For Elise (8 page)

“It’s rather ingenious, isn’t it? The trees painted on the walls are so lifelike. I half expect a breeze to blow through and rustle the leaves.”

Anne was, at that moment, touching her fingers to the painted branches of a bush in the full-room mural of a forest. She looked up at Elise, making the motion with her hands she used to indicate a tree.

Elise nodded. “A painting,” she further explained, matching her own hand motions to the words.

Anne pressed her palm flat against the tree bark, rubbing her fingers back and forth.

“Anne likes to draw,” Elise told Miles. “And for so young a child, her drawings are actually rather good. She’ll not be invited to display at the Royal Academy or any such thing, but one can easily tell what she’s drawn, which is a feat for a three-year-old.”

“A talent she clearly inherited from her mother,” Miles said. “You were forever sketching and painting. Your mother was a talented artist. I don’t know if you remember that.”

She hadn’t, actually. Mother had died when she was not much older than Anne. Elise had very few memories of her.

Anne rushed to the child-sized table, clearly in awe of the magical room, and dropped to her knees and crawled beneath it, looking up at its underside. The table was made to look like a tree stump. The chairs were painted to resemble toadstools and flowers. The floor was painted to look like grass, the ceiling like a sunny day, complete with wispy, white clouds.

“I know precisely which bedchamber Anne must have.” Miles motioned Elise across the room and held a door open for her.

Inside was a room to capture any little girl’s heart. The windows were draped in flowing pink crepe. A matching canopy hung over the bed. The walls were painted with butterflies and flowers.

“I may never see Anne again.” Elise stood in awe.

“Do you think she will be happy here?” Miles asked quite seriously.

Elise nodded. “She will be infinitely happy here.”

The thought of Anne happy
very nearly undid her. She fought back a sudden surge of tears. Yes, Anne would be happy here for however long they were permitted to stay.

“Miles Linwood’s lost his mind,
he has,” Mama Jones muttered, looking around the bedchamber selected for her very near Elise’s. “As if I be needin’ something as fine as this.”

“He wishes you to be comfortable and have all of the luxuries he assumes you wish for. I tried to explain to him that not even I, who once lived in this world, am at ease in these opulent settings.” Elise fidgeted with the edge of her shawl, one she’d knitted the winter after Anne’s birth.

“You’re talking more like you did when you first came to me.” Mama Jones pierced her with a searching gaze.

Elise felt herself redden. Jim had spent so many hours with her, practicing the accent they both knew she had to adopt to avoid pointed and uncomfortable questions. It had been part of her disguise for years.

“Now, child.” Mama Jones pulled Elise to the four-poster bed and sat the two of them down on the mattress. “Laws!” she exclaimed in momentary distraction. “Never felt a thing that soft before.” Mama Jones bounced a little on the mattress.

Elise smiled, pleased at the unexpected pleasure she’d given the woman who had done so much for her. “The linens are soft. And your maid will bring you a cup of hot chocolate every morning. To drink, Mama. Chocolate
every day
that you can drink.”

Mama Jones’s eyes popped wide at the thought. They had splurged each Christmas on a small piece of chocolate for each of them. To have the delicacy every morning, and as a warming beverage besides, was a luxury almost beyond comprehension. “This is the life y’ were born to,” Mama Jones said, a statement filled with both awe and sadness for the years of difficulty Elise had spent in Cheshire. “Do not think you’re bein’ ungrateful to be finding yourself again. My Jim always wanted you to find your family again.”

“But you—”

“Aye. We’re your family as well.” Mama Jones seemed to understand. “But it weren’t me nor Jim you longed for when Anne was born so sickly and you were so afraid for her. ’Twasn’t our comfort you ached to have.”

Elise studied her fingers. They had never discussed that time. Jim had been dead for several months when Anne was born. She was small and frail, and Elise had feared for her daughter’s life. Mama Jones had been with her through the ordeal, but it was Miles she’d wished for. He’d seen her through so many of life’s troubles. He’d comforted her again and again throughout the years. They’d once known each other so well that words weren’t always necessary between them.

It was him and that deep connection they’d shared that she had needed in those days of distress. She had never spoken of it after the fact, too confused at her need for her friend after all that had happened between them and too humiliated to have shown such weakness and preference in front her mother-in-law.

“I have the picture you drew of my Jim, but it was your sketch of Miles Linwood that
you
kept.” Mama Jones patted her hand. “Jim would want you to be home again—your real home.”

“My home was sold—”

Mama Jones cut her off. “Your home is with these people. Always has been.”

“But I need you with me too.” Elise squeezed Mama Jones’s beloved fingers in her own. “These past days have been awful. Well, not entirely awful. There have been some nice moments. But . . . Oh, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.”

“I believe you’re tellin’ me you’ve been a touch confused since I last saw you.” Mama Jones watched Elise with such patience and understanding. “You are happy to see your friends again, but you are afraid.”

Elise’s shoulders slumped as Mama Jones, true to form, hit directly at the heart of the matter. “Miles has been very kind, and I have appreciated that. I feel as though I’m being unfair to him, but I can’t . . . I’m not—”

“You don’t know how to go about showing that you’re grateful for his kindnesses, but you know better than to trust him.”

“That’s the truth and no denying it.”

Mama Jones clearly recognized the saying as one of her own. She smiled and squeezed Elise’s fingers. “You’ve reason to be wary, child. His kindnesses aside, he’s not earned the right to your trust.”

Elise leaned her head on Mama Jones’s shoulder. “What am I to do? I cannot trust him, but I do not want to live every day in fear.”

“You do just this: allow yourself to accept his friendly offerings. Allow yourself to be on more friendly terms. But keep a weather eye out.”

“Watchful waiting, you mean?”

“Indeed.”

There was wisdom in that. She could keep Miles at a safe distance without having to shut him out entirely. She would feel far less ungrateful, and yet she wouldn’t be opening herself up to the same pain she’d had before. They could be on friendlier terms without actually being friends.

Mama Jones motioned around the bedchamber. “This’ll never do. I’d much prefer a house somewhere in the woods. A grand room like this un makes me feel all closed in on.”

Elise knew precisely what Mama Jones meant. That first night at Tafford, she’d felt almost suffocated by the enormity and opulence of her surroundings after the simplicity of their cottage. It was the real reason she’d gone to the library: she’d simply needed to get away from her room for a moment.

“Can you believe I once lived in fanciness like this all the time?” She shook her head at the absurdity of it now. “Perhaps not quite this elegant but every bit as fine. It seems almost ridiculous considering my current circumstances.”

“Seems to me the two of us had best make the most out of this ridiculousness.” Mama Jones’s face wrinkled happily. “Though I do intend to find myself more suitable lodgings, I’ll not be turning my nose up at a cup of chocolate while I’m here.”

They laughed together at that. Life had been hard the past four years, but they had seen one another through it.

“I am so pleased to have you back, Mama Jones. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

* * *

“I’m goin’ to lose m’ mind, Miles Linwood,” Mama Jones declared, entering his library with all the assurance of a duchess.

“Is something amiss?” He rose and offered her a brief bow.

“Things like
that.
” She motioned to him with her head. “Your staff is bowin’ and scrapin’ and doin’ for me. And you’ve put me in a fine room.”

“You disapprove?”

“I’d much rather be in a cottage with work to do and smaller spaces. I’m like to lose m’ mind here with all this openness and bein’ treated like I was quality.”

Miles felt an ironic smile creep to his face. “Elise said you would not be happy with the arrangements I made for you.”

“And you didn’t listen to Ella, did you?” She pointed a wrinkled finger in his direction.

“I admit I didn’t.” Miles was duly chastised. He assisted Mama Jones to a chair near the low-burning fire. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

Mama Jones seemed to study him as if uncertain he was truly willing to assist her. “Is it your habit to come to the aid of those who need you?”

“I always have,” Miles answered immediately and forcefully.

“Are you sure about that?”

Miles tipped his head and studied her in return. Why would she second-guess his answer? “I have my failings,” Miles said, “but I do not turn my back on those in need.”

“And you never have?”

“I do not believe so.” Wariness entered his tone. Her interrogation was too pointed to be insignificant.

“Think on that, Miles Linwood.” She pointed the end of her cane at him, then returned it to the floor with a thump. “And think on a cabin.”

“A cabin?”

“Or cottage.” Mama Jones shrugged. “You said you wanted to help. I’d be happier in a cottage, like I was before.”

She certainly wasn’t one to mince words.

“I believe there is an abandoned cottage not far from the house.”

“I’ll take it.” Mama Jones tapped her cane on the floor once more.

“I warn you it has not been used in some time and would need work to make it livable,” Miles said. “I believe the roof needs replacing, and it could use an airing out.”

“You see to the roof, and I’ll see to the rest.” Mama Jones nodded her head. “And all m’ things that you hauled to that back building when I arrived, you can just cart on over to this cottage of yours.”

Miles smiled at the woman’s dauntlessness. Very few would have the nerve to order about a peer. Miles liked it. If Elise had had this formidable woman as her ally these years, she had been in good hands.

“This cottage of
yours
,” Miles corrected with an appreciative smile.

“I like you, Miles Linwood.”

“And I find I very much like you, Mama Jones, even if you don’t seem to entirely trust me.”

“I have reason to doubt,” Mama Jones answered. “But you’ve shown there’s reason to trust you as well. Now you just need to show that poor girl up there.” Mama Jones cocked her thumb up at the ceiling.

“Elise?” Miles asked. “You don’t think she trusts me?” Miles had suspected as much but felt winded by the confirmation just the same.

“She’s afraid to trust you. But I think she does the tiniest bit. And that worries her. Frightens the very daylights out of her, in fact.”

“Please.” Miles sat on the ottoman near Mama Jones’s chair and took possession of her hand. “Tell me what I’ve done. I have no idea how . . . I don’t understand—”

“It isn’t m’ tale to tell.” Mama Jones shook her head but gave him a maternal pat on the cheek.

“But
she
won’t tell me either.” Miles said. “She barely speaks to me.”

“You may be pickin’ the wrong topics, Miles Linwood. There’s a great many things she
never
speaks of. She told Jim about your fathers’ dyin’ at the hands of that horrible stranger but never once said anything of it to me. Four years, and she’s not spoken of it even once. And she wouldn’t often speak of you or her home. She kept that locked away. I’d not be surprised if she won’t allow those topics to be discussed between the two of you even now. So you’d do best to avoid those things.”

What else was there to talk about? Their entire connection was home and their childhoods, but she didn’t talk about them. The few times Miles had attempted to talk to Elise about her life in the years since she’d left Warwickshire, she had not permitted that topic either.

“I took care of her as best I could,” Mama Jones said, breaking into his thoughts. “But Ella weren’t very happy. She weren’t never joyful. Stranger still, she was hardly ever sad or upset. Her feelings stay bottled up. Fights ’em fierce, like she’s afraid to feel anything at all. I’d like to see her happy.”

“So would I.” Miles looked into the woman’s pale blue eyes.
She’s afraid to feel anything. Fights her feelings.
It fit perfectly what he’d seen. But how could he get past that? “Everything I have tried—”

“Stop trying so hard,” Mama Jones said.

Giving up on Elise was not an option, and it never would be. “I want to help her feel more at home here, but I’m not sure what would do the most good. I am hoping you have some suggestions.”

“There’s nothing in this world so dear to her as Anne,” Mama Jones said. “See what you can do for that sweet child, and you’ll touch Ella’s heart in the doing of it.”

“I have been thinking about Anne. Quite a lot, actually. And I do have a few ideas.”

“Good.” She nodded firmly. “Outside of that, Ella’s needs are simple. All she’s wanted since leavin’ your home was to have her friend back. She mourned losing you more than anything else she left behind. I realized that truth early on, before she was so good at hidin’ how she felt.”

“Then she did leave.” Miles muttered. Mama Jones had just said Elise had left. “She wasn’t taken away or forced to go.”

“Oh, she was forced,” Mama Jones contradicted. “But not in the way you think.”

“I don’t imagine you are going to explain that remark to me.”

Mama Jones smiled back at him. “I do beat all when it comes to sayin’ things mysterious-like, don’t I?”

“That you do.” Miles had to chuckle, though his mood had not lightened much. “Could you possibly tell me a little less mysteriously how I might go about reaching Elise—besides through Anne? I wish to cheer her and lift her spirits.”

“She’s already mentioned her morning chocolate,” Mama Jones said with a mischievous smile.

“Chocolate, then, is the way to soften a lady’s heart?” Miles leaned casually against the arm of Mama Jones’s chair, feeling very much as though he were a child again, speaking to his old nurse or Elise’s.

Elise’s old nurse
. An idea sprang on the instant, though unformed and very vague.

“Go on and bring Ella some chocolate and flowers.”

“I have plenty of flowers.” Miles warmed to Mama Jones more with each passing moment.

“That’s a start for you.” Mama Jones nodded. “An’ when that doesn’t work, you can always come visit at my cottage and ask for more advice.”

Mama Jones rose to her feet and Miles assisted her.

“
When
it doesn’t work?” he asked.