Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology #1) - Charlie N. Holmberg Page 0,45
throat tight.
She didn’t say anything when a knock sounded on the door. Nor did she protest when it cracked open, revealing Ogden in the doorway.
“Oh, Elsie,” he said, warm and sad. “What happened?”
She merely shook her head. She couldn’t speak even if God demanded it of her. A frog would be better understood.
Ogden stepped into her room, leaving the door ajar, and shoved her knees over so he could sit on the edge of the bed. Just like he had when she’d first arrived there. He had acted the part of the father she couldn’t remember, reading her bedtime stories and telling her old fables. It was his fault she had an addiction to novel readers.
She’d wondered, back then, if he was as lonely as she was.
She hid her face in her stained handkerchief.
“Someone say something to you?” he guessed feebly. Elsie was not prone to hysterics, especially not in front of other people. She refused to be the seed of someone else’s gossip. “The Wright sisters?” he tried again.
She shook her head.
“Might as well tell me, or I’ll stay here all night, and the neighbors will talk.”
A sore chuckle popped up her throat. Anyone who really knew Ogden knew any scandal between them was nigh impossible.
He touched her elbow. “Not the squire?”
“No.” Her voice was raw and childish. She hated it.
Ogden waited.
After a few almost smooth breaths, she said, “I saw Alfred.”
She needn’t explain further. She’d been employed here, just as she was now, during their courtship. Emmeline, new and excitable, had suggested ideas for the wedding dinner and Elsie’s dress almost daily. Ogden had stressed over finding her replacement. They, too, had been shocked when it ended faster than night turns to day. She’d dedicated herself more fiercely to the Cowls than ever after that. This was just a painful reminder of where her loyalty belonged.
“Oh, Elsie.”
She shrugged. “Just for a minute. Doesn’t matter. H-He didn’t think twice of it.”
He rubbed her arm briskly like she’d bruised it. “I’ll have Emmeline bring dinner to your room.”
I’m fine, she wanted to say, but her throat burned with the lie.
“With some warm milk,” he added.
God help her, she really was eleven again.
His hand stilled. “You’re a bright young woman, Elsie. You have no idea the things awaiting you in this life.”
And oddly . . . she felt better. They were simple words, but they carried a strange power. A firm assurance she didn’t quite understand. She thought she felt . . . but no, that was a hair tickling her face. She brushed the thing away. It would take hours to pull the pins out of the knots she’d made of it.
Ogden patted her elbow and stood from the bed. She heard him linger at the door for several seconds before closing it.
Elsie fell asleep before Emmeline could bring her a tray.
CHAPTER 11
“I suppose you’re going to compensate me after my employment is terminated?” Elsie asked, picking her way around a mud puddle formed by the morning’s rain. She traversed a wide dirt road that stretched from Seven Oaks toward the bulk of the duke’s tenants, and while the overhead sky was currently dry, the lurking, morose clouds promised more rain to come.
Mr. Bacchus Kelsey, half a step ahead of her, scoffed at the idea. He wasn’t in a jovial mood, not that jovial was his usual demeanor. But he was a little stiffer than usual, a little colder, too. Elsie didn’t think it had anything to do with the weather.
She stepped over a stone, glad she’d had the forethought to don sturdy boots for today’s blackmailed labors. She wore a simple linen dress, one she wouldn’t care too much about dirtying. The hem was already collecting whispers of mud. Elsie would wash those out herself rather than explain to Emmeline how she’d come by them. Another late night ahead of her, then. At least she’d caught up on sleep.
Even so, she knew she couldn’t carry on her triple life for much longer. If she spent much more time away from Brookley, she’d get herself in trouble. Goodness, it felt like she was a character in one of her novel readers, and if she’d learned anything from those sensational stories, everything would culminate into a ghastly event meant to entertain someone else—perhaps, in this case, God—at her expense.
She should try her hand at authorship someday. She might be good at it.
You may have more time than you think. What if it’s the steward who is keeping Mr. Ogden busy, not