Chapter Thirteen

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN

But Sabinus, having once read the beautiful words Lady Long-Nose had written, demanded more from Christina.

“I wish I’d never taken your advice,” Christina sobbed to Lady Long-Nose. “I can’t write such poetic words. Sabinus will find me out and hate me!”

Which is how Lady Long-Nose came to write more heartfelt letters to her true love… in the name of another.…

—From Lady Long-Nose

Elspeth could see Julian’s expression close at her words, and her heart sank. She still remembered the words he’d said about the Wise Women at that bookshop on Bond Street: “strange women who wanted to be thought witches.”

His mouth pursed with what looked like impatience. “That’s a story they tell children at the border. That the Wise Women will come and snatch you away to use you in their cooking pot.”

She winced at the description. “Those tales are spread by our enemies, but the Wise Women are real enough. I’m one of them.”

He stared at her. “You’re saying that you’re a witch.”

“No.” She shook her head. “We’re not witches—at least not the kind you mean. The ones who consort with the devil and can fly and eat little children’s bones. Those witches aren’t real, as I’m sure you already know. They’re just the superstition of fearful people. The Wise Women are a group who have lived and worked together for centuries.”

His eyes narrowed. “In secret, you mean.”

“Yes.” She darted a swift glance at the door and kept her voice low. “We’ve had to be secret for over a millennium. Most people do not understand women living without the guidance of men. Many would kill us if they knew.”

“If you live entirely without men, then how do your women not die out? Are they immortal in some way?” His voice held the trace of mockery.

“Of course not,” she chided. “Didn’t I just tell you we were real? Flesh-and-bone women, not some fairy tale. There are those women who seek the company of men or even decide to live with a man. A few—a very few—trusted men live within our compound. And once in a while, a woman comes to us who wants to join our numbers. If she is in earnest, then she is allowed inside.”

He grunted. “You just told me that you didn’t need men.”

“No,” she said softly. “I said we lived without the guidance of men, not that we abstained from them entirely.”

“At least we males have a use for something,” he muttered sourly.

She wanted to laugh at his disgruntlement, but somehow she stifled the impulse. “Yes, men are quite useful for the getting of children, but I suspect those who choose them for partners value them for more than that.”

He sighed. “Even if I believe this”—he waved his hand in the air—“ story you’re telling me about Wise Women, how could you possibly be part of a band of rebel Amazons when your father was the Duke of Ayr?”

“Ah.” She poured herself another cup of tea and one for him as well. “That is a tale. You see, the Dukes of Ayr are in many ways tied to the secret of the Wise Women. Centuries ago, one of my great-great-great-however-many-grandfathers married a Wise Woman.” She glanced at him over her teacup, amused to see him scowling. “She was my great-great-great-however-many-grandmother, and both her daughters and her sons were brought into the secret of the Wise Women. Since then, the dukes in my family have helped and many times married Wise Women. All daughters of the de Moray family are either honorary members of the Women or decide to join them permanently.”

Julian’s eyebrows had risen during her recitation. “Ran knows about this secret feminine society?”

“Of course.”

“What about Lachlan?”

She tilted her head in confusion. “Why would we keep Lachlan in the dark? Even if we tried, it would be impossible.”

He sighed and pushed his plate away from the edge of the table, crossing his arms on it instead. “This is where you came by your more unusual ideas, I take it?”

She smiled kindly. “Unusual to you. Not at all unusual to the Wise Women.”

“I take your point,” he said thoughtfully, staring at the table before him. “Where you come from, you have no need of a virtuous reputation.”

“No.” She shrugged.

“And you intend to return to the Wise Women,” he said, his voice flat.

“I…” She took another sip of tea, buying time to think. Well, she’d already told him most everything else. “I’m afraid I can’t. Not right now, at least.”

“Then where do you intend to live?” he demanded.

Oh, she knew where his questions were leading. “In London for the nonce.”

His voice became hard. “Then your reputation does matter, no matter what ideas you were brought up with. You’ll live among London society and London’s rules. They will crush you if you step even a toe out of line.”

“No.” She held up her hand to stop his harsh words. “You don’t understand, I—”

She was interrupted by the door opening again.

Mrs. McBride gave them a keen look, perhaps having heard Elspeth’s raised voice from the hallway, but her words were prosaic enough. “Shall I collect the dishes?”

Elspeth inhaled and put a smile on her face. “Not just yet. Perhaps in another half hour?”

“Yes, my lady.” The cook’s tone made it plain that they were taking an awfully long time over eggs and bread.

But the cook left nonetheless and closed the door behind her.

“ Elspeth ,” Julian immediately hissed.

“Just listen,” she snapped back, albeit in a quieter tone. “The reason I cannot return to the Wise Women now is because there is a civil war there. The Wise Women for centuries have held it as their mission to help other women in the wider world. Women who are beaten by their husbands. Women carrying a child they do not want or can’t bring home. Women entangled in London’s laws and attitudes.”

There was a silence. Julian’s eyebrows had drawn together. “Who agreed to escort my sister?”

Elspeth swallowed. His tone was too even. Her next words might make him hate her forever. “She’s called the Crow, the messenger for the Wise Women. She travels all over Britain, and she’s very experienced at keeping people from noticing her.”

She waited to see how he would react.

He pinned her with a look. “And you trust her?”

“Yes,” she said, trying to infuse all her faith in the Crow into one word.

He looked at her a moment more, then nodded once. “Go on. Tell me about your Wise Women.”

She took a deep breath and began again more slowly, “As I said, for longer than anyone living can remember, we’ve helped those in need. But now there is a faction within the Women who would like us to turn our faces away from women in distress and lock our doors to the outside world. Permanently.”

He turned his hand in a circle as if to indicate and?

Elspeth inhaled. “There are many of us—my sisters and others—who cannot abide by this idea, but the Hags, the ruling body of the Wise Women, are now united against those of us who wish to continue helping the women outside our compound. Most of us have been pushed out of our home.”

His eyes softened. “Is that why you came to London?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I worked in the Bibliothaca, our library—a vast resource of our history and knowledge and the literature and knowledge of other people. I was apprenticed under the Bibliothacar, the keeper of the Bibliothaca, and should’ve succeeded her, but the Hags put another woman in my place, and I was forced to leave with my sister Caitriona. I chose to come to live with Freya in London while Caitriona took another path.”

“But—”

“ But ,” she said hastily, wanting to tell him everything before he lost patience, “I came to London to search for Maighread’s diary. She reformed the Wise Women and wrote our laws. We have only a bastardization of the original laws that leave our mission much too open to interpretation. It’s said that Maighread wrote down our history, how the Wise Women came to be, and with it the original laws. Don’t you see? If I can bring back this artifact, I can persuade the Hags that their ideas have strayed from the path of the founders. I can bring the Wise Women back together.”

She stopped abruptly, out of breath, and looked at him anxiously.

She couldn’t read his expression.

“Is that what you’re searching for in my library?” he asked slowly. “This diary that will somehow convince your Wise Women?”

His skeptical tone was hurtful, but she nodded, never taking her eyes from his. “Yes. You see why I must remain here?”

He pursed his lips, staring down at his hands as if to tell the future. “How could such a book have come into my library? I doubt the Greycourts had any dealings with your Wise Women.”

She noticed that he hadn’t agreed with her.

For a long moment, he sat, his hands clasped before his mouth, and she couldn’t tell what he thought. Then he shook his head slowly, and her heart plummeted.

Until he spoke. “Very well. You can stay here another three days.”

He was a damned fool enslaved by lust and Elspeth’s hopeful face.

Later that afternoon, Julian reflected on his decision to let her stay. They were working in the library together, Elspeth busily paging through books as he climbed the ladder to fetch more for her. He’d known even as he’d said the words that he wasn’t letting her stay out of sympathy for her cause or even pity for her pleading eyes.

No, his agreement was entirely self-serving. He wanted her, as his commanding mistress, as the soft, warm woman in his bed, and, oddly, as the friend who talked and argued with him.

And that just made him a doubly damned buffoon because he could not touch her now.

As if to make his point, the maid—Elsie?—entered the room and inquired if they’d like tea.

Elspeth sat back, swiping a lock away from her face and leaving a dust mark on her forehead. “Oh, that would be lovely! Thank you, Alice.”

The maid dipped a curtsy and smiled, revealing two missing teeth.

His servants had never smiled at him.

Scowling, Julian descended the ladder and stalked closer to her. “A break so soon? We’ll never find your diary—or my mother’s book—if you keep stopping.”

She looked up, her face shining despite the grime. “Work goes much easier with breaks—especially tea breaks.” She sent a distracted glance at the door. “I hope Mrs. McBride sends some of those scones she was baking before luncheon. They smelled heavenly.”

“Scones.” He stood over her, frowning at the dust in her hair.

Elspeth leaned back on her hands. She was sitting rather disgracefully with her legs crossed before her.

He’d never seen any but a man in such a position.

She arched her neck back and looked up at him, and though her position was inferior to his, he had no doubt he wasn’t the superior. “Why are you in such a bad mood?”

He opened his mouth to reply—what he wasn’t sure—but Mrs. McBride returned with both the tea and a generous plate of scones.

“Oh, wonderful!” Elspeth exclaimed, and then glanced ruefully at her hands. “I’d best go and wash up so I don’t drink dirt with my tea.”

She was up and out of the room before he could think of a reply.

Mrs. McBride was slowly unloading the tea and scones onto the same table where they’d broken their fast, Plum at attention near her. “She’s a lively one, isn’t she?”

Julian looked at her suspiciously. “I beg your pardon?”

“Lady Elspeth.” The cook jerked her head to the door to indicate whom she meant, as if there were any other lady lurking about. “Don’t mean any offense by it. She just seems a bright one. Makes the hall feel happier.”

He cocked an eyebrow like a supercilious fop. “You’re ascribing emotion to a building.”

She set her hands to her hips. “I think you understand me well enough, sir.”

And with that shockingly blunt statement, she left.

Julian brooded. Now the servants were rebelling against his authority.

The problem was, he did know what Mrs. McBride meant.

Even Adders Hall with its dingy walls, falling-apart furniture, and gloomy rooms seemed to have come awake with Elspeth here. She smiled. Often and easily. No wonder the servants liked her within minutes of meeting her. They probably dreaded the thought of how this house would be when she went: cold, lonely, and crabby.

Or perhaps that was he.

Quick steps came from the hallway, and Julian drew out his handkerchief and was studiously cleaning his hands by the time Elspeth came back in. Her face bore the signs of a wash, but if she’d tried to tidy her hair, there was no evidence of it.

Julian had encountered ladies and paid companions with perfectly tamed hair, their lips and cheeks painted exquisitely. He’d seen a fortune’s worth of diamonds and emeralds drip from earlobes, necks, and wrists. And yet Elspeth, with her flyaway hair and wearing a plain, worn gown, was the most enticing woman he’d ever seen. Maybe it was the sunshine smile she was wearing.

It had to be the smile.

In any case it was obvious that he’d lost his wits somehow.

As a result, his voice came out sharper than he’d meant. “Don’t grin so much. The servants will suspect.”

She looked at him with amusement as she sat. “Suspect what? That I’m happy?”

He growled under his breath. This was a losing battle. “I’ll send one of them to hire a coach and driver when you’re ready to leave. I don’t like the thought of you on a stagecoach with strangers.”

She poured him a dish of tea. “Won’t that make the people in London more suspicious, if I arrive back in a coach you’ve rented?”

He scowled down at his tea, stirring sugar in vigorously. “Don’t tell anyone who rented the coach. I’ll pay the driver to keep silent.”

“Very well,” she said slowly, giving him an odd look.

“All this is for your own good,” he said grumpily. “You need not treat it as a joke.”

She looked at him for a moment longer before reaching for one of the scones. “How often do you live here at Adders?”

He peered at her suspiciously at the change of topic, but she seemed concerned only with spreading as much butter as possible on her scone. “About half the year, taken altogether. It’s cheaper than London, but I daren’t stay away from my sisters and Augustus’s machinations for too long lest he make a move I can’t counter in time.”

Her brows knit as she spooned jam onto her scone. “You’ve told me how much your uncle hates you—and indeed your whole family—but I don’t understand. What could you have possibly done so young that he keeps his rage over the years?”

Julian helped himself to a scone. “There doesn’t seem to be a reason other than pure, wicked spite.” He frowned as he took a bite of the scone. Currants. Horrid. “Augustus told us often enough when Quinn and I were trapped in Windemere House that he hated his brother, my father, so in some way, his ire seems to have been passed down. But I don’t know why. Father never made mention of a rift with the duke. I’m not even sure Father knew his elder brother hated him so much. Perhaps Augustus held some sort of jealousy toward my father, and it festered as time went on. Or perhaps my uncle was born with a bilious heart.”

“It’s hard to understand people who hate without reason,” Elspeth said rather thickly through a mouthful of scone. She stopped to take a sip of her tea. “Their hatred brings them no joy—quite the opposite, usually—but they refuse to leave it behind.”

“I’ve never thought about his hatred in that way.” He shrugged. “It simply is.”

She nodded. “I suppose that’s much more practical.”

He paused, wanting to acknowledge that her philosophical musings were interesting by themselves, whether practical or not.

But as he hesitated, she nodded at the uneaten scone still on his plate. “Do you not like it?”

She had a bit of jam by the corner of her mouth, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. “Currants. I can’t stand them.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened in what looked like honest concern. “What, not at all? What about in oatmeal?”

“No, that’s worse.” He shuddered at the thought. “They swell in the water and become mushy.”

“But that’s why currants are put in,” she explained solemnly. “Or raisins.”

He wrinkled his nose. “No.”

She tilted her head as if he were an odd specimen in a scientific display. “Dried plums?”

The dog perked up at his name.

“Oh God,” Julian protested.

She laughed then, throwing her head back without any decorum. “But you’ve slandered poor Plum!”

“Have I?” Julian gave in to impulse and reached across the table to swipe the jam from her mouth.

She blinked, watching him, as he licked it off his thumb.

He met her gaze. “Sweet.”

Her eyelashes fluttered as if he’d caught her off guard, and suddenly his chest seemed stifled by longing. Bloody hell. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this.

Julian cleared his throat and looked down, only to find the dog sitting patiently by his side, its head cocked and its eyes trained on his leftover scone. “I thought he didn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t really know you, does he?” she murmured softly. “Go on. Give him your scone and see if he likes you better.”

Julian glanced at her severely. “That’s bribery.”

Her lips curved. “That’s friendship.”

He didn’t agree at all with her philosophy, but he found himself offering a broken-off piece to Plum anyway.

The dog took the bit of scone politely, without even the scrape of his teeth.

“At least he doesn’t bite,” Julian muttered, feeding the rest of the scone to Plum. He ran his fingers over the dog’s head, tousling Plum’s silky ears and scratching his neck.

When Julian looked up again, Elspeth still watched him, her eyes soft. He caught his breath. He still felt the beat of lust low in his belly, but there was also something else, entirely innocent, that made him want to take her hand and simply stare at her for hours, maybe eternally.

He tore his gaze from hers by will alone and stood. “I need to see to Octavia.”

His exit from the library was rudely abrupt, but it was necessary he leave her at once.

He wasn’t sure he could restrain himself if he stayed.

Elspeth ate another scone, but she barely tasted it and fed the crumbs to Plum.

Ought she to leave Julian alone? Probably. Tending to his horses was obviously an excuse to get away from her. Perhaps to release personal needs. He was a secretive man, and she respected that. But he was also her lover. The man she’d shared want and pleasure with. And she had found that, although some women undoubtedly could have congress with a man without changing inside, she could not.

And she knew that she should find him.

So she did.

Outside, the rain might’ve stopped, but the wind was sharp and chill. Elspeth trudged over the rutted ground to the stable—or what was left of Adders’s stable. It was a low stone building, more than half of the structure fallen.

She looked at the ancient lintel in trepidation before pulling open the door.

Inside, it smelled of damp stone and rotted straw and, under those, horse and manure. Obviously it had been many years since horses were stabled here regularly.

At one end she saw—almost to her surprise—that Julian was indeed tending to his horse. Julian’s lantern glowed, lighting him and Octavia. The mare was tied in the aisle, a second horse in a stall behind her. Octavia snorted at her entrance, watching her warily. The man didn’t even raise his head from his work—shoveling old straw and manure into a wheelbarrow.

Elspeth hesitated but then decided she needn’t have come at all if she were to be a coward. She walked to Octavia and halted an arm’s length away.

The mare’s ears flicked forward in interest.

“Aren’t you lovely?” Elspeth crooned to her. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to bring you a treat. That was quite remiss of me.”

Plum had stopped by her feet, but now he ventured close to the horse. Elspeth watched. Octavia could hurt the dog should she wish.

The mare merely lowered her head, snuffling curiously at Plum.

Plum licked her nose.

Octavia jerked her head back but then lowered it to blow at the dog and then shake her head as if in horsey laughter.

Plum immediately went into a play bow—the first that Elspeth had seen him make.

She laughed. “Silly. How do you expect Octavia to play with you? She’d run you right over if let loose.”

Julian sighed from the stall, and Elspeth glanced over to see him leaning on the pitchfork, watching her. “Octavia has never been as serious as her name,” he said. “And she likes dogs.”

“Does she?” Elspeth asked in delight.

Plum was now darting forward at the horse’s legs, pretending to attack before retreating just as swiftly. Octavia watched bemusedly before stamping her hoof at the next attack, sending the dog into spins of excitement.

Elspeth knit her brow, concerned that the horse would accidentally stomp on the dog, but Julian reassured her. “You needn’t worry. Octavia knows to be gentle.”

Elspeth nodded, stepping closer to the open stall. “She seems quite an intelligent horse.”

Julian glanced at her sardonically as he began shoveling again. “Have you met many stupid horses, then?”

“Not many,” Elspeth allowed. “But there was King George. He was an old gelding at the Wise Women’s compound, and my sisters and I learned to ride on him. He was scared of birds. And cats. And the moon.”

“The moon?” Julian muttered under his breath. “You’re making that up.”

“I’m not,” she replied indignantly. “He couldn’t be ridden on clear nights. He’d take one look at the moon and simply refuse to move. We found Old Bess atop him one morning, still arguing with him at sunrise. She’d meant to visit her brother who lived in the village, but King George had refused to take her.”

He grunted.

She chose to take that as encouragement. “He’d been orphaned young, King George that is, and Old Bess said that was why he was so daft. She used to swear at him in the most terrible way, but then she wept for him bitterly when he died. Took to her bed and refused to get up for a month. We all thought she might die there, but eventually someone told Bess that her brother meant to marry again, and she got up just to go scold him for being an old fool. He was seven and eighty, but he was her younger brother, so she felt protective.”

She watched as Julian labored with the manure and straw. He’d stripped out of his coat and waistcoat, even though the stable was chill, and wore only his shirt, his sleeves rolled past his elbows. The muscles of his forearms flexed as he moved, the shirt sticking to his back with sweat, and really the sight was most fascinating.

Elspeth licked her lips, warmth creeping through her limbs. She truly hoped she wasn’t blushing or—or exhibiting signs of what she felt. He wouldn’t feel the same at the moment. She worked to repress her longing, the memories of his face frozen in agonizing pleasure, his mouth open helplessly, the tendons of his neck standing in stark relief…

Oh dear. She seemed to only be making it worse.

“I think all older sisters—and brothers—feel protective of their younger siblings,” he said, interrupting her heated thoughts.

Elspeth blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

He didn’t seem to notice her distraction, almost as if he were talking to himself. “It’s an older brother’s duty to care for the younger family. His duty no matter what. He has to protect his brother and sisters, or he’s no man at all.”

“My brothers don’t protect me,” Elspeth said.

She felt rather as if she’d broken into his own musings when Julian’s head shot up. “What?”

“Ranulf and Lachlan.” She shrugged. “I don’t think they even worry about me or my sisters. I’m not sure I would want them to, truthfully. I’m quite capable of seeing to my own protection. And if I need help or want comfort, I have Freya and Caitriona.”

Julian was frowning. “You don’t think Ran would help you, should you need it?”

“I think he might,” Elspeth admitted. “Although it would be hard for him after being a hermit so long.”

Julian shook his head, turning away. “This discussion is moot. I cannot change what is in the past.”

Elspeth watched his shoulders bunch under the shirt. “No, of course you can’t change the past. I’m not sure what that has to do with Ranulf and his isolation, though.”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” He pushed past her with the full wheelbarrow and out of the stable. A moment later, he was back, the wheelbarrow empty. Julian dropped it to the ground with unnecessary force.

He was so angry, and she wasn’t sure why. She was fairly sure it wasn’t she. Perhaps the reason Ranulf was in seclusion angered him? She was ashamed then at the thought. Of course he’d be angered remembering his sister’s death.

“I’m sorry I brought Ranulf into the conversation,” she said softly.

Her apology didn’t help. If anything, his shoulders were more tense now.

“Julian?” she asked.

He shook his head almost violently. “Never mind. Let’s go inside.”

She agreed at once, but she couldn’t help studying his back as they trudged to Adders. What was she missing?