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best left to you.”
    Miles nodded his agreement and rose, leaving the room to search out Elise, though he was fairly certain he knew where to find her.
    A particularly large tree grew very nearly in the center of the meadow their estates shared. He and Elise had spent most every summer afternoon under that tree when they were young and still wandered there to talk and laugh. It was often the center of the croquet field they constructed every September to celebrate the coming of autumn.
    Miles stepped over several croquet arches still up after two months of spirited games and made his way to the tree. Elise sat under it. She looked up as he approached. The raw pain he saw in her eyes deepened his own very real suffering.
    “I have something diverting to share with you,” Miles said, attempting a lightness he knew he didn’t achieve.
    “I believe I would like to hear something diverting.”
    Miles lowered himself beside her on the blanket and took her hand as he had done ever since they were small children. “It seems, my dear friend, that by some quirk of fate, I have been appointed your legal guardian.”
    She looked up at him once more, surprise evident in her eyes. “You?”
    Miles raised his eyebrows ironically.
    “You have been charged with keeping me out of scrapes and mischief?” She actually smiled. Miles realized, seeing it, that it was the first real smile he’d had from her in days.
    What a horrible burden she had to be bearing. He was determined to ease her pain, if only for a moment.
    “And I will be tight-fisted with your pin money like any good guardian would be.”
    Elise’s smile, though shaky, remained.
    “And, of course, I will be highly responsible and the perfect example of good behavior.”
    Elise looked doubtful.
    “And in a few years’ time, I will have the great pleasure of petrifying any and all of your suitors and threatening your future husband should he neglect your welfare.”
    The shaky smile slipped all together. “Papa used to say that too,” Elise whispered as the tears began falling. She leaned heavily against him.
    “Do not cry, Elise,” Miles pleaded, wrapping his arms around his friend. “I will take care of you.”
    “Do you promise, Miles?” Sobs broke her words. “Do you promise you’ll never leave me?”
    “I swear to you, my dearest Elise. I will never leave you.”
    Six weeks after he’d made that promise, Elise had vanished.
    But she was with him once more. He intended to keep that long-ago promise. He would see to it that she had more than a tiny dark cottage to live in, that she needn’t beg for scraps from the local merchants. More importantly, he would find out what had happened to her, why she’d left home, where she’d been since then. And somehow, he would find again the bright-eyed, smiling girl he’d adored since his childhood.



Chapter Six
    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