Filled with a restiveness, he took several steps away from her. At sea. Lost, but at the same time found in the unlikeliest of ways. William stared blankly out. “Every other person to come before you was nothing more than a charlatan, pretending at something they couldn’t do. But, Elsie?” His throat convulsed. “You were real.” She’d teased him and challenged him and bewitched him at every turn. “And…” I want you to remain here. But she couldn’t. Today was proof enough of that.
“And?” Elsie gently prodded. She leaned forward, almost expectantly.
“I…” He struggled to wrap his mouth around what his soul craved.
And…
Elsie fluttered a hand about her breast. “What is it, William?”
He held her gaze, his words emerging gravelly to his own ears. “I did not realize how very much I’d missed ‘real’ until you.” William dragged a shaky hand through his hair. “I want you to remain here for…” Ever. Elsie’s eyes went wide. He had to let her go. Now. Soon. Eventually. Just not now. “…our agreed-upon term.” He settled for the lie, his voice flat.
“Oh,” she said, her reply nothing more than a faint exhalation. Did he imagine the crestfallen note there? The one in her eyes and stamped in her delicate features? Or did he seek out only that which he wished to see?
She briefly studied her toes. “I… see.” Pray she didn’t. Because if she did, she’d sense the lie there.
“I have no right to ask anything of you,” he said on a rush. “And certainly have no right asking you to remain.” William grimaced. “My brother no doubt coerced you into coming.”
And just like that, William restored them to the familiar relationship they’d established more than a week ago: patient and healer, two people who’d begun at odds, but whose lives had become more naturally and meaningfully intertwined.
Elsie clasped her hands before her, attending those interlocked digits. “I came of my own volition, William,” she said softly, falling to a knee beside her basket. He stared down at her bent head as she ruffled through her basket and drew out a cylindrical stalk of grass.
He puzzled his brow.
“This is where I went,” she said by way of explanation, coming to her feet. Elsie held it out. “I wasn’t leaving. I was searching for… this.” Chewing at her lower lip, she considered the stalk. “I believe it will work as a straw, but won’t know until you try using it with liquid.”
Wordlessly, he accepted the piece of grass and turned it over in his hands. “This is where you went? Searching for something for me?”
“Of course. I said I’d help as I’m able, and that’s what I’ll do.”
“There is no other woman like you,” he said softly, lowering the blade to his side.
A pretty blush exploded on her cheeks as she plucked the thatch reed from his grip. “Do not make me out to be a martyr, or something different from what I am. It was my decision to come here.” She paused. “Just as it was my father’s decision to aid the Home Office. Not your brother’s. Not yours. Not anyone else’s.”
Those who dealt with the Brethren never truly had a choice, or that had been the case before her. Now, she called into doubt every last ruthless practice or decision he’d carried out when he’d not thought about the people affected by the Brethren’s influence.
Something shifted in his chest, emotions he’d believed dead and himself incapable of feeling anymore. William brushed his fingertips along her jawline, gently bringing her gaze up to his and cracking once more the fragile barrier that needed to be erected between them. “Anyone would resent me. Anyone,” he repeated, running his gaze over her sun-kissed cheeks.
“I have hated you before I even knew you.” The admission found a direct blow to his chest, because of both its truthfulness and rightfulness. Elsie drew in a breath. “I blamed them”—I am them—“for his murder, but I vowed to help you.” Because her soul was pure in ways that his was blackened. “And that is what I’ll do, William. I promised you three weeks, and I’ll not renege upon my pledge.” She’d already given him one week.
“A fortnight,” he murmured, though her meeting with the mysterious man proved he needed to send her away sooner rather than later.
“A fortnight,” she vowed.
Before he did something irrational, like ask her to stay beyond that with the ancient dog who’d slipped inside his household, William quit her rooms.
As she closed the door behind him, he lengthened his strides, seeking out his offices once more.
Fourteen days. Just fourteen more days with her in his life and in his household.
It was enough.
It would have to be.
Chapter 20
With her head bent over a patch of earth and the sun beating down upon her neck, Elsie could almost believe she was back at Bladon.
Bladon, which seemed a world away, that remote, tucked-away place on the corner of existence. She’d not truly noted how lonely it was until these past weeks here in London. For in Bladon, there was no one to speak with about her craft and obscure bits of history she’d never before known. No one to laugh with. Or dine with.
She paused, her gaze fixed on a fat earthworm winding its way through a moist patch of black earth.
There was no… him.
“You’ve finished,” William murmured from just over her shoulder, forcing her mind away from the melancholy musing.
After more than a fortnight living in William’s household and daily work carried out in the gardens, she’d converted this space into something no longer strangled by too much life. It was perfectly ordered for when she soon left. A pang struck in her chest. “I have,” she said as she assessed the grounds. Neatly trimmed boxwoods, the orderly beds, the tamed rosebushes—she rested her gaze upon the one wildly grown tree—well, with the exception of one.
Together, her gaze and William’s went to that bush.
And a sentiment increasingly familiar and wicked and all things wrong wound through her—envy for the woman who’d had a precious gift with and in William that Elsie would never know.
To give her fingers something to do, she toyed with the strands of her bonnet, and stared wistfully out. “Though it is not ever truly done, you know.” She forced the response out. “Caring for the gardens, that is,” she clarified when she finally looked at him.
He was seated on a rusted white wrought-iron bench. The bucolic tableau had come to represent their time together: he at work with a stack of leather ledgers on the bench beside him, while she tended his gardens. “Weeds always return. Leaves always grow. You’ll need to have someone attend them when I’m…” Gone.
He stiffened.
And she braced for him to condemn these grounds as he had more than two weeks ago. But the display did not come.
Not wanting to shatter the moment, she patted the ground beside her. “I’d show you something.” Before I go. Another blasted pang struck, and she fought it back, not wanting to shatter the peace that had sprung between them.
Without hesitation, he abandoned his books and joined her on the mud-stained blanket she’d spread out, kneeling upon it when any other lord would have recoiled at the idea of lowering himself to the damp earth.
Doffing her bonnet, Elsie sat back on her haunches and tossed it aside, so she had an unfettered view of the plants before her. She reached down and clipped a yellow bloom free. Elsie gathered William’s hand and placed the flower in his grip.
He eyed it. “What is this?”
“What do you think it is?” she returned.
“I’m a novice to the work you do out here, but I know enough to say it is a flower.” His lips twitched, and where there’d once been a sneer, now there was only a smile. One that wrought a dangerous havoc upon her heart.
“That is precisely what it is,” she said, her voice faintly breathless. “It has a fragrant scent.” She guided it up to his nose, and the slight aromatic smell wafted between them. Did she imagine that his hand trembled? “And satiny-soft pedals.” He caressed
the pad of his thumb experimentally over one of them. “On the surface, that is all most will see.” Elsie collected the stalk from him and laid the yellow bloom upon her palm. With four fingers, she crushed the petals and compressed them against her hand for several moments. She felt William’s eyes taking in her every movement. “And if that is all one sees, one will miss all the wonders it is capable of.” When she lifted her fingers, a distinct pine-sage odor danced around the air. Elsie applied the watery ointment upon his jaw, coating a portion of his right cheek.
“What are you—?”
“It is called arnica. I’ve read records that indicate it’s been used as far back as the 1500s,” she explained, crushing another handful of pedals so that this time her fingers were slicked with the natural ointment. “It soothes aches,” she explained as she applied it to his opposite cheek. “Reduces swelling. Heals wounds.”
“And you’ve used it before… with such results?” Heavy skepticism hung in his tone, along with something else—hope… and awe.
“I’ve used it countless times with such outcomes,” she confirmed. “Has your jaw ached with the same intensity this past week?”
She knew the answer before he even shook his head.
Elsie winked.
His eyebrows shot up, and he looked between the bloom in her hand and then back to her face. “Why… why… this is what you’ve applied to my jaw each morn?”
Dropping the crumpled remnants of the flower, she let them fall beside her. “Ointments are invariably looked upon more favorably when they come in proper containers.”
William stared wistfully at the vibrant plant. “And all along it has been here.”
“Oh, yes. Along with basil”—she pointed across the gardens—“and cloves.” Elsie leaned closer. “Cloves, William,” she added excitedly. “They’ve the ability to numb your gums, which would have aided with your recovery. It can still help you,” she rushed to assure him. “Nature is surrounded by gifts that have the ability to help us. But we have to be respectful of those gifts, honoring them.” And she’d left his late wife’s gardens in a state where they’d been restored to their former glory, and he’d… Elsie glanced up. A soft smile played about William’s lips. Heat washed over her face. “You’re laughing at me.” She stood and stepped around him.
“Never.” He leaped up with an agility he’d not shown weeks earlier and moved into her path. His gaze moved over her face, warmer than the sun, like a physical caress. “How could I take you… or any part of this”—he motioned to the gardens—“as silly?”
“Because everyone, except my father, invariably does,” she said guardedly.
“We’ve already established they were fools,” he reminded.
Her heart swelled.
“You have no idea,” he breathed, continuing forward until they were but three steps apart.
Her eyes fixed on his, riveted. “What?” she whispered.
William brushed his palm down her cheek in a fleeting caress that brought her eyes briefly closed. “How very special you are, Elsie Allenby.”
Special.
In the whole of her life, she’d been called odd, peculiar, strange. In some cases, villagers had whispered the word witch as she’d passed. Never had anyone spoken with a reverent awe about her or what she did, wholly trusting her work. Not even the patients she’d tended for the Brethren had been willing to accept her treatments unless her father had been present. Warmth stole through her.
As he slid his gaze over her face, lingering upon her like a touch, his Adam’s apple jumped.
The air crackled between them.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
“I want to kiss you,” he said, an aching quality to that admission.
He wanted to kiss her. Since their embrace more than a week ago, he’d revealed no hint of desire for her. She wetted her lips, and an agonized groan filtered from him and filled the air between them. “Y-you did,” she reminded him. Nine days, ten hours, and some handful of minutes ago. The single most erotic, passionate moment of her life.
“Again,” he said hoarsely. “I want to kiss you again.”
And yet, he did not. It was a contradiction of passion and restraint that made no sense in the scheme that was desire.
“That was different,” he explained, his response moving with a synchronic harmony to her unvoiced thoughts.
“In what way?” she asked and then cringed. How very easy that question could be confused for an entreaty.
Because isn’t it? Isn’t his embrace what you want?
“I was horrid before, and I’m… trying now because I wasn’t always dishonorable.” With a sound of disgust, William began to pace. “I was a gentleman once, you know.” He stalked an angry rhythm back and forth, and as he spoke, Elsie made herself go as still and silent as possible, afraid to move lest he stop the healing diatribe he so desperately needed. “I was polite to ladies and staff, and I was certainly never the lord who drank too much.” He dragged a hand through the tangle of his unfashionably long black tresses. “And I was certainly never one to kiss a woman on my staff.”
Me. He is speaking of me.
A servant in his employ and nothing more.
Why did that leave her so forlorn inside?
He stopped abruptly so that he faced her.
Elsie schooled her features lest he spy the inexplicable misery that his statement had stirred.
“After all, you are here at my…” He flashed a strained grin. “Behest.”
A laugh exploded from her, and she caught it behind her hand.
“Minx,” he muttered, looping a hand around her waist and tugging her close in a gesture that was so very natural that they both stilled. All laughter died between them. William closed his eyes. “Tell me to release you.”
“But what if I don’t want you to?” she whispered. If she were a proper lady, she would never admit to that wickedness. But she was no lady. She was a woman born to an altogether different station, one who yearned for another taste of this man’s kiss. “What if I tell you I want to kiss you as much as you want to kiss me?”
Passion glinted in his eyes. Passion, along with something else contrary to that emotion—regret. “I can’t offer you more.”
He could not or would not? There was a fine distinction, with the same end result—them parting. And then she did something that she never did. She lied. “I don’t want more than this, William.”
“Elsie.” Her name was a prayer and a benediction all at once. With a groan, he slammed his mouth over hers, and this kiss was different from the one they’d shared before. Heat, white-hot, warmer than the sun that now beat down upon them, set her ablaze.
Elsie climbed her hands about his neck and, going up on tiptoes, leaned into him and all that he offered.
He slanted his lips over hers, and then she parted her mouth, allowing him entry. William swept his tongue inside, and they tangled in a beautiful dance, both primitive and tender all at once.
“Elsie,” he groaned against her lips, the reverberation of her name tickling and pulling a breathy laugh from her. He swallowed that sound, claiming it as his own.
Cupping her under the buttocks, William drew her to the vee between his legs.
His length throbbed against her belly, and she pressed herself closer to the feel of him.
A sharp ache settled at her core.
Guiding her back down upon the blanket, William never broke contact with her lips. He continued to slant his lips over hers, and then he shifted his mouth.
She cried out in an incoherent protest, tangling her fingers in his hair to claim more of that kiss, but William continued his search, trailing his lips down her cheek. Every swath of flesh he caressed with them burned and sent that heat spiraling further within her.
“You have bewitched me, Elsie,” he rasped against her ear. He flicked his tongue out, teasing her lobe and then suckling that flesh.
“I have been c-called a witch before,” she said b
etween frantic little spurts of indrawn breaths.
“Damned villagers?” he muttered, moving his exploration lower until he found the place where her pulse frantically beat with her hungering for him.
Elsie bit her lower lip to stifle a moan, and her head tipped reflexively, affording him open access to that skin. “Th-the very same. S-some of my father’s patients, t-too.” Her speech dissolved into a partial whimper, partial plea.
He reached a hand between them and, through the thin fabric of her wool day dress, palmed her breasts, bringing them together, and she cried out softly. “Siren, then. Enchantress.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she dropped her head back, allowing him access to her. “A-an enchantress is really much the same as a w-witch, you know.”
William’s mouth again found hers for a hard kiss. “Goddess, then.”
As he continued to tease her through the gown, the restlessness built at her core, a throbbing ache that grew with his every caress.
The fabric of her dress, a thin barrier, only added a heightened level of eroticism to his touch. Nothing more than a scrap of cloth divided them, and all one needed to do was peel it back, and his skin would be upon hers.
Of their own volition, her hips undulated, seeking more of him. “I-I know so much about the human body, you know, and yet, I’ve never known I could feel like this.”
Masculine pride glinted in his eyes. “Let me show you everything your body is capable of feeling, Elsie.”
He already had. He’d opened her heart in ways that she hadn’t known existed. And he would give her this most primitive of gifts.
When I want more. I want so much more with him, and from him.
Elsie fought back the wave of melancholy. She nodded slowly and turned herself back over to simply having William in this way. “I want that,” she said quietly.
With another groan, he caught her to him.
His fingers made quick work of the buttons down the back of her gown, a vague reminder that before she’d come here, he’d been a scoundrel bedding beauties, and that for him, this was surely just an extension of that act.
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