Ellie Pride

by Annie Groves

  ‘I will do it,’ John announced.

  ‘No, John!’ Ellie said immediately. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’ She avoided telling him he was far too young to have to undergo such an ordeal if anyone else could do it. Nor could she face going herself – and who would look after Maisie and Henrietta?

  John turned to Gideon and requested almost formally, ‘Gideon, could I ask you, please, to remain here with my sister until I return? I do not think she should be here on her own at a time like this.’

  ‘John, I do not need Gideon to stay with me,’ Ellie began to protest, and then stopped as she saw how strained her brother was looking. He had been such a support to her these last months, and sometimes she forgot how very young he still was. She would not reject his kindness, and when she agreed he left to go to Mr Kershaw with Sergeant Johnson.

  Somehow she had known already that Minaco was dead. The Japanese girl could never have survived a night outside in such low temperatures and, more than that, Ellie knew intuitively that Minaco had stopped wanting to live.

  A heavy shudder ran through her. She was now the only person who stood between Henrietta and the appalling fate of ending up in the workhouse orphanage. But she herself might easily die in childbed, as her own mother had done. Ellie had never felt more vulnerable or afraid – not for herself but for those who depended on her: Henrietta, Maisie, and even this new baby she had carried so unwillingly.

  ‘Ellie, I am sorry to hear about…about the child’s mother, but you and I have urgent matters of our own we need to discuss.’

  Blankly Ellie focused on Gideon.

  ‘You are carrying my child,’ Gideon told her.

  Ellie opened her mouth to deny his assertion and then discovered that she could not.

  ‘We must be married, and as soon as possible!’ Gideon frowned as he heard his own stern declaration. That was not what he had come here to say at all, but now the words had been said, and he discovered he had no intention of calling them back. In fact, bemusingly, he discovered that he was extremely glad that he had said them! A cavalier attitude of reckless determination filled him, a sense of excitement and hope, almost, of his life suddenly taking an unexpectedly enticing and longed-for turn.

  ‘We have no alternative. We must marry for the sake of our child,’ he told Ellie firmly – privately thinking: for the sake of their child and for the sake of his love for her as well – but these were words he could not say to her.

  Ellie’s eyes were dull and empty. Had she heard what he had said? Had she registered his words, Gideon wondered.

  ‘I mean what I am saying, Ellie,’ he warned her. ‘I understand now what it is not to know my parents, and I would not have my child suffer from that under any circumstances.’

  Now she was focusing on him! ‘What do you mean?’

  Gideon took a deep breath. ‘Mary was my mother,’ he told her simply, so simply that Ellie knew immediately that he was speaking the truth. ‘She only told me herself when she was dying, and she begged me not to reveal it to anyone…other than the woman I…I married.’

  Ellie stared at him. The knowledge that Mary had not been his mistress but his mother was causing her to feel an emotion she was afraid to acknowledge. To prevent herself from having to, she reminded him flatly, ‘You hate and despise me.’

  Gideon turned his head, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I shall hate myself even more if I do not do the right thing by my child,’ he told her curtly.

  Ellie’s pride screamed at her to tell him that she would never marry him, never humiliate herself by joining her life to that of a man who had treated her as he had, who thought about her as he did, but a hardiness had developed in her these last months, a toughness that had no time for the luxury of an emotion such as pride. Every day that brought her closer to the birth of this child she carried brought her closer to her own fear.

  ‘Very well,’ she told him quietly, ‘but there is a condition I must make.’

  Gideon waited, his heart twisting in bitterness, already anticipating what was to come. She would want money, payment for his child and for herself. She would want…

  ‘I will only marry you if you will legally adopt Henrietta and swear to me on the Bible that no matter what happens – no matter what – that you will care for her, and for this child,’ she added, touching her belly, ‘yourself! That you will not send them away from you to be reared by others. Also, I want you to swear that there will always be a place beneath your roof for Maisie.’

  He was silent for so long that Ellie thought he was going to refuse, unaware of the confusion and raw emotion making it impossible for him to say so much as a word.

  Her ‘condition’ was so very different from what he had expected, so revealing of a side of her that he had previously refused to allow himself to see.

  ‘She is nothing to you!’ he told Ellie sharply, nodding in Henrietta’s direction.

  ‘On the contrary, she is everything to me,’ Ellie corrected him fiercely. ‘She is everything I should have done for my own brothers and sister and did not. I will not be responsible for another child suffering as they have done, Gideon. Either you give me your promise or I will not marry you.’

  Gideon knew that she meant it.

  ‘Very well then,’ he agreed tersely.

  They were married quietly six weeks later. Ellie had told no one in her family of her plans apart from her brother John, knowing how they were likely to react, and not just to the fact that she was marrying Gideon. She was, after all, officially still in mourning for Henry, but with her baby due in April Gideon had been insistent that there was no time to waste.

  As they made their vows, Ellie was conscious of the way Gideon avoided looking at her. This was the second time she had been married, she reflected dully. The first time she had married a man she did not love, and now she was marrying a man who did not love her! Despairing tears pricked her eyes. Why was she so upset? She did not love Gideon, after all! Not any more, even though today, marrying him, was making her remember all those joyous, tender, idealistic, youthful hopes she had once had. All the shining, adoring love she had once had…

  The fierce kick of her child thankfully distracted her.

  The staff of her new home had lined up to welcome Ellie as their mistress. For a moment she had hesitated a little apprehensively on the threshold.

  ‘Ellie, please allow me to present Mrs Harris, our housekeeper, to you.’

  Ellie only had a moment to register the warm pressure of Gideon’s hand on her arm, as the housekeeper bobbed her a respectful curtsy and announced formally, ‘Welcome to your new home, ma’am.’

  Her new home. She was now the mistress of this elegant, gracious house, Ellie had to remind herself as she was introduced to the other servants.

  Gideon, observing her manner towards them, watched as relief and respect replaced the initial wariness in the servants’ eyes. By the time she had finished being introduced to them, and had acquainted herself with a brief history of each and every one of them via her gentle questions, Gideon could see that she was going to have them eating out of her hand, an opinion that was confirmed when his starchy and sometimes formidable housekeeper unbent enough to declare, ‘I hope I know my place, Mrs Walker, but may I suggest that you take tea before I show you over the house?’ Tactfully the housekeeper made no reference to Ellie’s advanced state of pregnancy.

  Smiling gratefully, Ellie agreed, and slowly followed Mrs Harris towards the small sitting room overlooking the large garden to the rear of the house.

  Ruefully Ellie allowed herself to be seated in a comfortable chair and fussed over by Mrs Harris, thankful that her private worries that the servants might not take to her – or, even worse, might look down on her – had come to nothing.

  As soon as Mrs Harris had left, John, who had been holding Henrietta, put her down and the little girl ran immediately to Ellie.

  Bending down to lift her onto her lap, Ellie felt her eyes starting to fill with tears. Against her
will she found herself thinking of the past, and of things she knew it would be better for her to forget. It was nearly four years since she had first seen Gideon and the woman she was now was a very different person from the girl she had been then, but a part of her couldn’t help thinking how different things might have been had she been allowed to follow her own heart.

  A heart that Gideon had surely broken with his cruelty to her, Ellie reminded herself, as she hugged Henrietta close.

  ‘Let me take Henrietta, Ellie,’ John suggested, after the maid had brought in the tea trolley. ‘Then you can pour the tea.’

  ‘I’ll take her, John,’ Gideon intervened, mindful of the new role he was going to have to play in Henrietta’s life, but as soon as he approached Ellie, the little girl buried herself as tightly as she could against Ellie, hiding her face from him in a gesture of denial.

  ‘You’ll have to give her time, Gideon,’ Ellie said calmly, as John stepped in and took the little girl.

  Gideon’s mouth compressed. These last six weeks had shown him an Ellie who had constantly surprised him with her strength and her maturity. The declaration she made to him regarding the future of those she felt responsible for in the event of her death had shocked him in its bleakness. Now, with his own experience of losing Mary, for the first time he was beginning to question within himself what it must have meant to her to lose her own mother in the way that she had.

  ‘Oh!’ Ellie exclaimed as she looked at the tea trolley, which was laden not only with several plates full of deliciously dainty and tempting sandwiches, but also a cake. Not just any cake, she recognised as her face began to glow self-consciously, but a wedding cake!

  Following the direction of her gaze, Gideon told her brusquely, ‘I asked Mrs Harris to do it. I know you said you didn’t want any fuss, but I thought a wedding cake…’

  For some reason Ellie found she had a huge lump in her throat.

  ‘And this is the master bedroom, ma’am,’ Mrs Harris announced proudly, and with good reason, Ellie acknowledged, as she stepped into the elegantly proportioned bedroom. Not the room where she and Gideon…where he had…not that room, Ellie noted thankfully.

  She had been dreading returning to this house, but a little to her own surprise she had discovered that being there was not having the traumatic effect on her she had anticipated.

  Her nose twitched as she caught the smell of fresh paint.

  As though she had guessed her thoughts the housekeeper said, ‘The master has had it specially decorated and refurbished. And a brand-new bathroom put in for you, ma’am. He’s designed it himself!’

  A little dizzily Ellie followed her across the beautiful Chinese carpet and into the bathroom, unable to stop herself from giving a small gasp of awe.

  ‘Had the porcelain specially brought over from France, Mr Gideon did,’ Mrs Harris announced proudly. ‘And that door there,’ she added, nodding in the direction of a second door in the room, ‘goes through into a little nursery he’s had made, just until the baby’s old enough to go upstairs into the nursery proper. It’s not been furnished yet,’ she added as she showed Ellie the room. ‘Mr Gideon said as how you would want to choose everything for it yourself!’

  As they returned to the bedroom Ellie couldn’t help looking at the huge bed. Was she expected to share that with Gideon?

  ‘And this is the door to the master’s dressing room, ma’am,’ the housekeeper was saying as she showed Ellie the comfortable-sized room off the bedroom, in which Ellie was relieved to see there was a bed.

  By the time she had finished her tour of the house, Ellie was tired and longed for nothing so much as to have a nap. But Maisie and Henrietta both needed reassuring about their new surroundings, and Ellie intended to speak to Gideon and insist that a small bed was put in the nursery for Henrietta, so that she and the coming baby could move into their new quarters together!

  ‘You look tired. It’s been a long day – why don’t you go to bed?’

  Ellie tensed as she heard Gideon’s terse words. She had just come from the kitchen where she had gone to make sure that Maisie had settled in happily. Gideon was right, she was tired, but she was also worried about what married life held in store for her and what Gideon’s expectations were. She knew that he didn’t love her, but he was still a man and…

  As though he had guessed her thoughts, he said abruptly, ‘I shall be sleeping in my dressing room, but –’

  Ellie went white.

  ‘What is it?’ Gideon demanded.

  Ellie shook her head, unable to tell him that his words had suddenly reminded her painfully of Henry. Instead, she bent to pick up Henrietta, who had refused to be parted from her and who had fallen asleep on the sofa.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Gideon told her gruffly, but as he reached for her, Henrietta woke up. Gideon’s right hand was on her arm, and as she looked at it he stiffened and snatched it back. ‘Better not frighten her with this before she’s had time to get used to me,’ he announced curtly.

  ‘Frightened? Henrietta won’t be frightened, Gideon,’ she told him firmly. ‘She’s already asked me about your hand and I’ve told her that it is a very special hand that you have because you did a very special brave thing. Indeed, if anyone is frightened by it, I think it is you and not Henrietta,’ she added perceptively.

  The little girl was still looking at him with huge dark eyes. Grimly Gideon picked her up. That was a fine thing Ellie had said to him after the way she had recoiled from him with such pity!

  Henrietta was a soft warm weight in his arms as he carried her upstairs. On the landing, when he would have taken the next flight, Ellie stopped him.

  ‘You cannot expect a child as young as Henrietta to sleep alone in an unfamiliar room, Gideon. I have asked Mrs Harris to put a small bed in the little nursery for Henrietta, and until then she will share the bed with me.’

  ‘Share your bed?’ Gideon queried grimly. ‘Is that for her sake or for yours, Ellie? If you are thinking that having her in your bed will keep me out of it –’

  ‘I thought no such thing,’ Ellie countered sharply.

  Hostilely they looked at one another.

  FORTY-FOUR

  ‘What about this wallpaper for the nursery, Ellie?’

  Despite the nagging ache in the small of her back, Ellie’s mouth twitched as she looked at the sample Gideon was showing her. The little trains on it quite plainly revealed his hopes!

  ‘It is very nice, Gideon,’ she agreed, ‘but if I were to have a little girl…’

  To her amusement Gideon actually looked slightly shame-faced.

  Ellie was surprised at how easily she had settled into the Winckley Square house. And how easily she had settled into marriage with Gideon! Too easily, perhaps, given the real situation! Gideon had married her out of necessity, and despite the taunting comment he had made the first night of their marriage he had made no attempt whatsoever to share either the intimacy of the master bedroom with her, or the intimacy of its bed! Which should not have been a problem – far from it, but…

  Warily Ellie examined her thoughts. By rights she ought to feel nothing but anger and bitterness towards Gideon, but somehow, despite all her strenuous efforts to reject it, a tiny tendril of something soft and yearning had begun to bind itself around her heart. She had caught herself studying Gideon when she thought he would not notice, finding heart-aching similarities between the man he was now and the youth he had been.

  ‘I suppose it will have to be this one then.’ Gideon’s voice broke into her thoughts, as he showed her a wallpaper sample in softest lemon, decorated with little lambs.

  Gravely, she agreed, but her eyes were dancing with laughter, and as he closed the book, she couldn’t stop herself from teasing his straight face.

  ‘We could always decorate your dressing room, or even the study, with the other wallpaper, if you are so attracted to it, Gideon.’

  The look he gave her tore at her heart.

  Disbelievingly Gideon look
ed at Ellie, the amusement in her voice, the playfulness of her manner, the fact that she was treating him as though…as though…His heart was somersaulting inside his chest and banging so loudly against it that he felt sure Ellie must be able to hear it. Only he knew how difficult he had found these last weeks, and how radically his views, his beliefs and his desires had changed. He was overwhelmed by a sudden urgent need to take hold of Ellie and beg her to give him a second chance, to forgive him for the past, and let him show her just how much…

  Deriding himself for his impossible hopes, he told her instead, drily, ‘The dressing room, maybe, but somehow I doubt it would be a good idea to change the silk panels in the study for it.’

  As Ellie laughed, Henrietta came rushing up to them, begging Gideon to pick her up.

  ‘I want to see your special magic hand,’ she told him imperiously.

  Over her head Gideon looked at Ellie, his heart turning over as he saw the tears shimmering in her eyes. If anything should go wrong – if he should lose her as Ellie herself had lost her mother…Suddenly the most terrible fear and pain gripped him. If that should happen his life would not be worth living!

  Ellie gave a small sigh. Her back had begun to ache and she reached behind herself to rub the ache.

  She had decided to walk round to the Kershaws’ to see John and to thank Marianne Kershaw for her recommendation of a good midwife. Gideon had been fussing about getting in a special doctor from London, as well as an expensive monthly nurse. A little bleakly Ellie reflected that by rights she ought to have been looking to the women in her family to support her at this time – her aunts and her cousins, and her sister.

  There was still no word from Connie, or about her, and Ellie was becoming increasingly concerned. She had written to Cecily, informing her of her marriage, but as yet she had heard nothing back from her cousin.