Chapter Eighteen
An empty sack does not stand.
Irish proverb
He was alive.Elise couldn’t believe her eyes. Her father, the one she had grieved as dead,stoodin front of her.
And what a good house he had. Granted, it was not as fine and large as Wiltham; however, the floors were wood, the walls plaster, and there was a sense of hominess in the furnishings. Stairs led from the front hall to another floor. The scent of cooking food drifted toward where they stood. Over his shoulder, she saw into a dining room with pewter plates set around the table as if ready for a family meal.
When her father had been missing for longer than a year, Elise and her sisters had imagined all sorts of terrible things happening to him. He’d always talked of returning to the Indies, where he’d once served the king and been married toGwendolyn’s late mother. The tropics were a haven for the worst sort of diseases. Could he have been struck ill? Or even lost at sea?
Dara believed he might be on the Continent. He’d once told them of traveling through Holland and Belgium. The sisters had feared that, out of patriotic duty to his country, he had jumped into the battle of Waterloo. He might be one of the many buried where they lay.
Then Gram had died and their grief had seemed never-ending.
In spite of their father being declared dead, it hadn’t seemed true, not to Elise. When things at Wiltham were upsetting, she would lie awake at night imagining him in the Americas. Far away, where it was hard for him to reach them. He didn’t know about Gram’s death or cousin Richard claiming the estate. He couldn’t send money. The Americas were too far away. And there were wars and native uprisings and all sorts of danger that would make traveling home to Wicklow impossible.
However, none of the sisters had pictured their father in England.
And yet, here he was.
He’d aged quite a bit. Elise reached up as she had done as a child. Her hands easily landed on his shoulders. He stooped now as if the world was heavy. He’d also missed several spots shaving, and the wrinkles on his face had multiplied.
But he was still her beloved Papa. The one whohad swept in and out of her life with presents and stories before leaving just as quickly.
Tears, happy ones, filled her eyes. “I told everyone you weren’t dead. I knew it in my heart.”
“Elise?” He spoke as if he hadn’t recognized her until this moment.
Well, that was to be expected. She was twenty, grown up. She began chattering. There was so much she needed to tell him.
“You are not going to believe all that has happened. Dara’s married to a very good man. He’s an MP, an Irish one. Can you imagine? We traveled to London to take part in the Season because your cousin Richard claimed Wiltham. You remember him? You never liked him. I don’t think you knew his wife, Caroline, but she isodious. We couldn’t stay at Wiltham. They kept trying to marry Gwendolyn off to sluggish men. I think her suitors were paying Richard to marry her. You should see Gwendolyn now, Papa. She is beautiful and lords queue up to dance with her. They dote on me as well, but I—hmm... we don’t have to talk about that. Suffice it to say, I found you.I found you.”
She ended by hugging him. Her papa was safe.
And then a door opened and closed in the back of the house. A male voice called, “Father? Are you still here? If so, come and look at this pony...”
The voice trailed off even as her papa grabbed her arms and removed them. He placed them ather sides before turning. Elise looked in the direction of the booted steps coming their way.
“I was just leaving, Charles,” her father said.
Charles came into the hall. He was about Elise’s age, perhaps a year older or maybe more. He had dark curls, very much like Dara’s. His face was lean with a strong nose. Her father’s face. But his eyes were green.
His brows came together. “We have a visitor?” he asked.
“Someone from my past,” her father answered.
The words confused Elise. Someone? Justsomeone?
“Does Mother know we have a guest?”
Before her papa could answer, there was the clatter of feet running across the floor above. A door in the hallway not far from where Charles stood opened. A dark-haired woman of some forty years of age in a mobcap enter the hall. “Oh, Charles, supper will be served within the hour. I had so wanted it ready before your father left—”
Her voice broke off as she looked toward the front door where Elise and her papa stood. She was a handsome woman with hips that had borne children and an expression that didn’t suffer fools.
Elise took a step aside from her father.
The footsteps from the floor above came charging down the stairs, accompanied by laughing. Two boys of perhaps eight or ten years of age, onetrying to hold a hat away from another, came to a tumbling halt almost at Elise’s feet.
