Page 52 of The Lord who Captured Her Innocent Heart
Ella shook her head. “Perhaps I ate something. Or a bit too much of something. I can’t possibly …” Ella swung her palms across the flat of her stomach, feeling bulged-out and strange. Her eyes moved back to Peter, where he spoke with his father. His face was shadowed, the nose casting a dark line across his lips. She wished she could make out what he was saying.
Surely, regardless of what he was telling his father, she knew the inner aching of his heart. The love of his life had fully married someone else.
“Why don’t we take a moment to ourselves, hmmm?” Tatiana murmured, sweeping a red lock behind Ella’s ear. Her manner was oddly comforting, motherly, in a way that wasn’t ordinary, due to Tatiana’s everyday selfishness. She swung her arm around Ella’s waist and swept her towards the hallway, slipping between several wedding guests. They were glossy with early-afternoon champagne and piped Tatiana’s name as they passed, demanding her attention.
“Just a moment, darling,” Tatiana offered several of them, her voice overzealous with importance. “I just must attend to my sister.”
Ordinarily, perhaps, Ella would have taken this horrifically and demanded to know why Tatiana had decided to put her affairs on display. But her legs quaked beneath her, and she clung harder to Tatiana’s sharp elbow.
Ella and Tatiana marched down the long hallway, reflected on both sides with the cracked antique mirror, which had made it its duty to echo back the finery of many centuries of gorgeous men and women at the Braxton estate. Just now, the mirror told a far different story: one of Ella’s eyes, swimming with tears. She wished she could tear into her chest and break out her heart. She wished she could force herself to stop feeling.
Finally, when they’d created a great rift between themselves and the congregation of wedding-goers, Tatiana and Ella halted. Tatiana blinked at Ella, seemingly waiting for her to divulge the secrets of her heart. How difficult it was for Ella to imagine saying anything of truth.
“Tell me what’s going on, dear sister,” Tatiana murmured, her voice coaxing, as though she was speaking with a much younger child. “Was it all the talk about children? Of course, I don’t expect you to mother my children, as I said. I know you’ll have so many of your own to look after.”
Ella guffawed at this. Tears cut down her cheeks. “How foolish to even think of my children when I don’t have a suitor.” Ella sighed.
“Darling, you know it’s only a matter of time!” Tatiana chirped. “I know in my heart that you’ll find the perfect partner. I can’t imagine it otherwise. Someone who will balance out your moods. Someone who will ensure you don’t spend your entire life in the library. Someone who …”
“Someone like you,” Ella said, lending her sister a wide, tear-stained smile.
Tatiana slipped her shoulders back. Her own smile glittered with the sort of power only a bride on her wedding day could muster. “I suppose that’s what I mean. Someone like me. Wouldn’t you want to marry the male version of me, darling sister?”
“Perhaps the arrogance would become a bit much,” Ella teased.
“You always know how to put me in my place. Don’t you?” Tatiana returned.
They held one another’s gaze for a long moment. Ella felt as though they were perched at the edge of a cliff, poised to leap over the edge. She hadn’t a clue what would await them at the bottom.
“I really am so very happy for you,” Ella whispered, sweeping her fingers just beneath her eyes to scrape up the last of her tears. “I apologise for not showing it better. But Frederick is a good man. Perhaps a great man. And I know he will honour you and love you, every single day, for the rest of your life.”
Tatiana squeezed Ella’s hand. After a long, pregnant pause, the girls hugged a final time. Down the hall, someone called Tatiana’s name, a final pull back towards the party. Time ticked along quickly, now: tearing them towards the moment when Tatiana and Frederick would depart on their honeymoon to Brighton. Already, Ella felt the time ahead like a desert, void of purpose or meaning, water or life. She sensed she would spend the days alone, attempting to avoid her mother and father, straining through book after book.
When the girls returned to the ballroom, Ella’s eyes raced towards their table to discover that Peter hadn’t yet returned. His father had returned to his perch next to his mother, and Frederick busied himself in conversation with Lord Chesterton. But Peter was nowhere to be found.
Perhaps the emotion of the day had pounded itself within him, forced him to abandon the ballroom and return to his home. Ella had the strangest sensation that she would never see him again. She forced herself to swallow, to lend yet another false smile to her sister.
After the breakfast festivities finished, the gaggle of wedding-goers ambled out of the mansion to watch Frederick and Tatiana board their carriage. Both had dressed in alternate outfits — Tatiana in a dark pink frock, and Frederick in a different suit. Tatiana had donned a different cap. They cradled one another close as they waved out to their friends, their family, before diving the rest of the way into the carriage. To Ella, it looked as though the carriage had swallowed them whole and would now digest them.
She shivered, glancing on either side to discover herself entirely alone.
Seconds later, Lydia thrust herself up beside Ella. She spoke for a moment, but the words were blurry in Ella’s ears.
“What was that?” Ella asked.
“I said, it was quite a successful day,” Lydia affirmed, words that felt lacklustre against the weight of everything else.
“Oh.”
“I dare say, you’re looking rather sour,” Lydia said, clucking her tongue. “Your sister once mentioned to me that she thought you might have loved Frederick.”
Ella’s eyebrows popped high on her forehead. “That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she said.
“Oh, Tatiana said this years ago,” Lydia shrugged. “At the time, she thought Frederick was just as horribly boring as you are. No offence, darling. Unless — unless Tatiana sensed the truth? She hasn’t just run off with the love of your life, has she?”
Wedding guests had begun to board their own carriages, directing their lives back to their own estates, their own London town homes, their own Saturday errands and lives. At just after one in the afternoon, the festivities were complete. It felt strange, tearing through such an enormous event in the light of the morning. What was one meant to look forward to for the rest of the day?
“That’s preposterous.” Ella sighed.
