“God, my life is not going to be worth living,” she whispered miserably.
“What was that?” Oliver had heard her mumbled breath but couldn’t understand what had made her life so bad that she deemed it not worth living.
“Come on through,” Emmeline said by way of reply. She led the way into the small sitting room to the left of the front door and took a seat in one of the two high-backed chairs positioned next to the unlit fire. “Do you have news of my sister?”
Oliver planted his feet on the floor and rested his elbows on his knees once he had taken the pro-offered seat. He stared down at his hands for a moment while he tried to find the right words to say.
“She is dead, isn’t she?” Emmeline prompted when the man didn’t seem inclined to want to tell her. “Who are you by the way?”
Emmeline winced because she kn
ew she should have asked him that before she had allowed him into her home.
I would have done if I hadn’t been so enraptured by how handsome he is. You were foolish, Emmeline. Really foolish.
“My name is Oliver. I work with the War Office,” Oliver replied. He hadn’t been told to lie to the chit, but she didn’t need to know the finer details pertaining to the Star Elite. Not yet, in any case.
“Just what has she been up to now?” Emmeline gasped. It was such an instinctive question that she immediately regretted it and looked contritely at the man seated opposite while she waited for him to tell her what had happened. He looked so surprised by her outburst that he remained quiet and considered it for a moment before he spoke again.
“I take it that your sister was a little wayward.” It wasn’t a question.
It was no hardship to sit and study the woman while she tried to decide what to tell him. Emmeline Elkins was stunning; it was that simple. With blond hair, and deep blue eyes, the pale oval of her porcelain beauty was perfection personified. He had never seen anybody like her at all in all of his years touring the country and living in London. Hers was a classical beauty combined with an almost regal elegance that was at odds with her somewhat impoverished circumstance.
“Do you live here alone? Are you parents here?” Oliver asked a little desperately.
Emmeline opened her mouth to tell him that she lived alone but then questioned the wisdom of it.
“I am sorry, how do you know my sister?” she countered.
Oliver sighed ruefully. “Like I have said, I work with the War Office.”
“In London,” Emmeline said dully.
“Yes. We have been investigating the disappearances of several women believed to have been kidnapped around these parts,” he continued.
“Yes, I know,” Emmeline nodded. “Caroline being one of them.”
“Was it you who reported her missing?”
“Yes. Her landlady warned me that she hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. I naturally went to all of Caroline’s old haunts to try to find her, but nobody had seen her. Then, a villager told me that they had seen her late one evening in town. She had been all alone. It was the last anyone saw of her. The magistrate said it looked like she had been kidnapped by the same gang who had snatched those other poor women. He thought she had been taken because of how she looked.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
Oliver looked around the neat yet sparse room. “Why is your sister not sharing this house with you? Are your parents here?”
“My parents are dead, sir,” Emmeline informed him pertly.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
Emmeline nodded her appreciation but didn’t expand. It wasn’t pertinent given it happened a few years ago now. Besides, she had enough to contend with right now without opening up a Pandora’s box of memories as well.
“Caroline left here a few months before my parents died in a carriage accident, sir.”
“Please don’t call me ‘sir’. Oliver will do,” he ordered quietly.
“Emmeline,” she offered.