For Elise

by Sarah M. Eden

  “Oh, Elise.” He pulled her into a warm hug. “Do not cry, dear. It isn’t as though we will never see each other.”

  Elise held to him, repeating those words in her mind. He intended to see her again. He would come visit. He’d all but promised.

  “Beth has already insisted I come for Christmas,” Miles said.

  That was more than six months away. Would she not see him until then?

  “By Christmastime you will be settled in and happier still.” He hadn’t let go yet. “You will look back on this moment and wonder why you were even reluctant to be on your way.”

  “You will look after Mama Jones?” Elise needed a topic to ponder other than her own breaking heart.

  “Of course.” He put her a little away from him and offered a very friendly smile.

  “And you will tell me if you discover anything else about the man we are attempting to identify?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Just as I expect you to tell Langley and write to me if you begin receiving any of those letters again.”

  It was Elise’s turn to nod. The murderer had not written to her all week. The only reason they had been able to concoct was that he knew she was leaving the county and, for whatever reason, did not think her a threat any longer. Even so, they were taking no chances. An armed guard sat atop the carriage with the driver.

  Mrs. Ash arrived with Anne. Heloise had been given over for the doll Miles had given her. None of them knew what the doll’s name was but had come to recognize Anne’s sign for it. Her big brown eyes found Miles immediately. Her brow tugged low, confusion written there.

  Miles opened his arms for her. She went without hesitation. He held her lovingly and watched her make several gestures. She was asking him about the horses, though he clearly didn’t know that. There’d not been time enough for Miles to learn to understand her. Still, he watched her intently, fondness in his expression.

  Beth stepped next to Elise. “It is time to go,” she told them all.

  Miles pulled Anne into a true hug. He looked almost as though he would cry. Elise’s throat thickened at the sight.

  “I feel like a villain in a Gothic novel,” Beth said. Her eyes were on Miles and Anne. “He will miss her terribly.”

  “And we will miss him.” Elise couldn’t even begin to express how much. “But what else can be done? We need a home of our own. And staying here is not an option.”

  “It will all work out for the best,” Beth said. “I am certain of it. And he has promised to visit for Christmas.”

  Elise would likely spend the next six months counting down the days until he arrived. How she hoped the roads proved passable. Such a thing was not always guaranteed in the winter.

  Beth joined Mr. Langley at the waiting carriage. He handed her inside.

  Miles, with Anne held in one arm, offered his hand to Elise. “I think the staff will understand a moment’s familiarity,” he said.

  She accepted his hand. He walked her down the steps. At the door of the carriage, he released her and focused all his attention on Anne. “Have a safe journey, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few months.”

  She simply smiled and made her gesture for red hair, the words that had become his name to her.

  Miles hugged her once more before handing her in to Mrs. Ash. He turned back to Elise.

  “Good-bye, my friend,” he whispered. He took her face gently in his hands and kissed her on the forehead as he had always done in the moments before they were to part. One hundred different farewells sped through her mind. How many times would she be required to say good-bye to him?

  “Promise me you will come at Christmas,” she said.

  “I will do everything in my power to be there,” he promised.

  Knowing her emotions would not hold out a moment longer, Elise hastily climbed inside the coach.

  She kept her gaze firmly forward as they pulled up the drive. She would not look back, she told herself. But she did.

  He was gone already.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Miles knew his feelings were written all over his face. He’d turned back toward the house before the carriage had even disappeared from view. Elise would have worried if she’d seen the agony her departure caused him. She needed support and encouragement, not misplaced guilt. Elise had found a home, a future for herself and Anne.

  Anne. Saying good-bye to her had broken his heart in ways he hadn’t expected. He loved that dear little girl. Young as she was, she would likely not remember him at all the next time he saw her.

  By the time he reached the windows of his library, he could no longer see Langley’s carriage. Anne was gone. His beloved Elise was as well.

  “Good-bye, my dear,” Miles whispered.

  How pathetic he sounded. One would think she’d married someone else or had died rather than merely moved two counties away. It wasn’t as if he’d lost her forever. He would always have her friendship, as inadequate as that felt. Perhaps in time he could convince her there was more between them than that.

  He sat listening to the stillness of his house. When he’d first arrived at Tafford, the house had felt like little more than an overly large inn, a place to lay his head, nothing personal or welcoming. He’d thought the estate simply lacked the familiarity of Epsworth, that given time, it would feel like home to him.

  But that wasn’t it at all, he now realized. Elise had made Tafford his home because home would always be wherever she was.

  “Now she’s gone, and Tafford will likely never feel like home again.”

  Deciding he was in almost desperate need of distraction, Miles made his way to his desk. He had plenty of correspondence to catch up on. But he stopped before taking his seat. On the center of his desk sat the copy of Robin Hood he’d given Elise on her first night at Tafford. Why hadn’t she taken it with her? Surely Anne had not yet grown tired of looking at the pictures.

  Miles sat in the desk chair, running his fingers down the book’s spine.

  What an absurdly dramatic Little John Elise had always been during their childhood games. Half the time she’d been conspiring against Beth’s Maid Marion rather than helping rescue her from an imaginary Sheriff of Nottingham.

  He flipped through the book a moment. Then, seized by a sudden desire to read the tales he’d once had almost memorized, Miles opened to the first page.

  “Come listen to me, you gallants so free,

  “All you that love mirth for to hear,

  “And I will tell you of a bold outlaw,

  “That lived in Nottinghamshire.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Hanson, my lord.”

  Miles looked up from the next-to-last page of Robin Hood as his solicitor entered the room. “Thank you, Humphrey.”

  The butler bowed and left, closing the doors as he did.

  “Forgive the intrusion, Lord Grenton,” Mr. Hanson said, offering a bow. “I come with some information that I believe you will be interested in receiving.”

  Miles set aside the book. “Come. Sit.” He waved Hanson to a chair beside the desk.

  “I have been investigating your late father’s failed business ventures, my lord.”

  “What have you discovered?”

  “The first two of these ventures to fail were widely invested in. Many others lost money. Your father and Mr. Furlong were far from bankrupted by these disappointments but were understandably desirous to recoup their losses.”

  Miles nodded. He himself had lost everything and spent four years of his life halfway across the world trying to make up for it.

  “The investments they made after that were not nearly so widely embraced; there were far fewer investors, and they were obviously very risky.”

  Mr. Cane had said as much. He had, in fact, urged Miles’s father to seek expert advice before investing.

  “They failed one after another. And your father began investing greater sums of capital in each successive venture, only to lose all he had invested. Bas
ed on what I have seen and read, I do not believe your father was a gambling man,” Mr. Hanson said, his tone almost a question.

  “He was not. There was the occasional game of whist with gentlemen in the neighborhood. But he did not indulge in true games of chance, nor did he bet on the races.”

  “And yet,” Hanson continued, “the high-risk investing he embraced the last eighteen months of his life is precisely the sort of gamble one would expect from a hardened gamester. A gentleman like your father would be far more likely, after several losses of even minor significance, to choose investments that were more conservative, not less, in his attempt to gain back what he had lost.”

  “Perhaps he was feeling desperate,” Miles suggested.

  Hanson shook his head. “I spoke with a few well-respected members of my profession who have more experience than I in such matters—without giving names, of course—and they agree with my assessment. Your father’s situation early on was far from desperate. I am confident a characteristically careful, responsible gentleman would have chosen less risk.”

  “What precisely are you saying?” Miles felt in his gut that Hanson had truly discovered something of significance but was unable to guess what.

  “I began to suspect early on in this investigation—within the first day, in fact—that your father had been swindled.”

  Miles immediately tensed.

  “Someone misled him or tricked him into investing in impossible schemes. So I began looking into the companies and projects in which he invested. Not a single one still exists, which, considering their failures, wasn’t surprising. But I found information enough to begin piecing together a startling puzzle.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I ought to pour myself a brandy?”

  “You may very well want one after I finish telling you what I have discovered, my lord. It is one of the most corrupt and tangled webs I have had the misfortune to stumble upon.” Hanson looked angry.

  “Before you go any further, tell me this. In this web you have discovered, was my father the unwitting victim or the heartless spider?”

  “The victim, my lord. As was Mr. Furlong.”

  Miles let out a tense breath. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

  Hanson pulled out a stack of papers but did not give them to Miles or set them on the desk. “My first clue came when I traced a now-defunct canal-building project back to a single individual who could not in any way be connected with canal building. I looked into a shipping company, which, when unraveled, proved not to be a company at all but a nonexistent organization. Its bank accounts were under a single name.”

  “The same man connected with the canals?”

  Hanson nodded. “This individual proved to be connected to every single investment your father made after the initial two, though in some instances, he had hidden his connection very well. In the end, we found bank accounts at”—he looked back at the stack of papers in his hands—“Barclays; Drummonds; Thomas Coutts & Co.; Baring Brothers & Co.; Lloyds, which is in Birmingham; and even the Royal Bank of Scotland. Deposits into these accounts coincide almost perfectly with losses sustained by your father and Mr. Furlong and several members of their club.”

  “They were fictionalized investments.” Miles began to understand.

  “Yes, Lord Grenton. Every one of them. And I have found evidence that your father did not actually authorize these investments,” Hanson said. “Your father and Mr. Furlong were not the only victims.”

  Miles growled several curses, noticing Hanson nodding his agreement or, perhaps, his approval.

  “I looked into the other gentlemen who invested in these schemes,” Hanson continued. “I am sorry to say, a number of them were killed as well.”

  Miles’s mind lurched to a halt. He couldn’t quite wrap his thoughts around the startling and entirely unexpected revelation. “There were other murders? How did no one realize this?”

  “They did not happen one right after the other,” Hanson said. “And none of the victims were truly close friends, except for your father and Mr. Furlong. The connection wasn’t at all obvious until I began looking at these fraudulent companies. Without that piece of the puzzle, the only connection is that they belonged to the same club. But considering the sheer number of members, that isn’t enough to tie them together.”

  Members of the same club. That was how Mr. Haddington had known Father and Mr. Furlong.

  “I fully believe the villain behind your father’s ruination is the same man who—”

  “Murdered him,” Miles finished the sentence, knowing beyond a doubt that Hanson was entirely correct.

  “And, as near as I can tell, Mrs. Jones is the only living witness to his crimes,” Hanson added.

  Which explains why he was so intent on threatening her into silence.

  “Who is our villain?”

  Hanson held up the paper in his fist, positioning it so Miles could easily read the name written across the top of the first sheet.

  Merciful heavens. Elise had no idea. If the blackguard found her, she wouldn’t realize she was in danger!

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I am so pleased you’ve decided to come to Lancashire,” Beth said. The inn’s staff had already cleared their meal away.

  “And I am grateful for your generosity in allowing me to,” Elise said. “It is more than I could have hoped for.”

  “Not at all.” Beth smiled reassuringly. “You will simply adore our neighbors. The area is some of the prettiest country in the entire kingdom, and the people are so dear.”

  Mr. Langley smiled at Beth as he sat beside her on the sofa, her hand snugly in his own. Elise looked away from such a poignant reminder of what she had left behind. In Lancashire, there would be no one to hold her hand, no one to lean on in times of trouble.

  “Is there a meadow at Gilford?” Elise asked. The oddness of her question struck her an instant later, and she felt herself blush.

  “No, there’s not,” Beth answered, giving her a puzzled look. “But there is a wonderful natural garden to the south and a formal garden to the north. And not a ten-minute walk from the house is a lovely lake.”

  But no meadow. She was on her way to her new home that had neither a meadow nor Miles. It would seem no more like home to her than had the cottage in Stanton. Was she destined to be little more than a guest in any house she ever lived in? No place would feel like home without Miles.

  “Anne has done quite well on the journey thus far,” Mr. Langley said. “I hope it has not taken too much of a toll on you.”

  “I am tired,” she admitted.

  That had been Anne’s only complaint as well. She and Mrs. Ash had taken their meal in the bedchamber Mr. Langley had reserved for them and had gone directly to bed, a prospect Elise was finding ever more appealing.

  “If you will excuse me, I would appreciate seeking my bed. We have a full day of travel ahead of us tomorrow.”

  “Of course.” A look of concern immediately crossed Beth’s face. Elise very much feared that Beth would forever remind her of Miles, so similar were their features.

  Elise slipped from the parlor and up the stairs to her own private bedchamber. She closed the door behind her, leaning against it as she took several much-needed calming breaths.

  She could do this. She had lived four years without Miles. Of course, she hadn’t realized then that she loved him as she did. Living without a friend had been hard. Living without the man she loved would be torturous.

  I can survive this, she silently told herself.

  Elise hadn’t brought a lady’s maid with her. She could not afford one and needed to accustom herself once more to the necessity of doing things herself. She’d worn a very simple morning gown, knowing it would be easiest for her to remove on her own. How she’d wanted to wear the deep-blue walking gown, the one Miles had said was his favorite, the one she’d worn when he’d kissed her. She’d wanted him to remember her that way. But she could not undo the tapes or unfasten the bu
ttons on her own.

  She slipped into her white night rail and blew out her single candle. They would be departing early the next morning, and she needed to sleep. But she knew she would not rest that night. Her heart ached too acutely for sleep.

  Elise lay down, pulled the coverlet over her shoulders, and forced herself to close her eyes.

  Do you waltz, Elise? She could hear Miles’s voice in her memory.

  No, she had answered.

  You must learn to waltz, my dear.

  Elise flipped onto her side, that “my dear” echoing in her thoughts. She settled as comfortably as she could manage, burying her face in her pillow, forcing back the tears that pooled in her eyes. It was ridiculous to cry over a man she would see again. And he was still the Miles Linwood she had grown up with, her very dearest friend. That wasn’t something to mourn.

  Elise turned again, lying on her back. You cannot do this every night for the rest of your life, she silently chastised herself.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to picture her new house, to think of the weather, the roads, anything. She simply couldn’t concentrate.

  “This will never do,” she whispered, sitting up.

  She would write him a letter, she suddenly decided. She would never actually post it but would write out her feelings so they would at least be expressed. Maybe then they wouldn’t constantly threaten to burst out of her. Elise swung her legs over the side of the bed and stepped off.

  The floor was cold against her bare feet. The room was dim, only the slightest bit of light filtering in through the closed curtains. She blindly found the writing desk and fumbled for a tinder box, knowing there was an unlit candle nearby.

  The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood on end. Shivers of apprehension flooded over her. She held perfectly still, listening. She heard nothing beyond her own breathing and the faint noise of the taproom two floors below.

  Elise shook her head, attempting to convince herself there was no need for such nervousness. She found a quill and a penknife. Her hand brushed against the inkwell, but she couldn’t locate anything with which to light the candle. And her hands unaccountably shook.