by Annie Groves
‘Go away, Ellie. I’m not coming with you!’ Connie screamed. ‘I’m staying here and I shan’t come out until you leave. You can’t make me go with you. You are only my sister. And, anyway, Kieron and I are already as good as man and wife.’
Shocked, Ellie turned to look at Kieron Connolly. He could not meet her eyes, and Ellie’s stomach lurched.
‘I think you had best leave,’ Kieron told her uncomfortably. ‘I’ll speak to her; try to persuade her to go to her da’s.’
‘She cannot stay here,’ Ellie told him fiercely, adding bitterly, ‘How could you have done this to her?’
‘It was not all my doing,’ Kieron told her woodenly. ‘I tried to tell her that this wasn’t a good idea, but she wouldn’t listen. She’ll be much better off wi’ her da, but she’ll still have to pay the rent here. Gideon Walker has already been round demanding it. He’s given her two days to find it.’
‘How much is it?’ Ellie asked.
When he told her she opened her purse and counted out the exact money, and then took it upstairs and pushed it under the locked bedroom door, along with a few extra shillings.
‘This is the money for your rent, Connie,’ she told her sister through the closed door. ‘And a little extra for some food.’
There was no answer. Back downstairs, she begged Kieron, ‘Promise me you will persuade her to go to our father’s? It’s plain she will not listen to me, but you must know she cannot stay here. If you will take my advice you will end this relationship whilst it can still be ended – unless, of course, I have misunderstood the situation and you do really want to marry my sister, in the face of both your families’ disapproval?’
‘I canna marry to disoblige me uncle. ’Tis himself who gives us all work – me, me da and the others. I never said nothing about marriage to Connie,’ he whispered angrily. ‘’Twas all her idea and doing, that. All I wanted was just a bit o’ fun. Connie’s up to all the tricks; she knows what life’s all about. We were having a grand time until she got this idea that she was in love with us,’ he complained.
Ellie closed her eyes, torn between wanting to stay to provide her sister with the comfort she knew she was going to need, and fearing that if she did, she would only provoke Connie into even more indiscretion. Ellie had every confidence that Kieron Connolly would persuade Connie to go to Friargate, even if it would be more for his own sake than poor Connie’s.
And right now she needed some far wiser counsel than her own to decide what was the best course of action to protect her sister from her own recklessness. As she glanced up the stairs, Ellie acknowledged how helpless she felt and how much she longed for the strong support of the kind of husband she could turn to in such a crisis, in the way that Cecily would have been able to turn to Paul, were she in such a position.
‘I’m going now, Connie,’ she called, hesitating in the hope that her sister might see sense and agree to leave with her, but knowing Connie as she did, Ellie was not really surprised when she made no reply.
THIRTY-SIX
Gideon watched as Ellie left the house and started to walk up the street. She still had that same proud air about her, her nose stuck in the air as though she thought herself better than anyone else, and her with a sister living over the brush with a man who would desert her the minute his uncle told him to!
He hadn’t intended to wait for her to leave, never mind to follow her. It was simply that she was walking in the same direction as he himself had planned to go.
There was a sultriness in the air now, a brassy sulphurousness that made the tiny hairs at the nape of Ellie’s neck prickle as she made her way along the deserted streets.
At least they were deserted until she turned a corner and saw up in front of her how the street ahead was blocked by a huge press of people making their way towards the marketplace. Some of them were carrying placards protesting about working conditions, and some were simply chanting slogans about better pay, but it was obvious that their mood was one of angry defiance.
As Ellie hesitated, she was jostled from behind by a group of millworkers, the women dressed in clogs and shawls, the looks they gave Ellie, in her summer walking dress, ones of open hostility.
Apprehensively, Ellie looked for a means of discreet escape, but the street was becoming even more crowded.
‘Watch out, they’ve sent up to the barracks for some troopers,’ Ellie heard someone call out, and suddenly there was a stampede of people hurrying past her, a huge surge of humanity that threatened to overwhelm her. Suddenly she was sixteen again, terrified of being trampled by the crowd of sightseers out to watch the Guild procession. The same unreasoning panic filled her – and then the same strong arm was reaching out to pluck her from danger.
Gideon! Dazed, Ellie stared up at him, unable to drag her gaze away from his face.
‘Gideon…’ She breathed his name and swayed.
‘Damn you, Ellie, you can’t faint now,’ Gideon ground out. ‘If you do we’ll both be trampled underfoot. Didn’t you hear the warning? They’ve sent for the troopers, and they won’t stop to recognise Miss Ellie Pride amongst all this lot. Come on, hurry up, we’ve got to get out of here whilst we still can.’
Grabbing hold of her arm, he started to force a way through the angry crowd, dragging Ellie with him. Somewhere behind them she could hear what at first she thought was thunder, and then realised was the sound of horses’ hoofs, followed by shouts and screams and then a burst of gunfire.
‘Down here.’
Ellie almost lost her balance as Gideon tugged her down a narrow ginnel filled with evil-smelling rubbish so acrid that the stench made her stomach heave. A filthy clutter of broken-down hovels, another back entry, and they were out into Fishergate, and somehow Gideon was battling a way through the panic-stricken crowd, now a seething mass of people all trying to move in different directions to escape from the police and the troopers.
The angry roar of the crowd faded as Gideon ducked into a narrow alleyway, and Ellie drew a sobbing breath of relief as she recognised where she was and knew that they were in a cut-through that eventually would take them to Winckley Square.
In the distance she could hear again the sound of gunfire and she winced. Despite her fear, her sympathy lay entirely with the crowd. Her cheekbone stung from an accidental blow, and the hem of her dress was dusty, her sleeve torn.
As Gideon bundled her through the alleyway he was standing so close to her she could smell the hot male scent of him. Henry always seemed to smell of dry, papery air as dried out as their sexless marriage, an empty husk within which her own femaleness had withered. Gideon, on the other hand, smelled of heat and life and…
Ellie closed her eyes and valiantly fought off what she was feeling.
At last they were in Winckley Square.
‘Thank you for…for helping me,’ she began primly. ‘I shall make my way to the station now, for my train and –’
‘Are you mad?’ Gideon stopped her harshly. ‘There is no way you can do any such thing right now. It’s far too dangerous. I reckon it will be morning before the streets are quiet and safe enough for you to leave.’
‘Morning…? But I can’t stay here. My aunt is away and the house is closed up, and even if I could get back there, I somehow doubt that Connie would give me a bed for the night. She told me that you are her landlord, by the way.’
‘She rented the place under a false name, and from my…from Mary Isherwood’s landlord, and not from me,’ Gideon told her tersely.
Mary…Ellie bit her lip and lowered her head. ‘I was sorry to hear about her death,’ she said awkwardly, her face flushing as she tried not to think about the relationship that gossip said had existed between Gideon and the older woman. ‘My friend Iris greatly admired Miss Isherwood for her work for the suffragette movement.’
‘Your friend – would that be the woman you were with in Manchester?’
‘Yes,’ Ellie acknowledged. It seemed so odd in one way to be talking to him like this,
and yet in another it seemed so natural…so right. ‘She is Cecily’s sister-in-law. What was that?’ she demanded, jumping as she heard a sudden crash close at hand.
‘By the sound of it a stone being thrown through a window,’ Gideon responded tersely.
Ellie gasped as an unruly mob burst into the square.
‘Quick. This way,’ Gideon commanded, hurrying her across the road.
For a moment Ellie held back, but the press of people pouring into the square was frightening; the noise they were making drowning out whatever it was Gideon was trying to say to her, and instinctively Ellie moved closer to him. In the distance she could hear artillery fire. Gideon was unlocking the door of a house and urging her inside.
As Ellie hesitated, half a dozen troopers rode into the square in pursuit of the mob, who retaliated by throwing stones. As Ellie heard the retaliatory sound of their artillery fire, she acknowledged unwillingly that Gideon was right. It wasn’t safe for her to be on the streets. The mood of the demonstrators had turned ugly.
He took the decision out of her hands by slamming the door shut, enclosing them both in the heavy silence of the house.
‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything much by way of refreshment,’ Gideon was saying to her, suddenly very much the formal host.
His manner made her aware of how much more sophisticated and cultured a man he now was, compared to the one she had fallen in love with.
‘It’s rent-collecting day,’ he continued, ‘and I’ve given everyone the day off. There’s no point in having half a dozen servants rattling around here with nothing to do, but I dare say I could rustle up a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea, if you could bring yourself to eat such lowly fare. I suppose it’s all mulligatawny soup and champagne for you these days…Mrs Charnock,’ he taunted her, suddenly reviving the enmity between them.
Ellie almost laughed out loud. The soup served in the Charnock household was homemade by herself from her own vegetables, and as for champagne…
This house, although perhaps not much larger than the Charnock mansion, was so much more elegantly appointed and decorated, so much more refined and tasteful. It was a woman’s house, though, Ellie recognised, decorated and furnished with a woman’s delicate eye.
‘I’ll show you into the drawing room,’ Gideon said, and then as she turned away from him he exclaimed sharply, ‘What the devil…?’ and his left hand was on her face, turning it into the light whilst he frowned down at her swollen cheekbone.
‘It is just a bruise, nothing more,’ Ellie told him lightly, trying to pull away.
‘It is not just a bruise,’ Gideon corrected her grimly. ‘The skin is broken and the wound has to be cleaned, unless, of course, you wish to risk it becoming infected. It needs to be attended to immediately. Come with me, please…’
Ellie lifted her hand to her cheek, dismayed to see blood on her fingertips when she removed them. She had been aware of her face stinging, but she had not realised the extent of the injury. She had listened to Iris enough to know the dangers of heat and unsanitary conditions on open wounds. Apprehensively, she followed Gideon up the stairs.
He showed her into a bedroom and instructed her curtly to wait whilst he brought a basin of water and a medical chest.
Left on her own, Ellie studied her surroundings. The bedroom was obviously a guest room and simply but elegantly furnished. Every surface shone with cleanness and polish, and if she hadn’t grown as fond of Maisie as she had, and as defensively protective of her, Ellie suspected she could well have cried to compare the standard of Gideon’s servants’ abilities with that of her own. This room revealed a house that breathed care and attention, and as Ellie had learned both from living with her aunt and uncle, and from her own marriage, in a house of this size, that meant one simple thing: it was owned by a person of considerable means.
Mary’s means.
Which were now Gideon’s means.
Ellie could feel the turmoil and agitation of her emotions and thoughts driving her into feverish distress.
Her Uncle Parkes kept as a mistress a woman who, despite being a widow, was many years younger than he was himself, and the situation was not just tolerated but accepted by his peers. And by her aunt, if she was honest, Ellie admitted, since it meant that he no longer besieged her, but the thought that Mary, a woman who had been born around the same time as her own mother, Ellie had concluded from what she had heard, should take as her lover a man of Gideon’s age filled Ellie with such feelings that she was pacing the bedroom floor, hardly able to contain them. Any man of Gideon’s age – or were her feelings just restricted to Gideon himself?
‘I have found some salve for the cut and some arnica, which should ease the bruising.’
The sound of Gideon’s voice had Ellie turning round to face him.
He had removed his jacket and his collar. The top button of his shirt was unfastened and the sleeves rolled back.
A bewildering feeling of agonising longing and bleakness engulfed her, dizzying her, and automatically Ellie put her hand to the bed behind her to steady herself.
As she did so, there was a loud burst of artillery fire from the top end of the square, and even though it wasn’t possible for her to see it from the window, she looked automatically towards it, her whole body suddenly starting to shake.
It had been a day of distressing realisations, and they weren’t over yet. Although she had chastised Connie for her behaviour, wasn’t there a part of her that secretly envied her sister her boldness; her strength of will when it came to laying claim to her right to be with the man she loved?
A day? Hadn’t she had weeks, months, a marriage of unsettling and depressing discoveries, Ellie asked herself miserably, lifting her hand to her pounding head as she tried to ease the dizziness swelling inside it. She was too hot, her body suddenly drenched in perspiration. Her hand went automatically to the tightly closed neck of her gown, her eyes closing as she moaned and swayed slightly.
‘Ellie!’ Putting down the bowl and the unguents he was carrying, Gideon went immediately to her.
Her face had completely lost its colour, the sharp delicate line of her high cheekbones almost cutting through the fine skin, whilst a dew of dampness lay around her forehead, tightening the soft curls of her hair.
Her face had lost its youthful plumpness, Gideon told himself critically as he reached her, but against his will he was forced to acknowledge that its loss had added to rather than taken away from her beauty.
As she sagged towards the bed he could see the soft dark sweep of her lashes, and the mauve shadows beneath them.
She must not, she would not faint, Ellie told herself dizzily, but already she could hear the roaring in her ears and feel the blackness rushing to suck her into it.
Ellie could hear something thudding, the noise reverberating through her body. It took her several seconds to realise that the sound was her own heartbeat.
She was crying, she recognised, as she lifted her hand to her face to check the source of the slow seep of moisture she could feel against her skin, but not with physical pain! No, her tears were for…were because…
A sound – a breath, no more, but somehow enough to shock right through her body – had her struggling to sit up as full consciousness came flooding back to her. Gideon was standing beside the bed, frowning down at her, in one hand a glass of water, which he put down on the night stand.
‘Don’t move,’ he warned her tersely.
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she snapped back at him. And to prove her point, she sat bolt upright, then froze as she realised that Gideon had released the tightly buttoned neck of her gown right down to her chemise.
‘How dare you? You had no right,’ she began, her voice trembling. So too were her hands as she tried and failed to refasten the buttons.
‘What would you have preferred me to do?’ Gideon challenged her sharply. ‘You needed air. I can never understand why females insist on wearing clothes that –’
&
nbsp; He broke off, a dark surge of colour seeping up along his jaw and burning his cheekbones. The same way that the smouldering heat of how he was looking at her semi-naked breasts was burning her skin, Ellie recognised.
‘Don’t…’ Don’t look at me like that, she had been about to say, but the words were trapped in her throat, and as though in a dream she watched as Gideon reached out towards her.
His fingertips brushed the buttons of her gown. Ellie held her breath. She was shivering, despite the heat, her whole body a mass of tiny quaking movements, little rigors of sensation and expression.
‘Ellie…’
Gideon ground out her name as though his throat was being tortured by a million shards of broken glass. The side of his thumb touched her breast – an accident surely, and not a caress, and then suddenly – so suddenly that she couldn’t have moved away even if she had wanted to – his hands were on her waist and his head was bent over her, the dark hair she remembered so well brushing her throat and the tip of her chin as she bent her head in silent anguish whilst his lips pressed a kiss that was a mixture of violent anger and sensuality against the exposed curve of her breast.
Her hands lifted to his shoulders. His muscles felt solid and thick, and the flesh covering them hot and firm beneath the thinness of his shirt, burning her fingers as she curled them into it, to push him away.
Jarvis Charnock, returning from work, stared in loathing and contempt at his son, who had come out into the heat, seemingly to confront him.
‘What ails you, or do I need to ask? God damn you, Henry, you are no son of my getting, I’ll swear to it. You are your wretched mother’s son through and through! Every time I look at you I am reminded of her. God knows why I ever married her in the first place.’
‘I know what you did, Father,’ Henry burst out passionately. ‘I know that you arranged the deaths of all those men on the Antareas. And because of that, because of you, I have their blood on my hands too. I can never wash it away…never. Never be free of its taint…’
