For Elise

by Sarah M. Eden

  Grow up, Elise. Grow up and solve your own problems. His own voice echoed in the recesses of his memory, harsh and uncaring . . . and weary.

  It was Elise’s voice that followed, small and frightened. I need your help. Please, Miles. I am in a great deal of trouble.

  The memory remained vague and incomplete. Still, he could actually see her standing beside his father’s desk in the Epsworth library. Tears rolled down her face, her terribly young face.

  “Oh heavens, what did I do?” Miles closed his eyes tightly against a wave of guilt.

  “Come in, Ella,” Mama Jones called out, recalling Miles to the present. He hadn’t even been aware of Elise’s knock.

  “Mama Jones.” Elise greeted her mother-in-law with that tone of eerie solemnity she’d acquired during her years away, apparently not even noticing him at the window.

  Anne caught sight of him quickly, however. She moved toward him, arms outstretched. Elise held her back.

  “I have tried to explain to her that you cannot be forever spinning her about, but she doesn’t seem to fully understand.” Elise’s tone was apologetic and unnecessarily humble, as if she were begging the pardon of the Prince Regent himself. She lowered her eyes, her posture that of a servant before her employer, of a tenant before a landowner.

  “We need to talk, Elise.”

  Her eyes darted up again, confusion and apprehension in her gaze, quickly replaced by an empty expression. “Of course, my lord.” His title was beginning to sound far too comfortable to her. That would have to stop.

  “Blast it, Elise,” Miles muttered in frustration. “Must you keep my lording me?”

  A barely noticeable quiver shook her chin before her lips clamped closed and her entire frame seemed to tense. Elise’s eyes dropped once again to her hands clasped in front of her. She was retreating again.

  “Mama Jones, will you watch Anne for a moment, please?” He glanced quickly at the older woman rocking and watching them. “I need to speak with Elise.”

  “Take her for a walk, Miles Linwood. Talk till you’re blue in the face.”

  “It might come to that,” Miles acknowledged. Then, consigning all of Beth’s advice to Hades, he took Elise’s hand and marched her from the cottage.

  Elise attempted to pull free of his clasp, but he didn’t allow her to. Mama Jones had a small garden behind her cottage, and he tugged Elise to the low retaining wall at the far corner of it. He brushed off a light coating of dirt, then laid out his handkerchief for her to sit on.

  Elise sat. Miles actually breathed a sigh of relief when she stopped trying to pull free.

  “You said you would not hold my hand anymore,” Elise said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. Miles couldn’t determine her feelings on the subject. Was she as disappointed by the necessary distance as he had been? Did she care?

  “Yes, well . . . don’t tell Beth,” Miles answered, squeezing her fingers. Her hand felt so right inside his, he could hardly imagine never holding it again.

  “Beth?”

  “She reminded me that we really ought to be more circumspect in our attention to one another.” Miles sighed. He probably ought to be sitting a little farther away from Elise and certainly shouldn’t still be clasping her hand. There was comfort in Elise’s presence that he had sorely missed in the two days since he’d enforced a distance between them. She had, in those same two days, pulled away from him emotionally as much as physically.

  “Beth said that?”

  “She pointed out that we are no longer children.”

  “And you are now a marquess,” Elise added in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Which puts me in mind of something else about which I wanted to talk with you.” He faced her square-on and made no effort to hide his exasperation. “At what point, Elise, did I become Lord Grenton to you? You have been calling me that lately, and it makes no sense. I have always been Miles. And you’ve been my lording me half to death. I am apt to go loose in the brain box if you keep it up.”

  “But you are Lord Grenton.” Elise seemed to grow even more tense. “I am only being proper.”

  “Proper? Elise, you are my oldest friend. There is—”

  “You said yourself,” she interrupted. “Circumstances have changed. Our relative positions in Society dictate a certain formality. Like you said.” She hopped off the low wall. “I understand, Miles. I know our positions are not equal as they once were.” Elise walked a little away from him, her back to him. “I am learning to accept it, but having to continually discuss it is . . . is—” She took a shaky breath. “Oh, I don’t know how to explain.” She waved her hands in frustration. “I know we are no longer social equals, and I assure you I will not embarrass you. Only, please, do not force a detailed discussion on the topic. I can only bear so much without—”

  “No longer social equals?” Miles cut across her in confused astonishment. Then, in a sudden flash of understanding, the past two days made sense: the curtsies, the my lords, the posture of servitude that had returned to her demeanor. Elise believed he had brought an end to their closeness out of a feeling of superiority or aristocratic arrogance.

  “I am the impoverished widow of a man Society is not even aware ever existed.” She quickly covered the break in her voice with an increase in solemnity. “You are the Marquess of Grenton. Even a simpleton would recognize the discrepancy.”

  “Elise—”

  “I am sorry for any embarrassment I have caused you,” she went on, apparently unaware he had attempted to cut off her self-deprecating apology. “I am finding it difficult to think of you as anything other than Miles. But I will try.” Emotion broke her words. “I do not wish for you to be ashamed of me.”

  “I have never in all my life been ashamed of you, Elise Furlong. Jones,” Miles added when he realized his oversight. He turned Elise around so she faced him. With all the authority a marquess ought to possess, he continued. “You are a kind and giving person. You may have ordered me about mercilessly throughout our childhood, but you also displayed a level of compassion I have not seen in another human being.” Miles cupped her face in his hands, determined to be understood. “We were born equals. We are equals yet. And I am proud to call you my friend.”

  “Truly?”

  Miles dropped his hands to her shoulders and closed his eyes against the pain her doubt continually caused him. Every step forward was followed by a step backward.

  “Good heavens, Miles,” Elise said abruptly. “The look on your face just now was precisely the one your father wore when he came to Furlong House to tell me his pointer had killed my little kitten.” Sadness crept into her eyes. Either she was not making the effort to force it back, or she was simply unable to do so.

  “Actually, it is the look of a man who is beginning to realize how badly he hurt his dearest friend.”

  She was silent then. Miles could sense her defenses rising again.

  “I should have helped you when you came to me, Elise.” Miles still hadn’t let go of her shoulders. “I was distracted, overwhelmed. I would have—”

  Elise stepped back from him, tense and standoffish once more.

  “If you had come back, given me another chance—” Miles ran his hand through his hair and pushed on through his frustration. “Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you ask again instead of running away?”

  “I was fifteen, Miles. Fifteen. I had already asked, a dozen times at least.” Her back was ramrod straight, her fists clenched beside her. But Miles knew instinctively it wasn’t anger that gave her such a formidable stance. This was how she looked when she was holding back something: a word, an emotion. She was fortifying her wall, which, Miles realized, meant she felt more than she let on. “I was little more than a child, and I was terrified. When I came to you that final time, I was desperate. I was in no position to make a rational decision, but a decision had to be made. There was no one who would help me. I did the only thing I could think of.”

  “You were in that much trouble
? That much danger?” Miles asked. “Enough to leave?”

  “Leaving seemed like the only option.”

  “Did leaving solve your problem?”

  “No. Jim did.” A look bordering on reverence crossed her features. “By the time he found me, I was hungry and very, very ill. I was too weak and too poor to do anything to save myself, and I was alone. I was so utterly alone.”

  Guilt and regret crashed over him in alternating waves. He had failed her. He ought to have been there. She should never have been in that situation to begin with.

  “But Jim found me, and he helped me.”

  Gratitude warred with jealousy in Miles’s chest. “Helping you was always my job.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t there.”

  How those words stung.

  “I don’t wish to talk about this, Miles,” she said quickly and turned away. “I cannot expect Mama Jones to watch Anne any longer.”

  “Elise,” he called after her before she had gone more than a few steps.

  She stopped and turned back to look at him.

  “What was the problem you were running from?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, Miles,” Elise insisted. She’d shut him out again. “Jim took care of me and hid me away until the danger had passed. And in his home, I learned to take care of myself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You have to promise me, Ella, that you’ll take care of Mama.”

  “I will.” Elise swiped at the tears trickling down her face. They’d put this off as long as possible. “And you’ll be careful? Very, very careful?” Emotion nearly choked her as she spoke.

  Jim chuckled. “The most careful soldier in the reg’ment.”

  “Don’t tease, Jim,” Elise pleaded. “I can’t bear it. I have this horrible feeling you’re not coming back.”

  Jim sobered instantly. “I feel it too,” he said. “Here.” He tapped his finger against his chest. “M’ father was the same way, sensed his end coming.”

  “Then you have to stay.” Elise was crying in earnest, something she never did anymore. “I need you. Mama Jones needs you.”

  “Mama understands.” Jim put his arm around her shoulders. “She will care for you, and you’ll care for her. Neither of you will be alone.”

  “And you?” Elise whispered through her tears.

  Jim leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I’ll watch over you from above until your Miles comes for you.”

  Elise’s shoulders drooped with the weight of loss. How she missed Jim. She hadn’t known him long but had mourned his loss deeply. Mama Jones had held up better in the days and weeks that followed word of his passing than Elise had. Too much pain in too short a time had torn at her tender heart. If only she could thank him one more time, tell him again what his kindness had meant to her.

  Theirs had not been a love story in the romantic sense, but she had loved him in a very profound way. He had restored her faith in humanity. He had saved her life. Above all, he had been kind and gentle at a time when she had been nearly convinced such traits no longer existed in the world.

  Until your Miles comes for you. He had firmly believed Miles would search her out. But time had relentlessly marched on without Miles appearing. Jim’s regiment had fought in a battle within forty-eight hours of arriving on the Continent. Jim had not survived. At eighteen, he’d become another casualty of war quickly forgotten by a country that had long since grown numb to the reports of death and suffering. At fifteen, she had become a widow. Anne had been born later that year.

  “Ma.”

  Her wandering thoughts had distracted her from the game she was playing with Anne. The blocks sat unstacked in front of her.

  Elise pasted a smile on her face, hoping Anne wouldn’t see past the façade, though she knew it slipped more each day.

  Anne held out one arm, hand fisted around a crumpled sheet of paper.

  “What is it?” Elise asked.

  Anne sat on Elise’s lap, turned a bit so she could see Elise’s face.

  “Have you drawn me a picture?” She hoped Anne would someday learn to understand sentences. As it was, Elise labored through single words, trying to convey her meaning.

  Anne tapped the paper, watching Elise expectantly. She took the paper from Anne’s hand and turned it over to examine it.

  “Oh, Anne,” she whispered so her daughter wouldn’t hear the frustration in her voice. Anne had somehow found the sketch Elise had done of Miles years earlier. Now it was crumpled and smudged.

  Elise gently smoothed the paper against one leg, Anne sitting on the other. She felt Anne tug on her sleeve. “Just a moment,” Elise replied.

  Anne’s hand forcibly turned Elise’s head toward her.

  “Just a moment.”

  But the girl was not satisfied with that answer. She pointed to the paper, then tapped one index finger on the tip of the other, then tugged at her hair. She repeated the same series of gestures several times.

  What is she trying to say now? Elise wondered, still attempting to straighten the sketch as she tried to decipher Anne’s words.

  “The paper?” she asked, pointing to it.

  Anne shook her head no.

  “The drawing on the paper?” She indicated the sketch of Miles. At times, Elise felt like she was living one long, drawn-out guessing game.

  Anne repeated the finger-tapping gesture, which Elise recognized. It had long ago been made the symbol for the color red, owing to a badly cut finger at the time Anne was beginning to learn her colors.

  “Red,” Elise acknowledged, returning the gesture.

  Anne tugged at her hair.

  “Red hair?” Elise guessed. Red hair could refer to one of two people: Beth or Miles.

  Anne, it seemed, wished to know if the person in the drawing she had found was the person with the red hair.

  “Yes, Anne. This is Miles. Red hair.” She mimicked Anne’s earlier gestures.

  But Anne looked unsatisfied.

  “Perhaps if it were less crumpled, you would see the resemblance more easily,” Elise said.

  “Or perhaps if I were more rumpled.”

  “Good heavens, Miles!” Elise very nearly jumped.

  “You must realize that talking about someone only increases the chances of that person appearing unannounced.”

  He smiled like a little boy who had managed to sneak a toad into his governess’s bed. She half expected him to produce a set of nine pins and challenge her to a game. How could a grown man look so much like a carefree little boy? And how was it that even a boyish grin made her insides tumble around?

  He sat on the floor next to her. “That is a very good likeness.” He motioned to the sketch still in her hands. “Though I don’t remember posing for it.”

  Elise felt her face turn pink. She’d rendered the sketch from memory at a time when she had been desperately lonely. Somehow having him see it made her feel horribly opened up, as if he would be able to read in the lines of the sketch every heartache she’d endured.

  Anne came unexpectedly to the rescue. She climbed over Elise’s lap to Miles. She looked up at him, a contented smile on her face. She tapped her fingertips together again.

  “What did that one mean?” Miles asked.

  “‘Red.’ Anne is fascinated by your hair.”

  “Most young ladies are horrified by it. Red hair is not considered very handsome, you realize.”

  That was the general consensus. But Elise had always liked it. When they were tiny, his hair had been fiery, almost startling. Time had darkened it.

  His attention was fully on Anne. He puffed out his cheeks. Anne tentatively pressed her palms to his face, pushing against the air in his cheeks. When nothing changed, she pressed harder. Miles let the air out in a whoosh, blowing Anne’s curls up and away from her face.

  She giggled, her sweet little mouth grinning wider than it ever did when Miles wasn’t nearby. He laughed, wrapping his arms around Anne’s tiny frame.

  “She
has your smile,” he said. “Although you never would have sat this long simply looking at me.”

  “I don’t know why she does that,” Elise admitted. It had baffled her for weeks.

  Anne pressed her hands to either side of Miles’s face, pushing and pulling and distorting his features.

  He puffed out his cheeks once more, but she immediately shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

  Miles obliged, returning his face to its usual state. A pout pushed out Anne’s lips.

  “That is another look I remember well,” Miles said, his words made difficult by Anne’s continued attention.

  “Are you saying I used to pout?”

  “Adorably,” he answered.

  Elise attempted to force her heart to stop its sudden flipping about. That traitorous organ did not seem to care one jot that it was opening her up to even more pain.

  Anne’s hands continued their efforts. She glanced at the sketch still in Elise’s hand. She looked back at Miles and then at the sketch once more.

  “I believe she is comparing you to the drawing.”

  “That is unfair,” Miles said. “I believe I was quite a bit younger in that sketch. And that was before I spent four years under the sun in the West Indies. I do not believe I would stand up favorably in such a comparison.”

  Miles was even more handsome than he’d been as a youth, whether or not he realized it.

  Anne’s gaze became intense again, that staring sort of look that always made Elise feel the need to apologize to Miles. Anne dropped her hands, turned her head to one side, and looked at him. Her brows furrowed. She touched Miles’s face with one hand, gently, as one might touch a very soft fabric.

  Anne gestured red, then hair.

  “I do have red hair,” Miles answered Anne.

  Anne pointed at the paper in Elise’s hand, then back at Miles.

  He nodded. “That is a drawing of me.”

  Then Anne wrapped her arms around Miles’s neck and laid her head on his shoulder.