by Rebecca King
“Well, you weren’t there, were you? You have to accept the situation as it is now, not how it was,” Jasper grumbled. “You can’t change what has gone, but you can change the here and now.”
“Go after her, Aaron,” Oliver urged him.
“I need you back here a week on Thursday,” Sir Hugo informed them all. His alarm grew when all the men prepared to leave.
“I quit,” Aaron snapped. “I have no time in my life for any organisation that blocks something like this.”
“It hasn’t been blocked,” Sir Hugo warned. “You were in the middle of an investigation and couldn’t be contacted.”
“Why? Why couldn’t I be contacted?” Aaron demanded.
“You were watching Horvat,” Oliver said.
“Even so,” Jasper warned. “He should have been told and given the choice whether he wanted to leave and have someone take over his watch. None of us would have minded given the circumstances.”
“She isn’t his wife, though,” Sir Hugo added. He turned to Aaron. “We make allowances for kith and kin, but not friends and associates. You know that. When it arrived, the note wasn’t deemed important. I had no idea what it contained. If I had known what news it carried, I would have ensured a rider brought you that letter just as soon as it arrived.”
“But you didn’t,” Aaron replied. “Now I have missed my friend’s funeral, and his sister, who is also my good friend, is God knows where!”
“She isn’t your good friend, though, is she?” Oliver challenged.
“What?” Aaron rounded on him so swiftly that Oliver lifted his hands up, palms outward in a placating gesture that did little to soothe Aaron’s growing disgust with himself, and what he saw as his personal failures, with the Star Elite for intruding on his private life so severely, with his colleagues for, well, something, and for the world at large for being so cruel as to take someone as young as Thomas Lincoln at such an early age, and hurting Elspeth so much.
“She has already lost so much,” Aaron murmured.
“You have been in love with Elspeth Lincoln for as long as I have known you,” Oliver snorted. “We all know it. While you try your hardest to deny it, and ignore her for the most part, you refuse to encourage the affections of the myriad women who have crossed your path in recent years. They would have accepted your offer of marriage in a heartbeat. You barely gave those quite beautiful ladies a second look,” Oliver sighed.
“All because of Elspeth,” Jasper nodded. “No other woman gets noticed because of her.”
Niall agreed. “You speak of her a lot – Elspeth Lincoln, that is. She is, by far, the only woman who has held your attention for a very long time now. Just do something about it.”
Oliver pointed to Sir Hugo. “If he didn’t let you have the note because it came from home, not from a wife, make her your damned wife then the bastard doesn’t have any excuses in the future. This situation can never arise again then, can it?”
Aaron shook his head because he hated his friends knowing something he wasn’t at all sure about himself. They all spoke about his love for Elspeth Lincoln with absolute certainty. He had simply refused to stop and allow himself to contemplate how he truly felt about her. He didn’t see it as adoration. Not in any way. Unfortunately, it seemed that his feelings had been written on his sleeve for the world to see anyway, and it appeared to be love he felt for the woman who positively haunted his every waking moment.
“How long have you all known?” Aaron muttered with a worried frown.
“Like Oliver said, since we have known you,” Jasper replied honestly.
“We will help if you need us,” Oliver offered. “We can come with you and be there in case you need help finding her if she has moved.”
“You can’t go alone,” Callum warned.
Niall, Jasper and Oliver all nodded.
“Might I remind you gentlemen that we are in the middle of an investigation? You are needed to continue the search for Horvat,” Sir Hugo warned.
“Not at the cost to our personal lives and families, we don’t,” Oliver bit out.
Once again, the tension within the room increased tenfold. Sir Hugo straightened and stepped away from the door.
“Am I to take it that I have dissention in the ranks?” he mused as he moved into the room and looked at each of his men.
“We work morning, noon and night for you. We sacrifice so much of our lives for the bloody investigations, and for what?” Callum demanded. “For another idiot to resurface that we have to chase over hill and yonder. They get to go about their lives while we are the fools who have to spend our nights completely sleepless, and our days doing things none of us would choose to do, all the while sacrificing the ability to be with our wives and families – if we had any.”
“While we do the job because we enjoy what we do, there have to be limits,” Oliver warned. He waved a hand at Aaron but glared at Sir Hugo. “It is hardly right that he has missed such an important event, is it? I mean, the man has been friends with Thomas all his life.”
“I had no idea what that letter contained,” Sir Hugo repeated, his voice rife with frustration.
“It was marked urgent,” Callum all but shouted.
“Don’t you think you should have gotten it to him just in case it was important and contained dire news? I mean, most of us have homes where our correspondence is sent. For the man to have any correspondence sent here by his housekeeper should have warned you that the contents were important, don’t you think?” Niall challenged.
Aaron listened to what his friends were saying. It was quite telling that they were all echoing what he himself had said to Sir Hugo earlier, and proved to Aaron that he was doing the right thing.
“I would be extremely disgusted if you have blatantly dismissed a letter from home marked urgent purely because it didn’t have any relevance to one of your investigations,” Callum growled.
The men all studied Sir Hugo for signs of guilt.
Sir Hugo sighed. “Look, we have all been up to our necks with the investigations we have ongoing. It was my mistake, Aaron. I apologise for it.”
“That is cold comfort, I am sure,” Callum grumbled.
Sir Hugo looked about the room. “Am I to take it that you all feel the same? You all intend to leave?”
The men nodded.
“I will be gone for as long as I need to be away,” Aaron warned Sir Hugo coldly. “If that means I am no longer considered a member of the Star Elite, then you can take my failure to return as my resignation, and gladly so if the strictures of this group are such that there is no allowance for significant family matters like the death of someone who was, essentially, family to me.”
“Here, here,” Oliver added.
Aaron sensed an argument was brewing given the discontent that hovered over everyone. Even Sir Hugo looked annoyed now, but that didn’t stop Aaron from slamming out of the house without a backward look. As far as he was concerned, the Star Elite had already cost him, and Elspeth, so much that he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice another moment for an organisation who didn’t give a damn about the people who worked for it.
“I can only hope you are still at the house, Elspeth,” Aaron whispered quietly.
“Want some company?” Callum asked when he appeared at Aaron’s elbow.
Aaron lifted his brows and watched Niall mount his horse in one swift motion.
“Have you quit as well” Aaron asked cautiously. “You were serious then?”
Jasper grinned at him as he came to join them. “Looks like it.”
They both turned to watch Oliver step out of the house, together with Phillip.
Aaron turned in his saddle to look at his friends.
“All of you?” he asked in surprise.
“Come on then,” Callum called as he trotted past. “Time is pressing.”
“We have a lady to rescue,” Phillip added as he nudged his horse into a fast trot and set out after Callum.
Deeply touched by
their comradeship, Aaron watched them go, but only for a few seconds. When Oliver passed his horse, he slapped it mightily on the rump and grinned.
“Come on, you are slacking,” he teased. With that he trotted out of the yard.
Aaron’s horse immediately jerked into a trot, and Aaron quickly left the small yard of the Star Elite’s safe house after his good friends, Phillip, Callum, Oliver, Niall and Jasper.
Sir Hugo, stunned beyond measure, stared at the now empty kitchen. He turned to glare at the door. It was difficult to know what to think other than the War Office was now facing a significant crisis because six of their best operatives had just quit.
“Good God,” Sir Hugo muttered aloud.
Disbelief forced him to yank the door open and glance out into the yard, just to make sure it truly was empty. When he found darkness before him, Sir Hugo promptly slammed the door closed again and turned to face the room. Shocked, horrified, and more than a little appalled, Sir Hugo slumped into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Now what?” he muttered, his voice echoing in the silence.
For the first time in his career with the Star Elite, Sir Hugo had absolutely no idea what to do.
CHAPTER ONE
Elspeth stared at what she knew were thunder clouds on the horizon. The darkness overhead grew inky black. The sky was laden with menace that had already started to shake and boom with its heady cacophony. Mindless to the fact she had no shawl, Elspeth walked down the length of her garden. Her boots squelched in the muddy grass. Her flesh stung from the icy wind that swirled around her with increasing fury. None of it mattered. She needed to be outside, in the middle of the storm, because it felt considerably calmer than her life did right now.
As if to remind her of everything she had lost, a sudden flicker of lightning lit the sky with a promise of people and life in the form of a distant village, but it was further on the horizon, far, far away from the desolate isolation that was her own existence. The brief promise of hope swallowed swiftly by cruel menace reminded her of her life, or the life she had once had in any case. It belonged to somebody else now, the life she had thought she could live forever, or for as long as she chose. It all felt like it was a long and distant memory now, something that had belonged to the person she had been. The person Elspeth was now was being tossed about like the leaves on the rattling trees beside her, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.
Elspeth was not ignorant to the dangers of being out in such a ferocious storm. If she was caught by the lightning she would get to see her brother, Thomas, far sooner than she had anticipated, even though he was in the afterlife. But she didn’t care about the ferocity of the storm or the threat she was under from it. Everything in her life was in turmoil anyway. From all sides of her life; the town she lived in, the house she called home, everything she had once thought was hers was at risk of being swept out from beneath her with just as much fierce determination as the winds which tore the branches from the trees beside her and tossed them carelessly onto the ground at her feet.
Elspeth was oblivious to the tears that coursed down her face as she tipped her head back to feel the raindrops splattering against her heated cheeks. She was deluged by the steady downpour but was oblivious to the wet strands of her hair clinging to her pale cheeks. She was ignorant to the shivers that wracked her slender and starving frame. Nothing mattered but the coursing pain that seared her soul and rendered her useless to do anything more than howl against the desolation that scored every fibre of her being.
Her fists clenched in fury. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest. She sucked in a breath. With all her might, Elspeth opened her mouth and emitted a scream that seemed to come from every inch of her tortured lungs. She wanted to pound something. She wanted to scream once more, but her voice wouldn’t work. Elspeth had never wanted to physically hurt anybody before, but now she wanted to rage at the world such was the raw fury that surged through every fibre of her being.
Slowly, in answer to the pain coursing through her, Elspeth sank to her knees in the mud. She didn’t even flinch when another flash of lightning lit the garden around her. Not even a gasp of shock escaped her when that flicker of light revealed a dark shape standing in the farthest corner of her garden. She was too stunned to do anything but stare in shock. For one brief, sublime moment she wondered if it was Thomas. That tall, lanky frame was so blessedly familiar to her that Elspeth wondered if the events of the last several weeks had all been some sort of horrible mistake and she had not recently buried her brother at all. Her heart pounded with such vibrant hope that Elspeth was propelled to her feet. Mindful of the blackness that prevented her from racing across the lawn to see if it really was Thomas, Elspeth remained where she was but continued to stare across the garden at the spot where she had seen someone. She waited and waited with baited breath for the lightning to strike again, just so she could see for herself that it hadn’t been her imagination.
When the lightning did eventually flash, Elspeth’s torment increased when she saw the garden was completely empty save for herself. Defeated, she fell to her knees once more. The torment of her grief was a heavy burden. So much so, she didn’t have the strength to get back up again. Despite knowing that Thomas could never be there, she continued to watch the corner of the garden anyway. When the rain turned the mud beneath her knees impossible to even kneel on, she slid, slipped and slithered over to the base of a tree. Once there, she tugged her knees up and wrapped her arms around them until she sat in a tight ball of misery. She couldn’t have moved for the life of her. Instead, she waited patiently for the lightening to illuminate the house and garden once more.
Blindly, she stared out across the rolling lawn she had once played in as a child. Gone were the happy memories, forever washed away by the coursing tears that continued to deluge everything in her life. In the place of those bygone days was a wealth of pain and misery she knew she would never be able to escape. The huge hulking structure of the house she had once called home now stood in silent shadow, watchful and waiting for life to return to it once more. Elspeth knew she would not be there to see it for herself, and that hurt more than anything because until three weeks ago, she had been comfortable in the knowledge that it was her home forever if she wanted it to be.
“God knows who it belongs to now,” she murmured.
While her cousin Frederick was adamant he was the owner, Rollo Voss, a local who considered himself to be the closest thing to gentry in the area purely because he was richer than everyone else, had made it clear that his offer for the property had been accepted by Thomas in the week before his death. Elspeth had yet to receive confirmation from the solicitor about who owned the house. For now, Elspeth was its reluctant occupant, but for how much longer she had no idea. The uncertainty was driving her out of her mind with trepidation, but she had no idea how to vanquish it. Elspeth couldn’t even think about what she was going to do if she was forced out of the house, not when everything within her was grief-stricken and left her a deep sense of detachment that had plagued her every waking moment. Ever since she had stood beside Thomas’s grave in the churchyard, she had struggled through each day without comprehending much of, well, anything.
Unwillingly, her gaze turned to the distant spire across the rooftops. It seemed like a million miles away from where she sat. It brought a fresh wave of pain to think that Thomas was over there now, buried deep underground. Untouchable. Unable to speak to her. She couldn’t see him, talk to him, or hear him anymore, and never would be able to again.
“I am all alone,” she whispered miserably.
Mindful of the absolute sense of isolation she now faced, Elspeth tipped her head back against the tree and stared blankly at the branches overhead. The splatters of rain that fell upon her felt like tiny punches from nature. Even Mother Nature didn’t want her presence. But she refused to move. Nothing could have made Elspeth return to the house to sit amidst the still silence for another moment. It was
no longer her home and couldn’t ever be now.
Not now.
Not given the fact that she was no longer entitled to stay there.
She dug around in her pocket and withdrew the crumpled piece of parchment she had received that morning. Elspeth wanted to open it but knew the words off by heart because she had already read them several times. Instead of reading the neat wording, she threw the scrunched ball of papery mass across the lawn. There was no possibility she was going to answer the solicitor’s summons. Not only did she not have the money to travel anywhere, but she couldn’t find the heart to attend a solicitor’s office and pretend that everything was all right while the man told her she was destitute and homeless.
“I already know I have nothing,” she whispered aloud. Her words were snatched by the wind which swirled around her and jostled hollowly with the trees that formed the woods she sat amongst. “He can write to me if he wishes to tell me I need to leave here.”
The next flicker of lightning, directly over the church, lit up the garden once more. To Elspeth’s shock, a flicker of shadow passed around the side of the house. She blinked only to find the darkness had cloaked any further movement. A part of her wanted to go and see if it was Thomas, but she had no idea what she would do if it wasn’t. The thought that it might be Rollo Voss or Frederick Miniver was enough to make her settle back against the tree and pretend she wasn’t there.
Besides, if anybody does break into the house they won’t find anything worth taking. I don’t have anything, she thought bleakly.
Elspeth knew because she had searched the house several times, very carefully over the last few days, for any coin or item of worth she might be able to sell to make a few pennies to at least be able to purchase some food. So far, she had found nothing, and she knew all the secret hiding places her brother had used. Her failure to find even a single coin within the house was testament to just how desperate her situation was, and for the first time in her life, Elspeth couldn’t find a solution to her problem. There was nobody to turn to, nobody to ask, and nothing she could do to save herself.
