Valor Under Siege (The Honorables) (5 page)

She blinked in surprise. Fifteen hours? When had she last gone so long without alcohol? When had she ever bothered to quantify her time without? She smiled down at her hands, absurdly delighted by this information. The tiniest seed of gumption found an infinitesimal plot of fertile soil somewhere at the base of her spine and began to germinate. She straightened, her back a little firmer than it had been since she’d awakened.

“Yes, Mr. Dewhurst,” she promised, “I can make it twenty-four hours.”

Ensconced in her sitting room with a cup of tea warming her hands, Elsa watched a thin rain drizzle down gray windowpanes. In the small fireplace, the wood cracked and popped and hissed, the sounds a cheerful rebuttal of the morning’s gloom.

She’d gone to bed early last night, figuring it would be easier not to drink if she was asleep. And so she’d crossed the finish line of Mr. Dewhurst’s twenty-four-hour challenge without even trying, and set off on her second sober lap around the sun. By the time she awoke, she was already seven hours to the good. Maybe not drinking wouldn’t be as hard as she feared.

“Lady Fay. Good morning.”

She turned from the window. Yesterday’s overabundance of emotions had subsided, for Mr. Wynford-Scott was once more the placid fellow to whom she was accustomed.

“May I offer you tea? Anything to eat?”

He waved off her offer. “Thank you, but we should be on our way.”

Carefully, she set her cup into its saucer on the side table. “You needn’t do this, sir. I’m quite capable of traveling home by myself. I’ve made the trip unaccompanied on countless occasions.”

“Brandon was clear it would be better if you had ... company.”

A minder, he meant. A keeper. Someone to ensure she did not consume any of the alcohol on offer in the inns she’d be staying in during the two nights she’d be on the road. Foster had already written ahead to have Berrybrook Cottage emptied of inebriants, but the road was fraught with liquid peril.

Sheridan had suggested Mr. Dewhurst for the task, but the surgeon had obligations to his patients.

“I’ll go.” Norman had stepped forward with the bleak courage of a soldier volunteering for a suicide mission.

She’d tried to put him off, but Mr. Dewhurst endorsed the idea, in turn winning the support of Sheri and Arcadia. Elsa hadn’t the fortitude to put up much of a fight.

Now that the moment had arrived, she felt anew all the reasons why she did not want to spend three days traveling with the gentle giant. Bad enough she was deemed incapable of looking after herself, but Norman Wynford-Scott had seen Elsa at her absolute worst on that terrible night.

Looking at him now, standing there so calm and sensible, he was Guilt and Shame incarnate, a physical manifestation to remind Elsa of her myriad sins.

Clasping her hands around a knee, she worked her jaw from side to side. “Foster will look after me,” she said.

“Foster is just one person,” Norman returned. “She cannot be expected to tend you ’round the clock.” He lifted a brow. His eyes were a soft brownish green, she noted. “Furthermore—”

“Oh, there’s more?”

“Foster has not managed your behavior very well to this point.”

Elsa drew back. “She’s my maid. It’s not her place—”

“Precisely.” His eyes flared with an excitement she’d never seen in him before. “It is
not
her place. Foster is but a servant.”

 How dare he? What did Norman know of Foster’s time in Elsa’s service, of the six long years the faithful abigail had dried Elsa’s tears when her courses arrived, or of the bruises she had tended without comment?

“If you demand drink from her, will Foster not feel obligated to carry out your wishes, fearing for her livelihood?”

Queasily, Elsa realized Norman was employing some courtroom tactic upon her. She’d fallen into his rhetorical trap. “I wouldn’t ask that of her.”

“So you say,” he snapped, “and it is to be hoped you would not. But what if you procure a bottle for yourself? Would you tolerate Foster taking it away from you?”

“Well, I—”

“And if you find yourself in the taproom,” he pressed, looming ever closer, one slow step at a time, “cozied up to a glass of your favorite scotch, and Foster suggests you remove yourself from the room, what would you say then?” He towered above her now, the shadow of his large body cutting her off from the light and warmth of the fireplace.

She lifted a hand. “I would say—”

“In fact, Lady Fay,” his voice rose, reverberating through every particle of air in the sitting room, “you don’t know
what
you would say. Before two nights ago, would you have imagined yourself capable of setting fire to one of the Inns of Court?”

Her cheeks flushed hot. “That was an
accident
,” she pressed, stomping her foot for emphasis. “And if you hadn’t—”

“But it happened, did it not?”

She pressed her lips together, her chin trembling.

His nostrils flared. His lips quirked in the smallest of smiles. “And so, Lady Fay, we return to Foster. Despite your stated intentions, none of us—you, perhaps, least of all—can know of a certain how you will behave once you are actually confronted with the object of your temptation. Foster is in an untenable predicament: If she capitulates to your demands, she will further your ruin; but if she defies you, she risks dismissal, leaving her without employment and you to drown in your own folly.”

That would never happen. Elsa would never send Foster away; Foster wouldn’t let her. The maid’s loyalty ran deep. But when her maid had poured sweet almond oil into Elsa’s bath to soothe the welts on her thighs, there had been no conflict of loyalty. Her place was with her lady, providing for her needs in the face of a difficult marriage. However, Elsa herself was the villain now—as well as the one who still needed protecting. So to whom did Foster owe her loyalty: Elsa the drunkard, or the Elsa struggling to break free of that demon?

After allowing his statement a moment to sink in, Norman spoke again. “But I, Elsa,” he said quietly—it was the first time he’d ever said her given name, and the sound of it in his deep voice trickled over the nape of her neck— “have no such fears. I will refuse you. I will defy you. I will insist you leave the taproom, and if you do not, I will remove you bodily and let bystanders gawp their fill, damn your pride and mine.”

Truth rang in his words, even as she recoiled from the image he evoked. He meant what he said and was more than capable of carrying out his threat. If she put up a fight, he could easily put a stop to it by plucking her up in those great paws of his, the same ones that had held her so tenderly just the day before.

She was defeated and they both knew it, but she could not allow him to think she would be so easily vanquished. “You sound as if you quite relish the idea of thwarting me, Mr. Wynford-Scott. Do you wish to punish me? Is that what this is about?”

He tilted his head thoughtfully, as though giving her question due consideration. “For what would I wish to punish you, Lady Fay?”

Just that quickly, he’d talked her into another corner. She was exposed, her misdeeds reflected in his steady gaze.

Elsa turned from those damning eyes to pour herself a sherry. Her feet stuttered when her eyes landed upon the bare spot on the sideboard where the crystal decanter had been. Her throat convulsed. It was just that simple—stunningly so—to forget, to go wrong again. Her eyes would not leave that blank space. Guilt and Shame crowed in triumph.

Silently he came to stand behind her, his warmth on her back echoing the heat blooming on her cheekbones.

Finally, she tore her gaze loose with a sharp turn of her head. “Let us be on our way,” she said.

• • •

The problem with travel was that it was boring. Reading in a carriage nauseated Elsa, and she'd abandoned her needlework after she’d stabbed her finger when the coach hit the first big rut in the road. Foster had never been one for idle chat, and so Elsa had nothing but empty hours and nothing to do but think.

For a woman in her position, she soon learned, thinking was dangerous. Inevitably, her mind turned to drink. She sat with her craving and came to know it intimately, felt the way it affected her body. It wasn’t just a thirst in her throat and mouth; her hand itched to curl around a heavy tumbler of whiskey, and her bones felt wrong inside her skin. Too, she was afflicted with a hunger that gnawed painfully at the underside of her ribs. At breakfast this morning, she'd fallen upon a plate of scones like she’d not eaten food in a month and devoured the entire platter. Already, just three hours later, she was ravenous again. Visions of oven-fresh loaves with crackling crusts and dripping with butter had her mouth watering. Or maybe something sweet, a pot of chocolate or cake swimming in ganache ...

Elsa’s toes tapped anxiously against the floor. Her palms went clammy. She flexed and released her fingers. From the facing seat, Foster eyed her carefully. “My lady?”

“I’d like to walk, I think.” Elsa pounded the roof. The carriage lurched to a stop, and she hopped out, her foot skating on a slick of mud. She caught herself on the coach door, then pushed away, and began a determined march.

“My lady!” Foster called after her. “Come back! You’ll take a chill.”

“Drive on,” Elsa instructed her puzzled coachman. “Wait for me at the next posting inn.”

“But that’s not for three miles!” he protested.

“Drive. On,” she ground out through clenched teeth.

“Go on,” said a deep voice accompanied by the steady plod of hooves. “I’ll accompany Lady Fay.”

Pulling his behemoth of a horse to a halt with a quiet “Whoa there,” Norman dismounted. Because of his considerable size, he’d claimed sitting in a carriage for any length of time was uncomfortable, and so he’d ridden the entire trip thus far.

The coach rumbled away, leaving them in the middle of a road bordered on both sides by desolate fields impaled by the stiff, dead remains of the previous season’s wheat, cut down and left to mummify in the autumn sun before moldering and melting into nothing before next spring.

She felt his gaze, but could not bear to meet his eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice careful.

Suddenly, her throat was tight and her eyes were full and it hurt to breathe.
Everything
hurt. No longer pleasantly muffled with drink, her senses were overwhelmed by the world—the earthen stink of rot and shit rising from the fields, the wheezing bray of an unseen donkey, even the way the cotton of her shift grated against her sensitized skin—and cried out for her to
do something
to make the agitation end.

There was one solution only, and it was no solution at all. How was this all-consuming need her life? How was this
her
?

A keening cry-moan rose in her throat. Norman turned her around, softly shushing her. “There now,” he said, tucking her against his side, his arm heavy across her shoulders like Christ’s own cross. “Brandon said you need exercise, yes? And you’ve been cooped up in that coach for more than a day. A good walk is just the thing. I should have thought of it myself.”

She dashed a hand across her eye and laughed bitterly. “More than anything, I need—”

“A walk,” Norman insisted. “Fresh air.”

His vehemence caused her to look up at him. His eyes—how had she never noticed what a pleasing color they were? more gray-green than hazel, she decided—held a note of pleading, a soft counterpoint to the resolute set of his chin.

His horse peered over his shoulder at her as if in agreement with his master. Slowly, the great chestnut head eased forward, velvet lips quivering, and began to delicately nibble at the brim of her straw bonnet.

“Apple, no!” Norman shouted, aghast. “Leave Lady Fay alone, you bounder.”

Elsa laughed, all at once feeling lighter than she had in days. “That monster’s name is Apple?”

Norman gave her a rueful smile, boyish and endearing. “He came with it.” He wrapped the reins around one hand and patted the horse’s neck with the other. “He used to be a draught horse at a brewery, and that’s what the stable master called him. He was already low from the death of his teammate, Dumpling. Didn’t wish to worsen matters by changing his name.”

“Apple and Dumpling.” She tossed Norman a wicked grin. “I don’t suppose the stable master meant to pay tribute to his favorite pastry.” She took one step forward and then another. If she was going to walk three miles, she had best begin.

“By no means,” Norman agreed amiably, falling in beside her, shortening his stride to keep her pace. “All the horses at the brewery were named for parts of the female anatomy.”

“Really?” Elsa asked, reaching across to pat Apple’s shoulder. “How charming.”

He laughed at her wry tone. “Indeed. Besides Apple and his friend, there were Bubby and Diddey, and Bumbo and Water-mill.”

“The creative spirit will find a way, I suppose,” she drawled. Elsa slanted a look up at her companion. “You speak to me as if I were a man.”

Delightfully, Norman’s ears reddened. His eyes cut to her, then bounced away. “Beg your pardon, Lady Fay. I should be more mindful.”

She scoffed. “Please, Norman. You don’t mind if I call you Norman, do you? Wynford-Scott is quite the mouthful, and I’d like to think you and I have become friends over the last number of months.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s refreshing, is all I mean. Besides Sheri, you’re the only man who speaks frankly to me outside of bed. Social niceties grow wearisome.”

The silence emanating from the giant man carried a quality of alarm. He cleared his throat, readjusting his hold on Apple’s lead. “Still,” he blurted at last, “I know better, and I shall do better in future, my lady. Elsa.”

Smiling, Elsa lifted her face to the sun. The demon nipped at her heels, but she could outrun it. She was strong. And if she grew weak along the way, she knew the man at her side was strong enough to carry her through.

• • •

After their trek, Elsa and Norman rejoined the coach at an inn, where she guzzled water and stuffed herself silly with roasted potatoes, rolls, and plum pudding. Back in the carriage, she fell asleep almost instantly, not stirring again until they’d stopped for the night.