Hilde
She leaned forward, resting her forehead against her arms upon the table.
Her anger that Elmwood had lied to her still crackled inside her skull.
Would she have gone to Merewyth if he had told her the truth?
Would she have revealed so much of herself to him?
Would she have allowed him to somehow become necessary to her happiness?
That was what two days at Merewyth had done to her. It had made her love Elmwood. But he had not cared enough for her love to let it outweigh his own self-hatred.
She realized then, in a rush of regret that pushed the anger out of her body, that she had not said it. She had never admitted that she loved him. She had never said the words aloud, only felt them in her heart and denied them to herself. And now it was too late.
“Are you…ill, my lady?” asked Francie.
Hilde drew in a deep breath.
“Francie, will you please fetch Cook and Ed? I wish to speak with all of you.”
Francie frowned.
“Here in the kitchen?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
When Francie left to do her bidding, she rose, went to the pantry, and pulled out the ancient bottle of honey liqueur that Cook sometimes used in sauces. She placed it on the table, along with four little tumblers.
Ed arrived first. She gestured for him to sit. He frowned. She gestured again, and he slowly sat.
Francie and Cook soon joined them, and Cook took one look at Hilde and scowled.
“What’s wrong with you, then?” she asked.
Hilde stood and poured each of them a tumbler of the liqueur, which they all took rather reluctantly. It was not especially good to drink, but it would suit her purpose.
She raised her own glass.
“To Lord Croft,” she said, and she downed it. It burned the back of her throat, but it also gave her the courage for what she needed to do next.
“To Lord Croft,” echoed Francie and Ed, and they drank their own cups.
Cook remained silent but also drank, waiting for Hilde to get on with it. Well, she knew better than to keep Cook waiting.
“He’s dead,” said Hilde. “He died weeks ago. He collapsed on his way home one night, and I have been hiding it from you all in the hope that I could shield you from the trouble that will come as a result.”
She forced herself to look at them, to see the shock and judgment that would surely consume their regard for her.
To her amazement, that was not at all what she saw.
Ed seemed sad and a bit embarrassed. Francie, sympathetic and concerned. Cook…well, Cook was regarding her the same way she had on Hilde’s first week at the Croft when Hilde had dropped a basket of eggs and broken them all and then lied and said that the chickens hadn’t laid any.
Francie glanced at the other two, then said, “We know.”
Hilde couldn’t quite comprehend her.
“You…know?”
“Well, he hasn’t been in Neck this whole time, has he?” said Cook. “And here’s you, worried day in and out, tying yourself into knots and plotting and trying to work it all out on your own. Tried to get you to fess up a couple of times, but you’re mighty tight-lipped when you set your mind to it.”
“But how did you…?”
“Francie saw you and Han stash him in the cellar,” said Ed, with a bizarrely apologetic smile.
“You…I…” Hilde was at a loss for words. She thought she’d been protecting all of them from the terrifying truth, when in fact they’d all been quietly protecting her this whole time.
“Don’t suppose you have worked it out?” said Cook.
“No, I haven’t,” Hilde confessed, rubbing her face.
Cook rose and went over to stir something on the stove. She never sat idle for long.
“Lord Elmwood isn’t going to help?” asked Francie.
“How did you…No, never mind.” Hilde swallowed back pain at hearing his name.
She could not think about Elmwood right now.
If she thought about him, she would run right back to Merewyth and…
well, she didn’t know what. Shout at him that she loved him and somehow convince him to run away with her?
It was no use. “I’m afraid Lord Elmwood is in as much danger as the rest of us.
Much more, in point of fact,” she continued.
“The Harrier is coming here, and soon. Possibly this very night.” She knew that Elmwood’s conviction that the Harrier would be too preoccupied with him to trouble her was misguided.
He would come looking for Thorgoode. “With Thorgoode gone, Croftholde will be his to do with as he pleases, and he plans to revoke the tenancies and give them out as incentive to new soldiers. I thought I could change that, but I failed. I…I have resolved to tell him the truth about Thorgoode. I assume he will turn me out immediately.” She swallowed.
He would likely do worse than that. “He may want one of you to tend the house, but most likely you will all be dismissed as well. I am more than happy to…That is, I will be sure to write you each a letter of reference, so that you have it if you wish to seek work elsewhere.”
“I don’t want a reference. I want to go with you,” said Francie, reaching for her hand and squeezing it. “Where will you go?”
Hilde tried to imagine herself at Merewyth, wandering from room to room with Rollo at her heels, as Elmwood had begged her to consider. But the thought of being there without him was wholly unbearable.
“She’s not going anywhere,” said Cook. “Not a single soul of us is going to leave the Croft at the say-so of that horrible man.”
“We won’t have much choice,” said Hilde.
“Well, not if you make good on this fool idea to tell him his Lordship is dead. If I’d have known that was the best you were going to come up with, I wouldn’t have left you to stew over it so long, now, would I?
” The words were harsh, but Cook draped her hand over Hilde’s, and Hilde’s eyes began to well up.
She had cried more in the last few days than she had since she was a child.
“I’m sorry I tried to keep this from all of you,” she said, wiping away the tears that rolled down her cheeks despite her best efforts. “I’m sorry I failed.”
“Shhh,” said Cook. “Nothing’s done till it comes out of the oven.” She reached over and patted Hilde on the cheek fondly. “Now, tell me, what would make this sweet face happy again?”
If Hilde hadn’t already been crying, that would have pushed her over the edge. As it was, she had to stifle a sob.
“I want Croftholde to be safe. I want all of you and everyone in the village to be free from the Harrier’s cruelty and avarice,” she said. “I want you to be the masters of your own lives.”
Cook shook her head.
“Men like him are always going to try to squeeze the blood out of places like this. You can’t save us by putting yourself between us and him, nor should you try.
Croftholde is more than capable of taking care of itself—we’ve been doing it since long before you became Lady Croft, or have you forgotten? ”
“I…”
“What I’m asking is what you want for yourself.”
As soon as Cook said the word want, Hilde thought of Elmwood again. Could she be happy without him now? Perhaps she might, but she found she did not want to be.
As she had more than twenty years earlier, on that day when she first came to the Croft, she told Cook the truth.
“I want Lord Elmwood. I need him.”
They all exchanged another alarmingly knowing look.
“But,” Hilde continued, “it is too late.”
“Now, now, there’s always a way through every difficulty,” said Cook, with the dismissive click of her tongue that she generally reserved for peddlers with unreasonably high prices. “Especially with all of us helping you, eh?”
Francie and Ed nodded eagerly. “Where’s your Lord Elmwood now?” asked Francie.
“I left him at Merewyth. The Harrier will likely go to arrest him before he comes here, and Lord Elmwood is bound and determined to give himself up. He’s been banished, you see, and has been on the run.”
Ed nodded. “We read about it in the broadside that came in from Neck this morning. Everyone’s searching for him.”
“There’s been such a fuss over whatever he did that there’s been a temporary truce called,” said Francie.
“There…there is?” said Hilde. It seemed impossible. It would be the first truce in her lifetime. The first in almost two hundred years.
“Yes, whatever he did, the Relancians are right terrified of us now,” said Ed. “One writer was calling for him to be pardoned!”
Pardoned? If he were pardoned, he would be safe. But if the Harrier had him dumped in Relance before that could happen, it would do him no good…
“If we could hold up the Harrier,” said Cook, as if reading her mind, “then your fellow could make his escape and keep running until things settle down a bit and maybe land in his favor.”
“You could go with him, my lady!” said Francie. “Oh, wouldn’t it be romantic?”
“Wait, wait,” said Hilde, her mind whirling.
Perhaps if Elmwood knew that his actions had brought about a truce, he might see a way to judge himself less harshly.
And if the war was truly ending, then even the Harrier’s terrible plans for Croftholde might come to naught.
There would be no sense in incentivizing soldiers for a fight that was over.
Maybe, no matter how terrible it had been when he used it, Elmwood’s Charm had shifted things for the good.
“It’s possible that the Harrier has already gone to Merewyth. What if we’re too late?”
“Even if he is already there, that villain won’t miss a chance to come here afterward to gloat and cause trouble,” said Cook. “Mark my words. And when he does, we’ll make him regret it.”
Hilde looked at Cook and Ed and Francie and their eager faces, and she felt a little spark of something that seemed remarkably like hope flare up inside her chest.
“What exactly did you have in mind?”