Will climbed down from the driver’s seat and hurried to the back of the wagon. Victoria seemed to have a little debate with herself and then finally decided to meet Will who was standing there, smiling and waiting, his hand outstretched. Victoria’s eyes were clearly looking anywhere but at Will as he helped her up. Will tried to hide his smirk when she wiped her hand on her dress when he let go. Cecelia and Mabel were still astonished by Victoria’s acceptance of a ride and simply gaped at their mother the whole time, even while Will took their hands to help them up into the wagon bed.
I tried not to stare at Victoria as I attempted to figure out her acceptance of Will’s help. It was completely out of character. I had never seen Victoria accept any help from anyone. Yes, she ordered me to fix her food and brush her hair and make her bed … but that was not because Victoria was weak. It was because she was to be obeyed. It was to show me that she had power and status and control. To Victoria, accepting help was a sign of weakness, and weakness was abhorrent to her.
It was almost an absurdity to think that Victoria was finally becoming humble in our desperate circumstances, as was the idea that she could admit to needing help, even in this small way. All I could figure was that she must be suffering more physically than I had supposed that morning, or that she was in more of a hurry than I’d thought she was to get to town. Whatever the reason, I was grateful that she had accepted Will’s offer. And I suspected my stepsisters were too. Because, though they would never admit it, the soles of their shoes were dangerously close to becoming worn right through to the ground.
“So, you are going to town today, then?” he muttered to me under his breath when it was my turn to get into the wagon. I had no chance to answer. After all that had happened that morning, I had forgotten that he had asked me if I was planning on going. I thought it very strange that he and my stepfamily were suddenly so concerned about what was happening in town. Surely Will wasn’t at all concerned that Roger Wallace was back in town, if he even knew.
Will offered me his hand to help me up into the wagon, and without thinking, I placed my hand in his. I winced visibly and inhaled sharply through my gritted teeth as my tender, freshly whipped hand touched his. His eyes shot down to my hand, and I jerked it away and hid it behind my back with the other one. Will closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, but he wouldn’t allow himself to look in Victoria’s direction. Instead, he stared down at the ground, trying to compose himself. I was grateful that Victoria was studiously ignoring Will and me, and Mabel and Cecelia were now staring at nothing, sighing in boredom as they waited.
After a few seconds of him staring at the ground and me silently pleading with him to not say anything about it, he raised his eyes to mine. His fury and outrage and pity had been replaced by a fierce determination that I couldn’t quite understand. Then, so swiftly it left me breathless, and so gently it touched my heart, he placed his hands around my waist and lifted me up into the wagon. Without looking at me or anyone else, he returned to the driver’s seat.
People rarely ever touched me. I was abruptly aware of this as soon as Will’s hands touched my waist. I had never really thought about it before. I never went driving anywhere, so no man ever took my hand to help me into a carriage. I never danced with anyone or embraced affectionate relatives—who didn’t even exist anyway. My parents were gone and so no one ever hugged or kissed me. I was surprised by this startling reminder of how unaccustomed I was to having someone close to me and, ironically, how lonely it suddenly made me feel. I sighed and told myself to stop thinking about it. He was just helping me into the wagon, after all. But why could I still feel the warmth from his hands?
As we drove along, Victoria seemed not to have noticed Will’s and my exchange outside the wagon. She seemed utterly resolute to pretend she was anywhere else but sitting on a hay bale in the back of a rickety old wagon bed instead of in our beautiful carriage we once had. I turned away from her to hide my smile. I wondered how well she was succeeding in that as the little bits of hay flew into our eyes. I was just glad I didn’t have to feel every tiny pebble that poked through my thin soles.
Victoria ordered Will to drop us off just outside of town. Actually, she whispered something to Mabel, who then called out the order to Will over her shoulder to drop us off outside of town. Will helped them out of the wagon, and Victoria and her daughters didn’t even glance at Will, much less thank him. They walked away quickly before anyone could see them getting out of an old wagon filled with hay.
While Will was helping the other three out of the wagon, I considered quickly climbing up to the driver’s seat and down the side of the wagon. I wanted to avoid any awkwardness about my hands, but I decided that would do the exact opposite. Besides, I’d probably rip my last dress in the process.
When it was my turn, instead of offering his hand as he had with the others, Will lifted both arms out for me. I smiled in appreciation and embarrassment as he gently lifted me out of the wagon and placed me steadily on the ground.
“Thank you for the ride, Will,” I said before he could speak. I didn’t want to talk about the uncomfortable topic of my hurt hands. And my sudden awareness of his closeness made me terribly nervous so I tried desperately to hide that by talking … too much. “That was very kind of you, and besides that, I needed a good laugh today.” I described Victoria’s face as she sat on a pile of hay in the back of the wagon. It was as if she had been sucking on a lemon and couldn’t spit it out until we arrived in town.
“I would have given anything to see her face sitting back there.” He grinned mischievously, and then his face become abruptly serious. “The way they treat you infuriates me.” His eyes glanced quickly to my hands.
“I know, Will. But we both know that confronting them only makes things worse.”
My mind went back to a few years before when I had inadvertently mentioned to Will that I had been locked in the cellar all day without food or water because Victoria thought that I had stolen one of her favorite necklaces. Will had stormed into the house and yelled at Victoria. All she did was politely listen with a conniving smile on her thin lips. When Will left, I had been thrown back into the cellar for another day.
Victoria knew how to punish those around her, especially me. She could have yelled back at Will or even hurt him somehow, but instead, she took it out on me, and he never forgave himself. That was the only reason he ever stayed silent when he noticed how I was treated—knowing that she would find a way to harm me more.
My thoughts returned to the present and I looked up to see Will nodding, obviously reliving the same memory. I could see my own powerlessness reflected in his eyes.
“There’s nothing we can do. Life is difficult and that’s just the way it is,” I said. “But thank you for caring, Will. You’re such a good friend to me.” Will nodded again with a brooding look on his face and left to tend to his horse and wagon, as I walked into town alone.
Chapter 4
THE PLAZA IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN WAS BUSTLING WITH merchants and customers when we arrived. Traders were trying to outshout each other in their attempts to sell their goods. Victoria and her daughters always reveled in the chaos and loved going from shop to shop. Here, they were in their element.
I had always been mystified by my father’s attraction to my stepmother. From the very first time I met Victoria, I felt uneasy around her. She had come to live with us, but I felt like I was an intruder in her life. I always wondered how Father was so blind to Victoria’s cruel nature. Even in the six months between their wedding and Father’s death, it was plain to me that Victoria was not all what she seemed to be. She could silence me with one glare of her icy blue eyes, and in the next moment, she would be gazing at my father with all the affection of new love, at least her impression of it. I had wanted to tell Father about my fear of Victoria, but he seemed so happy, I hadn’t wanted to trouble him. I just figured it would take some time for us to get to know each other better and then maybe I could see that Victoria was
as wonderful as she seemed to be when Father was around. I waited for that day for a long time. It never came.
A part of me was disappointed in Father’s blindness, until I saw Victoria in public. When Victoria came into town to trade and buy, she became the lively, charming woman that Father had fallen in love with. I could, of course, see through the façade, but to the untrained eye, her dichotomy was imperceptible.
Today as I traded my vegetables for a small sack of flour and a few buttons, I watched Victoria as she effortlessly drifted from one conversation to the next, making people laugh or gasp in response to whatever story she was telling—in which she was always the main character—and then she would leave at just the right moment when people wanted to hear more so that they would be anticipating the next time they would be graced by her presence.
I realized in these moments why it was so easy for Father to fall in love with Victoria. He couldn’t stand the thought of anyone being insincere or false. So much so, he refused to believe that those qualities could exist in such a vivacious and lovely woman as Victoria had been … or pretended to be.
There was only one word to describe Victoria’s public “performances.”
Perfect.
Maybe it was because of Victoria’s inexplicable behavior on the way into town, or because of the gauntness in her face that I had noticed that morning, but I couldn’t help watching her closely as I was forced to follow her from shop to shop. Victoria seemed completely at ease as she wove in and out of the crowds, her daughters following closely behind as if they wouldn’t know where to go if Victoria weren’t leading them along. But as I observed her, I was concerned by the slight sheen of sweat on her brow and the stiffness of her motions, and how no one else seemed to notice.
After over an hour of following Victoria and her daughters, my arms full of their parcels and boxes, they finally stopped to visit with some more friends.
“Is it true? Is he really coming?” a girl standing near me asked as she hopped up and down on her toes and clapped her dainty hands. I didn’t know who she was, but I was used to that by now. I had lived in Maycott my whole life, but since I didn’t exactly belong to any social circle and the town had grown so much in the last few years, my stepmother and stepsisters now knew more people than I did.
“I’ve never seen him, but I’ve heard he’s the most handsome man who ever lived!” another girl squealed.
“He’s been away for so long! I’ve been dying to see him,” another girl sighed.
“Who? Roger Wallace?” I asked. Everyone looked at me as if they didn’t know I was even there until I spoke. Victoria rapidly looked around at each face of the women in the circle, mortification in every feature of her pale face. Then, abruptly, the women exploded into raucous laughter.
“Roger Wallace? Roger Wallace? Who cares about Roger Wallace?” Mabel said between fits of laughter. She wasn’t even addressing me. She was looking at the faces of the rest of the ladies in the circle so that they too could join in her amusement at my apparent stupidity. My face turned bright red, and I awkwardly excused myself—though no one seemed to notice me slip away.
I was thoroughly confused now. Victoria, Mabel, and Cecelia had cared very much about Roger Wallace just a couple of hours earlier. The girls had worn their best dresses to his house so that they would be the ones to catch his eye. Then out of nowhere, Victoria and her daughters had hurried into town for what I thought was another chance to be near Roger. But I had been wrong, apparently. And it was not only us in town. It seemed everyone else who lived in Maycott, or ever had lived in Maycott, was here too.
I strode away from the circle of uproariously laughing women as quickly as I could and carried the packages and my sack of flour to the fountain in the center of the square. I sat down on the edge of the fountain, held the flour on my lap, set their things down at my feet, and pursed my lips in frustration. None of the things they bought were useful. We all needed new shoes and practical clothes and food to eat, but with each shop they bought something more frilly and ridiculous. They had run up more debt than I could keep track of, and I wondered how they would possibly pay it all back. I shuddered at the thought.
I pulled my eyes away from the revolting pile at my feet and looked for a friendly face. Across the square, I noticed Will loading up bags of oats onto his wagon. Close behind him were three girls, giggling and pointing at him. Will heaved a heavy sack onto his shoulder, and one of the girls sighed and placed her hand over her heart. Will must have heard because he stopped and looked in her direction.
She giggled again and batted her eyelashes alluringly. Will rolled his eyes and finished loading the sack onto the wagon. I laughed quietly to myself. Will was always unimpressed by giggly, silly girls.
Sometimes I wondered if I would be more giggly and silly if trying to survive hadn’t made me more serious. I was generally content with, or at least tolerable of, my life, but over the past few years, I had grown more pensive and even solemn at times. It was impossible for me to know if that had come from maturity, or from the void left by losing my parents, or from the possibility that the surviving part of me was taking over the living part of me. It wasn’t as if I never felt any real emotion; it just seemed like I felt everything through the fog that was my constant companion. I just did what had to be done, without being particularly sad or happy about it. Just surviving.
I was brought out of my reverie by someone bumping into me so hard they almost knocked me off my seat on the fountain, and then they obliviously went laughing on their way. I wanted to leave town as soon as possible to escape this dense crowd, but I also did not want to leave until I knew what was happening.
I was about to go and ask Will if he would tell me what piece of information I was missing when my eyes met the eyes of the wigmaker. She was sitting on a rocking chair just outside of her shop, the tip of one shoe pushing against the ground as she rocked gently back and forth. She was the only woman I had ever known who worked in town, and it was only because she had taken over when her husband died. In Maycott, if a woman ever needed to earn extra money for her family, she most often quietly took in some sewing, but the wigmaker unabashedly set up shop right in the middle of town. It was quite the scandal for years, but now, she was a prominent, yet silent and watchful, fixture in the community.
I could tell that she had already been watching me, and I waved a hesitant hand in her direction. Every time she saw me since I had begged her to cut my hair, she looked at me with that same pitiful look that made me feel like I was even more helpless than I thought I was. I knew she wasn’t trying to be unkind—quite the opposite—but I had come to avoid her and her keen eyes. I would be forever grateful to her for never revealing our conversation to anyone, but I had never been able to find the words to thank her. I smiled politely and looked away, but I could still feel her pitying eyes on me. No one else in town looked at me that way. But they didn’t know what my life had become, if they even knew who I was. She did.
As I looked away from the woman, I spotted Jane Emerson admiring some shoes through a shop window across from me. Her father had worked for my father when we were young and she had spent many days with me at Ashfield playing in the garden, reading fairy tales in the library, and picking wildflowers. I gathered up my things, stood up from my seat on the edge of the fountain, and walked over to her, carefully avoiding bumping into anyone in the bustling crowd. I only saw Jane on Sundays at church and when we both happened to be in town on the same day. I was especially grateful to see her today.
I crept up behind her, freed one of my hands, and tugged playfully at her long, chestnut braid that fell down her back. Jane’s butter-yellow silk taffeta dress swirled around her as she spun around in surprise. When she saw me, her face broke into a delighted smile.
“Oh, Ella! You look radiant today! I think your eyes are getting bluer. How is that even possible?” She laughed and reached for a lock of my hair that hung loose around my face. I had taken it out of my sca
rf before we came to town, but didn’t have time to braid it or put it up. “I love your hair in the summer. It’s the color of corn silk.” She stole a glance over my shoulder. “And I’m not the only one who sees how gorgeous you are.”
I gave her a quizzical look, glimpsed over my shoulder, and spotted an impeccably dressed man leaning against a pillar. His hair was combed and slick, and a cigar was sticking out of his mouth. He was staring at me, his hands in his pockets and a leering expression on his face. Roger Wallace. He looked exactly how I remembered. I scowled and turned back to Jane, but she was still looking past me, captivated. I followed her gaze and to my horror saw that Roger Wallace had peeled himself off his pillar and was making his way toward us.
He threw his cigar on the ground, put his hand back in his pocket, and swaggered across the square. He didn’t go around anyone. He walked in a straight line through the crowds and made them part for him, as if he saw himself as something biblical.
“Don’t leave me!” I whispered to Jane.
“I won’t,” she said urgently, though we were both on the verge of laughter. But just then I heard someone call out “Jane!” and she was forced to join another conversation behind me.
By this time, Roger was standing directly in front of me. His eyes took me in from head to hem. I stood there helpless as he inspected me. He made no attempt to disguise what he was doing.
“Afternoon, Miss Blakeley,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
“Yes, it is.”
His scrutinizing eyes narrowed slightly as he processed my less-than-ecstatic greeting, and he looked at me more closely, more menacingly. “You know, when I saw you across the square just now, I thought to myself, ‘That Ella Blakeley is the most beautiful girl in the kingdom.’ But now, up close, I see that the years have not been kind to you, my dear.”
Ella: A Novel Page 4
