Free For Elise by Sarah M. Eden Page B

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.



Chapter Eleven
    “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.”