For Elise (20 page)

That thought brought Miles back to his other topic of reflection: the letter that still resided in his coat pocket. Why had there been no message? Certainly the as-yet-unknown man had not run out of threats and insults.

A letter without a single word of communication was actually more unnerving than the more pointed missives had been. He certainly thought on it more than any of the others. Miles imagined it worried Elise more as well.

Could that have been the point? After an unbroken stream of intimidations, the murderer chose to leave his latest threat up to its recipient’s imagination, a recipient who knew firsthand the atrocities of which he was capable.

Elise fumbled over more than
one note when Miles stepped into the music room the next afternoon. How she hoped he didn’t realize the nature of her swirling emotions. Her unrequited feelings would sound the death knell to their friendship, a friendship she was only just beginning to reclaim.

“Good afternoon, Miles,” she greeted, grateful to hear she’d kept her emotions out of her voice.

“Good afternoon, Elise.” His smile melted her. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“I would appreciate an interruption, actually.” Elise sighed. “My fingers do not wish to cooperate, it seems. I can’t manage to play any of the tunes I once did.”

“Perhaps you are simply out of practice.” He came and stood beside the pianoforte.

“Four years out of practice.” She’d severely mourned the loss of her music when she’d left Epsworth.

“Was there no one who would allow you access to an instrument?”

No one notices a woman of the lower classes.
Jim’s voice echoed in her head as clearly as if he stood there whispering in her ear. How hard they’d worked to perfect her disguise. She’d found safety in anonymity . . . and such profound loneliness. Elise had lived as an outsider, her neighbors never truly accepting her. Those few she encountered whose equal she was in birth if not in situation spared her not a glance.

She’d longed for a pianoforte, for the freedom to play without risking so very much. She’d often lain awake at night trying to remember the words of her favorite books, knowing she would never have them again or be able to read in public without raising suspicions. And she’d worried for Anne. Her circumstances would rob the girl of so much.

Elise pulled herself together, forcing such maudlin reflections from her mind. Perhaps a lighthearted reply would cover the sudden tension in the room. “I fear I was kept from an instrument quite cruelly, like a heroine in a Minerva Press novel.”

When had his smile become devastating? For perhaps the hundredth time, she wished she had been near him as he’d grown into the man he’d become. There were too many holes in his history, things she didn’t know about him.

“If only Tafford had a dungeon,” Miles said. “You could be the wilting heroine. Humphrey could be the mysterious butler. I, of course, would be the dashing hero.” He gave a self-deprecating shake of his head. “And we already have a villain.”

A villain.
Yes, they certainly had that. In a flash, the teasing mood of their conversation vanished. There had been no letter yet that day, but there was sure to be one. Would it be blank again? Would there be a threat? A warning?

“I am convinced within myself that the last letter was blank simply to worry me that much more.” Her thoughts grew ever more heavy and pensive.

She reached for Miles’s hand, feeling more at ease the moment her fingers slipped inside his. She forcibly ignored the little flip of her heart that accompanied it. If she didn’t keep
those
emotions clamped down, Miles would see her feelings in her face, and she would lose him. Again.

“I concur with your assessment. I believe he wanted to cause you more concern.” Miles squeezed her fingers quickly, then pulled his hand from hers and crossed to the window. He clasped his hands behind his back.

“I am anxious to see if today’s letter is also blank,” Miles said from his position halfway across the room.

“No letter has arrived,” Elise said. “I hope today proves a respite.”

“So do I.”

Miles kept his gaze on the window. Elise kept her gaze on him. Something had changed, but she couldn’t identify it.

“How is Anne today?” Miles asked after the silence between them had stretched to uncomfortable lengths. “Is she still insisting on being spun about?”

“Of course,” Elise replied, a tiny smile creeping up again.

“So am I to expect Mrs. Ash’s resignation at any moment?”

He was teasing her again, a very good sign. Elise smiled more brightly. “It may be on your desk even now.”

Miles looked back at her and smiled mischievously. “Should we check and see?”

Elise nodded, relieved. Friendly revelry was far more familiar footing for the two of them. “And if it isn’t there,” Elise continued with the joke as she crossed to where he stood, “we can always go to the nursery to retrieve it. Save her the trouble, you see.”

Elise took his hand again, grinning.

“She has, no doubt, drafted her letter in tremendous detail, delineating her many abuses and her injuries sustained from profound bouts of dizziness.” Miles pulled his hand from hers again. He had never once done that, not in all their lives. And he’d just done so twice. Miles had held her hand whenever either of them wished for it, pulling away only out of necessity.

He kept his distance as they walked to the library. Even his conversation seemed oddly disconnected, as if they were acquaintances speaking at a fete or musicale. Elise didn’t dare reach for his hand again. Having her gesture pushed aside once had been easily explained away. A second was proving more difficult. Should she be denied a third time, the rejection would sink like a dart into her heart.

“No letter of resignation,” Miles said when they’d reached their destination. He had been quite careful to leave the door slightly ajar. She felt rather like an acquaintance with whom one wished not to be seen as overly familiar.

“I’ll sneak around the nursery later to see if I can find it,” Elise said with forced joviality.

Miles nodded, distracted. He clearly wished for her to leave. Perhaps that had been the reason for the open door, a subtle hint that her stay in the room was temporary.

“I will see you tonight at dinner, then.” Elise made her way to the open door.

“Yes,” he said. “Until dinner.” The inclination of his head was not precisely formal, but neither was it at all personal.

Something had indeed changed, but she was at a loss to determine exactly what.

* * *

He simply had something on his mind
, Elise told herself repeatedly as they passed through dinner. Miles was acting more his normal self. He, Beth, and Mr. Langley were conversing as easily as always.

The gentlemen did not remain for port after the meal but went directly to the sitting room with Beth and Elise.

“Mrs. Jones,” Humphrey said almost immediately upon their arrival in the sitting room. “Another letter.”

“Thank you,” she managed to say, taking the letter from the butler.

She reached blindly behind her for Miles’s hand. Her fingers found his and, to her relief, he held them. Her need for his reassurance had only grown in the time she’d been at Tafford. No longer was she Ella Jones, who needed no one and kept a tight hold on every feeling. She couldn’t prevent herself from reaching for him now.

Beth and Mr. Langley were in the room, so very little could be accomplished immediately. Miles pulled Elise off to one side on the pretense of showing her a book on a side table. Beth, Elise noticed, watched them rather more closely than usual.

“May I?” Miles dropped her hand to take the letter.

Elise waited, wishing Miles would reach for her again. She needed the connection. She was painfully tense, her head beginning to throb anew. She wouldn’t show the others how worried she was, but the effort was taking its toll.

“I am watching,” Miles said, his eyes scanning the letter in his hand.

What?
Miles was watching her? What did that mean?

“That is all he writes,” Miles explained. “‘I am watching.’”

Elise glanced around the room, half expecting to see a shadow lurking in the corner or a face in the window. “I don’t like the idea of him watching me.”

“I doubt he is watching at this precise moment,” Miles insisted, his brow creased with concern.

“Knowing he is watching
ever
is enough,” Elise said.
Especially having no idea who he is
.

“I have been going over the papers.” Miles lowered his voice further. “Perhaps tomorrow we can discuss what I have deduced.”

Elise nodded. Fisting her hands wasn’t relieving her tension. She needed help. She needed support, someone who could share this burden with her, for she very much suspected she was not strong enough to do so alone.

She sighed and leaned her head against Miles’s shoulder. Would this never end?

Miles’s hands took hold of her shoulders. He would hold her now, wrap his arms around her, and tell her everything would be fine. A sudden memory surfaced of Miles at no more than seven, perhaps eight years old, with his arm around her while she cried. She had been crying for her mother, only a week dead.

She needed that again. But instead of pulling her close, Miles put her a bit away from him.

“Miles?” she whispered in bewilderment. First he would not hold her hand; now he pushed her away?

“This is a more appropriate distance, Elise.”

“More app—” Elise shook her head. “You’ve never before—”

“Circumstances are not what they once were,” Miles explained.

Circumstances?
Elise was keenly aware of her circumstances.

“We must have a care for our standing in Society, our positions.”

Standing in Society?
Whatever did he mean by—

“Oh.” Elise took the tiniest step backward.

Their positions.
He was now a marquess. She was an impoverished widow of an infantryman, poor and unimportant. No. Things were not as they once were.

“Oh.” The truth sank ever deeper. “You are right, of course. I wasn’t thinking.”

Miles glanced past her to where Beth and Mr. Langley sat, then shifted his eyes to the window. He wouldn’t even look at her.

The pounding in her head intensified. She pressed her lips together forcefully. With a few hard swallows and quick breaths, she managed to keep back the sudden sob that rose in her throat.

This was his home, the home of a peer, and she was a guest there, one most of Society would point out barely warranted
that
distinction. Their circumstances
had indeed changed. If Miles felt those changes ought not to be overlooked, she would abide by his wishes. She would do her best to pretend this new distance between them didn’t sting. She’d done so countless times in Stanton when she’d been looked down on by people who would once have treated her with respect. She’d pushed away every hurt, every prick so she could carry on despite the bleeding in her heart.

“Elise—”

She was certain he meant to explain, to offer detailed reasons for his objection to her gestures of affection. Elise knew she couldn’t endure that. Her composure would surely break. “I understand,” she quickly replied, the words physically painful to utter. “Really. I understand.”

“It just wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“I know.” Good heavens, she was about to cry. She could feel it. She had already allowed herself to become far too vulnerable. Her defenses had been lowered, allowing her to depend on him again. With a single sentence, he had reminded her why she’d worked so hard the last four years to never allow that to happen. “Thank you for your help with my letter. Now, if you will excuse me, I would like to go practice my pianoforte.” She offered a curtsy and left the room. She managed to maintain her entirely unruffled exterior up until the moment she reached the empty music room.

A tear broke against the wood floor before she could stop it. If she lost control now, she would crumble entirely.

Even the gestures of their lifelong friendship were no longer acceptable now that he was a marquess. But, she knew, it went further than that. She was not Beth’s or Mr. Langley’s equal either. Elise had been harboring foolish delusions of reentering the world she’d fled.

There’ll be no goin’ back to yer world
, Jim had warned her the day he’d offered his hand in marriage. She’d thought then that she understood. The full truth of Jim’s statement had not entirely sunk in until now. She couldn’t go back.

She sat at the pianoforte but didn’t play a single note. She silently struggled to keep the pain in her heart at bay. But a breaking heart, she was discovering, was harder to ignore than many of the other emotions she’d fought in the years she’d been in Stanton.

Elise dragged herself to her bed and lay down. She promised herself she would be fine in the morning. She would regain her iron-fisted grip on her feelings. She would protect herself again. She needed only this one night to come to terms with her heartache.