighting in the village, but instead of drying out, he had started making the journey farther afield to drink and fight off his memories of Janey where no one would deny him.
When it had come to Hilde’s attention that morning that no one had seen him for several days, she asked Han to try to find him in whatever ditch he had fallen into.
It would likely take her sister a couple of days to track him down.