Elmwood #2
“If it’s part of the Harrier’s estate…”
“It isn’t!” She leaned forward. “It was sectioned off and granted to Thorgoode by their grandfather.”
Elmwood frowned. It was very unusual for any part of an estate that old to be partitioned off at the pleasure of a youngest son. Unprecedented, even.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, Thorgoode explained it to me,” she said.
Telling the sad tale of the cow thieves seemed to have sobered her.
“You see, we had planned to change the terms of his holdings so that when he passed, Croftholde would be turned into freeholds. It would no longer be any lord’s domain.
But he never had time to set it up with his lawyer.
” She leaned forward again. “That’s why I need him back.
So he can arrange things. So that Croftholde can be free. Charming him is the only way.”
Elmwood tilted back in his chair, as if getting farther away from her could distance him from this madcap scheme. The buzz of the drink fell away.
“There is always another way.”
“Perhaps there is always another way for a lord to whom everything was given without him even needing to ask. For some of us, a Charm can mean the difference between living through winter or starving to death.”
“I think perhaps it would be better to die as part of nature’s plan than to corrupt it and live.”
“What an easy thing to say,” she said. “But not so easy to accept it when death comes knocking, is it? And there’s no shame in that. Nature made us this way, with Charms and with the will to use them to survive.”
Elmwood let out an involuntary noise as he pushed back another swell of images. Horses. Men. Blood.
“I don’t know how many ways I can tell you: that isn’t how my Charm works,” he said through gritted teeth. “Even if I brought him back, he wouldn’t be capable of doing what you want. Negotiating with lawyers, paperwork…it would be beyond him.”
“You can’t know that!” she said, lurching forward to lean even closer and stare across the desk at him.
He should never have asked her to stay for a drink.
He should never have met her walking in the woods.
He should never have come to Merewyth. He should never have been born, to be such a disappointing blight upon people’s hearts.
“I would love to save you, Lady Croft. But the truth is, my Charm has never saved anyone. It has only ever made things much, much worse. I will not inflict that upon you, no matter how much you blackmail, seduce, or beg me.”
All the fight seemed to drain out of her. She rubbed her face with both hands.
“I am drunk,” she said. “And I am a failure.”
“You’re only a bit tipsy. If anyone here is a failure, it is most certainly me.”
“I’m just so weary,” she said, and his heart rang with sympathy. “It feels as though my will is the only web that holds Croftholde together, straining and stretching until it’s so thin you could split it with one finger.”
He stood and went around the desk. He leaned his backside against it, half sitting to support his hip, then reached out and took her hands in his, shivering as they touched and the Charm thrill fizzed, but only faintly this time.
Soon, if he kept touching her so often, it would wear off altogether.
Given enough time, Charms became familiar with one another.
He must not keep touching her this often.
“Have you ever thought,” he said, as earnestly as he could, “that perhaps it’s not your responsibility to keep Croftholde together? That it’s too much for one person?”
“No,” she said. “As Lady Croft, it is precisely my responsibility. Who tends to the needs of your tenants while you are away fighting in Relance or hiding from the law here at Merewyth?”
“All of my lands have been seized, so that’s no longer my concern,” he said, looking away from her eyes.
“How convenient,” she said. “But I wonder, what would they say of their late lord and master if I were to ask them?”
He was still holding her by the hands, and she gripped his as though she truly wanted to know the answer.
“I don’t know what they would say,” he said, finally meeting her eyes again. “I never paid much mind to my tenants or my lands, content to leave them in the hands of various stewards and agents. I assumed they would carry on as they always had.”
“Ha! There, you see!” she exclaimed, surging to her feet.
She stepped closer, so that she was almost pressing him back against the desk.
“This is precisely my point. Lords will never care for their tenants’ lives and homes the way the tenants themselves will.
This is why the only thing that truly matters is making Croftholde free. ”
He had given little thought to whether his tenants might be better off being the masters of their own domain.
That line of thinking was for revolutionaries.
But he had given a great deal of thought to military rank and the sort of orders that officers gave to soldiers whose best interests they most certainly did not always bear in mind.
Her words resonated with a certainty that had taken root and flourished in his own heart: that his presumed superiority and that of the other aristocratic officers was, in fact, utter shit. So, he nodded at her words.
“You are indeed persuasive, Lady Croft,” he said.
She beamed at him. He’d enjoyed the sensations that her disapproval, her bemusement, and even her manipulative desire wrought in him, but this, this full force of her pleasure at his agreeing with her…
it made him feel too much. It was dangerous to take such heady delight in another person’s approval.
She leaned even closer to him, and the movement conjured up that moment when she had straddled him and moved her beautiful mouth down with the intent of placing it on his neck.
That same perfect mouth was very close now, breathing hot, adamant breath on him, and the gleam of passion that he had seen in her eyes then flashed once again.
Even though rationally he knew that it was not for him but rather for her radical views on land stewardship, some stupid part of him thought: Maybe a little of it is for you.
She was staring pensively at his mouth, and he watched as she bit down on her lower lip and furrowed her brow, as though she were seriously considering biting his lower lip and concentrating very hard on the idea.
In a sudden rush, he realized that he wanted her to do it, restraint and good sense be Charmed.
This lip-biting madness took hold of him, and without stopping to remind himself of all the excellent reasons why it was a terrible idea, he released her hands and reached around her to grasp her bottom.
Then he pulled her firmly against him, leaning back against the desk to support both their weights.
She let out a little gasp that made him almost delirious.
She didn’t pull away. Instead, she slid one hand up his arm and then his neck until it tangled in his hair.
There was only the faintest Charm thrill this time, then the simple, hot press of her fingers against the nape of his neck, and the little caress they left there that didn’t feel like a calculated seduction. It felt like she wanted to touch him.
Then she leaned forward and kissed him.
The first time they had kissed, he had done it lightly, as a distraction from the quagmire of his own mind. It had been an invitation issued, a banner lifted, a salute from across the field, meant to instigate whatever fun might be inclined to follow.
There was nothing of that casual salutation in this kiss.
This kiss was all need, and knowing that it was a terrible idea but doing it anyway. It was messy and absurd, and it rendered him insensible.
Elmwood generally prided himself on being an excellent judge of body language.
He liked to boast that he could tell if a person fancied him by the way they looked at him from across the room and determine their deepest proclivities within mere seconds of touching them.
He had always possessed an instinctive sense of what people wanted from him, and he made certain to tailor his ministrations and expressions of pleasure to appeal to his bedfellows.
He always maintained control of himself.
When Lady Croft kissed him, he lost all ability for rational thought.
She was crushing her mouth against his and pulling him into her delectably bountiful softness.
Her one hand gripped his hair and anchored his head, as if he might try to escape her clutches and she would have none of it, and her other hand crept up to frantically untuck his shirt and find the skin beneath.
The Charm thrill was well and truly dead now.
They had grown too well acquainted for it, and the sensations that replaced it were so much better.
He groaned, pressing against the warm force of her.
After a moment, she pulled back from the kiss. Her eyes were so large and dark this close that he could see his own awestruck face reflected back in their depths.
“Will you take me back to your bed?” she said, her voice rough.
His heart thudded against his chest. This was still a terrible idea, but his body argued that whatever price he might pay for indulging it would be more than worth it.
“Yes. No. Yes!” was the nonsense that came out of his mouth.
She frowned at him, her hands going still. He instantly mourned the loss of their ministrations.
“You’ve said no more than once. I don’t want to…” she began.
This time he kissed her, and the act had not somehow become less mind-addling in the time that had passed since their last kiss. They were soon gasping for air against each other’s mouths, and he pulled away just long enough to murmur in her ear.
“Lady Croft, I was a fool to tell you no. My bed is at your disposal. I am at your disposal, and whatever you ask me to do, the answer will be yes. Yes, yes, yes.” He said the last bit while kissing his way down her neck.
Some small part of his brain protested that he was promising too much, but he could not heed it. Not with both her hands now tangling in his hair and her mouth once again finding his.
They weren’t going to make it back to his bed, he decided. He was going to sit her on this desk, pull a chair over for himself, and then slide through the obscenely high slit in her skirts and press his face between her thighs until she screamed his name instead of whispering it.
“I say, Elmwood!” came a voice, shouting from outside the open window.
Lady Croft stumbled away from him, shaking her head, as if the shout had woken her from some somnambulist spell. Her chest heaved as if she were…frightened.
“Have they found you?” she whispered.
His heart stuttered. Was she concerned for him?
He was not concerned for himself, but that was likely because he was suddenly furious. If he was arrested and banished before he had the chance to worship at the altar of this woman’s body, then there truly was nothing worth living for. He would not stand for it.
Elmwood pushed his hair back and went to the window to see whom he needed to murder immediately.
It was Winthrop, lifting a bright lantern and squinting at the house.
Behind him was a large rented carriage, and out of it there appeared a pretty girl in a flouncy traveling suit, then an older woman so thin that she almost vanished when viewed from above.
Winthrop helped them both descend, then waved at Elmwood.
“There you are! Your steward isn’t answering the door. Come down and let me in. I’ve brought you a surprise!”
“Who is that?” hissed Lady Croft.
“My lawyer. Let’s ignore him and hope he goes away.”
“Your lawyer? That’s perfect.”
“What?” He looked at her, confused. Her lips had a bruised flush, her ridiculous dress was askew, and a sheen of sweat dampened her temples. She was glorious. But she was scowling at him.
“You said that whatever I asked you to do, the answer would be yes.”
“Well, yes, I did say that…”
“I explained why it was so important that we bring Thorgoode back, and then you grabbed my bottom.”
“I did, but…”
“And you said, yes, yes, yes!”
Elmwood’s heart sank like a cannonball hurtling into the depths of a lake.
“You thought I was agreeing to use my Charm. You didn’t want to kiss me. It was still your seduction.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Of course it was,” she said. “And we’ll need a lawyer. So it’s good that yours is here.”
Well, this was a bloody debacle.
Because if there was one stupid, overzealous lawyer who would be absolutely delighted to work out the legal logistics of freeholding the estate of an undead lord, it was fucking Winthrop.