For Elise (4 page)

Elise didn’t speak to any
of them the next morning. Dark smudges marred the skin beneath her eyes, and she was paler and dragging. She’d barely touched the breakfast laid out for all of them in the inn’s private parlor.

Miles was worried. Was she ill or simply ill at ease? He stepped up beside her as she fastened her cloak around her shoulders. “Elise?”

She startled at his sudden words. She stepped back, her gaze as guarded as it had been the night before.

For a moment, Miles stood silently mourning the loss of openness that had once existed between them. “You do not appear to have slept well.”

She looked over at Anne, who stared out the window to where the carriage was being loaded with their trunks and bags. “I’m fine.”

“Yesterday you were quite distraught in the carriage,” Miles added.

“I do not like carriages.” She offered no further explanation than that.

“I don’t remember that about you.” He searched her face for some kind of emotion.

“People change,” she answered before crossing to Anne. She didn’t look back, didn’t speak to him again. A moment later, she was in the inn yard.

“People don’t change that much,” Miles said to the empty room. Elise was still there, somewhere; he was certain of it. He simply had to find her and draw her out.

She hadn’t entered the coach by the time Miles reached it. She looked paler still, though it hardly seemed possible. What was it, precisely, about being in the carriage that unnerved her so? “We will take the journey in short stages,” Miles said. “And we will reach our final destination some time tonight.” He reached out to offer reassurance, but she didn’t permit it.

“I’ve asked you to leave me be, Miles,” she said. “I’d appreciate if you did.”

She handed Anne up into the carriage and, with a look of determination, climbed into the carriage herself. Miles tried again to reconcile the change in her. Even having seen it these past twenty-four hours, he couldn’t at all make sense of it.

They were soon all seated, and the carriage rolled along the road toward their destination. Elise looked every bit as uncomfortable as she had the day before. Something about the carriage ride upset her. Something about
him
upset her. He couldn’t explain either.

“Beth?”

Elise’s voice captured Miles’s attention immediately. Though she wasn’t speaking to him, she was speaking.

“Yes, Elise?”

“How is it we’re to reach Epsworth by tonight? The journey oughtta take several days.”

Epsworth?
Elise thought they were headed to Epsworth?

“We are not going to Epsworth,” Beth answered.

“But—” She shook her head. “I was told we were goin’ home.”

She didn’t know. Good heavens! She didn’t know.

“Epsworth is no longer my home, Elise.” The admission proved more difficult than he could have anticipated. “My father’s debts were too great. I had to sell Epsworth four years ago.”

Elise grew perfectly still, her eyes not focused on any of them. The surprise frozen in her expression held the tiniest hint of sadness. Did she mourn the loss of Epsworth, empathize with him, even the smallest bit, for having to part with his family home? It was the first sign of anything other than anger that he’d seen in her.

She gave a tiny nod. “You were afraid you’d ’ave to sell.”

“I held out as long as I could.” For some reason, it was important that she understood he hadn’t simply given up.

She made no response.

“Beth,” Langley said. “Come sit with me, love.”

If Beth was surprised by the request, it didn’t show. Miles took the opportunity he very much suspected Langley had purposely provided and swapped seats with his sister, finding himself beside Elise. She immediately turned her gaze to the window.

“I’m sorry about Epsworth, Elise. I did try. The last thing I wanted was to sell our home. Especially with—”
With you still missing.
But he wasn’t ready to discuss that yet. “I’m sorry.”

A moment passed. No one spoke. Miles wasn’t sure anyone even breathed. Somehow, he had to breach the wall she’d erected between them. He took one of her hands in his as he’d once done almost daily. She yanked her hand free and scooted as far into the corner of the carriage as she could get, slipping Anne onto her lap. His hand hovered a moment as his mind attempted to wrap around her rejection. He took a breath and laid his hand back on his lap.

Miles looked to Beth, wondering what her impression was. Beth shrugged and shook her head. Langley seemed equally perplexed. Anne watched Miles without her gaze wavering.

Well, little one, what do I do now? Your mother detests me, and I don’t know why.

“Where do you live?” Elise asked quietly after a moment had passed.

“At Tafford, in Derbyshire.” If only she would let him hold her hand. Before, it had made whatever either of them had been dealing with that much easier to face. There had been many times in the last four years he’d longed for his friend, even closed his eyes and pretended she was with him. He’d needed her presence. “I inherited it from a cousin of my father’s almost a year ago.”

She looked up at him, and for a split second, she looked more intrigued than provoked. It wasn’t exactly an invitation to be her friend again, but it was a step in the right direction.

“You said y’ sold Epsworth four years ago.”

He understood her question even though she hadn’t asked it. “I have been in the West Indies. Father left me a property there, the only Linwood property I did not have to sell to pay his debts.”

Elise nodded. She seemed to sigh, though she made no noise and hardly moved. “Your father an’ mine left behind an enormous mess.”

That was one of many things that had bothered him after their deaths. Neither his father nor Mr. Furlong were spendthrifts or risk takers. They hadn’t seemed so, at least. Their estates had appeared solvent. Yet there were debts and bad investments dating back several years in both men’s accounts. Miles couldn’t deny his father’s signature and very recognizable hand on the paperwork. The debts had been both legitimate and devastating.

The carriage shifted precariously beneath them as it traversed the rutted and muddy road. A tiny intake of breath was the only audible sign of distress, but Elise’s fists were tightly balled on her lap once more. What little he could make out of her face from around the wide brim of her very serviceable bonnet showed barely restrained panic. A second shifting of the wheels seemed to force Elise’s eyes closed, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of the carriage interior any longer.

Anne sensed her mother’s distress. She turned and looked up into Elise’s face with concern before leaning against her and putting her tiny arms around Elise’s neck. With a shaky breath, Elise embraced her daughter, though she still looked entirely unsettled.

Miles thought of how their two families had often traveled together to local dinners and entertainments, even to church on Sundays. She’d never been uneasy in a carriage then. But there was no mistaking her strain as she sat beside him, traveling the ill-maintained road south into Derbyshire.

“Do we need to stop?” he asked quietly, concerned for her.

Elise shook her head. “I’d rather it be over and done with.” She closed her eyes tightly.

“Several hours yet remain before we will stop for lunch,” Miles gently warned.

Elise only nodded.

Miles rubbed his mouth and chin, feeling completely at a loss. For a moment, he’d seen a tiny glimmer of Elise as she’d once been. It wasn’t joy or laughter or even grief he’d glimpsed in her, but longing. She missed her home. She had treated him with astounding coldness, but that fleeting moment of warmth gave him hope.

Miles glanced in her direction. She wasn’t looking at him, but Anne was. Anne tentatively lifted her hand and stretched it out toward him. He gently wrapped his fingers around her tiny hand. She didn’t smile, but neither did she pull away. Every moment of connection between them felt like a plea. She needed something from him but was too young to tell him what. Perhaps she didn’t even know herself.

Every jolt of the well-sprung carriage brought the slightest, briefest tensing of Elise’s frame. She didn’t turn her face away from the window to look at any of them. She likely didn’t even know her daughter had reached out to him. Miles held Anne’s hand as the minutes passed. Her eyelids grew heavy, though she didn’t sleep.

He hazarded a look at Beth, who sat opposite him. She watched Anne and Elise with a worry that matched his own. This was a family in such need, in such pain, and as long as Elise continued locking him out of her life, he was helpless to do anything about it.

* * *

Elise managed to survive the first leg of their trip without succumbing to her sense of panic, though it had been a harder battle to keep herself from crumbling at the news that Epsworth had been lost. Epsworth had been a second home to her. It seemed there was nothing left of the life she’d once lived.

Their midday meal eaten and all the necessities seen to, the group gathered at the front door of a small inn, awaiting the calling up of their carriage. Elise had strengthened her resolve once more, fortified herself against both the coming carriage ride and the emotions she struggled to keep under control.

“Mail comes through ’bout now,” a groom told Miles. “Any minute now, ’spect. We’ll bring up yer coach soon as it passes by. Mail don’t slow easy and don’t stop for no one’s pleasure.”

Miles nodded his understanding.

Elise remembered with heart-thumping awe how fast a mail coach moved, all but flying. Anne would enjoy the spectacle.

Where was Anne? It was not like her to wander off. Ever since the girl had begun walking, however, Elise had worried that she would do just that.

A rumble of wheels and thundering of hooves sounded from just out of sight of the inn yard. The mail, no doubt, was moments from arriving, and Anne was nowhere to be found. A horn announced the arrival of the mail just as Elise spied her daughter walking toward the inn’s front gate, which stood open in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the enormous mail coach.

“Oh, merciful Father, help me,” Elise pled in a strangled whisper as she began a frantic dash toward Anne, running as swiftly as her legs and skirts would allow. The rumbling approach of the coach that stopped for “no one’s pleasure” positively shook the ground, and for the first time, Anne seemed aware of its arrival. She turned and stared in wide-eyed curiosity.

Elise reached the tiny girl just as the mail coach crossed through the gates. She spun around, running from the oncoming vehicle. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest.

A powerful arm snaked around her waist and pulled both of them away in one swift, smooth motion. The air around her swished wildly as the coach flew past. Elise held Anne in a grip likely tighter than necessary, and she shook uncontrollably, her breath coming in gasps.
We’re safe. We’re safe.

“Are you hurt?” Miles’s deep, rumbling voice asked.

Miles.
Of course it was Miles.

“You’re shaking.” Miles’s arms closed more tightly around them.

“Anne was nearly run down by the mail coach. I’ll admit that’s shaken me a bit.” Elise slowly got to her feet. Her legs weren’t entirely steady. She kept Anne in her arms but stepped out of Miles’s.

He didn’t seem offended by the distance she put between them. Perhaps he’d begun to realize she wasn’t the vulnerable girl she’d once been. That would be safer in the long run.

“Anne, are you hurt?” Miles pressed.

Did he not realize?

“Anne? Is she hurt? Why won’t she answer?”

“She can’t hear you, Miles,” Elise whispered, hoping no one else had overheard. Anne’s condition had caused no end of difficulties with those not inclined toward compassion.

“She is deaf?” Miles asked, his voice equally as low.

“Not entirely. She can hear but not very well.”

Most of the population of Stanton had seen Anne’s near deafness as a sign that she was somehow less than a person.

“We should be goin’,” Elise muttered, walking away. She shook from deep inside. The near miss with the mail and her forced admission of Anne’s situation were taking a toll. Her emotions were in turmoil.

For just a moment, she’d found a degree of comfort in Miles’s arms that she hadn’t known in years. The little girl she’d once been cried out for that, wanted to believe he could be trusted, but she knew the harm he was capable of, and it terrified her.