by Merry Farmer
She was spared having to hold her own in any sort of longer confrontation as Henry finally walked out of the breakfast room and crossed the hall, heading for her. Olympia turned sharply and marched deeper into the morning parlor. As Henry reached her, Ellie let out a breath.
“What was that all about?” Henry asked, offering his arm.
Ellie took it gratefully, happy for him to lead her away from the morning parlor and out toward the estate’s gardens. “Princess Olympia was just reminding me how regal she is.”
“Was she?” Henry’s expression flickered, as though he wasn’t sure whether to be angry or amused.
Ellie chose to be amused and laughed. “Is that how all royalty behaves?”
Henry snorted, leading her down the back stairs from the house into a vast garden made up of autumnal flower beds in between crisply trimmed hedges. “German princesses are barely royalty,” he explained. “Before Germany was unified seven years ago, it consisted of a plethora of states and duchies that were part of various coalitions. The major landholders and administrators of those duchies all called themselves princes, but they are more akin to dukes and earls here in Britain than they are to our sovereign.”
“Oh.” Ellie nodded slowly, not sure she understood completely, but grasping enough to know that Olympia was getting above herself. Kind of like Vivian Bonneville thought she was the Queen of Haskell, just because her daddy had money.
Another jolt of homesickness wiped the smile from Ellie’s face and made her shoulders sag.
“Is something wrong?” Henry asked.
Since it wouldn’t have been fair for her to admit she was missing life in Haskell when everything Henry was offering her was so much grander, she said, “I’m worried about dancing.” That much was true.
“Dancing?” Henry laughed. “The kind of dancing my mother encourages at her parties is simple.”
“Maybe.” Ellie sent him a sideways look. “But it’s almost certainly not the kind of dancing I’m used to.”
“Hmm.” Henry nodded. Ellie thought that he just might understand after all. His brow knit in thought as they continued to stroll through the garden, until at last he said, “I have an idea.”
“Oh?”
A mischievous grin broke out on his handsome face. “Meet me after luncheon in the ballroom.”
“Where’s the ball room?” The feeling of being lost and sinking hit Ellie again.
Henry turned back to the house and pointed at the second-floor windows. “That’s the ballroom there, on the first floor.”
“You mean the second floor,” Ellie corrected him.
“No, the first floor.”
She frowned. “That floor there?” She pointed where he was pointing.
“Yes, precisely.”
“That’s the second floor.”
“No it isn’t, it’s the first floor,” Henry said with a chuckle.
Ellie pointed at the house and counted. “First, second, third, fourth floors.”
“No,” Henry corrected her with a charming and patient smile. “Ground floor, first floor, second, third.”
Ellie let out a breath, shaking her head. “Everything is different over here. You even count differently than we do.”
“It’s all right,” Henry said, giving her arm a squeeze. “You’ll get used to it.”
Ellie smiled, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.
HENRY COULDN’T REMEMBER when he’d had such an enjoyable morning. Any day he had the chance to sleep late was a good day as far as he was concerned. But to come down to breakfast only to see his mother smiling and Ellie looking, well, beautiful, made everything seem right with the world. Even if Reese and his father were arguing and Princess Olympia was curdling the cream with her haughtiness.
After a stroll through the gardens, in which Henry displayed the entirety of his horticultural knowledge by pointing out which flowers were chrysanthemums and which were not, he’d taken Ellie to the library to feast herself on books while he prepared for their dance lesson. They met up again in the dining room for a decidedly bland lunch, in which his mother talked of little else besides the upcoming party—with Olympia’s full, enthusiastic participation—while he kept Ellie amused with tales of university.
By the time the cold meats and cheeses were cleared away and the rest of the family went about their afternoon business, Henry was more than ready to whisk Ellie up to the ballroom.
“I’m glad I don’t have to find it on my own,” she said as they mounted to the stairs to the first—definitely first, none of this second nonsense—floor. “I don’t think I ever would have found it.”
“I shall have a map drawn up for you at once,” he said. Although he wouldn’t have minded constantly escorting her around the cavernous, old house either. “Here we are.”
The strains of a single violin greeted them as they squeezed through the half-open door into the ballroom. Ellie gasped as soon as they were over the threshold and pressed a hand to her chest as she looked around. Her awe caused Henry to look at the massive room too, wondering what it must be like to see it for the first time. The ballroom was nearly as long as the entire house and as wide as two rooms. It contained a total of four fireplaces, a dozen sets of ancient family armor, glittering chandeliers that hung from a gold-painted ceiling, and various articles of furniture scattered around the perimeter.
“The ceiling is painted gold because it if it were left white, the soot from all of the candles that are kept lit throughout balls would blacken it,” he explained, following her eyes upward. “It’s easier to wipe gold clean.”
Ellie let out a sharp laugh and dragged her gaze down to meet his. “Something tells me there’s a lesson in that statement.”
“Probably,” he grinned. He liked the way her mind worked. She could be completely bowled over by things that he took for granted, and yet cut through to the heart of the simplest statements. And here he’d thought she was just some pretty, simple American he could use to get back at his father. The fact that he’d thought he could use her at all turned his stomach.
He shook away the feeling by letting go of her arm and marching deeper into the room to where one of the house’s footmen stood with a violin under his chin, playing away.
“Bo, thank you for coming,” Henry said, gesturing for Ellie to follow him. “Ellie, this is Bo. He’ll be playing for us while we practice today.”
Bo the footman lowered his violin and bowed from the waist, but when he straightened, he wore a frown. “Forgive me, sir, I thought her name was Helena.”
“I—” Henry’s mind went blank. Damn him for slipping so easily, and in front of someone who could set the entire servant’s hall gossiping.
“Ellie is my nickname,” Ellie told him, her cheeks only slightly pinker than usual. “It’s short for Helena. It’s what my daddy calls me. You’ve got an interesting name too. Bo?”
Henry was so relieved he nearly laughed. She had turned the situation around so smoothly that even the shrewdest gossip would have been satisfied.
“It’s on account of me fiddle, miss.” Bo held up the violin in one hand and its bow in the other. “Bow.” He wiggled the item in question, then pointed it at himself. “Bo. Seein’ as how I been playin’ since I could pick the fiddle up.”
“I see.” Ellie gave him a smile that would have melted the heart of the most stubborn man. “And you’re going to play for us while Lord Henry here teaches me to dance?”
“Yes, miss.” Bo smiled, instantly won over.
“If you would be so kind, Bo.” Henry took Ellie’s hand and led her a few steps away, until they had plenty of space around them. “Let’s start with something easy, a waltz.”
“Yes, my lord.” Bo raised his violin and launched into a smooth waltz.
“Oh, I know this one,” Ellie said, letting Henry pull her into his arms.
“I think almost everyone knows the waltz,” Henry said. “Although you will find that a decent partner knows a few extra flourishes to make e
very dance special.” Although how any dance with Ellie wouldn’t be special was beyond him.
“Show me,” she said, the challenge of learning in her eyes.
“Like this.”
He tightened his hold on Ellie and walked her through a series of complicated turns. Ellie gasped and laughed as they went. She was a fast learner and had far more grace than Henry would have expected. Then again, he was beginning to wonder why he expected so little of her. She was vivacious, quick-witted, and warm. The only thing he enjoyed more than seeing her joyful smile as he spun her through waltz turns was holding her close enough to feel the heat of her body. Or perhaps that was the heat growing inside of him.
“Of course, people don’t dance as many kinds of dances as they used to,” he said as he continued to sweep Ellie around the room.
“They don’t?”
He shook his head. “In my grandparents’ time, they would dance quadrilles and reels, polkas, and all sorts of country dances.”
“Oh, I know country dances,” Ellie said, her eyes bright.
“You do?” In spite of his admiration, he found that hard to believe.
“Absolutely. We did country dances all the time growing up.” She tilted her head to the side. “Well, folk dances. German folk dances.”
“German folk dances?” he repeated, feeling inexplicably aroused by the idea. “German?”
She laughed, sent a sideways look toward Bo, then whispered, “My parents emigrated from Germany. I was actually born within weeks of them arriving in Missouri.”
“Were you really?” He danced them off to a corner of the room, ostensibly to practice traveling steps, but really so that he could ask more questions.
Ellie nodded. “Papa was certain he could make a better life in the American West. He used to tell me all the time about the advertisements for America in his German newspapers, and about the men in the cities who recruited people to move away to start a new life.”
“And did he make a better life?”
Ellie’s smile grew strained. “For a while. The problem was that he and Mama never learned English properly. We spoke only German at home. When Papa was killed in a fire at the factory where he’d gone to work in St. Louis, Mama had a hard time coping.”
“I’m so sorry.” Try as he did, Henry had a hard time imagining that kind of life. He thought back to the dock workers he’d admired so much the other day when he’d gone to London to fetch her. It hadn’t occurred to him what might happen if one of them was a family’s sole breadwinner and was killed or injured. “What did you do?”
She fixed him with a look that was both reproachful and teasing. “I think I’ve already told you what I did.”
A prickling, slightly sickening knot formed in his stomach. “How old were you?” he asked, dreading the answer.
She glanced down, regret and a strange sort of exhaustion coming over her. “Fifteen.”
Grief and rage made him miss a step. He stopped dancing, but continued to hold her in his arms. “Fifteen.” He shook his head in disbelief.
She slowly raised her eyes to meet his. “It’s not as bad as you think, really.” Something in her eyes told him otherwise, but he let her continue. “Most times I would just close my eyes and calculate how much flour or milk or rice the money would buy. And honestly, where I started out, at least, it didn’t take much more than five minutes for the men to have their poke and be done.”
Henry swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. Five minutes and money wasn’t intimacy. It was a pig paying to rut. He thought back to his own, wilder days and indiscretions. At least there had been a sense of fun with those ladies, even if they were professionals. They had laughed, played cards, drunk wine, and fiddled a bit before he sought his release. Did they feel the same way about him that Ellie felt about her—he could barely even think the word—customers?
He suddenly felt sick to his stomach and unspeakably dirty.
“It’s okay,” Ellie said, mistaking his grimace. “I moved out of working in the cribs and on to much better things when Bonnie found me.”
“Better things?”
He didn’t really want to know, but she seemed determined to make him feel better by saying, “I had my own room and a real bed at Bonnie’s. And she was really strict about which men she allowed in. We even had a room where they had to bathe first. And Dr. Meyers made sure we had exams every few months.”
Henry couldn’t speak. He wanted to say something. He wanted to say everything—that he was so, so sorry she’d had to endure that kind of a life, that it was unconscionable for any woman to have to live that way, that he would move heaven and earth to make sure she never had to sell her body to support her family again. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for dragging her into his heartless scheme.
“Do you want me to keep playing, my lord?” Bo asked from across the room.
Henry hadn't noticed the music had stopped. He cleared his throat, tasting bile. “Yes. Play something upbeat.”
“Yes, my lord.” Bo raised his fiddle and tickled it into a lively tune, still in a waltz beat.
“Are you all right?” Ellie asked as they swung back into dancing. “You look a little…green.”
He could take the coward’s way out and make an excuse, but Ellie deserved better than that. He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I never imagined what horrors women have been subjected to just to stay alive.”
“I made my choice,” she said quietly. “It meant Mama had a comfortable life until she passed a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. She went peacefully. And my younger sister went to school and became a teacher and everything. She wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t…done what I did. I’ve made peace with it.”
But he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure if he could. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to sleep at night after their ruse was over and Ellie was sent on her way. He would never be able to forget her, never be able to stop worrying about her and longing for her and…and wanting her.
Bo continued to play a lively tune, but Henry stopped, his arm tightening around Ellie’s waist, pulling her flush against him. His gaze fixed on her lips, softly parted and seemingly ready. The rhythm of the dance was drowned out by the beating of his heart.
“Ellie,” he whispered, inching closer to those lips.
“Yes?” she asked, breathless and almost quivering in his arms.
“I—”
“There you two are.”
His mother’s voice was so jarring that Henry jumped back as though he’d been caught doing something wrong. With distance between them, he was able to see the desire that filled Ellie’s eyes and the flush that spread from her cheeks down to the neckline of her dress.
“Mother,” Henry exclaimed, his voice cracking. He turned and started toward her.
His mother took a few steps into the room, sending both him and Ellie approving smiles. “I am certainly pleased to see the two of you getting on so well, but do I need to remind you that we still have more than a fortnight to go before your nuptials?”
“I’m so sorry, Lady Howsden.” Ellie rushed forward to Henry’s side. “It’s my fault. I was just so….”
“It was my fault entirely, Mother.” Henry took Ellie’s hand and as much of the blame as he could. “We were just practicing the waltz to be ready for your party.”
His mother laughed—a sound that hinted a little too blatantly that she was a red-blooded woman, and one who had enjoyed her share of beaux before being trapped in marriage to his father. “Never you mind.” She gave Henry a teasing slap on his arm by way of scolding, then reached to draw Ellie over to her side. “I’ve come to fetch Helena.”
“Me, my lady?”
“Yes, you.” The fond smile his mother gave Ellie was simultaneously wonderful and wrenching. She liked Ellie, and she would be so hurt when the truth came out. “Betsy told me what happened to your wardrobe, so I have sent for my modiste.”
“Oh?” Ellie’s voice wavered as she glanced to his mother in awe.
“I hope you don’t mind me whisking your beloved away, Henry, and I trust you won’t mind if we spend a great deal of your inheritance on adornment, but I believe your fiancée needs all new gowns in shades that are actually becoming to her.”
“Oh, Lady Howsden,” Ellie began, looking like she was going to wheedle out of his mother’s plans. “I don’t know.”
“I insist,” Henry said. He clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. “I insist that you have a dozen new gowns constructed, along with all of the trappings and mysterious things that I will only discover once we are wed.”
His mother laughed and blushed, slapping him again. Ellie looked as though she had died and gone to heaven…but wasn’t sure she deserved it.
“I insist,” he repeated, more serious, making direct eye contact. Because when everything did fall apart and she was forced to move on, the dresses and jewels he would give her could pay for her to start a new life.
“Well, all right then,” she said, letting his mother lead her off. “I’ll see you later?”
The hope in her eyes was almost too much. He wanted to go to her, take her back into his arms, and never let her go. Class and country be damned, he wanted Ellie more than he’d wanted anything in his life. But one glance at his mother, at the room around him, told him that could never be.
“You will,” he said and smiled as warmly as he could.
Inside, his heart began to break.
CHAPTER 5
When Lady Howsden said she wanted to throw a small party for her and Princess Olympia, Ellie imagined some of the gatherings Bonnie used to have in the parlor of her Place. Which was why she thought it was a little silly to have Lady Howsden’s seamstress work like crazy to sew an elaborate new dress in three days.
But when she made her way down from her room to the ballroom, the crisp, blue taffeta of her gown making exciting swishing sounds as she walked, she stopped dead in the doorway, clutching a hand to her stomach. There were at least a hundred people in the room, all of them dressed to the nines. The women wore jewels around their necks and in their hair that glittered in the light of what seemed like a thousand candles. The men were decked out in everything from midnight black suits to bright red military uniforms laden with medals. An orchestra was set up at the far end of the room, and already a dozen couples were swirling in waltz steps. Perfume filled the air. Even the house’s servants were dressed richly as they carried trays of drinks in crystal glasses among the guests.
