Chapter 11
Humming, challenging him, Elsie Allenby was a master of her emotions.
So much so, that any other person might have easily overlooked the exchange that had taken place moments ago in the corridor.
William studied her bent head as she neatly took apart a cold roll and fed it to the dog seated at her side.
She was haunted.
He’d recognized the dark, vacant glint because it was one that faced him in any mirror he passed. His company had been minimal this past year, and his dialogue even more sparse. But he’d heard the single utterance she’d sought to disguise. Help.
And he, who’d cared for nothing beyond his own miseries and losses, found himself wanting to know about this woman’s.
“Do you have a queue?” Elsie directed the query to the ugly mutt at her feet. At last, she picked her head up.
“Do I have a…?”
“It is generally a single piece of leather. A velvet ribbon, even?” She shoved back her chair, the legs scraping along the floor noisily, and sent her dog scrambling onto all fours. Elsie stood.
“I know what a—”
She reached behind her and caught the neat plait that hung down the middle of her back, and his annoyance, all rational words, a basic reply, fled his mind as he stared on, transfixed.
Elsie brought the braid over shoulder and tugged free the sapphire velvet piece. “Here,” she murmured.
“What are you…?” His words emerged slightly garbled to his own ears, for reasons that for once had nothing to with the pain of moving his jaw and everything to do with his body’s heightened awareness of this unconventional woman.
Sticking the frayed ribbon between her teeth, she proceeded to gather the tangled mass of black hair about his face.
William stiffened. He should order her to release him.
He should send her to the devil with curt orders on how to get there for her insolence.
Instead…
His eyes, of their own volition, slid closed. How long had it been since anyone had shown him such tenderness? When was the last time he’d been touched in this way? Had he ever? As a child, there’d never been any shows of affection or warmth. His wife, Adeline, had blushed when he’d taken her hand, but never so much as touched him unsolicited.
After her death, the exchanges William had allowed himself had been mindless meetings driven by that empty emotion of lust. Each one had been nothing more than a primitive joining of like beasts, satiating one another’s basest urges. And he’d wanted to be that animal, because his lovers did not know the searing agony of loss and failure and shame.
Is that truly what you’ve wanted?
He balked. Until Elsie had arrived, he would have answered an unequivocal yes and ordered one of his men to fetch any number of the beauties who’d warmed his bed this year to join him for the day. Lust was safer than… really anything. It was the most primal of the sentiments, where one simply felt sexual gratification that allowed a fleeting release from… everything.
But with Elsie silently stroking his scalp, a different hungering gripped him. One that defied the physical acts of these past months and enshrined warmth and… a host of other sentiments life hadn’t given him the experience to identify or name.
While his mind was in tumult, Elsie continued her work. She wound her fingers through the tangle of strands. She drew them delicately between her fingers, like a comb being expertly applied. His scalp tingled under her ministrations. What magic did she possess that she made him remember how life once was and yearn for that existence and not the one he’d laid out for himself?
After working some order into the too-long strands, Elsie drew them back and then, with that aging ribbon that had seen better days, tied them at his nape.
Elsie stepped back and assessed her work. “There,” she said, and with a pleased nod, she sat once more, picked up her bread, and popped a bite into her mouth.
That mundanity hit him like a fist to the solar plexus.
His life… had become, at best, a farce.
This slip of a woman had left him sitting here, exposed. Hair that had once been a curtain left his bearded cheeks visible to her intense gaze. You can always send her away… keep her out, just as you’ve kept out the members of your family. Guilt cut through him, an all-too-familiar sentiment. Guilt and something else, something that felt very much like melancholy at the prospect of her leaving. “I do not see how matters of my personal hygiene are important to you, madam,” he said gruffly.
She set her roll down and dusted her palms together. “I cannot fully assess the state of your jaw if you go about hiding your face from me.”
“I’m not hiding myself from you,” he gritted out, and agony shot down his jawline. Gasping, William dropped his fork and caught his chin in a hand, cradling it, stabilizing it. To no avail.
Through the pain, he registered Bear’s nervous whine.
Muscles he’d never known he possessed in his face throbbed, and if he were a weaker man, he’d weep from it. He squeezed his eyes shut. Pinpricks of light danced behind his eyes, and he forced them open…
To find Elsie’s intense gaze trained on his, eyes that could look into a man’s soul and steal the secrets he desperately sought to cling to. “You are hiding from someone,” she said somberly. “Or…” She leaned forward in her chair, closer to him. “Is it something within yourself?”
“How do you…?” William recoiled, halting that damning admission.
There was no triumph in her gaze, which made her discovery all the more intimate, and terrifying for it. Her openness also, for the first time since Adeline’s passing, brought the truth freely from his lips. “My wife was killed.”
Her lips parted slightly, but she did not seek to follow his statement with empty apologies.
“My enemies are great, and she paid the price. A carriage accident that was no accident at all.” His lips twisted in a wry grimace. “And I was the fortunate one to survive.”
“But you are… fortunate. And you are squandering that gift of life.”
“What rot,” he spat. “This,” he hissed, slashing his hand in the air, “is some kind of gift?” He shoved back his chair with such alacrity that the seat toppled over behind him. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he rasped. “I did not invite you into my household to pry into my past.” You freely offered the details and now you’d rail at her. William thrust aside logic and fed his frustration.
Pushing her plate aside, Elsie rested her palms primly before her on the table. “Your past is part of your present pain, William.”
My God, she was fearless. A slender slip of a woman, and yet, Elsie Allenby was unmatched in courage and strength. And more terrifying, she was dangerously accurate with every supposition she leveled. “You think you are so clever, Elsie.”
“I never presumed to be, nor do I seek to impress anyone in any way,” she said calmly. “I’ve confidence enough in who I am and my abilities.” That pronouncement couldn’t have been more accurately placed and vicious than if she’d slipped the dagger from his boot and shoved it into his belly.
She was, in short, everything he’d once been… and never would be again. William towered over her, willing her to look at him—and unsettled when she did. “I didn’t refer to your talents, but rather, your ploys.”
Her cheeks colored. “My p-ploys?” For all her remarkable strengths, she was still rot at subterfuge.
Her unevenness restored him. William walked a path about her seat, circling her in the predatory manner he’d perfected under his father’s tutelage. “Come,” he urged on a silken purr. “Let us cease the games.”
“I don’t know what games you speak of,” she said in a threadbare whisper. “I did not come here to play games. I was forced to come, and you required that I stay.”
Fair point. It was an admission he’d not concede.
“Your display, Elsie? Taking meals together so you might… assess me?”
The long column of her throat moved. Her skin paled. And the evidence of her nervousness should have been a victory. Except… William slowed his steps so that he stood behind her chair. Her unease did not make him feel any better. Rather, it made him feel like a damned bully, and he hated himself all the more for that weakness. “Hmm?” he prodded when she still said nothing.
“It is t-true.” The warble there spoke of a partial lie buried within her words.
William perched his hip on the edge of the table, letting the moments pass, at ease in the silence until she finally, reluctantly lifted her gaze to his. “Is it?” He caught the strands of her braid that had fallen loose since she’d freed them of the ribbon.
She flinched and shot a hand out to try to slap his fingers.
William caught it, anticipating the move. Holding her gaze, he gently lowered her hand back to the table, freeing her, but also reminding her of who was in command of this exchange. “One’s past is inextricably linked to one’s present.” He repeated the words she’d recently spoken. “Every word to leave your lips, every statement you utter, why…” He dipped his head lower, placing his lips alongside her ear, so close that he detected her audible inhalation. “Every uneven breath you take speaks of your feelings… and your intentions.” William shifted his mouth closer, filling his lungs with the citrusy scent that clung to her skin. It was intoxicating. She was more potent than the spirits or the laudanum they’d plied him with. And he resisted that pull. “So do not pretend all of this,” he whispered, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear, “was driven by a need to evaluate my jaw movement.” His pulse throbbed loud in his ears, making a mockery of the illusion of control when his body was so attuned to Elsie’s every movement. “You intended to pass our meetings off as medical in nature, when really you sought answers to questions you have.” Sneering, William straightened. “About my past.” Their gazes locked. “Ask them, but do not play games with me, madam. For you… will never win.”
Another would have been cowed by the fury he let spill freely from his eyes. “Would you answer them?” she asked quietly. This woman proved the contrary one in every regard.
“You don’t deserve answers.”
“I don’t,” she agreed, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. “But you deserve to share whatever keeps you imprisoned, because until you do, William, you will not be free.”
He caught her hard about the waist, ringing a gasp from her lips.
Through the fabric of her gown, his fingers curled reflexively into the generous curve of her hip. “I have no desire to be free,” he whispered, dipping his head so he might better hold her stare. “I have no desire to…”
“Forget,” she breathed.
He stared at her full lips, transfixed, sucked further within her spell.
Elsie’s long lashes fluttered, and she angled her head back. William battled with himself, wanting to lose himself again in her kiss. He briefly closed his eyes. And yet, if he did, something deep within him said there would be no coming back from the edge of temptation.
William released her.
“I invited you here to do a job, Elsie,” he said coolly. “One singular task: to evaluate my jaw and nothing more. Do what you were ordered here to do. Or…” Get the hell out.
Except, he kept those words back.
“Or?” she prodded.
She wants me to throw her out. She’d expressed reservations from the start at being here and had been forced into the role by his brother. And yet, she’d come… and stayed anyway. And would remain here until he issued the declarative.
God help me, I cannot.
With horror sweeping through him, he backed away from her, keeping his eyes on her as he went. The moment he stepped into the hall, William bolted.
*
“Well, that was a singular disaster,” Elsie muttered.
The most essential rule in overseeing anyone or anything—be they human or animal—was to establish a relationship based on trust. That lesson had been one of the first her father had handed over to her as a girl overseeing the care of her first injured animal, a fawn with a broken limb she’d found in the same copse where her father would die years later.
And she’d forgotten it.
Nay, you allowed yourself to forget because you are impatient for answers about William Helling, Duke of Aubrey. Because she wanted to know about him as a man and the losses that had turned him into a surly, angry figure content to live away from the rest of the world.
He’d lost his wife, a woman he’d desperately loved and now punished himself out of some sense of guilt. All these years, she’d taken the nameless stranger who led the Brethren as one incapable of feelings and emotion. Only to find in William one who’d loved so deeply that he’d been reduced to a shadow of a person.
To be so loved. It was a sentiment she’d never allowed herself even a dream of, for she’d been viewed by the world as an oddity more than as a person.
Except for William, the unlikeliest of ones to not turn his nose up at her or her talents. And now, in having resurrected the past, she’d left him hurting.
Bear whined, batting at her skirts with his paw, calling her back from her thoughts. “I know. I know. Go to him,” she urged.
The dog immediately sprang into action, rushing from the room with a speed he’d not shown in more years than she could remember.
“What in hell was that about?”
Elsie gasped and whipped her head toward the furious demand.
Lord Edward and his counterpart, Mr. Bennett, stormed into the breakfast room. Their matching black cloaks swirled angrily about their feet. Her heart knocking painfully against her ribcage, she shifted herself behind the high back of the seat William had vacated, sliding her fingers closer to the knife he’d left there. Do you really think you could use it if need be? That voice jeered her for the weak woman who’d run while her father had faced down the danger brought by the Brethren. “Lord Edward,” she greeted with an equanimous calm that she did not feel. “Mr. Bennett.”
“We’re not here to exchange morning pleasantries, Miss Allenby,” Mr. Bennett said in his brusque, lethal tones. He tugged off immaculate leather gloves and slapped them together. “We’re here for a report on your work with His Grace. And by that”—he curled his lip in a derisive sneer—“exchange, you’re as useless as everyone to come before you.”
As she’d said to William moments ago, she didn’t possess an inflated sense of self. She merely sought to help for the sake of helping, not to build a reputation of any sort. As such, Elsie let the insults roll off her person and instead fixed on one detail. She narrowed her eyes on the uglier, angrier of the pair. “You were listening in on our exchange?”
“We were verifying whether you are doing your job,” Mr. Bennett shot back.
All her earlier fear dissolved, and the realization proved a restorative fact. They’d been there all along, listening in on her exchange with William… and then Bear. “I’ll not be spied on.”
“You will as long as you are in our company,” he said with a cheerful matter-of-factness far more ominous than any threat he’d previously leveled.
She shivered.
Lord Edward lifted a hand, silencing his partner, and then he turned to Elsie. “Miss Allenby, will you please sit?” he asked, as polite as any gentleman greeting a guest in his parlor.
Elsie hesitated a moment and then took the chair previously occupied by William. She braced for him to tower above her as his brother had and issue veiled threats. Surprise filled her when he sat beside her.
Elsie quickly schooled her features and watched him. His movements were unhurried, deliberate, carried out with the ease of one who didn’t wish to jolt a skittish mare. He stacked his gloves neatly alongside her forgotten plate. Then steepling his fingers, he laid them on his flat belly. “I’ll speak candidly with you.”
Mr. Bennett leveled a sharp glance at the other man that went ignored.
“Oh?” she asked cautiously.
“You gathered my brother’s role is of some importance.”
“I ventured he is the leader of your organization,” she reminded him flatly.
His face remained impressively blank, carved of stone that not even a mason could chisel a hint of emotion or feeling into. “Regardless of what his specific role is or is not, the duke is a man of great importance. Your baiting him does us no good in helping to restore him to his previous state.”
She contemplated those words, along with the gentleman before her. “So that is what this is about.”
Lord Edward stared back quizzically.
“This…” Elsie waved a hand in front of her. “Me being here isn’t about your brother. It is about the Brethren.”
“They are one and the same.” Both men spoke simultaneously. Of course that would be the answer to them. To these men, that was all anything was ever about. The lives of their victims, or those inadvertently touched by any connection, were disposable. And it would seem, even the leader of the organization itself was useful only for the purpose he served. Or, in this case, did not serve.
A sliver of sadness pierced her heart, settling in there. Was it any wonder William had become the cold, unfeeling figure he had? Not only had he been broken by the event he’d not speak of, but he was viewed more as an entity to serve than a person.
“I would speak with you alone,” she said quietly to Lord Edward.
Mr. Bennett growled, “There’s nothing you can say about His Grace that you cannot say in front of me.”
“Leave us,” the other man ordered in cool tones that were a mirror of his brother’s.
He waited until Mr. Bennett had taken his leave and then stared at her expectantly.
“You want me to heal your brother,” Elsie said without preamble. “You would have me lay hands upon him and take away whatever pain he knows.” It was the hope of all the men who’d come before her father, pleading for an escape from their suffering. “Perhaps it is because he is family and you love him?” She hoped that for William’s sake, but knew their type enough to know the unlikelihood of that pure emotion driving either of them. “Or perhaps it is because of his role.” Elsie lifted her palms, willing him to understand. “But those reasons, and motives, they matter.” William’s visage flashed to her mind—angry, hurt, desperate—and her heart squeezed all the tighter. “Your brother is hurting, and he needs to find his way, not because of you or the Brethren, but because of him. His pain—” Ran far deeper than the physical effects suffered from a broken jaw.
“What is it?” Lord Edward encouraged.
Elsie looked to the door. Anyone could be standing outside it. Even the very man they spoke of. Discussing him with his brother, or anyone, would only be a betrayal. She weighed her response. “If I help him find freedom from physical pain?” She shook her head sadly. “He’ll still not be the man he once was, nor could be, unless he deals with what is broken”—Elsie pressed her hands to her chest—“in here.” She searched his face. “I don’t expect you to understand that.” No one ever truly had. Not the villagers who’d looked upon her as a freak, nor the patients her father had cared for.
“I do, though,” he said in somber tones.
Her lips parted.
Lord Edward flashed a small smile. “I’ve known something of my own pain and what it took to find happiness again.”
Which he had. There was a peace that radiated within his eyes. It was a sentiment she’d not seen reflected back in the cracked mirror of her modest chambers in nearly five years.
“What do you require?”
The question took her aback. “Truthfully?”
“I’d rather you not lie,” he said dryly, startling a laugh from her. She’d not expected humor from him, or anyone within the Brethren.
“I don’t require anything. I just require time and patience. I don’t need you visiting daily to see if some unlikely miracle has occurred. Because there are no miracles in life. There is just time that serves as a balm.”
“You’ll have it,” he said so automatically that it threw her off-balance once more.
“And your Mr. Bennett? Will he be of a like opinion?”
Lord Edward snorted. “He’s not mine. Cedric Bennett belongs to no one.”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
All earlier brevity faded. “You’ll have what you require. He’ll accept the terms as I set them forth.” He picked up his gloves and twisted them in his hands a moment, studying his fingers. As if he felt her gaze on his movements, Lord Edward stopped. “I would have you know that Cedric… and others, for them, my brother’s role is all that matters. But he is suffering, and I’d not see him hurt.”
It was the most honest he’d been with her since they’d met. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He said nothing for a long while. White lines formed at the corners of his mouth from the tight manner in which he clenched those muscles. “His wife—”
She shook her head, cutting him off. “No.” He still did not understand. But then, the concept was difficult for most to grasp. “You needn’t explain.” She would learn, as William was ready.
Lord Edward stood. She rushed to her feet beside him. “If you require anything, Miss Allenby…”
“I will certainly notify you,” she promised. But she would not need him. Not as long as she was here and not when she left.
Instead of leaving, however, Lord Edward lingered. “I am sorry about the circumstances surrounding your father.” She went still at the unexpected statement. “I trust there were reasons—”
“Please do not.” The request tore from her throat. “I’m not here to redeem him in your eyes.” Their opinions did not matter. Pain and regret stuck in her throat, and she struggled to get words past the emotion. “I know who my father was, and that is enough.”
He bowed his head, his silence unaccusing, and a small branch extended.
Lord Edward drew on his gloves and started for the door, but then abruptly stopped. “Miss Allenby?”
She stared back questioningly.
“You insist you are not capable of healing or miracles, and yet, my brother has not broken his fast in this room in a year. He’s not had his hair drawn back, and he’s certainly never allowed someone to speak as candidly as you did earlier.” A smiled ghosted his lips. “Not without having that person tossed out on their ars—ergh.” His cheeks flushed, and he coughed into his fist. “You’ve already done more for William than I’d believed anyone capable of.”
Her cheeks warmed under his praise. “You make more of it than there is.”
Lord Edward chuckled. “Miss Allenby, I’m a man who deals in facts. I don’t make anything out of something that is not there.”
And with that, William’s brother left.
Elsie stared at the open doorway. He believed she’d reached William, and yet, she could not, and would not, with the approach she’d taken.
They needed to begin again.
Fueled by that, Elsie went in search of her patient.