Hilde
“Lady Croft!” Mr. Winthrop said a second time, much too loudly.
“What is the meaning of this?” said Mr. Winthrop, backing away from her until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the bed and he was forced to sit, scowling with his entire face.
“Please, Mr. Winthrop, there’s no need for such volume,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing voice.
She studied the man. She had not intended to seek him out, but it occurred to her that this was Lord Elmwood’s best friend in the world, someone who cared enough for him to take the great risk of smuggling him out of Neck and trying to safeguard him here with badger hounds and betrothals.
She had previously hoped to gain his assistance with Thorgoode’s estate, in the event that she was able to convince Elmwood to help her.
Now she found that it was not Thorgoode about whom she wished to seek his counsel, but Elmwood himself.
“I am in need of your help, Mr. Winthrop. You may recall, before, at Merewyth, when I sought your assistance with an arrangement between Lord Elmwood and myself, regarding his ability…”
His frown deepened, and he held up a hand to stop her from continuing.
“I think I already made it quite clear to you that I am not interested in assisting you with any arrangements you have made with Elmwood!”
Was it to be this again? Here she was, wanting his counsel as Elmwood’s friend, and all he would offer her was more moralistic judgment about his Charm!
“Do you know, given your acquaintance with a person of the caliber of Lord Elmwood, I would have thought you might be more a man of the world,” she said, struggling to keep her voice quiet.
“His ability should be appreciated, not feared. Think of the things he could do with it. You must understand how big and important it is!”
“I’m not afraid, Lady Croft, I just don’t care how big it is!”
She let out a frustrated breath.
“I can see that you, like so many others, are so intent on seeing certain things as inherently wrong that you cannot see them for what they are: an asset gifted by nature.”
“Well,” he said, “I can’t help the fact that my interest runs toward the sort of assets you have been gifted by nature, rather than the sort Elmwood possesses.” Then he looked, pointedly, at her chest.
Shocked, she glanced down at herself then remembered that she was barely wearing anything. She realized with a humiliated flush that in the brighter light of the lamp in this room, all of her assets were indeed visible.
She flung her arms across her chest, trying to cover up.
“How dare you!” she said, but it came out as more of a squeak than a reprimand. Then she stopped short. Wait. If when he said assets, he meant…that. Then what did he think she had been…
“Oh…” she said. “Did you think that I was talking about…did you think I was propositioning…”
“For the final time, Lady Croft. I cannot stop you from bedding Elmwood if you are determined to do so, but I will not condone it, and I most certainly will not be joining you!”
She couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. It was much too loud, but she didn’t even care anymore.
She walked over to the bed and sat down next to him, laughing even harder when he scooted farther away from her.
“Are you…quite well, Lady Croft?” he said.
She managed to get herself under control.
“Yes, I am fine, and you needn’t worry for your virtue, Mr. Winthrop. I am not trying to seduce you. Though with the record I have of late, it is no great wonder that you think I am.”
“I…don’t follow.”
“Ever since I met Lord Elmwood,” she said, “I seem to be constantly finding myself in situations of mistaken seduction. So let me be perfectly clear. When I refer to Lord Elmwood’s ability, I am speaking of his Charm. His ability to resurrect the dead.”
Mr. Winthrop drew back, even more horrified.
“Wait,” he said. “You mean to say that you made an arrangement with Elmwood to use his Charm? To what end…oh. Oh. Your husband.”
“Yes. I had hoped…I wanted him to resurrect Thorgoode so that we might set up his estate as freeholds. It was our plan, you see, before he died. When I approached you before, it was to ask if you might assist with the paperwork.”
“Elmwood agreed to do this? He said he would resurrect your husband?” He sounded incredulous.
“Well, no. That is, I tried many ways to convince him. In the end, he refused.”
At this, Mr. Winthrop nodded slowly. “I would have been very surprised if he had agreed. Or rather that, having agreed, he intended to honor the agreement.”
That assessment of Elmwood’s honesty did not sit well with her. She knew he would never lie in that way, to get what he wanted at someone else’s expense. Why did his friend not know that?
“Tonight, I had hoped that perhaps…Well, you see, I found Rollo. I had thought to try one last time to bargain with Elmwood. But after seeing him tonight at dinner, I find that I cannot bear to do it.”
Saying it aloud made a great weight shift off of her chest. She could not do it, and that was the end of it.
“He has a way, doesn’t he?” Mr. Winthrop said.
“A way?”
“A way of slipping into your heart when you were minding your own affairs, and then, next thing you know, you’re upending your life to smuggle him out of prison,” he clarified.
“Oh dear.”
“Precisely.” He paused. “So…you’re not planning to coerce him into using his Charm?”
“No,” she said, with finality. “Not anymore.”
“Well, thank goodness for that. I’ll be quite honest with you, Lady Croft, the last time Elmwood used his Charm, it was nearly the death of him, and he has not been the same since.”
Her heart began to beat more quickly.
“Do you know…that is, will you tell me what happened to him in Relance?” she said.
Mr. Winthrop sighed.
“I know very little. The military court thrives on redacted information and secrecy, and they seemed to be keeping Elmwood’s case under especially tight wraps.
Even we lawyers weren’t given the details.
I tried to convince Elmwood to explain what happened so that I could make a better case for him, but he refused.
I think that perhaps he is not capable of speaking of it. ”
“But surely you must know something of what happened?” she pressed.
“All I know is that Elmwood was the only survivor of a terrible, bloody massacre that he barely survived himself, and that his superiors maintained he had caused the whole mess with his Charm.”
Hilde had never truly been able to think of Elmwood as a soldier. The idea of it seemed so contrary to his gentle nature. She could not believe that he was responsible for a massacre. She refused to believe it!
“They must have been lying,” she said.
Mr. Winthrop shook his head.
“I tried to stop him, but he testified that they were correct. I never even had the chance to defend his innocence. All I could do was negotiate for the sentencing to be more lenient. They wanted to execute him at first, for treason. It took everything I had to get them to banish him instead.”
She had lectured Elmwood about responsibility, assuming he had never taken any in his life. How wrong she had been. If anything, it now seemed evident that he took too much upon his shoulders when he need not bear it alone.
“I think that perhaps I have judged him as wrongly as the courts must have,” she said, her voice tight in her throat.
“Most people do judge him wrongly, and they rarely take the time to see past their first impressions of him. I might easily have done the same. When we first met, I instantly decided he was a rich prick who never had to work for anything in his life. When he began doing me favors, I thought it was to sway my opinion of him for some nefarious reason, and it only made me dislike him more.”
“What made you change your mind about him?” she asked.
“I was stuck with him. He wouldn’t stop acting like we were the best of friends, insisting I be included in everything he benefited from, and eventually, I began to see that his kindness was not calculated.
It’s who he is. And once I saw that, it was impossible to avoid being the friend he had decided I was. ”
She saw the echo of her own experience with Elmwood in Mr. Winthrop’s remembrance. He was the sort of person you couldn’t help but grow fond of.
“I do wonder, though, how it is that he has ended up so alone, when he has such a gift for making friends.”
“Well,” said Mr. Winthrop, “it does seem that he has made at least one friend out here in the Gaze.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh.
“I do not think I have been a very good friend to him. I am too caught up in my own troubles,” she said.
It occurred to her then that perhaps Mr. Winthrop could help her, if not in the way she had originally envisioned.
He was, after all, a lawyer, and she knew now that he was not above bending the law for a good cause.
“Mr. Winthrop, I wonder…before I sought to involve Elmwood in my affairs, I had thought that perhaps, if I could find the right lawyer, I might be able to draw up some paperwork that reflects my husband’s wishes for his estate and, um, sign it on his behalf?
Is that something…you would consider helping me with?
I am quite desperate to keep Croftholde out of the Western Harrier’s hands, you see. Thorgoode’s brother.”
Mr. Winthrop’s brow wrinkled as he considered her words.
“Lady Croft, if I may be so bold…at dinner, you stated with great certainty that Croftholde belongs to your husband, and that it had been divided from the estate belonging to his brother.”
“Yes. Thorgoode always said so. His grandfather granted Croftholde to him before he died.”
“Have you ever seen any documents that support this claim? A receipt of registry, perhaps?”
Hilde frowned. “No, there’s nothing like that. At least, not that I have seen, and I manage all the accounting and such for the Croft, and have for years.”