by Annie Groves
‘Your aunts, my sisters, know my wishes, Ellie…and my hopes for you and your sister. I want you to promise me that you will obey them in all things, and that you will remember that they are carrying out my wishes. I cannot bear to think that you may meet a fate like mine, Ellie…Promise me, Ellie…’
Ellie started to cry, too overwrought to question logically what was happening, knowing only that right now her love for her mother took priority over everything and everyone else in her life.
‘Mama, please,’ she choked. ‘I will promise you whatever you want, if only you will forgive me…’
‘You will put Gideon Walker completely out of your life and your thoughts, and you will be guided by your aunts in all things, do you promise?’
‘I promise, Mama,’ Ellie sobbed.
‘Good. I want you to remember always that you have made me this promise, Ellie. To remember it and to honour it, because…’
Her mother’s voice had become so faint that Ellie could barely hear it, and then suddenly she stopped speaking, her head falling to one side on the pillow.
As she clung to her mother’s icy cold hand, Ellie could hear her breath rattling in her throat.
‘Oh, Mam, Mam, please, please get well,’ she begged heartbrokenly, reverting to the comforting softness of the town’s dialect as she clung to her hand.
Lydia’s eyes were closing. ‘Always remember and honour your promise to me, Ellie.’
The words were so low, little more than a sigh, that Ellie had to bend her head closer to her to hear them.
She saw her mother’s chest expand once as she breathed in – sharply – and then went still, her eyes suddenly opening, focusing not on Ellie but into the distance.
Panic suddenly filled Ellie. Releasing her mother’s hand she ran to the door and opened it, calling frantically for her father, as Lydia’s final breath bubbled in her throat.
EIGHT
Gideon paused as he turned into Friargate. Theoretically he was on his way to see Mary Isherwood, having telephoned to make an appointment, but naturally he wanted to call in at the Prides’ house to see how things were. And, of course, to see Ellie!
For once there was no busyness outside the shop, no carefully protected display of choice hams and salted beefs. The door was firmly closed, and there was no sign of either life or light inside, and then as Gideon glanced along the street he saw the sombre black ribbon attached to the front door knocker – a sign that the family was in mourning.
Had the child not survived? Reluctant to intrude, Gideon started to turn away, but as he did so the door suddenly opened and a buxom woman dressed in black emerged, accompanied by a white-faced Ellie, her hair escaping from its pins to curl softly round a face so riven with grief that Gideon caught his breath in anguish for her. The bleakness of Ellie’s expression didn’t belong to the girl he had held and kissed only the previous day.
‘Thank you, Mrs Jakes,’ Gideon heard her saying. ‘I’m sorry that my father isn’t here, but –’
‘Aye, that’s menfolk for you. First thing they do is turn to drink when they’re in grief. Never met one of them yet who could stomach a laying-out. ‘T’ain’t natural for ’em, you see. Tell your aunt that I’ve done the best I can. Allus close to your mother, she was. She’ll be sadly missed, will your ma, especially with a new baby to be cared for.’
‘My Aunt Jepson is to take care of the baby,’ Ellie said in a low, unsteady voice. ‘My mother left instructions for…for everything. She was afraid that –’
Unable to bear seeing her in so much distress, Gideon stepped forward, causing the departing midwife, who had come to lay out Lydia’s body, to give him a speculative look. Gossip was as much her stock in trade as births and deaths, and it seemed that the Pride household had very generously supplied her with all three. Whoever the young man was in such a rush to get to Ellie Pride, he was certainly a good-looking ‘un, that was for sure.
‘Ellie! What –’
‘Gideon!’ Ellie stepped back from him immediately, holding up her hands in a gesture of denial, but Gideon had already followed her into the hallway and was closing the door behind him.
‘I saw the black ribbon,’ he told her, ‘but I thought it must be the child. I had no idea…My poor little love. Believe me, I do know how you must be feeling. When I lost my own mother…But it will get better, Ellie, I promise you, and you have me and…’
Ellie froze. How could Gideon claim to know what she was feeling? How could he say that he understood? No one understood! No one knew what misery and guilt she felt, what pain!
As he saw the emotions chasing one another across her face, Gideon’s smile changed to a concerned frown. Swiftly he crossed the distance separating them, taking hold gently of her upper arms.
‘Ellie, Ellie, my love, please do not look so,’ he begged her, unable to keep his feelings out of either his voice or his eyes. ‘What is it?’ he demanded when he felt her stiffening against his hold.
‘Let go of me, Gideon,’ Ellie demanded sharply. The icy tone of her voice was her mother’s and as she heard her own words and recognised it, Ellie drew strength from what she felt must be her dead mother’s support and approval. Haughtily she drew herself up tall and looked into Gideon’s eyes.
‘Ellie, sweetheart, don’t look like that,’ he protested. Had she wept he would have known immediately what to do, but this icy stiffness bewildered him. ‘Come here,’ he commanded gently. ‘Let me hold you and –’
‘No!’
The fury in Ellie’s eyes as she pulled away from him shocked Gideon into silence.
‘Don’t touch me!’ Ellie told him. ‘Don’t come anywhere near me! I don’t want to see you ever again, Gideon. Ever!’
White-faced, she looked dispassionately at him. Why was he still standing there? Hadn’t she told him to go? The icy coldness surrounding her had somehow become a form of welcome protection, and she withdrew herself even deeper into its glacial grip. Here, within it, away from anyone else, she could truly make reparation to her mother for her guilt.
‘I promised my mother that I will never see you again, Gideon. And I intend to keep that promise!’ she announced.
Gideon stared at her, unable to take in what she was saying. Disbelief, anger, and then pain – oh, such a pain – held him silent! When at last he was able to speak, his voice was raw with emotion.
‘No! You cannot mean that! What are you saying? I understand how shocked and upset you must be, but your mother had no right –’ he began unwisely, carried away by his feelings of outrage.
Ellie stopped him. ‘I will not stand here and let you abuse my mother. My Aunt Gibson is right! If my mother had not stepped out of her class to marry my father she would still be alive now.’
As he listened to her increasingly hysterical outpouring, Gideon’s compassion and concern started to change to resentment and anger – not against Ellie, but against her mother.
‘You have no way of knowing that,’ he told Ellie brusquely, adding curtly, ‘And as for the rest – I knew that your mother was a snob, Ellie, and that she was encouraged by her sisters to believe she should not have married your father – your Uncle William has told me as much – but I never thought that you would be foolish enough to allow yourself to become tainted by the same brush.’
‘How dare you say that?’ Ellie rounded on him furiously. ‘How dare you even so much as speak of my mother?’
An ugly silence fell between them.
Ellie’s outburst had touched a raw spot on Gideon’s pride. Did she seriously believe that he wasn’t good enough for her? Had she believed that all along?
Gideon couldn’t bring himself to speak. If he did not go soon he would be late for his appointment with Mary Isherwood.
‘Ellie…’ he pleaded eventually, lowering his pride for the sake of their love, but immediately Ellie stepped away from him.
‘I promised my mother,’ she reminded him stiffly.
‘Ellie, Ellie, I understand tha
t right now you are overwrought and upset, but I can’t believe you mean this. A deathbed promise! You can’t mean to destroy our love, our lives, the dreams we have begun to share, because of that. Your mother had no right!’ he exploded again, when he saw the stubborn look on her face.
‘I gave her my word,’ Ellie told him woodenly.
‘Yesterday you gave me your love!’ Gideon reminded her bitterly.
Ellie looked away from him. ‘My promise to my mother comes before anything and everything else, Gideon. I was…unwise…foolish…unknowing. My mother is…was right and –’
‘And I’m not good enough for you? Is that what you’re trying to say?’ Gideon challenged her bitterly.
‘Please leave, Gideon,’ Ellie demanded, her voice thickening in her throat. ‘My aunts will be here soon to…to…see my mother. I should not even be here with you whilst she is alone. You see, even now you are coming between us. Oh! You don’t know how much I wish I had never met you!’
Fighting to master his emotions, Gideon looked at her. She had become someone he didn’t recognise, a very different Ellie from the one he had fallen in love with. She had become, he recognised bitterly, her mother’s daughter. His Ellie would come back, though, he was sure of it. He was not going to give her up so easily!
‘Very well then. If that is what you want,’ he told her quietly, ‘I shall go.’
After she had shut the door behind Gideon, Ellie leaned against it and closed her eyes.
‘I have done what I promised, Mama,’ she whispered as the tears blistered from her closed eyes and burned an acid trail down her face.
‘Edith, I’m afraid that I must go. I am expecting a young man to call round and see me – a Mr Gideon Walker. He is newly come to the town and wishes to set himself up as a cabinet-maker. I am determined to put my own stamp on the library, and I also want to commission some new cupboards for the drawing room.’
Edith Rigby’s eyebrows rose. ‘I am surprised that you would consider entrusting such a large commission to an unknown tradesman, Mary, especially when Gillows of Lancaster have such a good reputation.’
‘Gillows can afford to pick and choose their clientele and take their time about completing their commissions. It seems to me that if this young man has anything about him he will be so grateful to me for giving him a commission that he will put his whole heart and soul into his work, as well as complete it on time.’
As both ladies stood up, Edith Rigby hesitated a little, picking her words carefully. ‘It seems from what I have learned about you from certain friends of mine in London that we have a common interest. I do not wish to say too much at this stage, Mary, but if you are interested, I entertain a few…like-minded friends once a month. We are rather a serious crowd, I’m afraid, for we discuss in the main not fashion or the goings-on of the King and his friends, but rather more political issues. If you think you would be interested in joining us…?’ She looked searchingly at Mary.
Levelly, Mary returned her look. ‘I too had heard from my friends that you shared our beliefs and goals.’
Edith sighed. ‘A goal which even between ourselves neither of us quite dares to put into words for fear of ridicule and rejection. It is my passionate belief that our sex has been wrongfully and deliberately denied the right that every adult man may take for granted and that it is high time that we were accorded it in full, and given the vote. There, I have said it, and if I have offended you or mistaken the situation –’
Mary shook her head. ‘No, and you are right, Edith. I too am passionately committed to that goal. We owe it to our sex to do everything within our power to right what must be one of the most shameful wrongs ever done! For a country that abhors and has abolished slavery, to permit its women to be so disenfranchised is surely a sin against our sex.’
Having given her a fierce hug, Edith released her to say, ‘At the moment we are merely straws in the wind, Mary, an ununified smattering of like-minded people, but one day those straws will bind together and when they do we will be a force to be reckoned with. But there, I am lecturing to the converted, and you will be late for your cabinet-maker. If he is as good as you hope, you may instruct him to present himself here. I too have work I should like to have done. Who knows,’ she teased, ‘between us we may be able to convert him to our cause, and if he has a wife, a mother, a sweetheart or a sister, they will one day, I hope, have good reason to be grateful to us for doing so.’
As Gideon walked through Winckley Square, he was still trying to come to terms with what had happened. That Ellie, his lovely, gentle Ellie, could have spoken to him in such a way had hurt him very badly. Naturally, she was very upset about her mother’s death – he could understand that and, of course, forgive her her cruelty to him – but what he could not forgive was the way in which Lydia Pride had played upon her daughter’s feelings and tried to turn Ellie against him.
He loved Ellie and she loved him too. He was sure of it. Somehow he would find a way to make her see sense. But perhaps it would be best if he waited until the funeral was over before seeking her out again.
Of course, with her mother’s death she would have new responsibilities and would, no doubt, have to take charge of her father’s household. Gideon’s eyes warmed with a lover’s pride as he mentally envisaged his Ellie bustling about her new household duties – duties that might well mean that their married life would have to begin beneath her father’s roof, he acknowledged, because he certainly could not see Ellie abandoning her siblings. He would have preferred to have her all to himself, but Gideon was sensitive enough to recognise that Ellie would be needed at home. His spirits lifted by his imaginings, Gideon managed to shrug off his angry despair. All courting couples quarrelled from time to time, he reasoned, and it was far more pleasurable to think about the rosy future he was visualising for Ellie and himself than to dwell on the hurtfulness of her icy words.
He may not have particularly liked Lydia, but, of course, Ellie had loved her mother. Even he had been shocked by the news of her death, so how must his beloved Ellie have felt?
‘Well, Mr Walker, you certainly seem to have an excellent grasp of what I’m looking for.’
Surreptitiously, Mary studied him. He was both what she had expected and yet not. The years of his apprenticeship had given him an impressive breadth of shoulder to add to the height he must have inherited from his father – along with that cool and rather disconcertingly direct grey-eyed gaze. The shock of thick dark curly hair she supposed she should have expected, along with the slightly olive cast to his skin. His voice had a soft country burr, and there was a calm sureness about him that also spoke of his being a countryman. But that cool objective ability to assimilate what she required, and the instinctive skill to translate it into quick, economically elegant sketches that showed her just how her room would look as they came to life beneath his hands – that had caught her off guard. And that air of control and authority – where had he got that from? Herding William Pride’s livestock? Mary doubted that.
Determined not to let Mary see how anxious he was about her reaction to his drawings, Gideon sought to assume a nonchalant confidence he was actually far from feeling. He ached, like every young man in love, to prove to his beloved that he was worthy of her. He could feel the anxious tension gripping his gut whilst he watched Mary Isherwood studying the sketches he had made following her description of what she wanted. If she commissioned him to make her cabinets then a whole new future could open up for him: a future in which he could afford to provide for Ellie as his wife! And once they were married he would see to it that he made her so happy that she soon forgot about the snobbish aspirations of her mother!
‘Mr Walker, I believe we shall be able to do business together.’ Mary smiled as she handed back his rough sketches.
Gideon felt his pent-up nervous breath leak jerkily from his lungs. Mary had been studying the drawings for so long that he had begun to fear that they did not suit her. Just wait until he told Ellie! Gideon
frowned. Of course, with Ellie in mourning for her mother he could not rush round to Friargate as he longed to do and share his excitement with her. No, he would just have to be patient…leave her to grieve for her mother for now, and then see her after the funeral.
‘I shall require you to supply me with detailed drawings, of course, and costings, and if I should find that you have attempted to cheat me by substituting inferior wood, or indeed in any other way, I promise you I shall make you sorry for it. I may only be a woman, Mr Walker, but I am not a woman to be underestimated.’
Controlling his excitement, Gideon forced himself to concentrate on what Mary was saying to him, and then frowned as the meaning of her words sank in.
‘It is not my habit to cheat, Miss Isherwood,’ he told her angrily.
‘No, I am sure it is not,’ Mary agreed calmly. ‘But you are a young man about to set up in business on your own account and there will be those who will seek to cheat you, I’m afraid. So you will do well to be on your guard. Now, how soon can you let me have the detailed drawings and your costings?’
Gideon thought quickly. ‘By the end of the week?’
‘And the work? When will you be able to begin that?’
Gideon tensed. This was the question he had been dreading.
‘I…there is a slight problem, Miss Isherwood,’ he admitted uncomfortably.
‘You have other commissions to complete?’
‘No…’ Gideon told her reluctantly. ‘The truth is,’ he blurted out, ‘as yet I do not have any premises to work from. I have two in mind, but I am waiting for the landlords to come back to me.’
‘I see.’ Mary looked searchingly at him. ‘And where exactly are these premises?’
Hesitantly, Gideon gave her the addresses.
