Valor Under Siege (The Honorables) (18 page)

A soft rain fell from low, gray clouds, preventing the morning from lightening beyond a twilit gloaming. Elsa couldn’t have been happier.

Snug in her bed with Norman, with the low light and silver, watery windows blurring the garden, the rest of the world seemed a very distant concern. Her hands were stacked on his chest, and her chin on her hands. They spoke of inconsequential nothings, exchanging lovers’ talk.

She ran her nails over his stomach while his fingers sifted through her hair. “It’s so dark,” he observed. “Like a spill of ink.”

“Too bad you cannot employ the blotter on me.”

“I would not undo you, even if I could.” He glanced from where he’d been staring at his hand in her hair to meet her gaze. His jaw was rough with morning whiskers, russet spattered with gold, and his nut-brown hair a floppy jumble about his head. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”

She hid her smile against a rise of chest muscle. “You undo me with your sweet words.”

“Then I’ll say nothing more. I shouldn’t like to be responsible for annulling your existence.”

Instead of speaking, he reached down and pulled her up his length to lie on her side facing him. Their mouths found one another, and they kissed, slow and unhurried. Elsa’s body warmed, her blood quickening in areas still pleasurably sore from last night’s lovemaking.

Norman touched his brow to hers. They lay like that for a while, and for Elsa, it was such a luxury just to enjoy physical contact without the expectation of sex. In the past, though, she’d expected sex just as much as her partners had; she would not have wished to share intimacy of this sort with anyone she’d brought to bed.

“Are you sorry I was your first?” she asked, her voice small. “You should have had someone as untried as you, perhaps.”

He snorted. “As if I could bed a virgin without causing serious injury to the poor woman. You saw what I’m working with here, did you not?”

A fit of giggles took her.

“I wasn’t waiting for anyone or anything in particular,” he said after a moment, “but now I think I must have been waiting for you.”

There he went again, making her innards melt with his open, unaffected tenderness. A poignant pang went through her chest, taking her breath. Elsa closed her eyes against a prickling at the corners.

“Are you crying?” He sounded bewildered.

“No.” She burrowed against his neck. “My feelings are just trying to leak from my face.”

Sometime later—she must have dozed—Norman woke her with a kiss on her brow and her name rumbling through his massive chest. “Mmm?” she managed, reluctantly lifting her eyelids.

“When will your servants be home?”
“Noon.” She scratched her nose with the back of her wrist. “I gave them yesterday evening and this morning off.”

“It’s ten now,” he said, consulting a watch he must have retrieved from his waistcoat. “I should be well away before twelve, in case someone comes home early.”

The reminder of the outside world and the troubles it held gave her a moment’s regret. Once he was gone, they would no longer be simply Elsa and Norman, but opponents vying for the same prize, which only one of them could have.

“Are you hungry?” She squirmed her way to the headboard and sat up against the pillows. “You must be. Look at you. You probably fight Apple for rights to the trough. Between the two of you mammoths, you could eat your way through the entire county in a week.”

He pulled a face at her, then swung his legs over the side of the bed, wiggling his long toes into the rug. “You stay here. I’ll head to the stable and find a sack of feed for myself, then come back through the kitchen and scrounge together something for you.”

Norman plucked his breeches from the floor, shook them out, and pulled them on. When he crossed the room to where his shirt had caught on a picture frame, he glanced out the window.

“There’s a horse tied in front of your house. No rider.”

Just then, a knock sounded on the front door.

Elsa sprang from the bed and ran to the window. A familiar palomino idly hoofed the gravel. “Oliver,” she moaned. “What’s he doing here?”

In a frenzy, she rushed into a chemise, pulled an old morning dress over her head, and grabbed a shawl before darting to the door. “Stay here,” she whispered to Norman.

He blinked slowly. “That would probably be prudent,” he drawled.

She rolled her eyes at his sarcastic tone, closed her bedchamber door, and pattered downstairs just as her cousin loosed another volley of rapping.

Elsa wrenched open the door. “Oliver!” Her voice sounded overbright to her own ears and her breathing labored from her mad rush from naked to presentable. “What brings you here so early? I trust all is well?”

His gaze took in the disarray of her hair, traveled down her slapdash ensemble, and came to rest on her bare feet. He lifted a brow. “Perhaps I should ask the same of you, dear cousin.” He stepped past her into the house, his eyes swinging from one side to the other.

“Forgive my dishabille,” Elsa said. “Foster has the morning off, and I’m simply hopeless without her. Return this afternoon and you shall find me neat as a pin.”

“This cannot wait.” Oliver strode to the parlor, leaving Elsa to hurry after him.

“Oliver, is something wrong?”

The man paused before the cold fireplace and turned. He slapped one of his riding gloves against his thigh. “Wynford-Scott.”

A flurry of alarm scattered through her chest.
How does he know?
Light-headed with anxiety, she clutched her shawl in tight fists. “What of him?” she asked, carefully bland. He didn’t know. He couldn’t.

“Yesterday afternoon, I overheard Mr. Alderly make mention of a so-called
screening
pertaining to my opponents. You were standing there, as well. Did you hear that?”

Elsa’s breaths came shallow and fast, as though she were tightly corseted. What was he getting at? “I ... I don’t recall.”

Deep grooves folded around Oliver’s mouth as he smirked. “I wasn’t familiar with the term, but last night I went into Ipswich to consult a barrister I know there. As it turns out, screening is a disciplinary procedure at the Inns of Court.” His eyes lit with triumph.

Elsa shook her head, an ominous dread prickling at the back of her neck. “What are you saying?”

Abruptly, he crossed to where she stood and grabbed her arms. “Elsa, this is our chance to ensure my victory!” he said in an excited rush. “Once it’s known that Wynford-Scott lied about his leave of absence from Gray’s Inn, that he was really driven out in disgrace, he’ll be finished.”

A cry escaped her mouth before she could stop it. Elsa pulled out of his grip. “Oliver, you mustn’t!”

“Why not?” he demanded hotly.

“You don’t know anything for sure. This is hearsay, speculation. You were eavesdropping. You cannot purposely ruin him on such thin evidence!”

She thought of the man upstairs in her room, with his flop of hair and his kind eyes and his penchant for rescuing toy soldiers from wells. To see his name dragged through the gutter, his reputation in Fleck tarnished because of her actions ... she couldn’t bear it. Elsa meant to see Oliver elected to the House of Commons, but they would win fairly. Hurting Norman again was not an option.

Her cousin ran a hand over his short, graying hair. “It’s evidence enough. I might not know the particulars, but I know he’s been sent down from Gray’s, he and Alderly both, based on what that popinjay said.
Our screening.
That alone is a fact worth telling. Wynford-Scott’s presented himself as some altruistic servant of The People, which is a far cry from the truth. All of his noble
issues
,” Oliver sneered, “are simply camouflage for the fact that he cannot be called to the bar.”

Elsa shook her head all throughout her cousin’s speech. “No, Oliver. Do not do it. This is not how you want to win the—”

“I will not win otherwise!” he shouted. His nostrils pinched white, and his eyes bulged. A vein popped from his temple. “If the polling was held today, I would lose.” He smacked a fist against his chest. “
That man
,” he pointed wildly, incidentally landing in the approximate direction where Norman waited in her room, “has turned Fleck into a borough of Parliamentary scholars. Everyone has opinions now, some romantic delusion of
vox populi
.”

“Maybe they should,” she countered, her steps circumscribing an arc, forcing Oliver to turn to keep her in his sights. “Is it wrong for people to have thoughts about the way they are governed?”

“You promised me this seat,” he hedged. “Said I was the obvious choice, that there would be no contest.”

“But there
is
a contest,” she snapped, bringing her hands to her waist, “and pouting about it won’t change the fact. Now,” she moderated her tone, “win or lose, you must conduct yourself like the gentleman you are, Oliver. Do not dishonor yourself by engaging in dirty politics.”

Eyes downcast, his tense jaw worked side to side. He huffed a breath, nodded. “Thank you, Elsa. You know I value your advice. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. Without you, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against Wynford-Scott at all.”

Relief bathed Elsa’s nerves; a knot between her shoulders released. “You’ve conducted a strong campaign, Oliver. I’m proud to stand beside you.”

With a brotherly kiss on her cheek, he took his leave. Elsa watched from the front step as he donned his hat and turned his collar against the drizzling rain before swinging up into his saddle. He lifted his hand in salute; she waved in return.

Back inside the house, Elsa leaned against the shut door and exhaled deeply, feeling as if she’d just missed colliding with a runaway mail coach. She gave herself a few moments to allow her alarmed heart rate to return to normal. A soft pattering sound drew her eyes to the stairs; she saw Norman’s feet on the landing above.

She came to the bottom of the stair and lifted her eyes.

He’d donned his breeches, shirt, and waistcoat. His cuffs were still loose, and his feet as bare as hers. There was no nervousness in seeing him this way, other than the flutter in her stomach at the sensual appeal of his rumpled, unshaved appearance. Neither did she feel self-conscious over him seeing her half-dressed, her face as yet unwashed and hair a tangle. Before, she’d never have allowed a lover to see her looking anything but her fashionable best.

But that was before.

Norman rested one hand on the wall; the other gripped the top of the bannister in a tight fist. “Is everything all right? I saw Mr. Fay leave, but you didn’t return.”

She stepped onto the bottom riser. He took one step down. “Oliver was just confirming the details of this evening’s campaign event.”

Her gut twisted even as the untruth slid past her lips, but there was no reason to alarm him with Oliver’s threat of revealing Norman’s secret, not when Elsa had put a stop to it before it amounted to anything.

His sigh echoed through the stairwell. “Back to the campaign, are we? Not thinking about it for a night was a blessed respite.” He took another step. So did she, feeling as she did that she was approaching her fate.

His sudden smile put an appealing dent in his cheek. “Although, I’d wager that through our combined efforts, we can contrive to ignore politics for another thirty minutes or so.” They met in the middle of the stairs. Norman lifted her by the waist and swung her around, placing her several steps above him so their eyes were almost level.

Elsa cupped his jaw and swept the pad of her thumb over his stubble, while his hands remained on her waist. She touched the corner of his mouth and stared at his lips. A memory filtered down from her inebriated past. “I’ve always loved your lips,” she confessed. “I used to think what a shame it was they were put to such a dull purpose like advocating, when it was so patently clear that their true vocation is kissing.”

Heat flared in his eyes as his gaze moved to Elsa’s mouth and then lower. “Then I must use my gifts as God intended.” Norman grasped the loose neck of her dress and yanked it down, exposing her breast to his hungry gaze. His thumb flicked over her nipple. A shudder passed through her body, and she arched her back, brazenly offering herself, shamelessly accepting the brief stay of reality. Both of their futures teetered on a precipice, but only one of them could achieve the coveted outcome. If Oliver lost the election, Elsa knew—
knew
—she faced a bleak path that would eventually lead her back to the bottle. And as for Norman, without the seat in Commons, he would be cut adrift from any plan for making his livelihood, possibly never to recover from the shame she’d brought upon him at the Christmas revels even once his screening was over. So yes, coward she was, she grasped the procrastination he offered and held tight.

Norman’s tongue flicked over the tight peak of her breast. He cupped the mound of flesh in his hand, lifted it higher. Elsa gasped as his lips closed over her and he drew her nipple deep into his mouth, kissing her the way God intended.

• • •

Three days later, one week before the election, it happened.

Stepping out of the Rabbit’s Glen where Norman and Alderly had just stopped for their noon meal, they noted a delivery wagon that was, oddly, parked on the green, rather than pulled alongside or in back of any of the shops surrounding the village center. Men Norman did not recognize were offloading bundles of what appeared to be newsprint, tossing them onto the street where a lad cut the twine. As quickly as the bundles were opened, more boys snatched up armfuls and dispersed, scampering down side streets. Soon their hawking cries filled the air, and the papers were distributed to passersby.

“What’s this?” Alderly asked. “Papers from London?”

“Ipswich, sir!” cried one of the paperboys, thrusting the broadsheet into Alderly’s hands. Norman fished in his pocket for a penny, but the boy shook his head. “Compliments of a concerned citizen, sirs.” He gave Norman a copy, too, before trotting to intercept a knot of ladies emerging from the post office.

“Shit,” Alderly spat, the paper open in his hands.

Norman snapped his open. It wasn’t a periodical of news from Ipswich; rather, it was a printing of one article only—
article
being a generous term, considering the brief number of words on the page. It didn’t take very many to proclaim that the Fine and Upstanding Citizenry of Fleck had been taken in by charlatans, one Mr. N. Wynford-Scott and his associate Mr. R. Alderly, formerly of Gray’s Inn, London. Both gentlemen, the author declared, had been sent away from Gray’s Inn via a discipline action called screening.