A Desperate Hope

by Elizabeth Camden

  “I doubt we’ll be able to find four rooms on short notice in Kingston,” Eloise was telling the other men. “My guardian lives only a few miles from here and has plenty of space.”

  “You’re staying with Garrett?” Alex asked incredulously as he pulled alongside the group.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she replied calmly. “He has always been loyal to me.”

  “Maybe because he had me pounded to a bloody pulp when he found out what we’d been up to behind that old cider mill.” He pointed to the crook in his nose. “See that? It’s what a broken nose looks like. It has Garrett’s signature on it.”

  She sent a fleeting glance to her coworkers before stepping closer to speak in a furious whisper. “Perhaps you could lower your voice so the entire valley doesn’t learn our business.”

  She was right. The men she came with were already heading back toward their carriage, but a handful of people loitered outside the tavern, listening to every word. Maybe she could control herself and talk like the queen of England, but he actually had a beating heart and a pulse. Eloise hadn’t come back to the valley for him. She came because she was bitter and vindictive.

  “Is this fun for you? Showing up to help wipe us off the map?” Alex asked.

  “Believe it or not, I have a meaningful career entirely free of personal vendettas. Good day, Mayor Duval.” She headed toward a carriage across the street, her back stiff with anger, but he couldn’t let it go at that.

  “Eloise, wait.” He grasped her arm, and she looked down at it as though a bug were crawling on her. He let go, dumbfounded. “What’s happened to you?” he whispered.

  “I grew up. I no longer run around behind people’s backs. I don’t break the rules. I’m sorry that seems to be a disappointment to you.”

  The other men boarded the carriage, and she followed. He stood, poleaxed as she walked away without a backward glance. Even after the carriage started moving and the wheels kicked up dust in his face, he couldn’t move.

  The weight of sorrow hit him hard. It was foolish to believe he could ever recapture those two summers, but this hurt. He was aghast at Eloise’s chilly transformation, but he shouldn’t have spilled their personal business in public. Willard and a few others still lingered on the tavern steps, and he closed the distance quickly.

  “Willard, forget what I just said about me and Eloise behind the old cider mill, all right?”

  The older man looked amused. “It’s not exactly a state secret, Alex.”

  “Yeah, but it happened a long time ago, and she probably wouldn’t want that old gossip stirred up again.” Alex swiped a lock of hair off his forehead. Wet, beer-soaked hair from indulging in a stupid bet. Of all the times for Eloise to come waltzing back into his life!

  Willard chuckled a little but nodded. “Sure, Alex. I didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything.”

  Alex lived on the top floor of Willard’s hotel, and the man was like a second father to him. He had no doubt Willard would keep mum, but he wasn’t so sure about the other two men watching from the bench outside the tavern.

  “You didn’t hear anything either,” he ordered them.

  “Not a word,” one said.

  “I don’t know anything about you and that girl from Garrett’s mansion everyone was talking about all those years ago,” the other said. “Marie Trudeau just left, but she probably didn’t hear anything either.”

  Alex blanched. Having his favorite teacher overhear tales of his youthful escapades was like being caught out by his own mother. A glance down the street showed Mrs. Trudeau heading to her tiny saltbox house only two blocks away from the tavern. In five bounding steps, he was at her side.

  “Mrs. Trudeau?” he implored. “Rumor has it you heard me shooting my mouth off about some girl I once knew. Please, if you could keep that quiet, I’ll be forever in your debt.”

  She placed a gentle hand on his arm. “You need say no more, Alex,” she said in her softly accented voice. His old French teacher had been in this country for almost thirty years but still had that lilting accent. “Of course I won’t say anything. I am curious though. . . .”

  “Yeah?” He braced himself. He adored Mrs. Trudeau and could deny her nothing.

  “I always wondered why you never married. Is she the reason?”

  “Don’t read too much into it,” he said with a shrug. “I got over her a long time ago.”

  Kind of. For years he had been frantic. After joining the army, he bombarded Hercules with letters, begging him to prowl around the Garrett estate, looking for signs of Eloise. Hercules was friends with the stable guy up at the mansion, who reported that Eloise was nowhere to be found. Alex used his first leave from the army to go to her fancy boarding school in Boston. He’d spent every dime he had bribing a few of the school employees for insight about what happened to her. All they could tell him was that she never returned to school after that fateful summer.

  It seemed Eloise had vanished from the face of the earth. Having given up trying to find her, he concluded the best thing would be to let her find him. Even though he’d earned a battlefield commission and had a bright future in the army, he cut his military career short and returned to the valley. Battle-hardened by service in the Spanish-American War and tested through experience, he was no longer intimidated by Bruce Garrett. He led the strike, ran for mayor, and took out an announcement in every newspaper in New England to publicize his presence.

  It seemed she didn’t want to find him. At first he’d been miffed when she never tried to track him down. Then angry. Then he was merely bewildered about what had happened to the girl of his dreams.

  Now he knew. She had become an ice princess.

  Chapter

  Five

  Rather than gamble on their ability to find a hotel in Kingston, Eloise convinced the group to follow her to Bruce’s house. The mansion where she had spent her childhood summers was only three miles away, and Bruce always told her she was welcome anytime. She’d been working as his accountant for years, and they were closer than they’d ever been, so she didn’t feel too guilty leaning on his hospitality. He had probably never expected her to bring along three coworkers, but Bruce despised Alex and would gladly open his home if it meant keeping her away from Duval Springs.

  The journey up the mountain was bumpy and tense. She clenched her teeth as she stole a glance at Claude and the others in the carriage. Had they heard Alex’s reference to what they had done behind that old cider mill? Gossip like that could get back to Fletcher, an upright man who believed her to be a respectable woman. Not some foolish girl who gave everything to a boy in exchange for a little attention.

  “I told you staying in Duval Springs was an idiotic idea,” Claude growled as the carriage climbed the hillside.

  “You’re very wise, Claude,” she said coolly. “We’ll be far more comfortable at the Garrett mansion.” It was halfway between Kingston and Duval Springs, plus it had the advantage of being free, which would please Fletcher.

  “You seemed to know that man at the inn,” Enzo said, politely waiting for a response. Claude and Roy both swiveled toward her, curiosity rampant in their faces. She looked out the window and scrambled for a truthful answer that remained entirely devoid of useful insight.

  “I grew up nearby. So did he.” She kept her gaze fastened on the towering pines outside the window, refusing to add even another word.

  The carriage rounded the last of the hairpin turns, and Bruce’s estate came into view. The roughly hewn stone mansion was perched on the side of a cliff and surrounded by wide terraces and towering walls, and it had an actual turret on one end of the house. A dozen smaller outbuildings were scattered behind the estate walls.

  Eloise had only been eight years old the first time her mother brought her here one hot July morning. A combination of awe and fear had gripped her as she learned the Garrett mansion was to be her home for the rest of the summer. It looked like somewhere a king or evil wizard might live. Her mother ha
d dropped her off on the front porch, not even accompanying her inside after the housekeeper answered the door. Eloise had to walk into that imposing mansion all alone, totally bewildered by why she had been abandoned here.

  She was terrified of Bruce Garrett the first time they met. He was big, gruff, and ill at ease around her. That didn’t stop him from insisting she join him at the massive dining table each night for dinner, even though she didn’t know how to talk to grown-ups, for her parents mostly ignored her. Actually, she didn’t know how to talk to children either, since there were no children at the country estate where she’d spent her first eight years. Bruce, as he insisted she call him, eventually filled the silence by talking about his quarry and how his workers used huge cutting machines to carve slabs of limestone out of the hills. She liked his stories and over time started looking forward to the dinners where she sat, silent as a mouse, and listened to the gruff man talk about his life.

  She had never returned home again. During the school year she went to special conservatories because her mother wanted her to master the piano. During holidays and the summer, she went back to the Garrett mansion. She didn’t ask why. Her parents had never wanted her underfoot, but when she learned about cuckoos in school and how they foisted their chicks on others to raise, suddenly her father’s pet name for her made horrible, perfect sense. She and Bruce had the exact same shade of red hair, while her parents both had glossy black hair. She truly was a cuckoo bird, so no wonder her parents didn’t want her around when it was so obvious she didn’t belong.

  The carriage halted before the mansion, and she stepped outside, breathing deeply of the crisp mountain air.

  “How do you know Mr. Garrett?” Roy Winthrop asked as he looked at the castle-like fortress in awe.

  “He was my guardian growing up,” she said simply, a little wounded that Bruce still refused to acknowledge her. While her parents were alive, the charade was understandable, but they had both died within the last year, so now it was just hurtful.

  One of Bruce’s thickset bodyguards sat on the front stoop, whittling a lump of oak. She’d known Emil Lebenov since childhood, and his bark was usually worse than his bite.

  “Weren’t expecting to see you today,” Emil said in his heavy Bulgarian accent as he continued whittling.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  “It’s your lucky day. Riesel just left an hour ago.”

  Lucky, indeed. Bruce didn’t have many rules when she was growing up, but she’d been taught since childhood that when Theodore Riesel was in the house, she was to make herself scarce. Mr. Riesel owned the cement factory a few miles away, and he and Bruce were business partners. Bruce mined the limestone, and Mr. Riesel turned it into cement.

  They were also related by marriage. Bruce had been married to Mr. Riesel’s sister, Laura. A month after Laura’s death, Eloise was delivered to Bruce’s doorstep. At the time, Eloise was never sure why Bruce refused to let Mr. Riesel see her, but it was easy to understand now. Anyone with eyes could see their resemblance. It had been twenty years since Bruce’s wife died, but he was still anxious to hide his infidelity from his brother-in-law and business partner.

  “Can you tell the cook to expect four more people for dinner?” she asked Emil. “I’m sure it will be all right with Mr. Garrett.”

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Hofstede, took the others to guest rooms on the second floor while Eloise went in search of Bruce. By the time she reached the gathering room, she could hear him out on the terrace, shouting at one of his employees. Why did he always have to sound so bad-tempered? She crept forward, staying close to the wall as she approached the open French doors to listen in on the conversation. Old Mr. Jake, the man who could fix any of the mechanical equipment at the quarry, was getting a tongue-lashing.

  Mr. Jake caught her eye and sent her a wink. Bruce whirled around and spotted her through the open doors.

  “Eloise,” he said, his voice flustered. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”

  “I have some business to discuss. I can wait until you’re finished.” Bruce could provide valuable insight into navigating the dicey political situation in the valley. He was canny and shrewd, always thinking two steps ahead, and good at getting the upper hand. Given the demolition team’s rocky start in town, they could use his advice.

  Bruce dismissed Mr. Jake and beckoned for Eloise to join him on the terrace. From here she could see all the way down to Duval Springs nestled at the bottom of the valley. The moment she explained the situation to him, he almost exploded.

  “I don’t like the idea of you dabbling in Duval Springs,” he said in a growl. “At least take a couple of bodyguards with you when you go into town. Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady! There’s been a spate of sabotage lately, and that idiot mayor is nothing but a rabble-rouser. Have you seen him?”

  “It’s going to be hard to do business in Duval Springs without seeing the mayor.”

  Bruce clenched the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles went white. “That man is still a disrespectful hothead. He quietly sneers every time he sees me, and it’s got nothing to do with the strike. It’s all about thumbing his nose at me over you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about Alex. He didn’t even recognize me.”

  Bruce snorted. “I guess he’s had so many women over the years that they all blend together.”

  She tried not to flinch, but the fact that Alex hadn’t recognized her gave the accusation a ring of truth.

  “Let me send some men down with you,” Bruce said. “That hothead won’t dare—”

  “Was Emil one of the men you had beat up Alex?”

  “Who said I had anyone beat him up?”

  She sighed. “Please don’t insult my intelligence. It would be foolish to inflame the situation by bringing anyone who participated in that incident into already tense circumstances.”

  “And why is the situation tense?” Bruce demanded. “It’s because Duval is leading a campaign of sabotage against me. The whole town is bitter and irrational.”

  A part of her understood the lingering hostility from the villagers. Bruce and Theodore Riesel ruled over this valley with an iron first. At the time of the strike, they had demanded a sixty-hour workweek from their employees. They paid their workers in scrip that could only be redeemed at a company store. “Company towns” had a bad reputation for exploiting their workers, and under Alex’s leadership, the people of Duval Springs revolted and won. After the strike, people worked a forty-hour week and were paid in cash, never scrip.

  Alex had won the strike against Bruce but lost the bigger battle with the state. Bruce was probably secretly rejoicing that the demolition of the town would be planned in his own home. He invited Eloise and the rest of the demolition team to join him for dinner as they began the thorny task of deciding how best to empty the village.

  The dining room was dominated by a heavy oak table imported from a monastery in Spain. The house had electricity, but Bruce preferred to light the room with dozens of candles, like it was a medieval castle.

  Even Claude seemed impressed by the grandeur, but after dinner, he wanted to plan their first week of operations. “Roy will make a geologic assessment of the land, noting all possible sources of contamination. When we flood the valley, the basin needs to be pristine. Enzo and I will survey the buildings that will require dynamite and those that can simply be burned. Eloise, start making appraisals of residential structures and find out when people plan on moving. If we can get them out before May, we can start demolition early.”

  “Ha!” Bruce retorted. “The mayor has already got a court order saying the state can’t touch a single building before May 1.”

  “But a third of the homes are already vacant,” Claude said. “Why should he care if we start demolishing the abandoned buildings?”

  “Because he enjoys being a thorn in the government’s side,” Bruce said. “They’re billing the state for putting workers up at their hotels, using their telegr
aph service, even storing equipment in their empty buildings. They’re charging twice the going rate for everything.”

  Eloise twisted the stem of her goblet as she studied him. “How do you know all this?” Bruce always seemed to know what was going on in the village, and given that he was the least popular man in the valley, he had to have someone on the inside feeding him the information.

  “All you need to know is that I’m on your side and the mayor of Duval Springs is not, and he never has been.”

  Eloise sighed. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who dwelled on the past, but she had to admit that the only constant in her life had been Bruce Garrett. His punishment after discovering her trysts with Alex had been tough but fair. And in the long run, it had made her a better person.

  All Alex had done was provide her with a cautionary tale of how life could go wrong. She must never forget that.

  Chapter

  Six

  The first house Eloise planned to appraise was a modest, single-story clapboard home on the corner of Main and Cherry. She counted the windows and exterior features, noted them on the chart, then mounted the single front step and knocked on the door.

  It was answered by a petite woman with fading brown hair and a spray of laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. She held a leather satchel, as though about to leave.

  “Can I help you?” she asked with a faintly accented voice.

  “You are Marie Trudeau?” Eloise asked.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Eloise Drake. I’m here on behalf of the state to determine a fair market value for your house. May I come inside?”

  The woman’s hand flew to her throat. “Oh dear, I did not expect this so soon. But yes, of course you may come in.” She paused in the doorway, and Eloise had the feeling that Mrs. Trudeau was about to weep as she bowed her head. “Oh, Alfred,” she whispered so softly Eloise could barely hear. “This is the beginning of the end.”