Chapter 18
The purpose of Elsie being here in this household was to help William step out of the prison he’d made for himself and reenter the living. She was to help him learn to live with the injury he’d suffered and the damage it had done to him.
As such, his being here now was a mark of the progress he’d made.
But this… his questioning her and challenging her? This was not part of the role she’d undertaken. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and she didn’t wish to talk about it with him or anyone.
Elsie made a show of gathering several blades of grass. All the while, her skin tingled with the heat of William’s gaze upon her.
How dare he presume to know what her life had been and why she’d closeted herself away in her cottage in the corner of the Cotswolds? It was because of him and the Brethren.
Liar.
You lived a narrow existence, with your father driving your actions, long before the Brethren rejected your father’s appeals for help.
He stretched a hand out, and she stiffened, but he merely reached for the cherished book that had belonged to her father.
“Have you heard of the King List?” he asked unexpectedly.
Elsie paused in her task, and blinking back confusion, she looked up from the grass. What was he talking about? “I’ve not,” she said carefully. All the information she’d been fixed on through the years had pertained only to ancient medical practices and the techniques and treatments she and her father might have used to help whichever patient inevitably came to them.
“It is quite fascinating, really,” he said, returning the ancient leather volume to its previous place. “We know much about what we do about the Mesopotamians because of a clay tablet kept. This tablet is known as the King List and contains the names of most of the ancient rulers of Sumer, as well as the lengths of their reigns.” As he spoke, William barely moved his lips. The white lines at the corners of his mouth marked his misery, and yet, he sat here talking on anyway.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured, setting down the latest grass she’d been evaluating.
“This tablet memorialized all the greatest leaders. They had a special concept of kingship.”
“In what way?” she asked when it appeared he intended to say nothing else and leave her as confounded as she’d been moments ago at the abrupt shift in discourse.
“A kingship was more than a title. Rather, it was something with a lifelike force that traveled. As such, it went from city to city, not following any one person. Sometimes, it would remain in a respective city for a hundred years. Sometimes longer.” William patted the empty spot beside him on the bench. Bear scrambled eagerly up onto all fours and promptly rested his head alongside William’s knee. William immediately found that sensitive place at the base of his head that Bear loved so much.
Her heart quickened in her breast. Such a man who took enjoyment in a dog’s presence, and who had learned so very swiftly what brought the ancient dog pleasure, fit not at all with what she’d expected of him. Nothing where he was concerned did. She’d believed all the worst about William, the Duke of Aubrey, only to have all of those beliefs ripped up by the reality of him.
“Among the many ‘kings’ to rule, there was one female.”
Elsie sat upright. “Indeed?” It was a wholly foreign concept. In a world ruled and dominated by males, women were left to claw every moment just to survive.
William favored Bear with one more affectionate pat before laying his palms upon the table. “Her name was Kubaba. The recordings indicate she was a ‘tavern keeper’ first, who went on to take the throne of the city-state Kish after being rewarded for the work she did for the previous king.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you funning me?”
With an endearing boylike gesture, he crossed a solemn X over his chest. “No.” He lifted a brow. “And why should it be so unbelievable?”
Elsie snorted. “Why should it not? Women”—she slashed a hand in the air—“aren’t granted roles of leadership. They are…” She let her words trail off.
“They are what?” he quietly compelled in the melodious tones Satan could have used to seduce God’s own secrets from Him.
Elsie met William’s gaze directly. “They are relegated to the role of the forgotten, bent to the will of whichever man has a need of her.” Just as she’d been by Lord Edward. Just as she’d been by this man before her, and every man to come before him. She bit her lip. I said too much.
“A tavern keeper,” she said softly to herself.
“She was a woman of influence,” he said, slightly emphasizing the last word.
“She was one woman among thousands upon thousands of years of leadership.”
William glanced pointedly around at the items laid out between them. “It’s not the number of women who have ruled, but rather, the mark of one’s greatness and capabilities.”
If he believed that, he was more naïve than she’d ever expect of a man of his status and station. Frustration spiraled through her, at herself for her lot as a female, at William for daring to hint that it could be different for her as a woman. Women were not allowed any role—no matter how vaunted—among Society. And there certainly weren’t women of medicine hired to care for any patients.
Or, there hadn’t been… until him.
With shaking fingers, Elsie gathered up the next batch of grass she’d retrieved in the gardens and tested the strands for their suitability. No more words passed between her and William. The quiet stretched out, tense and uncomfortable in ways that it hadn’t been before. Elsie abandoned the stalks of greenery and glanced around at the remaining pieces.
“That is all?” William murmured.
She stiffened.
Of course he should break their stony impasse. William Helling, Duke of Aubrey, was the manner of man who could command any silence and force it to bend to his will.
“It did not work,” she muttered. “They are all too narrow.” Elsie reached for another. Wider than the others, it had potential. She proceeded to arrange the stalks in a neat line. “I’ve been unable to find reed grass like—” William covered her hand with his own, staying her.
His touch enveloped her in a soothing warmth, oddly juxtaposed with the unease raised by his earlier questioning.
“That isn’t what I was talking about, Elsie,” he murmured. “You know that.”
She stared at their entangled palms. Of course she’d known that. But it was a good deal easier to speak on grass and greenery and straws than on her place in this world that had little use for a woman skilled in medicine.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked tiredly, her gaze transfixed by how very different their two hands were. His large, the midfingers dusted with the faintest hairs. Hers callused, with mud-stained fingertips that retained the stain of dirt no matter how hard she scrubbed.
“I’d have you acknowledge that you can do more for yourself and others if you didn’t live in some remote, forgotten cottage, a stranger to the world.”
Elsie gritted her teeth and drew her hand away, going cold at the loss of his touch. “And you of all people would lecture me on leaving?”
“I’d lecture you on leaving because I recognize someone who’s imposed the same prison upon herself that I have. The difference being, Elsie? I know what I’ve done and why I’ve done it. I acknowledge it.” He gave her a sad, pitying smile that sent heat rushing to her cheeks. “But you? You cannot be honest with even yourself.”
She jerked, his charge stinging like the blow she’d taken to the cheek from one of the men who’d killed her father. Only, this burned far more than the mere physical pain of that assault. This was a challenge to her soul and spirit and whole way of life. “How dare you?” she whispered.
“I dare because you will not,” he said calmly. “Because you have not.” William stood, and placing his palms on the table, he leaned forward. “You’ve not because of some ungrateful village folk who don’t appreciate your skill or what you’re capable of.”
“You know nothing,” she rasped, exploding to her feet and matching his pose. Her chest rose and fell quickly. She scoffed. “What do you think?” she asked, proceeding to tidy up her workstation. “That I’m just a simple village girl afraid of the world?” She didn’t allow him a word edgewise. “I wasn’t afraid of the world until I saw what men were capable of. Honorable men who simply take from good men.”
*
William took in Elsie’s unusually jerky movements as she cleaned the remnants of her efforts this night. Head bent, shoulders slightly hunched, she gave the task all her attention, leaving him to stare on.
Since Elsie had entered his household and his life, William had been filled with questions about the mysterious woman who challenged him at every turn. He’d been besieged by a burning need to know all there was about her.
Until now.
My father was a man who’d not reject any request or demand for help. It was a virtue, but also a fault, and it would prove to be my father’s downfall.
All the pieces she’d revealed now rolled around his memory.
My father was a healer. He did not end lives… He saved them.
A niggling premonition took root.
And, coward that he’d proven himself to be this past year—a failing Elsie had opened his eyes to—he proved himself to be an even greater one in this instance.
Because he preferred to think of her just as she said—as a simple village girl. He wanted to think of a world where Elsie lived in the English countryside, caring for animals and villagers alongside her father, before she’d been left alone in this world. He didn’t want to know her life had been in fact complicated by evil and darkness and the seediest side of a man’s soul.
His stomach muscles tightened as Elsie finished lowering her items into a lidded basket.
Let her go. You don’t need to know. No good can come from knowing…
For, ultimately, he’d known all along the lie in imagining her as a country girl. Known it because his brother and Cedric Bennett wouldn’t have known of a simple village girl. But he’d allowed his mind to shy away from the questions and realities there.
Elsie stepped out from behind the table and tapped her leg once, springing Bear into motion.
Unease threaded through him. “You said your father’s goodness was a fault,” he called after her. “How was it a fault?” he asked, not wanting the answers, not truly, but seeking them anyway.
She stopped suddenly, her narrow back presented to him, her reply directed at the kitchen door. “My father was a good man.”
“And he became entangled with… bad men?” Wasn’t that invariably the case? Was she in danger even now?
“That would certainly be the simplest explanation for what happened to him,” she said, her voice distant, as if she contemplated her own response. “It’s certainly the one I had before…” Before…
Before…?
Did the men who harmed her father seek revenge upon Elsie, who was so closely entangled in her father’s work? And I unwittingly brought her to London and exposed her to the same peril I did Adeline…
Bile stung his throat. I am going to be ill.
“What happened?” William urged, his voice slightly hoarsened. This query came not as a directive from the leader of the Brethren, one he’d issued so many times as a duke, but rather, as a man who wished to know about this woman. To keep her safe when he’d proven unable to help the other woman who’d relied upon him.
Elsie turned slowly back around, facing him. “His talents were discovered, and he was put to work for the Crown.”
A pressure weighed on his chest as warning bells that had been faintly ringing at the back of his head chimed all the louder. No.
Elsie sucked in a shuddery breath and held the basket closer to her side. “He gave them his service, and others learned of that and wanted the information he had about his patients.” Elsie held his stare. “When our lives were threatened”—our lives, not his, for it was as he’d reasoned, she, by her association with her father, had been in danger, too—“my father sought help from those who should have given it,” she said simply, an uncharacteristic bitterness ringing clear in her singsong voice. “In the end, they didn’t help, and he was murdered for the work he’d done.”
He rocked back on his heels. “The bastards.” The air hissed between his clenched teeth.
“Yes, well, I certainly have been of a like opinion,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. A sheen glazed her eyes, and she blinked the crystalline drops back, restraining them when any other woman he’d ever known would have let them fall freely and copiously. “Now, if I may?” She snapped her fingers twice, and the slumbering dog clambered to his feet.
Let her go. You don’t truly wish to know…
“Elsie,” he called out before she left, halting her at the door, her fingers clasping the handle.
She turned back.
“Who?”
Silence rang around the room.
Bear nosed at her skirts, as if offering canine encouragement.
Elsie said nothing for a long while, and something in her eyes shot straight through William, sucking the breath from his lungs and trapping it somewhere in his chest. Oh, God.
He shook his head as a vile, loathsome possibility slipped around his mind, like venom.
“My father’s name was Francis Allenby, and he worked as a doctor on behalf of the Brethren of the Lords.”
A loud buzzing filled William’s ears as he stood there, motionless, afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. Everything within him ached. Only this… this was not the vicious agony that had been his jaw, but rather, one that rocked his entire body and soul, from the inside out. “No.”
She compressed her trembling lips into a line. “Yes. He was murdered for his efforts.” And with that pronouncement that ripped a ragged hole in his heart, Elsie left.
Her father, and she, had worked on behalf of the Brethren.
And I did not even know their names.
All the life drained from his legs, and he slid numbly onto the bench. All along, the only explanation that made any sense in his upside-down world, was that she, Elsie, was somehow connected to the Brethren. It had been a thought there at the back, and sometimes front, of his mind with every encounter.
But she’d not borne the same ruthless traits of the men and women he’d dealt with, of the ones he’d commissioned to work on behalf of the Home Office.
His pulse pounded loudly in his ears, throbbing there, near deafening in its intensity, drumming a beat that only added to the cacophony of confusion in his mind.
Think, man. Think.
Allenby. Allenby. Francis. Daughter, Elsie.
He dragged his fingers through his hair, tugging the too-long strands. Why don’t I know them?
It was his responsibility to know them. To know everyone who served.
But what was worse… she’d known him. She’d known of the Brethren and his role with the organization that, by her own words, had failed her family, and she’d come here anyway. Because of a threat made by Edward and Cedric Bennett?
With every question, sweat beaded his brow.
Groaning, William buried his face in his hands and struggled to bring her name into clarity.
Mayhap Elsie and her father had been assigned different names by one of the agents within the organization to protect their identities. Only, she hadn’t been protected.
She’d lost her father and had been alone since his death. What dangers had she known, then and now?
A beastlike groan lodged in his throat, choking him. William surged to his feet, threw the door open, and sailed through. “Stone,” he bellowed as he broke into a dead run for his offices.
The spy who’d spent this past year overseeing William’s household stepped into his path when he reached the corridor where his offices were located.
William stumbled to a stop.
“You summoned?” Stone asked in his gravelly tones, as though it was the most common thing in the world for his employer to call for him in the dead of night.
“Lord Edward,” he rasped. “I want him in my offices five minutes ago.”
Nodding, Stone took off in the opposite direction.
William shoved the door closed behind him and stalked over to the mahogany desk at the center of the room. Removing his watch fob, he snapped the back of the lid open and slipped free the key hidden there.
He dropped to a knee, and despite being a year away from it, his fingers instantly found the minuscule row of locks down the back left side of the desk. Drawing open the panel, William pulled free the ten ledgers tucked away there.
Heart racing, he shoved the door shut and, with the burden in his arms, climbed to his feet.
He swept the cluttered desk and, for the first time in the course of a year, damned the mess he’d let his office become. Balancing his books in one arm, he used his spare hand to push the leather folios and ledgers over to the far left corner of his desk. And then, dropping the leather journals in the middle of the cleaned surface, he sat.
A frantic energy pumping through him, William grabbed the first book, opened it, and scanned the names written there. Searching. Searching. He flipped to the next page. And the next. And the next, making quick work of the first book.
Nothing.
William shoved it aside and reached for another.
If she and her father had done work on behalf of the Brethren, they would be here, in one of these books.
Where were they? Where were they?
The search for any hint of their names kept him focused. The methodical task kept him from the horror of what she’d endured. He paused, his gaze frozen on some other unfamiliar name written there in Stone’s hand.
“Because of me,” he whispered into the empty stillness of the room. If what she professed was in fact true—and there was no reason for her to put forward any such lie—then that would mean—
His stomach pitched.
Giving his head another shake, William pored over the rows upon rows of names and occupations and other distinguishing details marked there.
Rap-pause-rap-pause—rap-rap.
“Enter,” he thundered, abandoning the second book and finding another. He flipped it open.
The measured, familiar fall of his brother’s steps echoed in the room, followed by the click of the door as he shut the panel behind him.
“Now, this is certainly not what I expected to see,” Edward said quietly, his words hoarse not with sleep but with relief and joy.
William turned the page and froze.
His heart, soul, and body turned to stone as he stared at the lone name written there in Stone’s hand.
Francis Allenby. Medical Consultant for the Brethren. Tending injured agents and others on behalf of the Brethren.
Oh, God. His stomach roiled.
“I’m going to be ill.”
“William?” Edward’s concerned tone drifted through the haze, but William remained firmly absorbed in that name, uncaring that he’d spoken aloud.
“What is it?” his brother asked, rushing over to the desk.
Elsie’s father.
And yet…
William searched. “Where is it?” he whispered. His fingers trembling, he grappled with the edge of the thick velum page, turning it. He scanned. Skimming… There was not even a mention of her. She’d worked alongside her father on behalf of the Crown, giving of her services, and she was not so much as a footnote upon those pages? William turned back to Francis Allenby’s name. “It isn’t here,” he repeated dumbly. Her life had been upended, her services enlisted to help William, and no one had thought to record her name.
Resent Stone, or Edward, or whoever kept notes on the staff in the fields, but you were the one who authorized the hiring of these people… whose names you yourself did not even know.
Edward opened and closed his mouth several times. “I don’t know what you are ta—”
“You brought her here.” Fury ripped that from him. “Surely you know something about her,” he charged ahead before his brother could speak.
Understanding lit his brother’s eyes. “Miss Allenby.” Just that, her name. Edward drew out the winged chair and slid into the leather folds. “What is this about?”
“How did you know of her?” he asked in deadened tones. How did you know of her, when I knew… nothing?
When it had been his responsibility. Before.
But now… now, he wanted to know because of who Elsie was.
“Ah,” his brother said, as if he understood everything clearly, when William himself couldn’t make sense of up or down, left or right. Edward looped his ankle across his opposite knee and rested his clasped hands there. “Our father recommended Francis Allenby’s hire more than two decades ago.”
“Our father,” he repeated dumbly. His father had hired Elsie’s. Their families had been linked by their service to the Crown, and she had been a stranger to him, until now.
His brother waved a hand, infuriatingly nonchalant. “A former agent was thrown from his mount when riding through Bladon and taken to convalesce at Dr. Allenby’s cottage. Father learned about the man’s capabilities, and he was… petitioned.”
Petitioned. Which, under his own leadership and the leadership to come before, would have really meant forced.
My father was a healer. He did not end lives… He saved them. And that generosity extended to animals.
A man such as the one described by Elsie would have never rejected any request to help any man who was wounded or suffering.
Winded, William fell back in his seat. “How did I not know any of this?”
Edward shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and overseeing Francis Allenby was delegated to Bennett. It was an irrelevant matter that wouldn’t have commanded your time or energies,” his brother said gently. His words were meant to lift guilt, but they only compounded the shame that stung at his insides.
“What happened?”
Edward’s expression darkened, and he shook his head slightly.
Snarling, William leaned forward. “I am not asking you a question as your brother. I’m issuing a directive.”
“Of course.” His brother instantly sat upright in his chair, and as he spoke, he doled out details the way any agent might when asked for a full report. “Francis Allenby betrayed the Brethren.”
William jerked. “What?” he demanded. “Impossible.” He knew the man not at all, but he knew the daughter, knew Elsie, and of what she spoke and her own goodness. Those people were incapable of deceit or treachery.
As soon as the thought slid in, he faltered. For the whole of his adult life, he’d been led to question everyone’s culpability and motives. To be wary and mistrustful. And yet… he inherently trusted her.
“Quite true,” Edward said, nodding. “He confirmed to enemies not only the existence of the Brethren, but his role within the organization.”
“Bloody hell.” William swiped a palm over his forehead. “Why?”
“I don’t know those details. We severed ties, but the damage was done.”
The clock ticked. The fire hissed and popped.
“That is it?” William asked when it became apparent his brother had nothing else to say.
Edward lifted his shoulders and continued with a methodical telling. “From my understanding of speaking to Bennett, the moment he revealed the information, he realized his mistake and sought help from the Brethren.”
Help that would not have been forthcoming for one who’d betrayed the organization. Allenby would have been left to flounder, owning his mistakes and crimes, and ultimately paying the price that was invariably paid—with his life.
William curled his fingers so tight into his palms he left crescent imprints upon them. “The men he would have given that information to…”
“Came for him,” Edward confirmed with a somber note of finality.
Them. Elsie would have been there, too. “What happened?” he asked, his tongue thick.
“From my understanding, he was called out for being a liar and pressed for the names of the men he’d treated. Whether he withheld them or shared them?” Again, Edward shrugged. “I’ve no confirmation. Miss Allenby was spared. Beyond that, I’ve little information.”
It was the beyond that that William needed. It would be the stuff of nightmares, and they belonged to Elsie.
What do you think? That I’m just a simple village girl afraid of the world? I wasn’t afraid of the world until I saw what men were capable of. Honorable men who simply take from good men.
His vision tunneled as horror lapped at every corner of his consciousness, battering him with visions he didn’t want, and yet, they came anyway. William struggled to breathe, focusing on drawing in a steady, even cadence.
“William?” his brother asked, concern heavy in his question.
The world sharpened back into clarity with crystalline focus. “You brought her here,” he seethed. “Knowing all this?”
Edward squirmed in his chair, the leather groaning in protest. “I evaluated the facts I was in possession of and made a choice based on that. And by your recent emergence from your rooms, and you’re not having whores in your bed, or spirits on your breath, as well as your renewed interest in the organization, I say it proves my judgment correct.” His brother straightened an already immaculate cravat.
“I want the file,” he said in steely tones. “I want every goddamn bit of information we have about Els—” His brother’s eyes sharpened on William. “Miss Allenby,” he swiftly amended, “and her father at the Home Office and in Stone’s possession, and anyone else within the organization.”
His brother made a sound of protest. “Stone indicated it’s been five, maybe six, years. The records will have been filed and locked away at the Home Office.”
“I don’t care where they are. I want them collected. Everything. Every last detail about the whole damned… situation. And when you have it? I want all of it here. Am I clear?”
Edward inclined his head. The faintest glitter filled his younger brother’s eyes. “As you wish.” He hesitated, and his throat moved up and down several times. “I’m glad you are…” His words trailed off, and color splotched his cheeks. “I’m glad you are… back.”
Back from the dead, restored to the living… but not because of his work or his title. Not even because of his family. Rather, because of Elsie Allenby.
“Go, Edward,” he urged.
His brother offered a deferential bow and started for the door.
“Send Stone in,” William ordered after him.
As soon as his brother had gone, William scrubbed his hands over his face. Elsie would have been within her right to send him on to the devil before offering him any medical assistance, and yet, she’d not. For all the rightful resentment and animosity she undoubtedly carried, she’d evaluated his injury and issued more meaningful guidance than all the previous doctors or healers who’d come before her combined. He closed his eyes. He was in awe of her strength and spirit and purity of heart.
And I’m a blackhearted devil who has only ever taken. It had only ever been about his happiness, and his needs as a duke, and as the Sovereign. Even his marriage had been representative of that. He’d enjoyed the thrill of the unfamiliar innocence Adeline had represented, and he’d wanted to continue knowing that sentiment, even though doing so put her and those connected to her at risk.
He’d taken too much. From everyone. And now Elsie. Elsie, who deserved to be free of him and any requirements his brother and Bennett had placed upon her.
He slid his eyes closed.
Only… mayhap with this next decision, one that left him empty and aching before it was even carried out, proved he wasn’t so very selfish, after all.
Rap-pause-rap-pause—rap-rap.
William swiftly opened his eyes. “Enter,” he boomed. The final echo of his voice hadn’t even faded before the door opened, and Stone appeared.
“Your Grace?”
“Summon Miss Allenby,” he said before the other man fully stepped into the room. William got the command out while honor won out over his own desires. “I want to see her now.”
Stone rushed off.
Alone once more, William fetched the book lying open damningly before him and reread words he’d already largely committed to memory.
Dr. Francis Allenby. Unconventional doctor, with skills superior to some of London’s most notable names. Allenby’s father and grandfather were both proficient doctors. Allenby removed himself from London for Bladon only after meeting his wife, a young village girl.
No name was mentioned for the woman who’d given birth to Elsie.
William lingered on the afterthought of Francis Allenby’s wife, the young woman nothing more than a detail to explain how the doctor had come to leave London for a distant corner of England.
This was it.
This was all there was.
The Brethren had not recorded anything about Francis Allenby’s capable daughter, who was versed in ancient massage and able to identify pain and alleviate it when every man before her had failed.
The pages revealed nothing of what her life had been like as an assistant to her father, or what had become of her with Dr. Allenby’s passing. For all intents and purposes for the Crown’s business, she’d ceased to exist that day, as well.
He dug his fingertips into his temples and rubbed. Was it a wonder she’d mocked him for his simplistic challenge of her decision to remain tucked away?
What a bloody fool he was. How self-important and ignorant, and—
Footfalls echoed outside his office, and a moment later, Stone reappeared—alone.
The spy coughed into his hand, and for the first time in all the years he’d served William, the other man avoided his gaze.
“What is it?” William demanded.
“I checked her rooms.” William’s stomach fell, and he knew with the same sick intuition that had met him when he’d awakened after two months and searched for his wife. “She’s gone.”