Hilde #2
I will ask you once more to resurrect my husband, and if you refuse, I will…not give Rollo back to you. Your dog is my prisoner.
That was even worse.
As she walked up the drive, she was startled out of her ruminations by Lady Isobel, who came spilling out of Merewyth’s front door in a waterfall of yellow lace and ruffles. She was carrying a parasol and wearing the largest, most absurd hat that Hilde had ever seen.
It was woven out of some sort of dark straw into a shape that Hilde could think of only as an upside-down harvest basket and was easily six times the size of Lady Isobel’s head.
The top had been enthusiastically adorned with some manner of fluffy yellow feathers that must have been imported.
Hilde had never seen anything like them—they were certainly not the plumage of any bird native to Eldmere.
There were also golden-yellow roses preserved in wax and a bow that could have eclipsed the entirety of Lady Isobel’s face, set dramatically over her left eyebrow and ear.
“Oh!” Lady Isobel cried, noticing Hilde, who, under her regard, became conscious of the fact that she was wearing serviceable brown plaid and an ancient, tattered bonnet. “Lady Croft! How delightful to see you again!”
Hilde smiled at her. It was impossible not to smile at someone who was the embodiment of a sunny afternoon, even if she was not even remotely the person Hilde wished to speak with at present.
Lady Isobel, Hilde thought, would never bribe a man to do something he found repugnant with the return of his own dog.
“Good morning, Lady Isobel. I am here to speak with Lord Elmwood. Do you know where I might find him?”
Lady Isobel’s mouth formed a little circle as she cooed, “My darling Erol is not here, I’m afraid.
He is out searching for his poor little dog.
” Her chin dipped. “I was very stupid and let him out this morning. I didn’t realize he would run away, you see.
Erol was so terribly upset. I haven’t seen him since he went out to search.
Mr. Winthrop went after him, but neither has returned.
I have grown quite anxious waiting and thought I might go out and search the gardens closest to the house.
I don’t know what I will do if we cannot find the doggie.
I fear my darling Erol may never forgive me. ”
Guilt stabbed at Hilde. She had anticipated that Elmwood would be eager to find Rollo, but she had not imagined he would be so distressed, which, she realized, had been very foolish of her.
Of course he was distressed, and she was prolonging it!
The blackmail and attempted seduction had been bad enough, but this…
she was disgusted with herself. She tried to focus on Croftholde and her duty, but it could not ease her conscience.
At least she could do her best to ease Lady Isobel’s.
“You should not blame yourself,” she said carefully. “It is a dog’s nature to go out and adventure on occasion, but they always return to their warm hearth and sure dinner.”
“Oh, do you really think so?”
“Yes. I am quite confident promising you that Lord Elmwood will be reunited with his dog. Most likely before the day is at an end.”
“You absolute darling! Come, let us see if we can find Erol and you can reassure him, too. Oh, please say that you will!”
Hilde hesitated. She certainly did not wish to involve Lady Isobel in her dealings with Elmwood, but she did need to find him. Perhaps she could contrive to get him alone and tell him of Rollo’s safety…and inform him of its price?
She swallowed another lump of guilt.
“Of course,” she said.
They walked through Merewyth’s garden, which was a wilderness of weeds.
It was obvious that no one had tended to it for years, and everything was quite overgrown.
It was slow going, as Lady Isobel wore dainty little calfskin boots and the paths were a morass of mud.
She skipped from one patch of relative dryness to the next, making little chirping sounds as she went.
“Are these about to bloom?” she asked, pointing to a tall bush covered in buds.
“Yes. Wild roses. They’re a bit of a nuisance to keep under control and they bully the other plants, but the hips make a nice tea.”
“Which part of them is the hips?”
“After the roses bloom and the petals fall away, the hips form in their place.”
“You would get along so well with my darling cousin Cherie. She is quite wild for her gardens. I hope I may introduce you someday, for I think you would have many things in common to discuss.”
Hilde couldn’t imagine having much in common with someone fancy enough to be Lady Isobel’s cousin, even if she were an avid gardener.
“I’m afraid I find plants easier to understand than people,” she said.
“Do you know, I feel quite the same way about horses! You can always tell exactly what a horse thinks of you, as they are uninterested in games or deceits. You’re never left wondering if a horse loves you as much as you love them.”
The poor girl had grown a bit glassy-eyed as she spoke, and Hilde suspected that there was a particular person whose inscrutability was troubling her. Did his misbehavior regarding Lady Isobel somehow make it less terrible that Hilde planned to torment him again? She thought not.
“You see,” Lady Isobel continued, “some ladies are obsessed with their modiste, and some with their chef, but I have always been more interested in my master of the horse! Or rather, his charges. I own thirty steeds in all, though there’s a new filly I have my eye on. She’d make thirty-one.”
Thirty horses! Hilde knew that there were lords and ladies who could afford to keep such a stable, but it still shocked her to hear. Han would die of happiness to be master of the horse to such a collection.
“You’d get along well with my sister,” she said.
“You have a sister? How darling! I have no siblings myself, and I have always longed for a sister with whom to share confidences and gowns and secrets.”
Hilde laughed, despite herself. “I suspect that Han would sooner go naked than wear one of my gowns. In fact, recalling several incidents from our childhood, I know it.”
“How intriguing! You must bring her round for dinner. Tonight! Though…I don’t know that we can host dinner. There’s no cook here, you see, only a very cross steward who seems to have disappeared again. No, perhaps we’d better come to Croftholde for dinner instead. Oh, do say you’ll have us!”
“Well, I…”
Lady Isobel stepped quite close to her and clasped Hilde’s hands in her own, which were encased in buttery leather gloves.
The leather caught a bit on Hilde’s calluses.
Lady Isobel lifted their hands to hover between their chests.
They were standing beneath an arbor all overgrown with ivy, and the sun cast a halo around her enormous hat as she looked up at Hilde with big, beseeching eyes.
“I realize I am being brazen, but you see, I am quite desperate, and I would so appreciate your help.”
“My help?”
“Since arriving here at Merewyth, I sense myself to be even further from my darling Erol than I did when he was in Relance. I’m afraid that the horrors that have befallen him since we last met have caused him to pull closed the shutters around his heart, and I cannot seem to pry them open.
He won’t even speak to me at length. Now I’ve lost his poor doggie…
but if we were to have a formal dinner, perhaps I could get him away from his chambers and make him see how much I care!
I know he will love me again, if I express to him how dearly I want to help him recover from the things he suffered in the war. ”
“Do you know…what happened to him?” asked Hilde, her own heart in her throat.
It was so strange to listen to Lady Isobel talk about Elmwood as though he were hers.
But why should it be? He was Lady Isobel’s betrothed, and he most certainly wasn’t Hilde’s anything, no matter what confidences and caresses had unwisely passed between them.
Lady Isobel shook her head, lowering their hands at last. She went over to a little bench beneath the arbor, and Hilde followed.
“Alas, he has not confided in me. I hope that one day he will, for I would like to help him bear the pain of it,” Lady Isobel said.
This was how a kind and good person reacted to learning that someone had been through a terrible hardship, not by calculating and manipulating as Hilde had done. As she was still doing.
“I hope you will succeed,” she whispered.
“I shall make it my life’s purpose. I have waited for my Erol for a very long time. We were secretly betrothed for four years, you see, but we met long, long before that. I decided I was in love with my darling Erol when I was only ten years old.”
“Ten?”
“I know that is young to fall in love, but I have always been an extremely stubborn sort of person. Once I decide something, I am quite incapable of letting it go.”
“Lord Elmwood must have been, what? Almost twenty?”
“Yes, but don’t frown so, Lady Croft; he had no inkling of the attachment that I formed.
My parents brought me to a party at Elmhouse and then forgot about me.
Erol found me hiding in the library and took pity on me and spent the afternoon entertaining me.
He was such a sweet young man, to use his time to cheer up a strange little girl. ”
Hilde frowned at that. Elmwood could certainly be sweet, but he could also be rather cruel. Yet she knew that she had deserved that cruelty. His sweetness was not owed to her, however absurdly possessive she seemed to be of it.