Page 42 of The Lord who Captured Her Innocent Heart
“I don’t imagine I’ll find anyone on this earth who will love me the way you love my sister,” Ella murmured now.
“You will, Ella. You will.” Frederick held her eyes for longer than was perhaps appropriate. But Ella knew that it meant little more than deep, brotherly affection.
Ella felt it, now: the place where she’d kept her seemingly deep, seemingly undying love for Frederick, it was void, empty. She hadn’t a single thing left for him. With this realisation, she reared forward, drawing her arms tightly around Frederick, hugging him tight. Frederick acted as though the wind had been kicked out of his lungs. He coughed several times, then brought his hands to her shoulders, hugging her back. Around them, the world swirled — Tatiana’s laugh rang out. But they were one another’s safety net, just as they’d been for years.
Just because true love hadn’t grown out of that, didn’t mean Ella didn’t respect Frederick more than nearly anyone on the planet.
“Look at the pair of you!” Tatiana chirped, her voice barrelling into Ella’s ear. “It’s a sight to make my heart nearly burst. My two favourite people on the planet.”
Ella took a large step back. Her eyes glittered with tears, so much so that Tatiana seemed but a messy haze. Tatiana’s glass of wine was held aloft, and Ella wrapped her own hand around it, sweeping it towards her lips. She took a slight sip, and then another, feeling on the brink of some sort of break. Was Peter still speaking to Eve? Had he already decided that she was his next conquest?
“I see that Peter’s been introduced to Eve,” Tatiana said, her eyebrows stitching together. She passed this judgement towards Frederick, seeming to demand what was going on.
“Yes. I thought, well. To be frank with you, he seems terribly out of his element,” Frederick said, shifting his weight. “I assumed he would immediately latch onto her, but he seems void of — of personality. I can’t quite name the situation. I’ve never seen him so low in my life. And I’ve known him for all of it.”
As if on cue, Eve placed her hand again over Peter’s lower arm, tugging him closer towards her. Ursula seemed on the prowl now, as well, shimmying closer. Ella’s eyes swept towards Tatiana, hunting for assistance.
But Tatiana just scoffed, muttering something about never really liking Eve to begin with. “Perhaps I have given Peter too much credit in previous months,” she stammered. “Imagining him to be a more upstanding gentleman.”
“Darling, I’ve only just explained …” Frederick began.
“No!” Tatiana snapped, pulling back from her beloved. “You don’t need to explain things to me yet again, Frederick. Is this truly the sort of thing you’re going to do the rest of my life? Constantly tell me when I’m wrong?”
Suddenly, Tatiana spun towards Ella, only, and gripped her wrist. Her eyes swam with tears. “I think I need your assistance in the house, Sister.”
Tatiana pulled Ella towards the mansion, drawing her across the gleaming floorboards of the inner hallway before thrusting them both up the steps. Tatiana flung herself across her bed once more, her body quaking with sobs. Ella again felt herself at the mercy of her sister’s emotions, marvelling at the weight of them. Again, it seemed that her own stirring emotions would go unmapped, without respect, because her sister was simply louder.
Ella dipped herself onto the mattress beside Tatiana. Her fingers traced her sister’s slight back. There was nothing she could do but wait.
“Suppose I shouldn’t marry him?” Tatiana murmured, her mouth pressed against the fluffy blanket beneath her. “Suppose I’m making a mistake.”
“You’ve spoken in circles about this,” Ella returned. “You know that Frederick is your match. He’s the only one who can fully balance you. The only one to ensure that your moods find solace. I’ve always struggled with it, but Frederick seems to have the magic touch.”
Tatiana spun her head, to allow her blotchy, tear-stained face to peer up at Ella. She reached forth, drawing her hand across Ella’s knee. She gripped it so hard that Ella nearly leapt out of her skin.
“Please. Tell Frederick I need to speak with him,” Tatiana whispered. “Please. Tell him he’s so needed.”
Ella did her duty, as sister, as friend. She shuffled down the steps, her shoulders heavy, her hand guiding itself down the railing. She felt as though she was walking through a sort of daydream, sweeping through the grass, finding a nearly inconsolable Frederick near the bushes (apparently, he’d assumed she was going to leave him — just rush out of their engagement like that. “Surely I’ll never find anyone like her again in my life!” he uttered, making Ella make sure to keep her eyes straight forward, without rolling). She was further careful to ensure that she didn’t find Peter in the crowd, sensing that he was surely in the midst of a now 30-minute conversation with Eve (a better match, she truly couldn’t imagine).
When Frederick was safely indoors, guiding himself to the designated meeting point (as the bedroom was inappropriate), Ella snaked herself from the garden party, rushing her little feet across the cobblestones that led between the rose garden and the old garden, the one built by her grandfather nearly 40 years before. For a moment, she paused at the gate, drawing her fingers over the iron. The iron creaked back and forth, its rust shuffling off into the wind.
But being locked inside a garden didn’t suit her current disposition. Rather, she felt cast out, wild, and she needed to abandon herself to that freedom. She began to run, lifting her skirts towards her waist and allowing her feet to flash before her. She’d never felt so manic in her life.
Within minutes, she’d rushed the remainder of the way from the gardens, into the moors, where the grasses seemed to tear towards the sky. It was perhaps seven in the evening, nearly eight. There was a strange, grey haze over everything, and it had eaten at what had been a blissfully blue sky. Ella suddenly sensed it was going to rain, perhaps storm. She didn’t care.
She rushed through the moors, allowing her dress to tear, allowing her shoes to flop off from her feet and fall behind her. Her red hair rushed behind her, every bit the monster she’d always imagined it could become if she didn’t brush it, if she didn’t tend to it. She didn’t want to tend to anything now. Not now that she would have to live out the remainder of her existence without Peter. Without love.
When she did scream, it matched the storm above. It seemed to capture the exact same pitch of the lightning as it snaked through the sky. Ella wasn’t accustomed to the sound of her own scream, and she glanced back, almost expecting someone else to approach from behind; almost expecting it belonged to someone else.
But no: it was just Ella Chesterton, alone on the moor, while the rain splattered all around her. Her shoulders shook. She allowed another insane scream to escape. In the back of her mind, she imagined Peter appearing in the midst of the downpour — extending his arms, wrapping her tight against him. “I always wanted you. I always wanted only you,” he might say.
But she would know it wasn’t true.
It took Ella a while to return to the safety of her home. By the time she reached it, the garden party had broken up, with only a few stragglers inside, wrapped around the pianoforte. Eve sat perched upon the stool, her fingers flowing evenly. But Peter was nowhere to be found. Ella spied from the edge of the party, dripping rainwater across the floor. She prayed no one would ever know the intensity of her inner mind. It seemed far too much to bear.
Eve’s perfect lips parted as she strummed her fingers along the keys. Her song swept forth, glittering with a melody Ella knew she, herself, could never muster. Her stomach stewed. At least Peter wasn’t amongst them; at least he wasn’t privy to the beauty Eve graced the world with.
“What on earth!”
