For Elise (2 page)

He reached out, desperate to
be certain she was real. But she moved out of his reach.

“Do you not recognize me?” Miles couldn’t countenance that she wouldn’t. Other than the usual differences between a nineteen-year-old and a barely twenty-four-year-old, he hadn’t changed much since they’d last seen each other.

Her mouth tightened. She didn’t look away, but neither did her expression change from bone-deep apprehension.
Apprehension?
Was she not at all happy to see him?

“Bring the young man in, Ella,” a quavering voice instructed from inside.

The door opened wider, and “Ella” stepped aside to allow him room to pass. He doffed his hat and stooped as he crossed the threshold. After a moment, his eyes adjusted to the relative dimness of the damp interior. The space was small and sparsely furnished.

An older woman sat bundled in shawls in a rocker by the fire, studying him. Miles offered an inclination of his head and an uneasy smile. His gaze returned quickly to Elise. He could hardly believe she stood so near, that he’d found her after so many years. Other than a fleeting look of alarm when their eyes had first met, Elise had still given no indication that she knew him at all.

“Well, child,” the older woman said. “Do you mean to introduce me, or will you be standing there like you don’t remember your manners?”

Elise stepped forward but didn’t immediately speak. She looked like a cornered fox, poised for flight but afraid the slightest movement would bring the hounds down on her. Her eyes locked with the silver-haired woman, who nodded.

“This here’s Mama Jones.” She motioned to the seated woman.

Miles tried not to gape. Elise sounded so different. Her cultured and refined accent had entirely disappeared. She spoke like a tenant, like a lower servant. She’d made a completely inept introduction, not at all what he knew her governess had taught her. And yet, she absolutely had to be Elise. The resemblance was too great.

Miles remembered his own manners and bowed to the older woman. “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said, hoping his confusion wasn’t too obvious.

“And you, sir,” she answered, studying him closer before turning her eyes back to Elise.

The young woman was Elise, wasn’t she? He felt suddenly unsure.

“Ella?” the older woman pressed.

Ella took a heavy and shaky breath. Why did she not look even remotely pleased to see him? This could not be his Elise.

“Forgive me. I—” he began but was cut off.

“No need apologizin’,” Mama Jones—that was the only name he had for her—told him.

“But I wonder if perhaps I’ve been mistaken.” He looked more closely at Ella. How could she not be Elise Furlong? He’d have sworn to her identity.

Then, suddenly, she spoke again. “This is Miles Linwood.”

The words came out so rushed Miles almost didn’t put together what she’d said.
This is Miles Linwood.
She knew him.

“Elise! It
is
you.” He reached for her again.

She backed away from him, eyeing him almost contemptuously. When had she ever looked at him with contempt? Miles couldn’t reconcile the Elise who stood in front of him with the sweet, dear friend he’d once known. Without fail, she’d tossed herself into his embrace every time he’d returned from school. She’d sneaked into his room when he was nine because a sore throat had kept them apart for a week and she’d missed him too much to stay away. And now, four years of separation and she didn’t seem the least interested in being reunited. She almost seemed angry that he was there.

“You do remember me, don’t you?” he asked, perplexed.

“I know who it is you are.” Again that strange accent. What had happened to her? Why was she shying away from him? And why was there an edge of hostility in her tone?

“Haven’t you even a smile for me?” Miles could do little more than watch her in bewilderment. “
Pon rep
, Elise. We’ve known each other all our lives, and I haven’t seen you in more than four years. Are you not at all happy to see me?”

She didn’t answer.

“At least tell me how you came to be here, so far from home.”

“This
is
me home.”

Miles looked over at Mama Jones. “I . . . I don’t understand.” He held his hands out in frustration.

“She is m’ daughter-in-law,” Mama Jones said. “Married to me poor Jim. He was a soldier.”

Elise is married?
Was
married?
In his mind, she was still the fifteen-year-old girl she’d been the last time he’d seen her.

“
Was
married?” Miles asked, trying to piece the story together.

“Jim was cut down by them Frenchies in some foreign place. Now I just have Ella an’ the girl.”

“Why do you call her Ella?” She was Elise. He knew that for certain, and yet so many doubts spun about in his mind.

Elise, who had shared all of the most important moments of his life before her disappearance, clearly didn’t want him there asking questions. Something had happened. Something had changed her.

“Go get the girl, Ella,” Mama Jones instructed gently.

“No,” Elise answered emphatically. It was the first spark of feeling he’d seen in her.

“He’ll wish to meet her.”

“I do not wish for him to meet her. An’ I’ll thank you not to drop more of m’ troubles in his ears.”

“Ella.” The single word came out as a command.

The moment Elise disappeared into a back room, Mama Jones spoke. “I am glad you’ve come, Miles Linwood. Ella’s been hidin’ for too long.”

Elise slid to the floor
beside the closed bedchamber door and buried her face in her hands.
Miles was in her home. Miles. The person she’d once treasured more than any other on earth, who had once cared so much for her.

The person who had snuffed out the last flicker of light she’d had left inside.

He had found her and, in the instant he’d appeared in her doorway, had torn open her unhealed and unseen wounds. She’d spent four years trying to piece together a life after his coldness had ripped her away from all she’d known and loved. And now he was back.

I can’t go through this again. I cannot.

She didn’t cry as she sat there hunched over by the door. She never cried. Not anymore. But she shook, aching inside, fear mingling with unforgotten pain.

Perhaps if she refused to come back out, Miles would leave. It would be as if she’d never seen him. She could go on as she had before. If he left, he couldn’t hurt her again.

Tiny hands touched her face, pulling her gaze up. Her sweet little girl, her Anne, stood watching her with such a perplexed look in her eyes. Anne had lived so much of her life in hiding, tucked away from the world for her own safety. But a threat Elise hadn’t anticipated had simply walked right into their home.

She pulled Anne into her embrace and held fast to her.

Oh, Anne. What are we to do?

Anxiety shook through her. Miles was not a physical threat, she knew that well enough. But he could deal a blow to a trusting heart from which it would never recover. He, who had once been a rock amidst the storm-driven waves, had left her to the cruelty of the world. She would shield Anne from that pain using whatever means possible.

“Don’t dawdle, Ella. You’re keeping the gentleman waiting,” Mama Jones called out from the parlor.

Mama Jones knew enough of Elise’s history to understand perfectly well why she wasn’t rushing back into Miles’s presence. Elise adored her mother-in-law, but the woman was set in her ways. Once her mind was made up, it was made up for good. If she intended to force this reunion, it would happen whether Elise wished it to or not. Her only source of comfort, though a small one, was that Mama Jones cared for her a great deal too much to insist on something if she didn’t think it best.

She could indulge her mother-in-law in this. A quick moment of introduction, a word or two, and she could send Miles on his way. Mama Jones could not expect more of her than that.

Elise forced an aura of calm, though it did not sink very deep. She could pretend for Anne’s sake. She rose slowly to her feet, Anne firmly in her arms, and turned to face the doorway. She slowly, quietly opened it, needing a moment to watch Miles in preparation for this encounter but without his realizing she was studying him.

He stood looking out the window. Time had darkened his hair from a bright, fiery red to a deep auburn. His shoulders were broader. He held himself with more authority than he had before. She’d seen the earliest hints of that change during the last few weeks she’d lived at home. The whimsical, lighthearted playmate of her childhood had begun to turn gruff and dismissive.

Anne leaned more heavily against her as she too studied Miles. Her brows pulled in, and her dark eyes clouded with uncertainty.

My feelings exactly, dearest.

She needed only to endure his company for a moment, then Miles would leave. She could go on as she had before.

“Ah, you’ve returned,” Mama Jones said.

Miles spun around. Elise held ever tighter to Anne. Her pulse pounded in her head. She kept to the far side of the room, out of reach. She’d not come any closer if she could at all help it.

“Good heavens, Elise.” Miles all but stared at Anne. “She’s the very image of you as a child.”

Anne’s eyes darted from Miles to Elise, then back to Miles, where they then stayed. Anne watched Miles with palpable interest, something she never did. Miles was pulling at her.

“Aren’t you goin’ to introduce ’em?” Mama Jones prodded.

There was no avoiding it, really. “This is Anne.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Miss Jones.” Miles gave Anne the tender smile Elise remembered from her earliest years. If Elise wasn’t careful, Anne would fall under Miles’s spell, thinking she was safe and cared for.

“She’s not called anythin’ but Anne,” Elise said.

“And you are called Ella,” Miles said. “Why is that?”

“Ella’s a fine name,” Mama Jones observed, rocking calmly in her chair.

“But her name is Elise.” Miles sounded increasingly frustrated. He turned away, pacing again and rubbing his face with his hand.

Elise took a small step backward. Frustration had been his defining emotion during the terrible last few weeks she’d spent with him. She didn’t at all like seeing that look in his face again.

“You’ve seen me, and you’ve met Anne. Now you can just go on your way.” Elise spoke as firmly as she could manage. Seeing him again was undermining every bit of peace she’d found in the last four years.

He looked at her once more. “Beth is here in town.”

Beth.
The name brought an unexpected moment of longing. Beth had been both older sister and surrogate mother to her. But no. No. She couldn’t face even more memories.

“Will you come to the inn to see her?” Miles asked.

“No.”

“Might I bring her here?”

“No.” Would he not leave her be? Had he not hurt her enough already? “Just go, Miles. You aren’t welcome here.”

“How long do you plan to be in Stanton?” Mama Jones asked before Miles could speak a single word.

“How—? Uh—” After fumbling a moment, Miles pulled himself together. “Only through this afternoon, actually. We are having a carriage wheel repaired and should be on the road again very soon. Immediately, I would imagine. But . . . now . . . I could not leave now.”

“You must,” Mama Jones replied with a firm nod of her head.

Relief swept through Elise.

“And you must take Ella and Anne with you,” Mama Jones added.

“What?” The word ripped out of Elise.
Take them with him?
Was Mama Jones mad?

“Of course,” Miles answered, a sudden air of eagerness in his tone. “They must come. We are traveling to my home. There is more than enough room there. She is like family and—”

“Mama Jones
is
m’ family.” Elise cut over him, stepping closer to the woman in the rocker. “And
this
is my home. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

“Child.” Mama Jones looked up into Elise’s face. “You must go.”

“I’ll not leave you.”

“Sweet child.” Mama Jones patted Elise’s hand.

“Ma’am.” Miles crossed to the rocking chair.

Elise immediately moved farther away. She set Anne on the floor, placing herself between Miles and her daughter.

He knelt in front of the rocking chair. “I would be most pleased if you would also agree to come to my home. I could not ask Elise and Miss Anne to leave behind any member of their family.”

“I’m of a mind to accept your offer. Ella can go with you today,” Mama Jones said authoritatively. “And Anne, o’ course.”

This was insanity. “Mama—”

“If Miles Linwood’ll arrange for a cart, I’ll see that our things are brought to his home, myself along with ’em.” Mama Jones pierced Miles with a stare. “Know this, Miles Linwood. If you take my Ella from here, you’re responsible for her. She cannot come back.”

“This is not his decision.” Elise tried to make her objections but wasn’t permitted to.

“I assure you, Mama Jones,” Miles said. “You will, all three of you, be looked after. I promise you that.”

An empty promise if Elise had ever heard one. “I am not leaving.”

Mama Jones turned her gaze to Elise. There was a firmness in her expression that couldn’t be ignored. Mama Jones had made up her mind.

But Elise would never agree to this lunacy. “I will not leave. Not with him.”

Her very personal objection brought shock to Miles’s expression.

“Miles Linwood,” Mama Jones said. “Go see if you can find something interesting out the window to keep you busy a moment while I have a talk with m’ daughter.”

Miles obliged but with several glances back at them.

“What is this madness, Ella?”

“
I
am acting mad?” Elise lowered her voice to a whisper. “You know what he did and why I can’t go with him now.”

Mama Jones’s expression softened. “I know you were hurt, and I know you’re afraid now. But you are tossing away an opportunity you will never have again.”

“I’d not call this an opportunity.”

Her mother-in-law clearly didn’t agree. “You’d be leaving behind poverty, Ella. Miles Linwood’d never let you go hungry.”

“I’ll not sell Anne’s safety and mine for a mess of porridge.”

Mama Jones took Elise’s hand in hers. “You’ve reason to be afraid; I’ll grant you that. Laws, I’d be surprised if you weren’t terrified.”

“I am.” Elise could hardly find her voice.

“You must be strong enough and brave enough for this, my darling Ella.” Mama Jones patted her hand. “Though the path has its risks, walking it will offer Anne a life she’d not have otherwise. She’d not be pushed aside by an entire world that sees her as nothing but a poor child hardly worth acknowledging.”

“She would still be a poor widow’s daughter no matter where we go,” Elise pointed out.

“But a poor widow’s daughter who’d have a doctor when she needed it.” Mama Jones held firmly to Elise’s hand. “I cannot promise you everything will be easy or that you won’t be hurt again. But Anne deserves better than this dark, damp corner of nowhere.”

Elise glanced at Miles across the room. The very sight of him made her heart pound out a dread-filled rhythm. “I can’t do this, Mama. I can’t.”

“It is often those things we think we can’t do that we need to do most.”

Elise knew then that she was beat. Mama Jones had made this a matter of walking the hard road to help Anne. Elise couldn’t argue with that. She would have to go, but she didn’t have to let herself be hurt by him. She held tightly to Anne’s hand as she walked back toward the room they shared. Anne looked over her shoulder, no doubt at Miles.

He’ll break your heart, dearest. He’ll break it clear to pieces.

“You’ll pack quicker if you leave Anne with us,” Mama Jones called after her.

“I’m not leaving her with
him
. Not ever.” She shut the door firmly behind her, not knowing whether to rage or weep. The quiet stillness of her life was evaporating before her eyes.

Nothing she did would undo the upheaval of the last hour. But she would do the one thing in her power. She would never let Miles get close enough to hurt her again.