Stephen had a berserker to woo.
46
Elizabeth crouched in total darkness. She was awaiting the sound of approaching footsteps before she sprang from the shadows. Elizabeth hated waiting. Springing up and slicing down were second nature, but biding her time was an absolute nightmare.
To distract herself, she took inventory of her body. Despite holding an uncomfortable position for what felt like weeks, she was still a solid seventy-five percent. Possibly it was the return to the warmth and safety of home that had invigorated her after a month in a drafty castle. Or perhaps it was the new mission, which had consumed her thoughts from the moment she stepped foot back in Islington.
She enjoyed infiltrating unknown territory, at least. That part was fun.
The waiting, on the other hand… Lurking in the shadows alone with no sounds but her own breaths, no smells but dust, nothing to see but blackness—well, it gave a skulking interloper plenty of time to think.
And all Elizabeth could think about was Stephen.
One more hour with him wouldn’t leave her satisfied. She wanted more than that. She wanted to spendeveryhour with him. Clothing optional. Even swordplay optional. What mattered was not the activity, but whom she shared it with. And the person she longed for most was Stephen.
She was glad his cousin was a complete disaster. If the Earl of Densmore had been competent in his duties, Stephen would not have been at Castle Harbrook.
She was grateful her siblings had all been busy, and had therefore been forced out of pure necessity to send Elizabeth 120 miles southwest to Dorset all by herself. If they had come with her from the beginning, or if Jacob or Graham had been sent instead, Elizabeth would never have spent that blissful time with Stephen. Or discovered she indeed had the capacity to fall in love.
Elizabeth apparently also had a limitless capacity to bollocks it up. Not only had she walked away from the person she most wished to keep close, but had also wasted the past few hours of her life hunched in an extremely uncomfortable shed despite it becoming increasingly obvious no one was going to come and open the door.
With a sigh, she rolled back her shoulders and eased around the sharp edges of dozens of jutting wooden boxes and pushed open the door.
Well,pushedanyway. The door did not budge.
Elizabeth pushed harder. The hinges squeaked and the door moved only slightly, but it was enough to rattle heavy chains against the outer side.
No one was coming. She was locked in!
The dust in the musty air now tasted a bit like panic. She didn’t mind dark spaces, and even now had gained an affection for wooden boxes, but this was not the moment to stand around waiting to be rescued.Shewas the one who intended to do the conquering.
She certainly wasn’t going to let a locked door stop her from trying. Not with Stephen on the other side.
Elizabeth unsheathed her sword with a flourish. Or tried to. It was a semi-flourish, interrupted by the sharp edge of a wooden crate, and twenty full seconds of swearing as she picked splinters out of the skinof her hand. Swashbuckling in an enclosed space sounded dramatic, but in practice it was bloody near impossible.
She was going to do it anyway.
Once her sword was free, she positioned herself halfway between the locked door and the hulking crates and swung her sword with all her might.
A satisfying crack exploded into the wood before her, and a stream of dust-filled sunlight dazzled her eyes. Without waiting for her vision to adjust, she swung her sword again and again, concentrating instead on dislodging one of the individual panels that made up the door.
At last it popped free, and sunlight poured into the storage shelter. One skinny panel might have been wide enough for Tommy to slip through, but wouldn’t do for Elizabeth. So she pried at the next one, fully expecting footsteps to come running at any moment to investigate the destruction unfolding in the rear garden.
Nothing. No one. Not even a maid, a footman, a gardener.
The security in this place was absolute rubbish.
She squeezed out through the hole she’d carved into the door and brushed dust and splinters of wood from her dress. She’d looked nice when she’d left the house this morning, but now she looked like she’d spent the day wrestling with a wooden crocodile. Bites were missing from her skirt, and her hands were pricked with blood.
Elizabeth shook the extraneous shards from her hair and turned her gaze toward the house. A short wooden ramp connected the storage shed to a rear door that might have been a servants’ entrance. Tall hedgerows blocked the house from the neighbors’ view. Out front, an imposing stone wall with a thick iron gate indicated no visitors were welcome.
Luckily for Elizabeth, she wasn’t a visitor. Not in the traditional sense. She’d been delivered inside a wooden crate, hidden amongst a dozen other such crates. A Trojan horse, if you will.
Which she’dspecificallywarned Stephen to check for.
She was tempted to chop down the next door out of pure disgruntlement that her advice had gone unheeded, but Marjorie had provided her with a special lock-opening key. Besides, Elizabeth was tired of picking splinters from her skin. It was on to the next contingency plan.
She removed the special key from the hidden pocket Tommy had sewn in Elizabeth’s skirt, and inserted it into the lock. After twisting it a few times and banging the end with the hilt of her sword the way Chloe had shown her, the mechanism sprang open, and Elizabeth gained access to the interior of the residence.
