A Desperate Hope

by Elizabeth Camden

  Then she stepped aside and held the door wide for Eloise.

  “Forgive me,” the older woman said. “I came from France thirty years ago, but Duval Springs is the only real home I’ve ever known. Please make your assessment. I am due at school shortly, but I must know how much I am to receive for the house.”

  “Do you know what year it was built?”

  Marie’s brow wrinkled. “I have no idea. My husband was born in this house, and that was in 1845, but I don’t know anything beyond that.”

  “Would your husband know?”

  “He passed away eighteen years ago,” Marie said. “I have been living in this house since my first year in America. It’s hard to imagine that soon it will be no more.”

  Each word the widow spoke was laden with yearning. It made Eloise wonder what it would be like to have such a profound attachment to a home. Eloise had led an itinerant life as a child and never had the sort of bone-deep love for a place she saw on Marie Trudeau’s face.

  “I had my babies in this house,” Marie continued. “Of course, they are young men now, but sometimes, late at night when I sit by the fire, I can almost hear those long-ago memories, as though they are embedded in the house itself. Alfred’s footsteps coming home after a day at the quarry, or the whimpering of the babies. I still like to sit here and remember those sounds. It will be harder to summon those memories once I move to Saratoga.”

  “That is where you’re headed?”

  The widow shook herself and came back to the present. “Yes,” she said briskly. “I understand prices are higher in the city, so please, make your assessment and let me know how much I can expect.”

  “It won’t take long,” Eloise said.

  Fletcher’s system was stark in its efficiency. As she traveled through the tidy house, she tallied the windows, doorknobs, and flooring material. The old floorboards creaked as she moved from room to room, and since there were only two bedrooms, a compact kitchen, and a front parlor that doubled as a dining room, the assessment didn’t take long. In less than five minutes, her work was complete, but she stalled a little. It would seem rude to present the widow with the figure after only five minutes.

  “Do your sons still live in Duval Springs?” Eloise asked as she pretended to jot notes at the edges of her form.

  “Oh yes. They are quarrymen, just like their father was.”

  “And do they like working up at the quarry?” Eloise held her breath. She couldn’t explain it, but she wanted good things for this soft-spoken lady, and having raised sons who enjoyed their work was important.

  “It keeps their pantry full,” the widow said. “Mostly they just like living in Duval Springs. We are a family here, no? My husband was sick for two years before he passed, and he could not work. My boys were babies, so I couldn’t work either, but the town looked after us. People from the church brought baskets of food every week. Men came and shoveled our walk in the winter, and the doctor donated his services. They did these things for years until I could find my own way. I will be forever grateful.”

  The conversation stumbled to a halt, and Marie looked curiously at the chart. Eloise could delay no longer.

  “The state will offer $2,010 for the house.”

  The widow gasped. “So little?”

  But there could be no doubt. The compact house had no improvements, making it easy to tally the few factors in its favor and arrive at a valuation. Eloise tipped the clipboard so the widow could see.

  “The state developed a formula for assessing fair value,” she explained. “It is a straightforward mathematical calculation, based on the number of doorknobs and windows, the size of the rooms, and the composition of the materials.”

  The color dropped from Marie’s face, and she sank onto an old chair, her hand clutched over her heart. “Oh, Alfred, how could things ever come to this?” she moaned softly.

  Eloise struggled to find some comforting words to say, but she was useless in such situations. When she’d broken down in tears as a child, her father would say, “Buck up, little cuckoo bird. Life isn’t so bad.”

  She didn’t think such words would be any comfort, but before she could think of anything more useful to say, the thudding of boots and a rap on the door startled her.

  “Mrs. Trudeau? Are you in there?” It was Alex’s voice.

  Marie rose, straightened her collar, and opened the door. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

  Alex didn’t notice Eloise as he stepped inside, concern on his face. He grasped the widow’s shoulders. “Is everything all right? You’re never late for school.”

  “I apologize. The state appraiser is here, and I needed to know what I will receive for my house.”

  Alex finally noticed Eloise standing beside the stove, and the muscles in his face tightened. “Miss Drake,” he said. The formality of those two words hurt. He had lain on the grass with her, tickled her, called her Ellie. Now she was Miss Drake.

  “Alex,” she said with the tiniest of nods.

  He turned back to Mrs. Trudeau with a reassuring squeeze of her shoulders. “It’s all right. Lettie Cooper came to my office to report you hadn’t arrived, and I came right over. Is something wrong? You look upset.” His voice was tender, concern radiating from his eyes.

  “The price they are offering for my house . . . it’s not good.” Marie jabbed a finger at the clipboard. “They are using some horrible formula that boils everything down to the number of doorknobs in a house.”

  Without asking permission, Alex grabbed the clipboard, his face hardening as he skimmed the printed page. “Calculated with all the tender compassion I’ve come to expect from the state.”

  “It’s a very efficient method,” Eloise defended, ignoring the scorn in his voice as he continued reading.

  “You think a home’s value can be boiled down to its component parts? Why do you care how many doorknobs are in a house?”

  “Because an actual door with a closing mechanism connotes a room. Otherwise someone could claim this shared parlor with an archway leading to a dining area counts as two rooms.”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” Marie demanded. “I am standing in the middle of the parlor.” She took a large step. “And now I am standing in my dining room. Two rooms!”

  The dining nook was not a separate room. This was exactly the sort of quibbling the chart was supposed to solve. Doorknobs were important.

  “The formula is a fair way of quickly setting the value for all structures, whether it is a house, a barn, a factory, or a public building. The rules are transparent, and they are fair.”

  “But this house is less than ten yards from the public pump,” Alex pointed out. “That makes it very desirable to people who need to lug water into their homes.”

  Eloise shook her head. “The chart adds value for installed plumbing, but there is no room in the equation for people who carry their own water.”

  “But you can see the town’s pump is only footsteps from my door,” Marie said. “It’s what makes this house so valuable. And look at my view of the village green. It is wonderful to sit out on the porch on summer evenings. Over the years, many people have tried to buy me out, but I could never leave the home where my husband was born. Where we raised our children, where I nursed him during those final years that meant so much to us both.” Her lower lip began trembling, but she wouldn’t stop talking. “This house holds the best and worst of me. It is love and compassion and a thousand nights of laughter and tears. It’s more than a collection of doorknobs.”

  It was impossible to put a price tag on the things Mrs. Trudeau valued. Fletcher was entirely correct in designing a formula to isolate the value of a home from the murky tentacles of emotion.

  Eloise spoke as gently as she could. “I hope you sign the form, because otherwise the state has a right to claim you have refused payment, and then you will receive nothing.”

  Marie’s shoulders sagged, but Alex wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t let her push y
ou,” he said. “We aren’t going to let the state bully us. If you don’t agree with the value, we can sue.”

  “I don’t want to sue. I just want to keep my home,” Marie exclaimed. “I love it here. I thought I would spend the rest of my life here.”

  “Shh,” Alex murmured.

  The gentle warmth in his tone made Eloise flinch. It had been ages since someone had treated her so tenderly. The last person who offered to nurture or protect her had been Alex, back during those idyllic days when she wallowed in his unabashed devotion.

  “There will be no need for lawsuits,” Eloise said briskly. “If you sign the form, you can have your payment within a week.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Alex said, not breaking his gaze with the widow. “She is only the voice of the state, trying to frighten you into giving up your rights. I’ll make sure the town’s residents are treated fairly. All I need from you is to go teach Latin class and get my nephew fluent enough to pass that Harvard entrance exam.”

  Marie nodded. “John is a bright lad. I can do that.”

  Mrs. Trudeau headed to the schoolhouse, and Eloise followed her outside. She was about to approach the next house on the street, but Alex blocked her on the front stoop of the widow’s house. He planted his hands on his hips and looked down at her with a stern face.

  “Why are you on this team? After all these years, why did you come back to the valley only to tear it down?”

  Eloise hugged the clipboard to her chest. “It’s not intended as a personal insult, Alex. I needed a job, and this is where they sent me.”

  He snorted. “You’re rich. I heard that your parents died and you inherited a fortune, so you don’t need to work.”

  It was true that she would inherit a tidy sum after her mother’s estate was settled, but she didn’t work for money. She worked because it was the only thing that gave her a sense of accomplishment. Alex couldn’t possibly understand. He had hundreds of friends and a loving family; she had a desk at an accounting office. She’d give her eyeteeth if she could have the sort of easy relationships that seemed to come naturally to Alex, but for now, she would bring this project in on time and under budget. Fletcher depended on it.

  “My finances are no concern of yours. You’re being very rude. Is this how they taught you to treat women in the army?”

  “They taught me to be a leader.” There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy on his iron face.

  “It looks like they taught you to be a bully.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes. “I survived,” he snapped out. “That’s surely a disappointment to your loving guardian, but I fought and struggled and survived. I was slogging through the swamps of Cuba while you lounged in the lap of luxury.”

  She quirked a brow. “Is that what you call a convent in the desert?”

  “A what?” he gasped. Apparently he knew nothing about what had happened to her after the catastrophic morning Bruce learned of their summer trysts.

  “Saint Elspeth’s,” she said simply. “It was where Bruce sent me after he found out about us. A desert convent in Arizona. Eighteen women, two donkeys, and sixty goats. We made cheese. And prayed.” A hint of guilt gnawed at her, because the way she described it made it sound bad, and it wasn’t. It was hard, but it wasn’t bad.

  “A convent?” Alex asked incredulously. “It sounds so medieval.”

  She considered it. “I suppose it was,” she admitted, for their life of barren simplicity wouldn’t have been out of place a thousand years ago.

  In the beginning she had hated the convent in the rugged desert. She arrived feeling used, dirty, and ashamed, with Bruce’s harsh condemnations still ringing in her ears. In the early months, the grim women dressed entirely in black were intimidating, but over time they softened toward her, and she to them. What was supposed to be a punishment turned into a few years of blessed peace as her heart mended and her faith was restored. To this day she thanked God for the gift of Arizona and the wisdom she had learned in that scorching wilderness.

  Alex sighed and dropped to sit on the front step, his head in his hands. “That’s why I couldn’t find you.”

  She sucked in a quick breath, surprised at the statement. “You tried?”

  “Of course I tried!”

  She could scarcely believe it as he recounted the dozens of letters he had sent to Hercules. He even visited her old school in Boston! She sat beside him on the stoop, stunned and bewildered. No boy who wanted only a quick roll in the hay would have done such things.

  “Oh, Alex.” Those two words carried the weight of twelve years of confusion. His impossibly blue eyes mirrored her own regret and heartbreak, and a dangerous surge of emotion welled up inside her. It threatened to pull her back into the wild, wonderful tumult of those sun-kissed days. Maybe Alex had cared for her, even though she’d been too young to be making life-altering decisions. He’d always been rowdy and impulsive, when all she craved was stability. Had they married, it would have been a disaster.

  “Did you ever find out who told on us?” she asked.

  “I think one of his bodyguards must have found out.”

  She shook her head. “The morning Bruce confronted me, he said someone from the town had been spying on us and told him everything.” Bruce was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.

  “No,” Alex said, rubbing his jaw as he stared into space. “I think it had to be someone on his payroll. Somebody from town might have told my parents or Hercules, but they wouldn’t have snitched to Garrett.”

  Eloise swallowed hard. Although she hadn’t breathed a word of their trysts to anyone, that hadn’t been the case with Alex. In the tavern, Hercules Duval had asked if she was the Eloise.

  She framed her words carefully. “Your brother . . . he knew about us.”

  Alex’s face stilled. “Yes.”

  “Could he have been the one to tell? Maybe he didn’t approve.”

  “Not Hercules. He would never have put us in danger like that. It had to be one of Garrett’s bodyguards.”

  Alex pulled back a few inches, reluctant admiration on his face as he looked at her. She’d taken great care with her appearance this morning. After squeezing into the world’s tightest corset, she had selected a tailored pinstripe jacket with a frothy lace jabot.

  “You sure have changed,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognize you. The girl I remember had twigs in her hair and grass stains on her skirt. She never would have worn that torture chamber squeezing your waist.”

  Was he making fun of her? She couldn’t be sure, but it wasn’t prudent to get dragged into this conversation. She wasn’t that rebellious girl anymore, but the way he smiled at her seemed uncomfortably familiar. She tried to stand, but he pulled her back down onto the step.

  “Look, we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I want you to know that I’m sorry. To the bottom of my soul, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, for everything,” he said. “For what happened twelve years ago. For losing my head in there a minute ago. For the lack of electricity in this town. For the cloudy day.” He spoke with teasing affection, and it stirred something inside her.

  A bit of the starch went out of her. “Alex, can I ask a favor?”

  “You can ask me anything in the world.”

  She always could. No matter how deep or vulnerable, she’d always been able to share anything and everything with this warm-hearted, funny man. But that was in the past. The town spread out before her. Hundreds of buildings, shops, and homes that needed appraising, and Claude Fitzgerald was waiting to pounce on her for the slightest mistake. Alex was a dangerous distraction on so many levels.

  She swallowed hard. “Can we try to forget the past and treat each other like cordial acquaintances? I feel awful coming into this town to help pull it apart, and it’s inevitable that we’re going to run into each other over and over. It would be easier if we declare a cease-fire. I can’t afford to botch this assignment. Claude Fitzgerald is a mean bull
dog, and he’d like nothing more than to see me fail in spectacular fashion.”

  For a moment Alex seemed taken aback, then amused. He leaned forward to speak conspiratorially. “You know that I’m the mayor. I can have him thrown into the stocks or banished from the town square.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “Tarred and feathered? It has a long and storied history in this part of the country. Just say the word.”

  It was hard not to laugh, but this sort of flirtation mustn’t take root. “Alex, please. I’m here to do a job that neither one of us is happy about. I want to be civilized. I’d like us to behave like cordial acquaintances.”

  His eyes dimmed a little, but he still smiled. “Sorry, Eloise, my feelings for you will never be cordial. I think of you as the girl who set my wild boyhood heart on fire. Who I could tickle into—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “That’s in the past. Buried.”

  “How far in the past? Maybe we could dig it up.”

  She’d just asked him to stop flirting, and he had ignored her. It was time to end this conversation and get down to work. With cool precision, she stood and smoothed the features in her face.

  “It was another lifetime,” she said coolly. “One that’s gone and lost forever.”

  She didn’t look back as she headed to the next house on her list, even though she felt Alex’s gaze boring into her the entire walk. She had too much to lose by getting entangled with him again. There were only six female certified public accountants in the entire state of New York, and she was one of them. She had walked through fire to get her CPA license, and going forward she intended to be a model of efficient civility. Cordial acquaintances, nothing more.

  No matter what, she wouldn’t let Alex knock her off-kilter again.

  Chapter

  Seven

  Alex sat at the conference table in the town hall meeting room, surrounded by members of the town council. For the past five years, this had been their war room, where they’d desperately fought to save their town. So far, they’d lost every battle. Now the best Alex could do was negotiate favorable terms of surrender. This morning, that meant getting the upper hand over the government bureaucrats due to arrive in ten minutes to plan their demolition.