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The fires have burned out, but the air within the castle halls still hangs thick with smoke and the too familiar smell of charred flesh. Will feels as though he is certain to choke on it, sick himself on the stone beneath his feet. They are not far from dawn, and when day comes it will be for him to do the ugly work left to the survivors. Already, too, he is bracing to be given his leave, sent away with a purse heavy with Hoffman’s gratitude, just as Peter’s already weighs in his pocket.
All of that is to come, he knows. For now, though, makes his way to Lilli’s rooms.
She has not moved since he left her last, sitting stiff and still on the edge of her bed. Her eyes are closed now, but there is nothing restful about her. Nearly hidden in the folds of her skirt, Will can see the hilt of Lady Hoffman’s dagger clenched in the fist she has made of her right hand.
He’d tried to take it from her before. Whispered her name and promised she was safe, but her hand would not give. Not even through her relief at hearing her name from her father’s lips or as Will near carried her to her bed chamber. She held fast as he knelt at her feet and used his own blade to cut a strip of linen from the hem of her underdress, folded it and pressed it against her cheek.
“Hold here,” he’d told her, taking her empty hand in his and making her keep it firm. Now, from where he stands in the threshold, even in the flickering light of the torches, he can see where it has grown dark with her blood.
“Lilli,” Will says, and it takes so few steps to get from here to there, find himself on his knees before her again, one palm flat against the mattress at her side, the other curled carefully at the crook of her elbow. He tips his head back to look up at her, and he knows that if she wished to she could cut his throat in a single move, press the blade against his flesh until it gives. He leaves himself at her mercy. Let her do as she will, he thinks. “Lilli, I swear to you, you’re safe now.”
For a moment, there is nothing but the careful sound of his breath and hers, the high, strong whistle of wind outside.
“She’s dead,” Lilli says, opening her eyes. Will knows she doubts her own words.
“Yes. Yes, Lilli.” It is enough. With something near a sob, she releases the dagger, lets it fall and skip against the stone floor. She let’s herself fall as well, slumping forward, slipping off the edge of the bed. Will catches her as best he can, out of practice at such intimacy. He sits back on his heels and wraps arms around her, lets her shake against him as she presses her face into the crook of his neck and weeps.
Long as it has been, the habits of comfort are quick to return now. He remembers living another life, holding a woman in his arms who would stop her weeping when given his soft murmured nonsense and gentled hands against the curves of her ribs and fragile line of her spine . So he does now what he did then, hoping Lilli will be enough the same.
“Lilli, Lilli. Shhhh, sweetheart. All will be well.” He has seen enough to know that these words are too often an empty lie, but still he hopes for her. Hopes that her father and her home will be enough to to keep her from waking up tomorrow with the same hollow heart that has echoed in his chest for so many years. “You’re safe. You’re home.”
Lilli’s holds him tighter with every word, fingers digging bruises into his shoulder, his neck. He would gladly bleed by her hand if it would be enough to heal her. She doesn’t ask that much of him, settles for burying anguished cries against his skin.
When she has gone quiet at last, limp and almost weak against him, he draws back, touches her face, gentle. She lets him take away the bandage, does not flinch when he looks. She is streaked with tears and blood and soot. Still, when she looks at him with mouth parted and raises her hand to trace the bones of his face, Will feels his breath catch. He only barely stays himself from kissing her, the dangerous pull of want rising up in him. Her touch is already familiar.
“Will, please,” her voice is soft.
“I - Is there clean water?” He asks, desperate for even a moment to put his mind to rights.
“What?” Lilli’s brows nearly knit together in her confusion.
“There is a basin and cloth. If there is water, I would help you wash,” Will says, and he feels his cheeks grow warm, his words and meaning tripping over each other as when he courted as barely more than a boy. “Your face and hands.”
“There is a well in the yard,” Lilli says.
Will frowns at this. It seems too far to go when her eyes still brim with tears. He presses his mouth against her temple.
“To bed with you,” he tells her, lifting her from his lap easy as a child. Once stood, he settles her among the soft blankets and pillows and takes up the basin from the table, but makes no move toward the door. It has been hours now that the wind has carried snow with it, and when he undoes the latch on the window, he finds exactly what he hoped. When the sill is near clean of snow and the basin full, he pulls the window closed again and returns to Lilli.
“Let me?” he says. Her nod is slight but certain, and Will takes up the cloth, piles it with snow, letting the heat of his hand melt it until the cloth is wet through.
He draws it first across her forehead, down the curve of her unmarred cheek and the slope of her throat, stopping just short of the swell of her breasts. Again and again, he follows the path, adding the jut of her chin, the bridge of her nose, scrubbing pale skin to pink until there is no way to delay any further.
“I’m sorry, Lilli,” he says, and with the gentlest hand he can manage, begins to clean the still her wound.
Lilli draws a hissing breath at his touch, and tries to draw away. Will takes hold of her chin. “This will hurt for a moment, but trust me when I tell you, it’s the better of your options.”
“Is it so bad?” Lilli asks, the words nearly caught in her clenched teeth.
When he had seen her first, after, Will had feared the worst for her. As the blood comes away, he can feel the tight coil of unease begin to unravel. Under it all, the cut is straight and clean at the edges, shallow enough. It should heal and well, fade to near nothing in the time it will take for spring to come. So long as it doesn’t begin to fester. Will shapes a smile made easier by the truth and says, “Not so bad. A scratch.”
They fall into silence again as Will moves from her face to her hands. He holds her hands beneath the icy slush in the basin, loosens the dirt from under her nails, wipes the blood and ash from her palms, taking care not to reopen the small cuts, some he has seen before and nearly healed, others new. There are calluses on her finger tips and in the creases of her knucles, blisters too, that were not there when she came to them in the forest. He feels them when he takes her hands in his, rubbing fast until she is warm again. When he is done at last, no more excuses to touch her, he sets the cloth at the bottom basin, the basin back on the table.
“Tomorrow, I’ll bring water from the well. Enough for a bath.” he says, as though there will not be so much else to do. “For now, this will have to be enough.”
Lilli nods, lays herself back against the bed, but she doesn’t close her eyes, doesn’t look away from him. Will has no more he can say to her here. Not within her father’s walls. So he waits.
“My father” Lilli says at last.
“Lord Hoffman-” he starts, pauses at the strange feel of such words on his tongue and begins again, reaching once more to touch where he has no rights, rough fingers catching in her hair. “Your father sleeps. So should you.”
“Please,” Lilli says. Her fingers tangle in the fabric of his sleeve “Lie with me.”
“Lie with you?” He knows she cannot mean it as he has wanted, as they nearly did the night she came to him in the dark of their ruined church. His mouth drew to hers then as if on a string, and he might have done far more than kiss her had they not remembered their company. He could have taken her in God’s plain sight and asked her to call it marriage, but they are not in the forest anymore.
“I only meant I don’t want to be left alone with my dreams or you with yours,” Lilli says.
“Then you should be careful what you ask, Lilli.” Will touches her pale skin where a flush is rising. “You know full well there are men who would take liberties where none are offered.”
“I know you’re not one of them. You seem unwilling now to take even what I have offered,” Lilli says.
“I can’t.” He says it even as his hands itch to touch her more and more by the second. He wants to kiss her dizzy, to strip her bare and taste her skin, draw cries of pleasure from her throat. He knows even the simple comfort she claims to be asking for is more than he should allow himself to have. “It’s... It’s not proper.”
“Manners now? Who is there to see?” The sound she makes could not be called a laugh, too bitter and tired by far. “A castle filled with death, blood fresh washed from my hands, and suddenly you’re a gentleman.”
“And what would your father do with the outlaw who thinks to share a bed with his daughter? Take him at his word that he left her untouched? Grant him her hand and a title? Or perhaps I would find myself hanged as an example to other low men who sully a good woman? Tell me, Princess,” Will spits the word out as though it is poison, none of the sweet fondness it has earned over the weeks. “Which of these do you think I’ll be lucky enough to be blessed with?”
“I think if you fear what my father assumes about your acquaintance with my virtue, you’re as good as dead already. What more harm can come of one night in my own bed than was done by weeks on strange ground?” Lilli says.
“And you would lie with such a dead man as you would your husband?” Will asks, but she has already won. He is sinking to the mattress, too tired to fight.
“I would lie with you as you would let me. Tonight, while we still live.” Lilli rolls to face Will as he stretches out beside her. She lets her hands wander the breadth of his shoulders, the shape of his ribs. She kisses him, over and again, lips chapped but warm against the place on his throat where she left tears earlier, the scarred skin beneath his eye, his mouth.
Will catches her hands up in his, holds them still between their bodies. He will let himself believe if only for tonight he can have at least this. Outside, the snow still falls. He can see the first dull light of dawn rising up from the horizon. When he dreams, it is not of fire.
*
Under the snow, the ground is cold but not yet frozen. Will is chilled with sweat and can feel the fierce ache of overwork weighing across his shoulders, all the way down his arms, and into his fingers, but still he digs.
When he’d woken the sun was still low, but it shone onto the snow and make the world outside near to blinding bright. Lilli was curled in his arms, tucked close against his body. He’d stolen a careful pair of kisses before he rose, his lips brushing against first her mouth then the shell of her ear. She frowned when he left her but did not stir.
In his rooms, Hoffman slept on as well, breathing deep and steady. Will left him to his rest and, for hours, searched the castle and grounds, wrapped bodies in sheets, drapes, anything he could find, piled them in a barrow and made his way to the cemetery. Lady Hoffman’s body was little more than bone burned to near dust, lying among the shattered mirrors, and Will’s hands yearned for his pickaxe at the sight, wishing he could finish the job of grinding her to nothing. He could find no trace of the babe and was grateful for it.
Peter was the last he found, body crumpled and neck broken against the ground beneath the southern wall of the castle. It is only Peter who still lies above ground as the sun begins to dip beneath the tree tops, the payment he made to Will returned to him.
“He was one of the only men I had known who was not family or of our household until I came to the forest.” Lilli’s words make Will start, shocked at his own focus that kept him from hearing her approach. The makeshift shroud has slipped from Peter’s face. Lilli is not looking at him, but at Will. “It seems almost silly now, but I thought it love.”
“He was a civilized man, for certain,” Will says, pulling himself up from the pit of Peter’s grave. He knows there is no respect in his tone even as he says it, but he cannot hold his tongue. “He told me your father had agreed to the match eagerly. I’m sure he would have made a good husband to Lord Hoffman’s daughter. ”
“Perhaps,” Lilli says, frowning and kneeling beside the body. Her knees sink into the muddied snow. She kisses Peter’s forehead gingerly, and covers him again. She stands then, wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, brushes her knuckles absently against her cheek. “But I don’t know if he would still want me as I am now, instead of as I was. I fear he would have asked my father for release from his promise.”
“Then he would have lived on alone as a fool,” Will drags his forearm across his face. He can suddenly feel just how caked he is in the grime of his day’s work. There is cold mud between his toes, soaking through at his knees and elbows, sweat cooled and sticking between his shoulders and in the small of his back.
“I know what you did.” Lilli steps to his side at the the edge of the empty grave, stares down. “I know I only live now because of you. I think she wanted me aware so I would know how little anyone cared. He was so ready to bury me, I wonder, would he have mourned me for even a week?”
Will thinks of Peter’s calm on looking on Lilli’s body and the worth he placed on her resurrection, tries to measure it again his own heart’s tight ache from the moment he saw her among the birds until well after she drew breath again. Had she not woken, Will might have followed her into the ground rather than go on living in the grip of another ghost.
He does not answer her in speech, only drawing her to him careless of dirt and laying a kiss to her hair.
They bury Peter together, mark the head of the grave with a flagstone, just as he has the others. When they are done, Lilli tucks her arm in Will’s as they make their way back down the line of graves. Stopping at each, he tells her what he can of the body lain there, and she gives them names.
“Where is....” she begins. Will does not let her finish.
“Somewhere else,” he says, jerking his head vaguely toward the land beyond the boundary of the cemetery.
“Good,” Lilli says with a nod, turning them to start back to the castle. She says nothing else until he stops her near the well in the courtyard, dragging up a bucket and sloughing off the several layers of dirt from his hands and face. Then, “I have seen my father earlier. He knows me, but is weak.”
“He’ll be well soon, I’m sure,” Will says. “Are you hungry? I feel half starved. I visited the kitchen this morning, and there’s much unspoiled.”
Lilli’s eyes go wide with excitement, and the sound she makes is so eager that Will cannot stop a the ripple of laughter that rises up in him. He goes with her, following easy as she drags him from courtyard to kitchen. Will watches her disappear into the larder. She returns with a plate piled high with dried meats and fruit, hunks of cheese.
When he opens the cupboard nearest at hand, Will finds a loaf of brown bread gone hard near to rock. He has eaten much better but also much worse. He cuts thick slices, spreads them with butter and the sweetest jam they find. There is wine, too, drunk rich and strong from a shared cup. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, knees near touching and plate balanced between them, they eat and drink until they are flushed and full with it.
“It’s too quiet,” Lilli says, whispering herself in the growing shadows. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.”
Will thinks he would have missed her words entirely had he not had gaze fixed on her mouth. He shakes himself free of thoughts of whether the wine on her lips is sweeter than that in their cup and says, “There will be noise again, I’m sure. Your father will regain his strength. New people will come.”
“It won’t be the same.” Lilli shakes her head, her loose hair falling around her shoulders. When Will reaches out to push it back, she leans into his touch, takes hold of his wrist to keep it. “They were not-- I know what you thought of me when you found me. A spoiled child. Useless. Selfish. Maybe I was all those things, but I don’t think I am anymore. I feel changed. I will grieve them deeply. I think I would have even before. They were not just servants. Ilsa, Greta, Bruno, all of them. They were more family to me than I know how to say. I loved them.”
“I am sorry.” Will says. His thumb moves a fragile path over her skin. When she blinks, he can feel the brush of her lashes, but she will not look at him, eyes cast on the stone floor.
“They are dead because she hated me. Gilbert and Lars, too.” Her shoulders rise and fall with her breath. “They’d all still be alive if--”
“Don’t you dare.” Will takes hold of her then, shakes her, not caring when their plate goes clattering to the floor. “Lilli, it’s not your fault. Their deaths, it’s not your soul that needs to account for them. She did this. Not you.”
“Is that what you tell yourself when you think of your family? Do you absolve yourself? Can you forget their deaths simply because you weren’t the one who lit the fire?” She claps her hands over her mouth as soon as the words are out, but it’s enough for Will to feel the sting, sharp as any whip or blade that has ever bit his skin.
“No,” Will says, pressing his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. “I don’t absolve myself, Lilli. I will never...”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Will.” Lilli breathes her apology against his mouth. “Please, forgive me. I shouldn’t have. Lars, he told me, but I should never have said that.”
“You should see to your father,” Will says, as much for her sake as his. They may both have ghosts to keep company, but she still has a family however small it is. He will make sure that remains true. “Take him some food. Talk with him. Come back here when he is ready to sleep again, and you’ll have a bath waiting.”
“Of course,” Lilli says, and she is quick to fill a plate, tuck a bottle beneath her arm and make a retreat. When she is gone, Will waits until his heart is settled back beneath his ribs, and then sets to work. There are logs and kindling still waiting by the kitchen fireplace and it takes only minutes until the flames are strong. He traces his steps back to the servants’ quarters and the wooden tub he stumbled upon that morning and carries it back. To and from the well, over and over until the tub is half full, and the pot he’s hung over the fire is on its way to a boil.
It must have taken even longer than it felt, because he doesn’t have time to give in to the creeping memories before Lilli has returned, her arms full of clothes. She sets them on the table, and stares in near rapture at the sight of the tub. When he moves to lift the pot from the fire, she is there to help him, and together they manage to fill the tub the rest of the way, steam rising from the surface into the cooling air.
Lilli does not wait, deftly loosening the laces on her bodice, her skirt, and Will watches dumb as they fall away from her. When it’s only her shift that keeps her from his sight, Will manages to find his tongue again.
“I’ll go, then,” he says, though it is so far from what he wants, and when Lilli turns to face him again, the pale curve of her shoulder is painted gold in the firelight. He cannot tell if the blush that has risen on her cheeks is from wanting him to take his leave or stay.
“My father asked about you,” she says before he bring himself to make any move to go.
“And what did you tell him?” Will asks, a strange uncertainty prickling at his spine.
“I told him he should ask you what he wants to know because I don’t have an answer, only what I hope is true,” Lilli says. “So go speak to him and let me bathe before the water cools.”
*
“So you are Will?” Hoffman says before Will is even through the door. He is barely the same man that Will found delirious with fever and pain just the night before. While his eyes are dark with exhaustion and bruises remain, he is sat upright in the bed Will found for him. Already he seems ready to preside with the power of his title. It makes Will’s stomach turn sour, but he finds he has not forgotten how to play the loyal subject.
“I am.” He says.
“I’m taken to understand that I’ve you to thank for my Lilli’s return to me and, in fact, for our very lives.” Hoffman raises his glass, and Will wonders what lies Lilli spun to make him look the hero. “How can a father ever thank a man for keeping his daughter’s safe in the world?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Will says, already decided he will not offer anything. If Hoffman is going to set a value on Lilli’s life, it will be a decision of his own making.
“Would you sit and talk with me for a while.” Hoffman waves Will toward the chair set by the bedside. “Lilli tells me enough that II know my wife for a witch of the black arts, my household murdered by her works. But under all this, my daughter seems determined to keep me from the truth of where she has been and much that has happened. I asked to see you because I felt perhaps, if I asked, you wouldn’t do the same?”
“I don’t know how to begin,” Will admits. He sits, though, and let’s Hoffman see him face on before he begins to speak. It tumbles from him in stops and starts, finding Lilli hungry and tired. He admits to the easy cruelty they showed her at first, until Rolf found himself at the edge of Will’s knife. He see’s Hoffman’s pride when he explains how Lilli didn’t cower to any of them even when her eyes bled with fear. He tells of the raven keeping watch, and how the earth and wind stole Gilbert and Lars from them instead of Lilli.
He speaks of the days of quiet, too, when there was easy company and how Lilli became dear to them as. As a sister, he says, though he knows it not to be the full truth. And some things he doesn’t say at all. When he comes to the day he found Lilli still and cold, he has to clench his hands tight to get through it. It raises the same sick feeling that had taken him at the time, and he can’t stop himself from admitting to Hoffman that even as he pulled her from the grave he thought himself only crazed with grief and that, “I have no words for the relief I felt on seeing her wake,” .
“And then after all that, you let her go?” Hoffman says, and Will guesses Lilli must have already spoke with him about Peter.
“I know she was never mine to hold,” Will says, too honest by a full measure, “but as I’m here, it seems I couldn’t quite manage it even so.”
“It’s a difficult thing to let go of a woman once she has taken space in your heart. Her mother was much the same in her power over me,” Hoffman says. “I carry her still. I fear sometimes that I’ve tried too hard to forget the pain of losing her. It’s sent me down paths I should not have gone. But then, I think maybe you have some experience in this yourself.”
Then, as he pours himself another cup of wine, his tone steady, “You are branded a sinner and coward before God. Or do my eyes play tricks on me again?”
“I am marked as that,” Will says, “but it is not so.”
“No, I suppose it might not be. Not if what Lilli tells me is true. It might be the fancy of a girl, but she says that for her you walked toward death. Do you love her so much?” Hoffman asks.
“I--” Will chokes back the answer perched on his wine-loosened tongue. He curses himself for dropping guard, nearly speaking himself into danger. Instead, he says only, “I am happy to see her safe and home.”
“Hmmm,” Hoffman says, settling further down into his bed. “I think I’ve had enough company and talk for a day. I am tired again. I sent Lilli with some clothes of mine when she left me earlier. I doubt they’ll fit you very well, but they are clean and meant for winter.”
“I don’t need-” Will starts, but Hoffman cuts him off with a raised hand.
“Accept a small kindness, Will. Call it payment for your day’s labor. A man should not turn down fair and honest coin for hard work.”
It strikes him to hold stubborn, refuse to accept anything, but he does feel the ache of everything he did today. Besides, winter will only get worse from here and he doesn’t know where he will be when it is at its deepest days.
*
Lilli is nowhere to be seen when Will returns to the kitchen. Her bath water is cooled but still scented with sweet soaps and oils she must have fetched for herself. Hoffman’s clothes are folded neatly on the table. There is linen and wool and leather, not of a quality unknown to him but nothing like Will has ever been given to wear.
There is hot water still on the fire. It’s quick work to make himself a warm bath and strip down, begin to scrub. By the time he is done, his skin feels raw over every inch. He stands naked, dripping on the tile. It’s almost enough to let him believe he’s washed new.
Hoffman was right, Will realizes as he pulls the nightclothes from the rest. They are not fit to him. They are made for a broader man, but a different kind of man in other ways, too. They are soft, well stitched, and for the first time in weeks he doesn’t feel the night chill creeping into his blood.
He goes to Lilli.
“Will you tell me about them?” She asks, when they are settled together in her bed. He shouldn’t be here again, but she had reached out for him. Even a good man (which he knows he is not) can only be so strong. One touch and he had gone crawling beneath the blankets and pulled her firm against him, back to front. Her head is tucked under his chin and her hip a good fit for his hand. It is quiet and so dark that Will can lose track of whether his eyes are open or closed. It makes it almost easy to pretend that it’s alright for him to be here with her. That he has the right to hold her.
“Why?”
“Because I wish to know you.”
“My father groomed horses.” He keeps his voice low, barely more than a whisper. “He died when I was young. A long fever that made him raving mad and left him not knowing even my mother. I don’t remember him much, but I remember his hands. They were gentle. He could control any horse without a even a bridle. He had a laugh that could shake a room. My mother, she was different after he died. Quiet. I was too young to understand what it meant to have a heart so broken that you can’t figure how it still beats. She could have taken a new husband, young enough and fair. She never did. She became a laundress, our house always filled with other people’s clothes, so much finer than anything we would ever wear.”
Will knows this is not what Lilli meant when she asked, but it is all the truth and the only way he can start. The rest is bound too tight and hard to unknot.
So it goes for a week. Lilli visits with her father in the morning and speaks with him on matters she does not share with Will. In the hours when the sun hangs highest, they work to set the castle to rights as much as two people can do in creeping winter. At evening’s first shade Hoffman calls for Will to bring his supper and makes him sit until his plate is empty. They say little, but Hoffman watches him keenly and makes no hint that Will has worn his welcome. When the curtain of night falls thick around them, Will takes his place in Lilli’s bed, lets her kiss and touch as she will until he can bear no more and then distracts her with easy stories of his childhood.
It is the eighth night, and Will has felt her lips on palm and wrist and bend of his elbow, drug his from shoulder to shoulder and near to the valley between the sweet swells of her breasts. They are settled for sleep now, but neither seem ready for it.
“Would you ever take a new wife?” Lilli asks after he has been quiet for some time, twining her fingers with his where they have come to rest again on the rise of her hip.
“Lilli.” What answer can he give?
“You were wed,” she says, no question in it.
“Yes.” Will is grateful once more for the dark. “I had a wife.”
“Will you tell me?” Lilli says.
“It’s not a good story, Lilli,” Will says. “And you already know the end.”
Lilli holds him when he tries to pull away. She says, “I know, but it is a piece of your truth.”
Will takes a deep breath and begins.
“Liese. Her name was Liese. She was the daughter of a baker, and I thought her lovely the first time I saw her in the village. Blonde and plump and pretty. She rode with her father when he went to market, and I could often hear her singing as their wagon came by our home. It was spring when I came to court her. I thought I’d never earn even a glance from her. I was only the woodcutter son of a widowed washerwoman, patches on everything I owned and barely any coin in my pocket. I don’t even know how I got her father’s permission.”
“You must have been much more charming then,” Lilli says. Will laughs against her neck, sudden and loud. It’s been so long since he let himself think about the time before, when Liese was the best part of his life instead of a piece of his greatest loss.
“I was,” he says. “Or at least my foolish stammering flattered her. I was sure my heart was going to fly right out of my chest before I could so much as speak, but she’d words enough for three people and a sharp wit. That first day we walked in the forest and stole each other’s kisses until nearly dark. We were promised by month’s end and married in high summer. By winter, Liese was large with child.”
Lilli’s breath hitches, her hand drawing Will’s from her hip to the flat plane of her stomach. Will remembers so well the nights he spent in an embrace just like this, huddled against Liese in their small bed against the wind that blew through the cracks. He took such peace then, tracking the changes in Liese’s body with his touch, his mouth, as she grew with their babe. She would tease him for his roughened hands, kiss where they were thick with calloused skin and torn by slivers and say she should have married a tailor or a baker like her father. He, in turn, would kiss her silent and bring her to gasping with those same hands and fingers.
“A daughter first,” Will said, and when he closes his eyes he can see Elsbeth’s deep brown eyes as they were the last time he saw her smiling. Six years old and so serious that it was his greatest pride to earn a giggle from her. “Two years after that a son. And then one day, I came home and there were men waiting.”
“Crusaders,” Lilli whispers. Will is glad that she took the word from him, saved him saying it, though there is nothing easy about any of what is left to be said.
“Winter was coming again and I had to keep my family fed. What kind of man would I have to be to leave a wife and children to starve? I told them that surely God would understand that my family needed me. They said God needed me more. I told them I’d never heard God crying in the night from an empty stomach. They called me savage, a heathen, and struck me down. When I woke I was bound and...” Will swallows against the rising terror. He knows it’s just an echo and not something that can find him now. At least not this night. He forces himself to focus on Lilli in his arms. She is warm, soft, alive, and safe (but so dangerous).
“No one to feed now, they said.” He continues on, steady and even, though it feels like he is breaking all over again. “I swore I would not fight in the name of a God who would allow them to murder my mother, my wife, and my children and leave me with their screams as my last memory. They whipped me senseless, and when I still refused their war, they branded me and left me for dead. Gilbert and Lars found me wandering in the woods with nothing but my ax, half mad and near death. They fed me, stayed my hand when all I wanted was to spend my blood into the dirt, and for six years we lived as you found us, as barely more than thieves, outlaws, and low men.”
“Thank you,” Lilli says. “For telling me.”
She says no more that night, and is gone from bed when Will wakes. He works the day through in the stables, and she does not visit with steaming cider. Will only comes in when his hands and nose burn with cold. He calls for her through empty halls, but receives no reply. When the time comes, he puts together Hoffman’s meal and takes it to him. Lilli is slipping from her father’s door just as Will comes round the corner.
Hoffman says nothing during supper, until Will can take the strange day no more and says, “I think it is nearing time I take my leave.”
“Do you?” Hoffman raises his brows, “I suppose if you wish to leave. You’re not contracted to us in any way, after all.”
“Not in any way.” Will agrees.
“We can discuss this more tomorrow.” Hoffman says. “I owe you for your employ. Unless of course, you mean to leave tonight.”
“No,” Will says. “But most likely soon.”
“A man must do,” Hoffman says, and waves him away.
Will doesn’t know where to go from there. It is dark and he will grow weary soon, but suddenly he questions his welcome in Lilli’s bed. When he arrives at her door, it is closed to him.
“Lilli?” He calls her name softly and lets his knuckles rap once against the wood.
She opens the door to him in her shift, the same as she has worn to sleep beside him every night. But tonight, there is not a room sunk in dark to hide her from his view. She has flung the curtains open and a heavy moon hung in the window gives him light to see her by. She holds out her hand in waiting for his and, when he gives it, leads him slow to stand next to her bed. She rises to her toes and kisses at his jaw. He says her name again like a prayer, taking her up in his arms.
“I need to tell you the truth,” she says, her arms flung tight around his shoulders. “My father delivered me with a knife. He cut me from my dying mother’s womb before she and I both were devoured by wolves. I grew up spoiled and sheltered because I was all that was left of my mother and no one would risk my father losing the last piece of her. I didn’t know any of this before this week. I never knew what my father loved about my mother but that she was beautiful. No one ever told me if she was kind or smart or brave. All anyone ever told me was that I had her smile and her name. I thought I loved Peter because I believed love a game to play and win, and he seemed a valuable prize.”
Will knows not what he is meant to say to this, but Lilli only takes his silence and leave to go on.
“I don’t love you--” Lilli’s words hang for a moment in the air and Will feels himself flash cold before she finds her meaning. “I don’t love you for your smile, or your eyes, or the way your hands fit against my hips. But I do love you. I know because when I look at you, I realize that my heart is not my own anymore. It is as though it has been halved, and-- and I grieved for Peter. I still grieve. But if you were to go, Will, if you were to go I don’t know how my heart would keep beating.”
“I’m not the man--” Will starts, but the rest is buried against her mouth.
When finally she stops kissing him, she says, “I don’t care the man you think you are. I love you, and I have been given to believe that you might love me too.”
“I do.”
“Will you lie with me, then?” She says, and he answers her with his hands upon her skin.
*
In the morning the sun will rise. He’ll kiss Lilli until they are both breathless with it and tell her again that he loves her. He’ll start to find the good memories of Liese and Elsbeth and Hugo so long hidden and share them with her. In a few days, on a clear morning, they’ll ride out together to find Scar and Konrad and Bart and bring them to the castle. Lilli will take them in her embrace and say sweet words to make them blush, introduce them to her father as kind friends, as Will’s brothers.
Servants will come, and the household will grow loud and busy again. Scar will take to the young cook who arrives with the new year, and fret that she will be unable to love a man with a monstrous face. She will marry him while ice still hangs from the branches.
Will will continue to make his home in Lilli, body and soul. He’ll lie with her in passion and in sleep and call it their bed instead of hers. He’ll never again speak of going, and when Lilli’s father grows strong again, he’ll clap his hands on Will’s shoulder and speak of family with an easy smile.
As summer cools and becomes fall, Lilli will find Will in the gardens. She’ll kiss him with a mouth cherry sweet and press his strong palm to the subtle curve of her belly.
“Would you ever take a new wife?” She’ll ask him for a second time. “My father gave blessing for the match ages ago, though he still thinks you’ll make a terrible Lord Hoffman. He hopes our son will do better.”
He will take her as a wife and give himself to her. They will keep each other's hearts, and they will watch their sons and daughters grow strong and lovely, kind, smart, and brave.
All that will come in its time. But first, he loves her.