Page 55 of The Lord who Captured Her Innocent Heart
Ella hadn’t the strength to answer. She swallowed hard, trying to draw up memory of whatever it was Lydia had been speaking of. She turned her head left, then right, marvelling at the loss of time and space between them.
“That’s what I think, too.” Lydia sighed, casting her eyes to the ground. “There truly isn’t a proper answer, is there?”
Wonderfully, Lydia abandoned the Chesterton estate about a half-hour later, placing kisses on Ella’s cheeks and espousing on what a wonderful time she’d had. Lady Chesterton called from the sitting room, demanding that Lydia make her return sooner, rather than later. Ella heard her own voice affirm this as well. She shivered, surprised at the ways in which her body kicked in, without her allowing it, following on with the rules of society.
Hadn’t she imagined something better for herself?
Prior to dinner, Ella wandered into the room with the pianoforte, which stood, shadowy, with its own firm personality in the corner. Her head was filled with flashing images of Peter, playing it weeks before. At the time, she hadn’t imagined a world in which he didn’t exist. She’d taken him so for granted.
Now, she perched at the edge of the piano bench, allowing just the edges of her fingers to dribble along the keys. The sound was alluring, warm. Her eyelids dropped. She inhaled sharply, remembering the song Peter had played for all of them that long-lost afternoon. Could she remember it? How she yearned to hear it again, streaming from her own fingers.
She began to pluck out the tune, keeping her eyes closed so that she could remain fully positioned in the sound. But of course, her fingers couldn’t fully find the tune; she was a half-wrought musician, only just so creative. She was nothing in comparison to him. Frustrated, she allowed her fingers to fall to her lap. A tiny sob escaped her lips.
She felt she was staring forward at a reality in which she would be forever alone: a reality of tired afternoons of listening to Lydia fall into boy-talk, of trying and failing to read yet another book. Her chin fell towards her chest, and she inhaled, exhaled, feeling her body try — and fail — to fall into tears. She simply couldn’t give her enormous lack of feeling that kind of power.
There was the call of dinner, just as it had always come before. Ella shoved back from the piano, allowing it to rest, calm and stoic, just as it had been before. Tatiana wouldn’t play it every afternoon any longer, humming and singing out, bringing fire and charm to Ella’s afternoon doldrums.
“Coming,” Ella responded, her voice only loud enough for herself to hear. “I’m coming.”
Chapter 25
Lord Holloway awaited his son, Peter, at the base of the steps. It was the morning Peter had dreaded — the morning his father had affirmed they would embark upon the business meetings in cities across England: everywhere from Central London to Brighton to Coventry. When Peter descended the steps, his father lent him a smirk that told Peter he knew precisely how wretched this would be for him. It was as though he wanted to watch his son squirm.
Peter had spent the majority of the night before tossing and turning, his face squeezed up in a sort of half-terror. Since the wedding, he’d felt on the brink of a total mental collapse, sensing himself fall further and further from his life’s purpose. Now, the woman he’d told himself he loved for years on-end was fully married to someone else, his cousin. Yet, his heart didn’t gape with the hole of this. Rather, he felt a strange listlessness, with regards to anything Tatiana. Instead, his mind turned continually toward Ella, reminding him that she didn’t yearn for him the way he did for her. Reminding him that whatever sort of internal hope he had for her, for them together, was a kind of child’s play. He couldn’t allow it another moment of passion.
His father’s butler dropped their bags into the back of the carriage. Peter took firm steps up the carriage, sitting beside his father without bothering to glance his way. He felt there was an enormous wall between them, one that disallowed him to speak of anything with any air of genuine kindness.
The stablehand leapt atop the carriage, casting his eyes back towards Peter’s father, waiting for the “okay.” Peter’s father gave him a firm nod. In response, the stablehand drew his whip across the horse’s shoulders. The horse moved forward, carting them away from the estate. Peter gaped out the window, feeling a strange sense of loss. He felt he was being pulled towards an adulthood he hadn’t fully agreed to.
“I can’t quite handle it,” his father said now, seemingly echoing back what Peter was thinking, for alternate reasons.
“What do you mean?” Peter responded, perhaps a moment or two too late.
“I simply mean, I can’t handle your desolate nature, as of late,” his father returned. He cleared his throat. “It’s as though you’re mourning something. Your skin is about as pale as it’s ever been, yet it’s the middle of the summer. If you’re going to act this way in front of our clients, then I dare say you might have a hand in ruining several business relationships. I can’t very well support that.”
Peter didn’t speak for a long moment. The moors whipped out beside him, green and blissful, heavenly beneath the simmering sunlight.
“I’ll be good, Father,” Peter said, his voice low. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
The carriage tugged them the rest of the way towards Brighton — the place where, Peter knew, Frederick and Tatiana were having their blissful honeymoon. When he and his father arrived at their hotel, Peter made an effort to deliver a letter to Tatiana and Frederick, reporting that he was in the city and would very much like to see them for dinner one night, if it pleased them. His father noted the letter, muttering under his breath, “We’re here to work, son.”
But the following afternoon, after hours of thudding conversation with various business prospects, Peter did pull himself away from his father for a few hours to meet with the married couple at a nearby restaurant. On the walk to the restaurant, he ached with apprehension, wondering if the sight of Tatiana alongside her beloved would incite his innermost feelings for her. His heart swam with feelings he couldn’t entirely name.
Yet when he burst through the door of the restaurant to discover them, Tatiana’s long, white fingers were draped across Frederick’s, in complete comfort. Her eyelashes batted towards him, in the midst of giggling at whatever joke he’d offered. Frederick, himself, chuckled, like a child showing off. They seemed to be years into married life, already accustomed to what it meant to have another half.
Peter expected a rush of jealousy, like a wave, to crash over him. But he felt nothing.
“There he is,” Frederick said, rising from his chair and shaking Peter’s hand. Peter knelt and kissed Tatiana’s glowing cheek. Even her skin incited nothing within him. She was simply the wife of his cousin, now.
“Good evening,” he said. He sat upon the chair across from them, watching as the waitstaff ambled about. A waiter piled menus into his arms and strutted towards them, eyeing them as “moneyed” people.
“I trust Brighton has served you well?” he asked them, delivering a wide smile. He was surprised to feel the genuine nature of the smile. Perhaps it was just the fact that the humans before him had nothing to do with the wretched nature of the business he’d been conducting, nor with his father.
“It’s been marvellous,” Tatiana said, beaming. She glanced once more towards Frederick, waiting for his assessment.
“And Frederick here hasn’t picked up a single book on the way?” Peter asked, finding his smile grow more assured.
“Oh, there’s been a bit of book reading, that’s for sure.” Tatiana laughed. “Even me. Frederick has lent me a few of his favourites. Please, Peter, don’t tell Ella about it. She’ll absolutely die if she learns I read a few of her beloved books, long after her recommendation. She’ll demand why it wasn’t enough that SHE recommended them. That I needed to wait for Frederick.”
