CHAPTER 52 - Eloise
DALE COULD NOT BREATHE. Shock wrapped around his lungs and squeezed the air out. Reality had splintered, lost all meaning. Surely he must be dreaming. Stranger things had happened. Olivia had traveled from the future, which surely qualified as more extraordinary, but seeing Eloise return from the dead shook him more. He felt... unmoored, glad, confused, relieved, furious, everything at the same time and with the same intensity. Such a storm of violent and contradictory emotions left him breathless and paralyzed.
The frozen tableau could almost be farcical if it wasn’t for the raw emotions permeating the room.
A burst of movement to his right broke the stillness,
Ninette had run to a credenza, shoved her hand into a drawer and pulled a pistol which she was trying to aim at him.
Eloise gasped. “No!”
Livvy was the closest to Ninette. She jumped to the other woman, and they grappled for the gun.
Dread dropped heavily in Dale’s gut at the danger to Olivia. It broke through his shock and galvanized him to action. In two strides, he reached them and snatched the weapon from Ninette’s hands. He quickly checked it and noticed, with rising fury, that it was loaded. She could have shot Livvy. He scowled at the maid.
“What were you planning to do, you lunatic? Shoot me?” He roared.
“I will kill you before I let you take her!”
“Enough, Ninette!” Eloise finally spoke up. “You will not kill anybody. Least of all Avondale. I need to speak with him. I owe him that.”
“You owe him nothing! Remember how he treated you? He will demand that you return to him.”
“It would be his right to do so. Nevertheless, I need to speak to him. Alone.” The authority in Eloise’s voice, coupled with her poise and direct stare, managed to subdue Ninette.
The maid begrudgingly moved toward the front door. She looked deflated, but then she turned to Olivia. “If I have to go, this woman should go as well,” she spat out.
Olivia merely looked her up and down. “My name is Olivia, and I will go only if Avondale so wishes.”
She looked back at him, asking for guidance. In her eyes he saw an emotion he couldn’t decipher, ...sadness, perhaps. She looked fragile, almost lost. But he couldn’t deal with it just now, not with his own emotions in a jumbled chaos.
There was an apology and a plea for understanding in his eyes when he asked, “Please, Livvy. Just give me a few minutes.”
She nodded and left with Ninette.
When they were finally alone, he turned to Eloise.
She turned and motioned for him to follow her to a cozy parlor just off the entrance.
