Elmwood
His eyes wandered around the room, imagining her inhabiting the space.
It was not a large room, but it was cozy, every surface draped with shawls and blankets and pillows, and a little fire burning in a stone hearth.
The fire combined with an oil lamp that hung by a chain from the ceiling to illuminate a case of books along one wall, a small loom by the window with some half-finished weaving clinging to the warp, and a stylish little desk, with ledgers and notes neatly stacked.
He found himself drawn to the desk. He could clearly picture her sitting here, and he ran his fingers over her books and pens, as if they might hold the heat of her touch.
Then his attention caught on a volume he knew. It was her sketchbook.
He’d watched her draw in it during the time he’d spent in her company at the farmer’s cottage, but he had never caught more than glimpses of the work it contained. He knew he ought not to open it, as that would be an invasion of her private thoughts.
He stared at it.
Surely it would do no harm. He would take whatever he saw with him to an early grave, after all.
He opened the book.
Here was Han, brushing a horse. Here was the millpond, full of ripples from something tossed in.
Here was the footman, Ed, seen crossing the courtyard from above.
Here was some sort of ruin in the woods, all overgrown with vines.
Here…here was Elmwood. He was sitting with his bad leg propped up on a stool, leaning back in his chair, holding a biscuit, and laughing at Rollo, who was begging, his long body swaying absurdly upright, front paws beseeching.
He had seen his likeness only once before—a formal portrait of his father and him, when he was still a child.
He looked very unhappy in it. His father had certainly not been inclined to capture his image once he had grown up into such a colossal disappointment, and Elmwood had never sought to have his portrait done himself, generally avoiding any activity that required examining himself too closely.
Yet somehow, this drawing of himself with Rollo didn’t disgust him.
Indeed, he was amazed to discover that he liked the fellow he saw in it.
This was a nice man whose dog was fond of him. Perhaps even a good man.
That meant that it was not a true likeness. All the same, there was a truth to the image itself, to the moment that it captured. Lady Croft had transformed him with her little scrap of charcoal. Could it be…that this was how she saw him?
No. This had been done when she still thought he might help her, before he’d foolishly promised her whatever she wanted and then ripped it all away again. There was no way that she would capture this same regard for him were she to bother drawing him now. That was most certainly gone for good.
The thought pained him so badly that he found himself rubbing at his chest with the heel of one hand, as if he could ease the ache there. It was no use. She’d already had every reason to hate him, and now he’d stood her up as well.
He ought to return to his room and hope that he would have the opportunity to entrust Rollo to her in the morning.
But that might cause trouble if Winthrop noticed what he was doing, and it wasn’t as though Lady Croft would have vanished into thin air when he did not meet her at the appointed time. She must still be nearby.
There were two doorways in the study—the one he’d entered through, that led in from the corridor, and a second, standing a bit ajar, which he suspected led directly into an adjoining chamber.
Holding his candles aloft with one hand and using his cane with the other, he pushed through the door and entered the dark expanse of a significantly larger room.
What he saw illuminated in the candlelight as he swung the candelabra around surprised him so much that he let out a laugh.
A bear!
A stuffed bear, preserved forever in a domineering hind-footed stance, as if it were poised to attack the observer. This was in contrast with the baffled expression on its face, as if it could not quite work out how it had come to be stuck in such a position.
Elmwood realized that the whole room was filled with dead animals.
He was surrounded by corpses, preserved in stilted and absurd parodies of life.
Creatures of earth and air lined the walls.
Glass eyes peered at him from every direction, the candlelight glinting off them.
All along the far wall stood a line of scruffy wolves.
A cete of badgers congregated in one corner, and a whole shelf of birds peered judgmentally at him from another.
There were foxes, weasels, and a horrible shelf of mice, all of whom had been outfitted with little chain-mail shirts and swords and sent into an endless battle over a large piece of painted plaster cheese.
He was caught between another laugh and the urge to gag. He set his candleholder down on a table that held a demented otter and peered at it sympathetically. It looked like it knew exactly what had become of itself and was rather embarrassed about the whole thing.
“Lady Croft?” came a voice from the study.
Elmwood froze. It was not Lady Croft’s voice, obviously.
It was, he realized in a rush, Miss Floret’s voice.
What was she doing, wandering about in the dark?
Whatever her reasons, he could not let her find him here.
He might have no further reason to care about Miss Floret’s designs on him and his reputation, but he would not be responsible for giving her more fodder to tarnish Lady Croft’s.
“Lady Croft?” she said again, her voice closer to the door. Then, “Isobel?”
There was a door at the far end of the room that must lead somewhere.
He dove for it, yanking it open and flinging himself through, spinning to pull it closed behind him as quickly and quietly as he could manage. There was a latch, so he flicked it into place.
Heart thudding in his chest, he realized that the room he was now in was illuminated and…not empty.
He turned slowly, and there, standing not ten feet away from him, was Lady Croft.
She was completely naked, and he wished that he were a half-decent poet because her body deserved verse of a caliber far beyond his own meager capacity.
Her legs were long, with curving calves and thighs crafted for the sole purpose of crushing men to merry death.
Her hips each had a gentle dip that begged to be grasped, and the curve of her belly was so beautiful and soft that it made him want to fall immediately to his knees and press his face into it.
Her shoulders were broad and proud, her collarbones exquisite, and her neck immensely kissable.
The light from the hearth behind her made her dark hair glow in a halo around her head where it had frizzed out of her braided crown and illuminated the goosebumps that had raised along her arms and legs.
She instinctively covered her breasts and her sex by crossing her arms over her body, but that was fine, as he wasn’t certain that his heart could have withstood the sight of all of her at once.
Then she opened her mouth to say something, and at the same moment, the door behind him rattled.
He threw himself toward her and their bodies collided, pushing her backward against the wall. He clasped a hand over her mouth so that all she managed to get out was a small squeak of surprise.
“It’s Miss Floret,” he whispered to her.
He was incredibly distracted by Hilde’s body pressed against him and the knowledge that she was entirely naked, but he had the presence of mind to uncover her mouth, now that he’d warned her to be quiet.
It was tempting to put the freed-up hand to good use elsewhere on her person, but he forced himself to use it to push a little against the wall and withdraw from her enough to be polite.
He wasn’t going to remove himself fully until she asked him to, which she inevitably would, but he hoped to have a few more blissful moments before that happened.
“What does she want?” Lady Croft whispered, her breath hot upon his neck and the side of his face.
“No idea, but I didn’t want her to catch me in your rooms.”
The latch rattled again. Both of them were breathing heavily, and the moments that followed were filled with their inhales and exhales, not quite in unison.
He realized that her hands had come up to wrap around his back, her palms pressing against his shoulder blades.
Hardly daring to think, he allowed his face to slowly lower into the crook of her neck, then inhaled.
She smelled of damp linen and woodsmoke.
They stood like that for several minutes, listening and breathing, but the door did not rattle again.
He gave a little sigh of relief, and then, unable to resist, he pressed his face further into her and grazed his lips along the soft skin where her shoulder and neck met.
Her breath hitched, and he could feel her heart hammering between them. His was beating every bit as fast, and he risked a glance at her face.
She was giving him that wanting look. The one that was just for him.
So he kissed her.
There had been a moment, after the first battle he fought in, when he sat, shocked and dazed and covered in grime and other people’s blood, at the edge of the field.
A girl had walked over to him. She was carrying a bladder of fresh water, and she held it up to his lips and let him drink.
His throat was hoarse from screaming and coated in soot and bile, and as the cool water ran down it and washed all of that away, it was as if he had never had a true drink of water before that moment.
This kiss was like that.
He knew he shouldn’t let her be the balm that soothed away all the soot and bile that had collected on his tattered soul. She should have someone with a soul that ran clean when love poured over it.
He pulled away from the kiss ever so slightly so that he could study her face.
She had little freckles on her nose. He hadn’t seen them before, since they were almost the same brown as her skin. They were barely visible in the firelight.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I’m so very sorry.”
“You’re…making me an apology?” he said, his heart constricting. “Whatever for?”
She inhaled, her body pressing more neatly against his own.
“I was wrong to treat you the way that I did. I…should have listened to you, all of the times you tried to tell me how hurtful it was to make demands and cajole you to use your Charm for me. I am so sorry that I refused to understand.”
Elmwood stared into her dark eyes, caught off guard.
It was his experience that, once he had developed a reputation for being a rake, a lush, and a general good-for-nothing, most people seldom thought twice about his feelings.
They quite liberally lied to him, led him on, used him, and generally profited from his inability to make good decisions.
He didn’t blame them: it was simple human nature.
People always pushed to get what they wanted, and it wasn’t realistic to expect anyone to put his frailty before their own desires.
When he had chided her so harshly for using him the previous day, it was only to push her away forcibly, floundering as he had been in the face of his own desire to please her.
For her to acknowledge his hurt and to express regret for doing what everyone did, which they could bear no real blame for…
She might be the one who had no clothing on, but now it was he who was rendered naked by her words.
“Elmwood? Will you forgive me?” she whispered.
Instead of answering her with speech, which seemed woefully inadequate, he showed her his forgiveness by kissing her again, more deeply, and allowing himself to reach up and pull the pins from her crown of hair, letting them fall to the floor.
She kissed him back, her hands gripping his waistcoat, her long black braids tumbling down across her shoulders as he loosed them.
He slid his fingers into the strands, pulling them apart and letting her heavy hair flow through his hands, which were not shaking at all.
Then she ran her hand down his side and around to grasp the curve of his flank, pulling him hard toward her, pressing him into her softness.
His hip twinged as his weight shifted, but the knowledge that she was naked and touching him made him so delirious that he hardly noticed. He shuddered with longing.
At that, she stiffened.
“Did I hurt you? I don’t want to hurt you.” She paused, her expression so achingly earnest. “I don’t want you to think that I’m manipulating you, either. I don’t want to use you.”
“Are you manipulating me?” he whispered, wishing he didn’t need to ask but knowing it was necessary if this was to be what he desperately hoped it might.
“No. Not anymore.”
“Then please, use me. Use me any way that brings you pleasure. I am at your disposal.”
“Elmwood,” she breathed, and it had just enough of a scolding tone that it went right to his cock.
“I mean it. Tell me how I might please you.”
She didn’t relax, but her tension took on a different quality. She pushed him back a little but kept a grip on the front of his shirt. Her hair was wild from his ministrations, and her eyes seemed bottomless.
“I want your Charmed fingers so deep inside me that you worry you may never get them back,” she said.
The air left his lungs in a shocked, amorous huff. She rewarded that by sliding his braces off his shoulders and then dragging her hand down his stomach, stopping at the buttons on his trouser falls. Then she paused.
“Do you mind?” she said, quietly. “May I…”
Mind? He was so far gone for her that he would have resurrected every corpse in all of Croftholde’s green hills ten times over to ensure she’d let him touch her.
“Please” was all he said.