For Elise (22 page)

“You have to promise me,
Ella, that you’ll take care of Mama.”

“I will.” Elise swiped at the tears trickling down her face. They’d put this off as long as possible. “And you’ll be careful? Very, very careful?” Emotion nearly choked her as she spoke.

Jim chuckled. “The most careful soldier in the reg’ment.”

“Don’t tease, Jim,” Elise pleaded. “I can’t bear it. I have this horrible feeling you’re not coming back.”

Jim sobered instantly. “I feel it too,” he said. “Here.” He tapped his finger against his chest. “M’ father was the same way, sensed his end coming.”

“Then you have to stay.” Elise was crying in earnest, something she never did anymore. “I need you. Mama Jones needs you.”

“Mama understands.” Jim put his arm around her shoulders. “She will care for you, and you’ll care for her. Neither of you will be alone.”

“And you?” Elise whispered through her tears.

Jim leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I’ll watch over you from above until your Miles comes for you.”

Elise’s shoulders drooped with the weight of loss. How she missed Jim. She hadn’t known him long but had mourned his loss deeply. Mama Jones had held up better in the days and weeks that followed word of his passing than Elise had. Too much pain in too short a time had torn at her tender heart. If only she could thank him one more time, tell him again what his kindness had meant to her.

Theirs had not been a love story in the romantic sense, but she had loved him in a very profound way. He had restored her faith in humanity. He had saved her life. Above all, he had been kind and gentle at a time when she had been nearly convinced such traits no longer existed in the world.

Until your Miles comes for you.
He had firmly believed Miles would search her out. But time had relentlessly marched on without Miles appearing. Jim’s regiment had fought in a battle within forty-eight hours of arriving on the Continent. Jim had not survived. At eighteen, he’d become another casualty of war quickly forgotten by a country that had long since grown numb to the reports of death and suffering. At fifteen, she had become a widow. Anne had been born later that year.

“Ma.”

Her wandering thoughts had distracted her from the game she was playing with Anne. The blocks sat unstacked in front of her.

Elise pasted a smile on her face, hoping Anne wouldn’t see past the façade, though she knew it slipped more each day.

Anne held out one arm, hand fisted around a crumpled sheet of paper.

“What is it?” Elise asked.

Anne sat on Elise’s lap, turned a bit so she could see Elise’s face.

“Have you drawn me a picture?” She hoped Anne would someday learn to understand sentences. As it was, Elise labored through single words, trying to convey her meaning.

Anne tapped the paper, watching Elise expectantly. She took the paper from Anne’s hand and turned it over to examine it.

“Oh, Anne,” she whispered so her daughter wouldn’t hear the frustration in her voice. Anne had somehow found the sketch Elise had done of Miles years earlier. Now it was crumpled and smudged.

Elise gently smoothed the paper against one leg, Anne sitting on the other. She felt Anne tug on her sleeve. “Just a moment,” Elise replied.

Anne’s hand forcibly turned Elise’s head toward her.

“Just a moment.”

But the girl was not satisfied with that answer. She pointed to the paper, then tapped one index finger on the tip of the other, then tugged at her hair. She repeated the same series of gestures several times.

What is she trying to say now
? Elise wondered, still attempting to straighten the sketch as she tried to decipher Anne’s words.

“The paper?” she asked, pointing to it.

Anne shook her head no.

“The drawing
on
the paper?” She indicated the sketch of Miles. At times, Elise felt like she was living one long, drawn-out guessing game.

Anne repeated the finger-tapping gesture, which Elise recognized. It had long ago been made the symbol for the color red, owing to a badly cut finger at the time Anne was beginning to learn her colors.

“Red,” Elise acknowledged, returning the gesture.

Anne tugged at her hair.

“Red hair?” Elise guessed.
Red hair
could refer to one of two people: Beth or Miles.

Anne, it seemed, wished to know if the person in the drawing she had found was the person with the red hair.

“Yes, Anne. This is Miles. Red hair.” She mimicked Anne’s earlier gestures.

But Anne looked unsatisfied.

“Perhaps if it were less crumpled, you would see the resemblance more easily,” Elise said.

“Or perhaps if I were
more
rumpled.”

“Good heavens, Miles!” Elise very nearly jumped.

“You must realize that talking about someone only increases the chances of that person appearing unannounced.”

He smiled like a little boy who had managed to sneak a toad into his governess’s bed. She half expected him to produce a set of nine pins and challenge her to a game. How could a grown man look so much like a carefree little boy? And how was it that even a boyish grin made her insides tumble around?

He sat on the floor next to her. “That is a very good likeness.” He motioned to the sketch still in her hands. “Though I don’t remember posing for it.”

Elise felt her face turn pink. She’d rendered the sketch from memory at a time when she had been desperately lonely. Somehow having him see it made her feel horribly opened up, as if he would be able to read in the lines of the sketch every heartache she’d endured.

Anne came unexpectedly to the rescue. She climbed over Elise’s lap to Miles. She looked up at him, a contented smile on her face. She tapped her fingertips together again.

“What did that one mean?” Miles asked.

“‘Red.’ Anne is fascinated by your hair.”

“Most young ladies are horrified by it. Red hair is not considered very handsome, you realize.”

That was the general consensus. But Elise had always liked it. When they were tiny, his hair had been fiery, almost startling. Time had darkened it.

His attention was fully on Anne. He puffed out his cheeks. Anne tentatively pressed her palms to his face, pushing against the air in his cheeks. When nothing changed, she pressed harder. Miles let the air out in a whoosh, blowing Anne’s curls up and away from her face.

She giggled, her sweet little mouth grinning wider than it ever did when Miles wasn’t nearby. He laughed, wrapping his arms around Anne’s tiny frame.

“She has your smile,” he said. “Although you never would have sat this long simply looking at me.”

“I don’t know why she does that,” Elise admitted. It had baffled her for weeks.

Anne pressed her hands to either side of Miles’s face, pushing and pulling and distorting his features.

He puffed out his cheeks once more, but she immediately shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

Miles obliged, returning his face to its usual state. A pout pushed out Anne’s lips.

“That is another look I remember well,” Miles said, his words made difficult by Anne’s continued attention.

“Are you saying I used to pout?”

“Adorably,” he answered.

Elise attempted to force her heart to stop its sudden flipping about. That traitorous organ did not seem to care one jot that it was opening her up to even more pain.

Anne’s hands continued their efforts. She glanced at the sketch still in Elise’s hand. She looked back at Miles and then at the sketch once more.

“I believe she is comparing you to the drawing.”

“That is unfair,” Miles said. “I believe I was quite a bit younger in that sketch. And that was before I spent four years under the sun in the West Indies. I do not believe I would stand up favorably in such a comparison.”

Miles was even more handsome than he’d been as a youth, whether or not he realized it.

Anne’s gaze became intense again, that staring sort of look that always made Elise feel the need to apologize to Miles. Anne dropped her hands, turned her head to one side, and looked at him. Her brows furrowed. She touched Miles’s face with one hand, gently, as one might touch a very soft fabric.

Anne gestured
red
, then
hair
.

“I
do
have red hair,” Miles answered Anne.

Anne pointed at the paper in Elise’s hand, then back at Miles.

He nodded. “That is a drawing of me.”

Then Anne wrapped her arms around Miles’s neck and laid her head on his shoulder.

“I do believe I have made a conquest.” Miles held her tightly and rocked her back and forth.

Please don’t break her heart.
The thought remained silent but no less fervent than if she’d begged aloud
.

“I originally came in to see if you two ladies would be interested in a little surprise,” Miles said, resting his cheek against the top of Anne’s head.

“A surprise?” Elise fought back the urge to lean against Miles the way Anne was. Had she looked as perfectly contented with Miles during her younger years as Anne did at that moment? She forced those recollections back.

He spoke with an air of mystery. “Something arrived this morning, and I have been anxiously waiting to show it to you. Would you like to see it?” he asked.

She did indeed wish to join in his surprise. She needed that joy again. “Yes, please.” She rose to her feet and laid the sketch on one of the small nursery tables.

“Excellent.” Miles shifted Anne to one arm and held his free hand out to Elise.

“Won’t Beth object?”

Miles sighed and returned his arm to supporting Anne. “Probably,” he answered. “And she would be right. I have no desire to tarnish your reputation.”

Elise nodded. She’d had time to think over Beth’s concern and saw the wisdom in it, though she missed that very personal connection with Miles. “Humphrey might not simply roll his eyes at our antics as Thomason always did.”

“Thomason was a king among butlers,” Miles said. “Now, are you ready for your surprise?”

“Ready? I have been ready ever since you told me there was one. You are the one who is dithering.”

“Dithering?” Miles feigned offense, obviously not surprised at her teasing. “We shall simply see who arrives there first, then, shan’t we?”

“That sounds almost like a challenge.” Elise half laughed.

He was acting so like he had as a child. And as if the nursery truly were a magical fairy kingdom, Elise’s heaviness was easing.

“A race, Elise.” He grinned mischievously. “Beginning now.”

With that declaration, he sped across the nursery, Anne giggling as they flew through the doorway.

“Miles!” Elise called after him.

She hesitated only a moment before hitching her skirts up a trifle and following in his wake. She looked both directions at the doorway. Miles was at the end of the corridor. When their eyes met, he smiled and disappeared around the corner.

“I don’t know where you’re going.” Elise laughed out loud and followed. They’d once chased each other through the corridors of Epsworth for a full thirty minutes before Beth’s very proper governess had brought their adventure to a halt. Elise had never liked Miss James after that.

Down a second corridor and up a flight of stairs Miles led her, speeding ahead, then waiting enough for her to see where he was headed. He abruptly stopped at a door and leaned against the frame. Anne laughed, clutching Miles’s neck for dear life.

Elise laid her hand on Anne’s back. “Now she will wish to be run all over Tafford as opposed to simply being spun.” Elise’s words broke as she attempted to catch her breath.

“You used to love running through the corridors.”

What a perfect childhood they’d had. She felt a measure of freedom to have relived it, even for just that brief moment. She’d nearly forgotten how wonderful it was to feel happy.

She had the most overwhelming desire to wrap her arms around Miles as tightly as Anne was. Her heart thumped at the thought. To be held by Miles . . .

Elise clasped her hands together to prevent herself from reaching out for him. After a steadying breath, she nodded.