Page 64 of The Lord who Captured Her Innocent Heart
Ella’s eyebrows furrowed. Peter beamed at her, seemingly reflecting the message in her father’s eyes. What on earth was going on?
“Good afternoon,” Ella said, sweeping her fingers across her skirts. “I didn’t imagine you’d be here today.” Her heart burst somewhere near her throat.
“I stopped briefly to have a chat with your father,” Peter said, beaming.
“Did you? I dare say the two of you had a bit to speak about?” Ella asked, trying to downplay the bright smile that seeped out between her cheeks.
“Shall we go for our own walk? Or are you already too fatigued after your jaunt?” Peter asked.
Slowly, Ella’s father turned back towards the house, moving with the air of a ghost. Ella understood, then: Peter had asked for her hand, just as Frederick had with Tatiana’s. A soft sob ebbed from between her lips. She quickly pulled it back in, forcing herself to indulge in the beauty of the moment.
“I can’t imagine anything better but a walk with you,” she told Peter, slipping her arm into his.
Chapter 28
It was funny how quickly a single year swept past.
It all happened in a blink.
Immediately after Peter whispered, “Be mine. Be my wife. Live by my side forever,” Ella found herself surging forward towards the life she’d always craved. Suddenly, she was busy celebrating her own engagement party; planning various family dinners, and sewing her own wedding dress, which had similar beadwork to Tatiana’s, with a larger skirt. Instead of silver, Ella chose a light gold colour and dressed Tatiana in the same bridesmaid dress Ella had worn previously — along with the very same hat.
Ella had previously met Peter’s parents, but now approached them with a far different light: knowing she had to impress them from a daughter-in-law, familial perspective, rather than just as the kid-sister of Tatiana. Initially, Ella was a bit anxious about Peter’s father, as she knew he was generally annoyed at Peter’s abrupt departure from the family business. “You should have seen my face when they announced the carriage was found, without my son in it,” Lord Holloway said to Ella, one evening when she’d arrived for dinner. “They told me oftentimes, bandits raced around those parts of the moors. I felt my life flash before my eyes. I knew that my son had made the one mistake I’d been waiting for him to make forever — the one that would end his life.”
“Father, you’re being ridiculous.” Peter had sighed, lowering a glass of wine into Ella’s hands. “He really is so dramatic, isn’t he?”
“Well, I would have been worried sick,” Ella had offered, trying her hand at befriending the Holloways.
“He simply had to make it back to see you,” Lady Holloway said, her voice sweet, almost tartly so. But she patted Ella on the back of the shoulder, lending her a smile that could only be perceived as motherly.
The wedding had been just as grand as Tatiana’s, although a bit smaller, as Ella wasn’t one for a great deal of attention. When they’d said their “I dos,” Ella’s cheeks had grown flushed with something impossible to name, something huge and emotive, and her skin had sizzled as Peter had slipped the ring upon her finger. When she glanced back at Tatiana, her sister’s eyes had filled with tears and she lent Ella an enormous nod, one that assured her that her decision was a marvellous one. “You match,” she mouthed. Perhaps that was the perfect thing to say.
In June of the following year, Ella had awoken with a strange feeling, swirling around her gut. Abruptly, she’d pulled herself from bed and hobbled towards the chamber pot, her hands over her stomach. She’d felt faint, as though she needed to empty the contents of her stomach. Unfortunately, she hadn’t eaten anything the night before, nor for lunch. Something was clearly amiss.
At this, Peter’s grin was wild and crooked, his eyes glittering with what he felt he understood better than she ever could. “You know what this means,” he said.
Ella hadn’t the energy to feel much excitement, at least not then. She cast herself to bed and tossed and turned, feeling alternately ravenous and absolutely fearful. Had she the energy, the life within her to actually become a mother? She imagined a little ball of life, pulsing in her belly, and whispered to it: “I hope I can do it. I want to do it so badly.”
The following afternoon, Tatiana arrived at her house, her face similarly white. When she appeared in Ella’s sitting room, Ella’s initial thought was that Peter had told Tatiana the events of the previous morning. However, the moment Tatiana spotted her sister, she burst into her own tears.
“I’m pregnant,” she murmured, her body quivering. “I’m so frightened, and yet so glad. I don’t know quite what to do with myself.”
Ella broke into her own tears. She drew her arms around her sister and held her close, wanting to give her enough time in her misery before whispering her own. “I think I am, too.”
The girls immediately erupted into anxious laughter. Tatiana smacked her lightly on the thigh, whispering, “When were you planning on telling me?”
“I only just discovered it,” Ella returned.
“So, we’ll be pregnant together. Is that it?” Tatiana said.
“We did everything else together before!” Ella cried.
Tatiana arranged for Peter and Ella to arrive for a dinner the following week, to celebrate the pregnancies. “Soon, the rest of our lives will be far, far different. Many more nappies. Much less sleep. Let us have intelligent conversations while we still can.”
Ella and Peter agreed.
En route to Tatiana and Frederick’s, Peter watched Ella closely and frequently hollered forward in the carriage to demand that the driver take it slow. “My wife is pregnant!” he said, a fact that the doctor had affirmed the week before. “I declare, if you move a single step faster than this, I will come up there and …”
“Peter…” Ella sighed, gripping his hand. “You really have to have more patience.”
