by Kirsty Ferry
Adam squeezed her hand. ‘Yes, I can hear the hooves coming,’ he said. ‘Come on, we have been spotted all right.’
‘Oh, please, just leave me in here!’ moaned Ella, reluctantly following him out of the hedge. She saw him shake his head and she rolled her eyes.
They stood together on the path, watching the horses ride up to them and Lydia, leading the way, raised her crop in greeting. The other two plodded along behind her, in no hurry, it seemed, to greet Adam. Ella saw pure venom in Helena’s demeanour and in Jacob’s she saw a pettiness directed at his male cousin. Ella promised herself to stay away from them for the next few hours if at all possible.
‘Darling, Adam!’ Lydia cried. ‘You are home. But please forgive me – I must go to my room for a while to lie down before dinner. This blasted head of mine. We had to cut our trip short.’ She pouted prettily and looked slyly at Ella.
Ella knew the look well. ‘Come to my room,’ Lydia mouthed, knowing that Helena and Jacob, sat as they were behind her, couldn’t see her. Ella nodded slightly, and Lydia blew her a kiss.
‘To the stables,’ she said, and flicked her crop against the horse’s flank.
Adam murmured greetings to Helena and Jacob as they approached, and Ella peeled away from the little group, heading back towards the house. Much as she didn’t want to leave Adam, she couldn’t bear being in the same vicinity as Helena for very long. In fact, even the next county would be too close for comfort, she decided.
Ella ran up the stairs to Lydia’s room and knocked on the door. The door opened a crack and Lydia beckoned her in. She looked far too healthy for someone who had suffered such a migraine, and Ella told her so.
‘You don’t fool me,’ Ella said, taking Lydia’s hands. ‘Be truthful, now. What happened?’
Lydia, laughing, nodded to the chairs in the bay window and they sat down.
‘You are right, of course,’ she said, with that mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘I was hoping they would stay behind and let me return home. I knew Adam was coming and I was anxious to see him. I also wanted those two to spend some time together. It didn’t quite work out how I had planned it.’
‘Adam was right,’ said Ella. ‘You are plotting, are you not?’
Lydia opened her eyes wide, looking at Ella innocently. Yes she signed, exaggerating the gesture. Then she shook her head and spoke. ‘Of course I’m not!’ she said, crossing her hands on her lap primly. ‘What must you think of me if I was plotting?’
‘One tends to find that matchmaking is only successful if the two parties at least consider each other as potential candidates,’ said Ella. ‘Adam says Helena may be open to the idea, but Jacob …’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he’s never considered her in that respect.’
‘Oh, he has,’ said Lydia. ‘Many years ago when we were children. I’m hoping to reignite the spark he seems to have lost somewhere.’ She leaned across and tapped Ella on the arm. ‘You need to help.’
‘Me?’ exclaimed Ella. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Well, I have a terrible feeling his heart is elsewhere and we need to put him back on track. We need him to understand that the only option he has is Helena.’
‘But where else would his heart be?’ asked Ella, leaning forward, eager for some gossip.
‘Why with you, of course!’ said Lydia, as if it was the most simple thing in the world.
Ella slammed back into her seat, horrified. ‘Oh, no. Absolutely not,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Exactly. And I cannot let it happen either, as I have other plans for you,’ said Lydia smiling angelically.
‘I cannot let it happen either!’ exclaimed Ella. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Why, talk to Adam at dinner tonight,’ said Lydia guilelessly. ‘Let those two … converse. I shall sit you next to Helena – now don’t look like that, it’s perfect – and on the other side of you shall be Adam. On Helena’s other side will be Jacob, then next to him, myself. You talk to Adam …’ she waved her hand around as if to display Ella turning her back on Helena, ‘and that means Helena has to talk to Jacob. And I will be there to guide their conversation. It’s really quite simple.’
‘Lydia, I hate dinner parties. You know that. I’m not particularly fond of Helena either. How can you do this to me and still say you are my dearest friend?’
‘Come now, that may be so. But you do like Adam, do you not?’ said Lydia. There it was again, the mischievous twinkle. ‘It’s perfect.’
Ella shook her head. She raised her little finger and pointed it at Lydia. ‘You are bad,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it for you, and only because it is you. But you are bad.’
‘Being bad can be so much fun,’ said Lydia complacently. ‘You should try it.’
‘So, are we to be entertained by your cousin’s little protégé tonight?’ asked Helena.
Dinner had not exactly been a roaring success. Ella had missed most of the discussions between Helena, Jacob and Lydia, but she had enjoyed sitting next to Adam. From what she understood, Helena had done her best to hold Jacob’s attention, but Jacob did his best to ignore her. Jacob had also spent much of dessert trying to attract and maintain Ella’s attention, which she was not particularly happy about.
And now, Helena sat daintily on the chaise longue, her rose-pink skirts all fluffed up around her, her dark hair falling from a neat centre parting into a froth of ringlets, almost to her waist. She folded her hands on her lap and smiled up at Jacob. She blinked her strange eyes innocently; a queer genetic flaw had made her the bearer of one dark blue eye and one bright green eye. Helena, Lydia had said, detested it, but she seemed to play on the fact that others thought it sweet and interesting.
‘Does she play anything we would recognise?’ Helena continued. ‘Or is it just – well – a rather amateur parlour trick?’
Ella, seated next to Lydia, stiffened. How dare she?
Helena deliberately looked straight at Ella and spoke very slowly. ‘Do. You. Play. Well?’ she asked. Ella wondered why the girl should distort her face quite so grotesquely to ask such a simple question.
‘I do,’ she replied.
Helena tilted her head slightly. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘I do,’ repeated Ella. ‘I play well. At least I have been told that.’ She flicked a glance up to Adam who smiled at her.
‘She does indeed,’ said Adam.
‘Oh! No. I meant what do you play?’ Helena ignored Adam and looked towards Jacob. ‘The inflection is lost on her,’ she said. ‘It is quite difficult to judge it.’
‘Inflection?’ Adam interrupted. ‘How ridiculous! The way you addressed her, Helena! “What?” could have meant absolutely anything and you know it. But what makes it even more astounding, is that you actually whispered that last comment! And to answer your question, whichever way you meant it, I would like to say that Ella plays Mozart particularly well.’ He caught Ella’s eye and she was sure he dropped one eyelid in a wink, as if to say stupid woman.
Ella ducked her head, frightened that she would laugh. Lydia took Ella’s hand and squeezed it. Ella turned to her, still smiling.
‘Would you mind?’ Lydia asked, nodding at the piano. ‘I told Helena how marvellous you were.’
‘Well, I do mind, a little,’ she responded. She flicked a glance over to Helena. She was fluttering her eyelashes at Jacob. ‘Why must I prove myself to her?’
‘I am so sorry, darling,’ said Lydia, ‘only she asked when we were riding earlier. She asked a lot of questions about you.’
Ella looked at Lydia curiously. ‘Surely I am not that intriguing?’
‘It is only the piano, sweetheart.’ said Lydia. She patted Ella’s hand, her warm, dark brown eyes smiling into Ella’s bright blue ones. ‘Adam would love to hear it too, I am convinced.’
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‘Lydia!’ said Ella, cursing the treacherous blush that flooded her cheeks. ‘That is not the way to convince me. And he has already heard me anyway.’ She glanced across at Jacob and Helena, effectively ending the conversation.
Helena sat picking lint from her bodice, her rather thin mouth set in a petulant line. Suddenly she pulled a face and looked up at Jacob. ‘I would not care,’ she said, seeming to forget that anything she said that night was not exactly private, ‘but she looks quite normal. It is difficult to remember that she is like that.’
‘Excuse me?’ asked Ella. She pushed Lydia’s hand away and stood up. Ella strode towards the piano and taking hold of the open lid, slammed it down with all her might. The vibrations passed through the floor, jarring through her satin shoes and up her body as the piano made what could only have been a hideous cacophony of chords.
Helena’s hands flew to her ears and Jacob rushed over to the piano, grabbing it and holding onto it, seemingly trying to stop the noise. A few sheets of music slid to the floor and Ella glared at Helena.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I will play the piano tonight. Miss Warner can do it.’
She bent down and lifted a sheet of music from the pile on the floor. She studied it then walked over to Helena. ‘Try this,’ she said, ‘and best of luck.’
She turned on her heel, oblivious to Helena’s outraged shouts, ran upstairs and into her bedroom.
She stood in front of the mirror and stared at her reflection. ‘She looks quite normal,’ Helena had said. Well, of course she did. She looked exactly the same as everyone else – she would never look out of place anywhere, ever. That was the problem. It wasn’t obvious. It didn’t have to be obvious. It was only when people like her pointed it out, that she could feel the shift in atmosphere among people who didn’t know her and then they all looked at her differently.
Ella picked up the silver-backed hairbrush that lay on the dressing table and hurled it at the mirror, watching the cracks burst across its surface. Seven years bad luck, was it? She wasn’t superstitious, so it hardly mattered. She saw the door behind her reflected in the mirror – someone had thoughtfully moved the table there shortly after she arrived, probably, she thought bitterly, so she would know if anyone was coming into the room. It worked, however, because now she saw the door open and a figure appear in the doorway. Their reflection was obscured, but she knew who it was. She swung around and faced them.
‘There was no need to come,’ she said. Instinctively, she raised her hands, spread her fingers and brought them towards her body at shoulder height. Leave me alone! She made for the door and pushed past, not waiting for an answer. Once in the corridor, she picked up her skirts and ran. She ran down the stairs and across the hall. She reached the door, not knowing or caring if they were following her or not and flung it open; then she was outside in the fresh air and nobody could stop her.
ADAM
‘Where did she go?’ asked Jacob, tiring suddenly of pandering to Helena’s bruised ego.
‘I do not know and I do not care,’ whined Helena. Her eyes were red and teary, although her ill-tempered sobs and raging had finally abated.
Adam had taken the sheet music and placed it back on the piano; then he had, Jacob knew, followed Ella out of the room a few minutes later. Jacob felt a new kind of anger build up in his stomach towards his cousin. Unbelievable, leaving him, Jacob, to deal with a hysterical woman. And Lydia was no help. She had disappeared as well. For God’s sake, Helena was a guest at their house, so surely one of those two should be soothing her?
He looked around desperately, wondering when he could escape. It didn’t cross his mind that Ella was also a guest and thus entitled to some attention from her hosts as well.
As if sensing his anxiety to leave, Helena let out yet another wail. ‘She is so mean!’ she said, hiccupping dramatically on her words. ‘I did not do anything. I was trying to be nice to her and it is so difficult …’
‘I know,’ said Jacob mechanically. ‘Lydia will speak to her when she returns, I am certain.’ Lydia, he noted. Not Adam. Oh, no, not Adam, because he could see where that was leading. He’d seen the way Adam had looked at the girl and really, her attention had all been on him, Jacob, before Adam’s arrival.
Damn the man! On this visit, at least, with Adam away on whatever unnecessary business he had to attend to, Jacob thought he would have been able to break through Ella’s reserve and God knows he had tried to at that ridiculous dinner party. At that moment in time, Jacob despised Lydia almost as much as he despised Adam. That was typical of his male cousin though – flaunting his status at the dinner table, monopolising the most attractive woman there; and he, Jacob, had to watch that man sit at the head of what should have been his table and play up to Ella Dunbar. He had tried to get her attention, but those beautiful sapphire-blue eyes had kept slipping away from him, her body clearly aching to turn back to bloody Adam. It was getting beyond a joke now. Due to that mad relative of theirs and that damned convoluted will, Adam had effectively stripped him, Jacob, of everything he should have owned – and Adam clearly wanted the one woman Jacob loved as well.
Helena pouted. ‘I still don’t understand why everyone thinks she is so marvellous.’ She raised those hideously strange eyes to him. ‘I have known you all much longer. Can you remember when we were very little children and we used to play together in the nursery? I would come over with my nursemaid and you would be here and—’
‘That was a long time ago,’ said Jacob, sharply. ‘We have all grown up since then.’
Helena continued to stare at him and then her face hardened. ‘’What is it about her?’ she asked. ‘Is she prettier than me? Is that it? Is she more talented than me?’ She laughed shortly. ‘I sincerely doubt that, actually. Jacob, you know my father can settle a sizeable dowry on me. What can she offer you?’
Jacob shook his head. How could he tell this girl, who he had grown up with alongside an ‘understanding’ of sorts, that from the moment he first met Ella, all those years ago, he had been utterly entranced? The way she really seemed to take notice of him, really seemed to listen to him and concentrate on his words had fascinated him and charmed him in equal measures. She was like nobody he had ever met before. And over the years, she had started to watch him with more interest and he knew that, when he was speaking to her, he was the only one she was aware of. Lydia had told him why, of course, had said that Ella was like that around everyone – she was “terribly polite” and going “terribly deaf”, apparently, but he revelled in the fact that her world consisted of him and only him when he was with her.
So Helena Warner could, quite frankly, go hang.
‘Jacob?’ The woman’s voice startled him and he looked at her, trying to hide the disgust he felt for her. ‘I repeat, what can she offer you that I cannot?’ she said, her pretty, doll-like face still contorted into a venomous mask.
‘Nothing, Helena,’ Jacob said flatly. ‘Ella Dunbar is just a house guest, like we are. She is interesting, that is all.’ And that night it had been obvious that she was just as interesting to Adam.
A roll of thunder interrupted Jacob’s thoughts and Helena started. ‘I hate storms!’ she moaned. ‘This evening just gets worse and worse.’
Lydia chose that moment to come back into the room. Jacob saw her cast a glance at himself and Helena. ‘So sweet together,’ Lydia murmured and wandered to the window. She lifted the heavy curtains and stared out into the darkness. ‘It’s terrible out there,’ she said. ‘I hope Adam finds her all right.’ She jumped as another roll of thunder tore through the house.
She dropped the curtain against the rain, which was pelting against the glass and turned to face Jacob. ‘Are you enjoying your stay?’ she asked. ‘I mean, apart from tonight, obviously.’
‘What annoys me is her attitude!’ burst out Helena. ‘She is so … so … unsettling.
She watches you the whole time. Ugh.’ She shuddered dramatically.
‘Helena! She is deaf, she is supposed to watch us!’ said Lydia, laughing. ‘How else can she understand what is going on?’
‘Well, I don’t like her,’ said Helena. ‘I don’t trust her in the slightest.’
‘Ella is a wonderful person,’ Lydia replied. ‘She is my dearest friend. I hope she becomes my sister in the future.’
‘Your sister?’ Jacob said bitterly. ‘What? Do you expect Adam to marry her?’
‘It would be rather nice,’ said Lydia. She moved over to the piano and picked up the discarded Mozart score and hummed the first few notes. ‘She plays this perfectly,’ she said. ‘It is a love song. I heard Adam singing it earlier. He said he had stumbled upon her playing it. It is just so romantic.’
‘That doesn’t mean he wants to marry her,’ said Jacob. ‘He could have heard her play anything and he would still have been singing it. Good music is like that; it stays in your head.’
‘Maybe. But do I detect a little jealousy, Cousin?’ said Lydia, her eyes twinkling. ‘Would you rather Miss Dunbar played this for you and you alone? Oh, Helena, don’t look like that. You know I’m only being naughty.’ She walked over to Helena and put her arms around her, kissing her on the forehead. ‘You and Jacob are perfect for each other, we all know that.’
‘Not all of us,’ muttered Helena.
Jacob pretended he hadn’t heard. Instead his mind was on Ella, as he imagined what it would be like to have her play a love song to you and then look at you with those sapphire eyes while she waited, all her attention on you, for you to voice your approval.
Now she had left the house, Ella slowed down and forced herself to walk along the pathway, around the familiar sweep towards the lake. She pulled a face. She didn’t like Helena at all. She had put up with more than enough from her these last few days. If it wasn’t a case of spoiling Lydia’s plans, she would leave just as soon as she could. Oh, but who was she trying to convince? It was Adam she didn’t want to leave, wasn’t it?
