Page 34 of A Waltz with Lord Death
Reeve had left them. Did he really deserve salvation?
A knock at her door startled her upright. She peered through the moon’s dim lighting. The knock sounded again, this time accompanied by a sniffle.
She twisted in her bed, and the moment her feet touched the floor, she ran to the other side of the room and yanked the door open to reveal Elise in her nightgown. Tears flowed freely down her friend’s face. Hiccupping sobs escaped her throat.
“Whatever has happened?” Meira asked softly as she pulled her friend inside and shut the door behind her.
Elise slumped into a chair and sobbed into her hands. She attempted to comfort the other woman by rubbing soothing circles on her back. “My husband returned late from the tavern. He wasn’t alone. He ordered me to leave.” Her shoulders shook with another round of weeping. “I didn’t know where else to go!”
“Oh, Elise,” she sighed. A brief, dark thought entered her mind of asking Death to kill her tart of a husband. A part of her wondered if he would do it. Another part of her was horrified she’d even considered asking.
Not knowing what else to say to her, she tucked her into one side of the bed while she curled up on the other. “You may stay here as long as you need to.”
“Thank you,” Elise hiccupped, and as if remembering the incident, she started weeping all over again. “H-h-he was so attentive to me when we first started courting. He wrote me poems and whispered songs in my ear. Where did it go? How could it disappear so quickly?”
She sighed. “Many men, especially aristocratic men, desire an heir. To get an heir, they first must woo a lady. I assume he is disappointed with a lack of offspring, but that gives him no right to treat you poorly.” She touched her elbow after another hiccupping sob. “You deserve so much better, Elise. I am sorry for your heartache.”
Elise wiped her eyes on her sleeves and sniffed. “He is seeking an annulment on the grounds that I am barren. Oh, Meira. I will be shamed. Disgraced. I will have nowhere to go. What shall I do?”
Anger burst through her, but she forced her expression to remain calm as to not upset her friend further. “Surely, he has enough heart to not turn you out during the winter.”
“I don’t know if he has a heart at all.”
She turned with a huff to stare at the dark ceiling above. Elise was not a working woman. She could not easily provide for herself. The two of them had met at her father’s estate during a social gathering. Meira had been a portion of the hired entertainment and Elise the noblewoman with the soft hands.
“Will your father take you back into his household?” she asked.
With a sigh, she answered, “I do not know. Nor do I know if my brother would take me under his wing. A letter would not arrive to my family in time should my husband throw me out before the season’s end.”
A shiver raced across her from a draft escaping through the closed window. Noticing the dying embers in the hearth, she grabbed the fire poker and added a log to the fire, satisfied when the flame began to grow again and fill the room with heat. A small smile broke past her anger as she fingered the fire poker. It reminded her of Death.
“I don’t know how much I can help.” Meira returned to the bed and wiggled beneath a pile of blankets. “But if you need to, you can stick with me and we can figure something out.”
“Oh, thank you, my dear friend. You and your fiancé are so wonderful. You are lucky to have such a great man in your life.”
“You are mistaken.” She shifted to seek out her friend’s eyes in the darkness. “He is not my betrothed. He has asked for my hand. But I do not know how to answer him. I…I fear very sudden life changes if I accept his suit.”
Her friend studied her for a moment, her tears forgotten. “Forgive me for being presumptuous. But he must be very wealthy for your lifestyle to change so dramatically.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she murmured. Did Death even need wealth when he had such a dark and fearsome power at his fingertips?
“Do you truly not know his first name?” Elise asked.
“No. He is holding it over me. Waiting for me to accept his proposal first, or something of the sort.”
With a snort, her friend wriggled around to get more comfortable. “It must be an embarrassing name then. What else could he be hiding?”
“What do you suppose it is?” She laughed at the absurd names that came to mind. “Nimrod? Eustace? Maurice?”
“I know a man named Eustace. He is actually very nice.”
“Death is nice. He is just very mysterious.”
Her friend stilled, and only then did she realize her blunder. “What did you call him?” she whispered.
She hurried to remedy her mistake. “Death. It’s my nickname for him. What with all the mystery and intrigue.”
“Oh.” Elise relaxed and smiled for the first time since she arrived at her door. “I see. I don’t know why my thoughts took a wrong turn, though it’s a bit of a morbid nickname, don’t you think?” She sighed. “You are very lucky. He dotes on you. I love the way he looks at you like you’re the only woman in the room.”
