Ellie Pride Read online

  ‘Say goodbye?’ Ellie stared at her aunt in consternation. What was she saying? ‘But how can I go to Liverpool?’ she protested. ‘Surely I must stay here in Preston to take care of my sister and brother, and keep house for my father.’

  Aunt Lavinia was beginning to look uncomfortable.

  Amelia looked sternly at Ellie. ‘What is wrong, Ellie?’ she demanded sharply.

  ‘My Aunt Lavinia says I am to go to Liverpool with her on a visit, but surely I am going to be needed here?’

  ‘You are not going to Liverpool on a visit.’

  Ellie began to relax, but before she could say anything, Amelia was continuing even more sharply, ‘It was your mother’s desire that in the event of her death you should go and live with your Aunt and Uncle Parkes. No, Ellie, please do not interrupt me. You are supposed to be an intelligent girl. You have surely read the letter your mother left for you. It makes her wishes plain enough. These matters were all discussed between us at your mother’s behest. As much as anything else, I believe she wanted to put as much distance as possible between you and that unsavoury young man your father has so unwisely allowed to ingratiate himself with you all.’

  Ellie listened to her Aunt Amelia with growing disbelief and pain. She was to be sent away from her father, her sister and her brother, and it was her mother who had made these arrangements!

  ‘Always remember that I love you and that what I have done I have done in your best interests and out of my love for you,’ her mother had written.

  Even as Ellie dutifully reminded herself of those words, she still couldn’t stop herself from begging shakily, ‘But what is to become of Connie and John…and baby Joseph?’

  ‘Connie is to make her home with our sister Jane from now on. Your mother, and the rest of us, believe that Connie would benefit greatly from the opportunity this will give her to improve her mind. I am afraid that she has befriended a group of girls at her school whose influence on her is not one that your mother approved of! And as for John, he is to attend Hutton, where Uncle Jepson is headmaster, as a boarder. And the new baby is, of course, to be brought up by your Aunt Jepson.’

  ‘But that means that my father will be all on his own,’ Ellie whispered painfully.

  ‘As to that, Ellie, Mr Pride is a man,’ Aunt Amelia told her meaningfully, exchanging a look with her sister. ‘And men, especially men of Mr Pride’s class and…inclination, are generally well able to take care of themselves!’

  Amelia was not going to say as much, but it was her opinion that a man like Robert would not be long without a woman to order his house and warm his bed.

  ‘Everything is arranged, Ellie,’ she told her niece, ‘and you must remember these were your mother’s wishes.’

  ‘Mother wanted me to go and live with my Aunt and Uncle Parkes?’ Ellie whispered, unable to take in what she was being told.

  ‘Yes!’ her Aunt Amelia confirmed impatiently.

  Ellie looked at her, and then across the room to where her father was standing on his own. A huge lump filled her throat. She wanted to cry out in protest, to run to her father, throw herself into his arms and beg him not to allow them to take her, but she knew she could not do so. She knew she could not argue against or ignore her mother’s wishes. And she knew most of all that she could not break the promise she had given her.

  PART TWO

  TEN

  ‘And I must tell you, dearest sister, how very happy I am to be living with our aunt and uncle.’

  Ellie frowned as she reread Connie’s short, stilted letter. Try as she might she could find no sign of her giddy, fun-loving sister in the brief, carefully written words, which disappointingly gave her only the same news she had already received in previous correspondence. She had hoped that the long-awaited letter might contain some news of their brothers, John and baby Joseph, and indeed she had begged Connie to send her news of them the last time she had written, but her sister had obviously forgotten. Ellie’s early letters to John had been answered not by him but by her Aunt Emily announcing that John was too busy catching up with his schoolwork to have time to write letters.

  Even so, it was good to hear from Connie. Letters from Preston were a rare treat now for Ellie. Even her father seemed to be too busy to reply to her own long letters imploring him to write or to telephone her, or, even better, to come and visit her. It was almost twelve months since she had come to Hoylake but Ellie was guiltily aware that she still missed her family as desperately as ever, and that this was a secret she had to keep from her aunt, who would, no doubt, be very upset by Ellie’s ingratitude. At Christmas Ellie had been allowed to speak with her siblings by telephone, but only for the merest few seconds, nowhere near enough to appease her ache for them.

  As she looked out of the window of her aunt’s elegant drawing room, and into the immaculate garden beyond it, a bleak look shadowed Ellie’s eyes. Sombrely she allowed her thoughts to drift back over the last year. She felt she was a completely different person now from the Ellie who had first arrived in Hoylake…

  Twelve months before

  ‘Thank goodness we are home at last. Now remember, Ellie, that Mr Parkes is very particular in his ways and…’

  Shivering despite the brick beneath her feet to warm them on the journey, Ellie wished passionately that she was at home in Preston and not here in Hoylake. The tears of despair she had cried on the initial stages of their journey had given way to bleak misery. She had tried to respond to her aunt’s chatter, inwardly questioning angrily how someone who one minute was claiming to be devastated by the loss of a dear sister could in the next be talking pettishly about the failings of her dressmaker to make her some new garments.

  ‘And I am not talking about going-out clothes, you understand, Ellie, but merely some plain house dresses, the kind one might wear whilst walking in the garden, or instructing the servants, and yet still she has totally ignored my instructions! I shall have to give the dresses to Wrotham, my maid. I could not possibly wear them myself! And Mr Parkes will certainly not agree to pay her bill.’

  Ellie was dreading seeing her uncle. She had only the vaguest memory of him from the funeral; a tall, frowning man who had kept himself at a distance from the rest of the mourners, and to whom Ellie had noticed her Aunt Lavinia giving anxious little glances when she thought no one else was watching.

  What was her father doing now, Ellie wondered miserably. And Connie and John? She had had to leave her home before the others and had not even had a chance to say a proper goodbye to them.

  ‘Ellie, you must think of them and not yourself,’ her Aunt Amelia had chided her. ‘It will only upset them unnecessarily to have to say goodbye.’

  Aunt Amelia had made it plain that she thought they should all be grateful for what was being done for them, but Ellie ached inside for the comfort of her home, the gruff sound of her father’s voice, Connie’s unending chatter, John’s noisy boyishness, and even Rex’s frenzied barking when John played with him. She was even missing the homely familiarity of the small kitchen – yes, and Annie and Jenny too. Had Annie thought to bank up the range and to make sure that her father got a decent meal? He would not think to get one for himself, Ellie knew. Why, she had practically had to stand over him and insist that he ate, these last few days.

  The carriage was turning into a wide driveway, and Ellie’s eyes widened in awed apprehension as she saw the house looming in front of them. It was far, far larger than her Aunt Amelia’s Winckley Square home, and Ellie gave a nervous shudder as she had to tilt her head right back to look up to its high gables.

  The carriage came to a halt, and the coachman opened the doors. As Ellie stepped down to join her aunt, the front door to the house was already open. A small rotund woman came hurrying towards her aunt and fussed round her, ignoring Ellie.

  ‘Oh, Wrotham, it is so good to be home,’ Aunt Lavinia exclaimed wearily. ‘This is my niece, Miss Pride,’ she continued, drawing Ellie forward. ‘Have one of the maids show her to her room
, will you. Oh, and Wrotham, my special tisane…I have the most dreadful headache.’

  Ellie flushed with discomfort as she was subjected to the dour-faced, middle-aged maid’s grimly assessing look. She felt as though Wrotham had mentally calculated the cost and the quality of every stitch she had on and it was plain that she was not impressed. That thin curl of her lip as she dismissed Ellie from her attention and turned back to her mistress was most explicit. Ellie swallowed hard on the painful lump of misery lodged in her throat.

  The hallway of the house was so brightly lit that Ellie blinked against the harshness.

  A door to one side opened, and Ellie felt her aunt tense as she breathed nervously, ‘Oh, Josiah! I hope that we have not disturbed you.’

  Ellie could feel her stomach muscles contracting in acute nervousness as her uncle stepped into the hallway.

  He was taller than her father, but thinner too, and as he had been at the funeral, he was frowning.

  Ellie had removed her hat with its mourning veil in the carriage, and she was conscious of the untidiness of her hair and her travel-stained appearance as Mr Parkes turned to scrutinise her.

  ‘Ellie, you may go straight upstairs to your room,’ her aunt was saying. ‘One of the maids –’

  ‘No.’ Ellie froze as Mr Parkes strode towards her. ‘You’re forgetting, my love, that our niece has had a long journey and she is most likely hungry.’

  Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise as she realised that Mr Parkes was actually smiling at her. ‘I-I shouldn’t want to put the servants to any trouble,’ she responded, mindful of her aunt’s earlier warnings.

  Immediately, Mr Parkes’ smile vanished, to be replaced by an intimidating look of disdain.

  ‘You must not concern yourself about the servants, Ellie. They are here to do as they are instructed. Besides, I was just about to partake of some supper myself. You shall share it with me and tell me about yourself so that we can get to know one another.

  ‘You never told me, Mrs Parkes, that our niece was such a beauty,’ Ellie heard her uncle commenting as he gave her a wide avuncular smile. The warmth of his hand on her arm as he guided her towards his study somehow reminded Ellie of her father.

  Ellie’s bedroom was four times the size of the room she had shared at home with Connie, but despite the elegance of its furnishings and the softness of the linen, Ellie ached with misery and longing as she curled herself up into a tight little ball in the bed.

  Her uncle’s unexpected joviality and warmth had eased some of her apprehension, but this was still not her home, and she felt alien and unhappy.

  The sturdy, kind-eyed young maid, who had accompanied her to her room, had announced that she was to be Ellie’s personal maid and that her name was Lizzie, and as she had bustled about the room, unpacking Ellie’s few belongings, Ellie had ached to be left alone so that she could give way to her tears.

  Alone and lonely, she finally succumbed to an exhausted sleep, but in her dreams the events of the day were a distressing, disjointed sequence of blurred images coloured with her own pain and fear. Only one person stood out clearly and starkly in her dream and that person was Gideon.

  ‘Gideon!’

  Ellie woke with the sound of his name echoing in her ears and the taste of her tears on her lips.

  What was she doing here? Why hadn’t her father insisted that she stay with him? Why had her mother done this to her?

  A week passed, and then a month, and slowly the sharpness of Ellie’s misery gave way to a dull acceptance.

  Her aunt and uncle’s house, and their way of life, were so different from everything she was familiar with. Her aunt lived the life of a wealthy lady of leisure. Her days were made up of certain strict and set routines.

  ‘I have put off my normal Thursday At Home this month, Ellie,’ she informed her niece one morning, ‘until we can get you some decent clothes.’

  ‘But, Aunt, I have plenty of clothes,’ Ellie protested. ‘Aunt Amelia insisted that I was to have two complete sets of full mourning.’

  Her aunt looked both uncomfortable and a little impatient. ‘Well, yes, of course, my dear, you have clothes, but I’m afraid they simply will not do for Hoylake. Even your uncle has noticed…Well, it is on his instruction that you are to have new. He is thinking of me, of course. He knows how embarrassing it would be for me to be shamed in front of my friends, and I am afraid that I would be shamed, Ellie, if you were to be seen in what you have. Which reminds me, I have instructed Wrotham to take you into the dining room this morning and she will go through with you the, er, correct order in which you should use your cutlery. Then this afternoon we shall practise how you must go on when I have my At Home.’

  Ellie could feel her face burning with misery and humiliation. She had seen the previous evening the way in which her aunt’s gaze had focused on her momentary fumbling with her cutlery. At home their meals had been simply prepared and served; here, well, it still shocked her to see so much waste, to see full courses brought to the table only to be waved away untouched by her aunt and uncle.

  Sometimes it seemed as though the new rules she had to learn were unending – but to what purpose?

  Her aunt talked confusingly about introducing Ellie to her circle of friends and finding a suitable husband for her amongst Mr Parkes’ wealthy clients, but Ellie was no fool. She had neither dowry nor social standing to enhance her value as a prospective bride, and besides, she did not want a husband – ever. The very thought made her shiver in terror, remembering her mother’s death. But, contradictorily, her aunt would then talk of how delighted she was to have at long last got a ‘daughter’, and her great desire to keep Ellie at her side for ever.

  And it wasn’t just her aunt and uncle’s way of life that bewildered her, Ellie acknowledged. The servants were terrifyingly formal and austere, and as different from their own Annie and Jenny as it was possible to be. And the worst of them all was surely her aunt’s maid, Wrotham, who seemed to seize every opportunity she could to underline to Ellie how ill-equipped she was to meet the demands of her new life.

  ‘Pay no mind to her, miss,’ Lizzie had told Ellie comfortingly earlier in the week, when Wrotham had refused to allow Ellie into her aunt’s room, insisting that her mistress be left in peace to allow the tisane she had drunk to ease her headache to take effect.

  Her Aunt Lavinia was, Ellie had quickly discovered, a martyr to the most dreadful headaches, all the more so when Mr Parkes was in one of his sharp moods.

  But hardest of all to bear was the fact that Ellie had so little contact with her family, despite the many letters she had written to them.

  ‘Oh, there you are, miss. The mistress is asking for you.’

  Still holding Connie’s letter Ellie turned round in response to Lizzie’s words. Sometimes it seemed to Ellie that she was closer to her maid than to anyone else in her new life.

  ‘Does my aunt wish me to go up to her?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘She does that, miss. Said you was to go straight up to her room, if you please!’

  Lizzie, a devotee of both the newly fashionable moving pictures and the more traditional music-hall theatre on her afternoons off, had returned from seeing the latest production, straight from London itself, earlier in the month, full of excitement about the hairstyle she had seen the leading lady wearing, and had managed to persuade Ellie to allow her to try it on her luxuriously thick hair.

  The result had been so elegant and stylish that even her aunt had commented on how much it had suited her, but all Ellie had been able to think was whether her family would have recognised her in this new, unfamiliar Hoylake young lady she was being turned into. Connie, of course, would have delighted in such fripperies and spoiling – or rather the Connie that Ellie remembered would have done. The brief, lifeless, carefully written letters Ellie received from her sister showed nothing of that Connie.

  Did Connie ever see anything of John and the baby? Did she see their father? Gideon?

  Ellie froze
. She had no right to be letting Gideon Walker into her thoughts.

  Ellie could feel the corset Lizzie had laced tightly to give her the requisite eighteen-inch waist digging into her skin as she hurried towards the parlour door.

  Picking up the skirts of the new lilac half-mourning dress she was wearing, she hurried up the imposing staircase with its Turkish carpet and intricately carved banister.

  Her aunt had told her within a week of her arrival that the house had originally been built for one of Liverpool’s shipowners, who, through a succession of unfortunate events, had had to sell it before he had even moved in. ‘Mr Parkes was able to buy the house through his business connections,’ her aunt had informed her.

  At that time Ellie had still been feeling too overwhelmed and daunted by everything that had happened to do anything other than acknowledge inwardly that the house was indeed very imposing and a far cry from her own much humbler home in Preston. But now, twelve months later, she was acutely aware that it wasn’t just in their sizes that the home she had grown up in and the house occupied by her aunt and uncle were so very different.

  She found her aunt, as she had known she would, lying down on the elegant chaise longue in her boudoir, with Wrotham standing guard over her.

  ‘Oh, Ellie, there you are,’ Aunt Lavinia declared in a feeble voice. ‘My dear, please do not move so vigorously. It makes my poor head ache! Mr Parkes has informed me that we have now received our formal invitation to your cousin Cecily’s wedding. Thank goodness my sister Gibson had the good sense to put it off until we are all out of mourning. I can think of nothing more dispiriting than a set of wedding photographs showing everyone wearing black, although, of course, as a family we are all fortunate in being so fair and able to carry mourning colours!’