For Elise (15 page)

Another tear fell unchecked. In
all the years she had lived in Cheshire, Elise had seldom allowed her emotions to get the better of her. And she’d almost never cried. In the few short weeks since Miles had returned to her life, she couldn’t seem to retain control of herself. She’d yelled at him in the garden. She’d let every ounce of anger and disappointment and hurt enter her words and voice. Now she was crying. Sobbing.

Grow up, Elise. Grow up and solve your own problems.
She could hear Miles’s words as clearly as if he’d only just uttered them. He had never, until that moment four years ago, turned his back on her so entirely.

Miles had always been her hero. He’d rescued her from scrapes her whole life. He was her very dearest friend, who had loved her through her darkest moments. But everything had changed after the murders.

Elise had spent more than a month crushed under the weight of her situation and all that had happened, a weight of such enormity she couldn’t even begin to fight her way free of it. She hadn’t for a moment doubted that he would help her. He always had.

But in that moment, that time, everything fell apart.

“Miles, I am in trouble.”

He had looked up at her from his father’s desk in the Epsworth library. Dark circles under his eyes spoke of too many sleepless nights. She had faltered for a moment. How could she add to his worries? But there had been no one else she could turn to.

“I need your help. Please, Miles.” Tears clogged her throat. “I am in a great deal of trouble.”

He didn’t answer. Miles simply watched her with a look of pique, as if her words, her very presence irritated him.

Elise took a slow breath, trying to keep her thoughts calm and rational. “I am frightened, Miles. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice broke on the last words. She’d so desperately kept the fear at bay but knew she couldn’t hold up on her own any longer.

“Will you help me? Please?”

Miles’s fists clenched, his jaw growing tight. Every inch of him tensed with anger and frustration.

“Please, Miles,” she begged, stopping just short of actually dropping to her knees. She came and stood beside the desk, pleading with her eyes and words. “Please help me.”

Miles’s eyes snapped as he looked at her standing there. Voice tight, he answered her inquiry. “I am sick of saving everyone. Grow up, Elise. Grow up and solve your own problems.”

He lowered his eyes back to the account book on the desk in front of him. He didn’t so much as glance back up. Elise stood beside the desk, unable to move.

He had spoken. She had asked for his help—begged for it—and he had said no.

“Please, Miles,” she whispered in a last attempt.

His pen scratched across the open page of the account book as if she wasn’t even in the room.

The walls of the book room began closing in around her. Dizziness and nausea threatened to send her toppling to the ground. Fear like she hadn’t felt since the night she’d seen two men shot dead before her very eyes gripped her insides. She was in real and immediate danger and not a soul on earth cared.

Elise walked in an unseeing daze back to her bedchamber at Epsworth and sat on the edge of her bed. Miles had said no. He who had always helped her, who had stood beside her in her most difficult moments, had turned her away.

“Solve your own problems,” she had whispered into the silence of her room. “Solve your own problems.” What else could she have done but that?

Elise pulled the rag quilt more tightly around her shoulders and leaned her head against the cold glass of the window in Mama Jones’s parlor. She forced herself to breathe slowly. A moment more and the memories would be safely tucked away again.

Rain trickled down the window, the trees outside rustling in the low wind. The house was warmer than their tiny house in Stanton had been. Warmer. Bigger. Nicer. Miles had arranged for Mama Jones to remain in the cottage free of rent and to receive a small annuity, less than he had originally attempted to provide for her, Mama Jones being both stubborn and proud, but more money than she had ever known before. Miles had appeased her sensibilities by explaining that he owed her that and more for caring for Elise, who had been, after all, his ward.

For all of his refusal to help Elise in her hour of need, he’d certainly risen to the occasion with Mama Jones.

“How much did you tell him?” Mama Jones abruptly asked. They hadn’t spoken much since Elise and Anne’s arrival nearly thirty minutes earlier. Anne lay on the rug before the fireplace, sketching trees and flowers.

“Not very much.” Elise’s voice quivered. Her emotions sat so near the surface.

“So is Miles Linwood less confused than before or more, I wonder.”

“I do not know.” She turned enough to watch Anne as she silently worked.

“He is trying hard, Ella,” Mama Jones said almost scoldingly. “And though he disappointed you in the past, I think he is a good un.”

“You believe I should confide in him?”

“Why did you trust my Jim?” Mama Jones asked in turn, rocking slowly.

“He was eminently trustworthy.”

“An’ who was it, Ella, that raised that trustable young man?”

“You did,” Elise acknowledged with a slight smile in Mama Jones’s direction.

“I know a good man when I sees him. Miles Linwood’s good to the tips of his fingers.”

A sting of emotion clasped Elise’s throat. Had she not shed enough tears? She turned back to the window. “I do not want to be hurt again.”

“Can’t be helped. We all are hurt now and again. It is the misery that buys the joy.”

Elise wiped at an escaping tear. If she didn’t stop soon, the dam would burst.

“You’ve been long enough without joy, my Ella,” Mama Jones said in her authoritative way. “Time to turn over your misery.”

“Suppose things only get worse.”

“Worse than you cryin’ at m’ window?” There was some wisdom in that. “You say you’re not able to trust Miles Linwood. So trust me instead. Tell him your troubles. Some
of them, anyway. See if he doesn’t help you like I think he will.”

“I am not sure I can,” Elise admitted. “There is too much.”

“
Give
a little, Ella. Just a little.”

* * *

It was no use. Miles had racked his brain all afternoon and evening only to come up blank. Nowhere in the recesses of his memory was there a conversation like the one Elise had referenced earlier in the day. Yet her words had a horribly familiar ring to them.

Grow up and solve your own problems.

Perhaps it was merely Elise’s almost constant insistence that she dealt with her own troubles that sparked that feeling of recognition, but he doubted it. Miles was convinced despite himself that he had indeed said such a heartless thing to her, and he would wager he’d done so very near the time she’d disappeared. The memory, it seemed, had become lost in a quagmire of tense and overwhelming recollections.

He sat in the chair behind the desk in the library, flipping absentmindedly through the Tafford accounts. His foot tapped. The fingers of his free hand drummed the arm of his chair.

How long before Elise’s disappearance had they had that painful interaction? What problem had she been attempting to get his help to solve? Had he ever addressed it? Had she tried to ask him again? Miles wished he could remember.

The house was so still he actually heard the quiet footsteps of someone’s approach. He looked up from the account book and experienced the strongest rush of déjà vu. Elise stood not far from the desk, watching him, her expression wrought with anxiety. She clasped her hands tightly in front of her.

“Might we talk?” She sounded oddly resigned, as if she were pursuing the conversation under duress.

“Of course.” Miles rose from the desk and hurried around to stand directly beside her.

Elise’s eyes darted around the room. “Somewhere else?” she whispered, her cheeks pinking slightly. “Please.”

Why not the library? “Certainly,” he said. Beth and Langley were in the drawing room. “The music room?” he suggested.

The slightest hint of a smile turned her mouth. She nodded mutely.

Knowing the music room would be empty and most likely dark, Miles brought a brace of candles with him as they left the library. He offered his hand, unsure if she would take it.

What precisely did Elise intend to say to him? Was he to be raked over the coals once more?

She slipped her hand inside his as naturally as she had at three years old. A very good sign. Before they’d even reached the library door, Miles realized Elise was shaking. With anger like before?

Miles squeezed her hand inside his and glanced at her face. Her expression was a study of neutrality. She was making a concerted effort to appear unaffected, like always. Her trembling hand told another story.

They spoke no words between them. Elise didn’t look up at him. He hoped she wasn’t having second thoughts. If her demeanor was any indication, the topic she meant to broach was significant. This was the opportunity he had been hoping for, if only she didn’t change her mind.

The music room stood empty when they arrived. Miles lit several of the wall sconces. Elise held herself perfectly still in the middle of the room, noticeably pale and utterly silent. She pushed a loose strand of hair from her face with a trembling hand.

Oh, Elise
.
You do not need to be so afraid of me.

Miles stood facing her. She studied her clasped fingers. He could hear her take several slow breaths.

“I am in trouble, Miles,” she whispered.

Again Miles was struck by a sense that he had lived this moment before.

“And . . . I need your help.” She looked up at him. Her eyes were troubled, her expression anxious.

“Tell me what it is,” he said. “I’ll do anything I can.”

Elise reached into a cleverly hidden pocket of her dress and pulled out a short stack of folded parchment—the letters she’d been hiding from him, no doubt.

“You want me to read them?”

Elise nodded.

He accepted the pile, his thoughts swimming. He’d sensed there was something unsettling about her correspondence but had given up hope that she would share it with him.

“Shall we sit, then?” He motioned to a short sofa not far from where they stood.

In a moment, they were seated side by side. He opened the first letter.

“I received that one the day Mrs. Ash arrived,” Elise whispered. “It was the first.”

The letter bore no return address. He read,
Should your memory improve, so shall my aim.

Miles breathed out a mild oath. He read it again to confirm he’d not been mistaken at the implied threat.

“The next one arrived the next day,” Elise said, her voice no louder than before, still without emotion.

Miles opened it.
You have been warned.

“The next is the letter that came during our meeting with Mr. Cane.”

“
Good day, Elise.
” An odd thing to write.

“I believe that was meant to be taunting,” she said.

Every letter was more of the same. Either innocuous greetings that felt somehow sinister or words that were clearly threats, pointed enough to be taken seriously but too vague to identify the issuer.

“Upon my soul, Elise.” Miles stared at the papers in shock.

“I know.” A detectable quiver of fear shook her words. “Some are posted, some are not. So I have no idea how near or far the writer might be from Tafford.”

“And the handwriting changes.” Miles flipped back through the letters.

“This one came this afternoon.” Elise handed him one more letter. “I was reading it when you came upon me in the garden.”

Miles looked at her as she sat. Her eyes were focused on this last letter, her face paler. Miles slowly opened it.
She will not hear me coming.

“Anne,” Miles said in a breath, shocked.

“Yes.” Elise abruptly rose. “Whoever is sending me these letters is now threatening Anne or at least mentioning her. That frightens me most of all. This person knows about my daughter. Is willing to threaten her, to use her that way.”

“Do you have any idea who might be sending these?” He wondered if his suspicion matched hers.

Elise turned back to look at him. She nodded slowly. “The man who killed our fathers.”