Page 16 of The Lord who Captured Her Innocent Heart
Chapter 8
Three days later, Ella scuttled herself deep into a flower garden, attempting, and failing, to loose herself in a book, rather than exist in the real world. She draped her head back, feeling the sunlight sweep across her cheeks. In the previous three days, she’d spent perhaps fifteen minutes with her sister, unable to trust herself to blurt out her true feelings for Frederick, her true opinion about the situation. Ella wasn’t ordinarily this strange, spitting fire. Rather, she was normally the measured sister, the one less apt to bicker.
She supposed love did crazy things to people.
When the sun grew too hot, a strange thing for late May, Ella stretched her legs out and roamed back to the house. Bees buzzed about her curls, swirling near her ears. She swatted at them absent-mindedly, fully falling into the lushness of the green bushes around her, the trees as they wafted to and fro overhead. She wondered what Peter was doing at that moment. Was he, too, wandering about, lost to the sea of torment it was, knowing the love of your life would marry someone else? Or was he elsewhere, perhaps hunting or fighting or screaming across the great green world? He and Ella were as different as Tatiana and Frederick, which gave Ella pause. How could she possibly partner with someone she saw so little of herself in? It went against her nature.
At this, Ella was led again to thoughts of her sister’s future with Frederick. Although frequently these thoughts were selfish, aligned only with Ella’s wants and needs, she now struggled, knowing that Tatiana’s future would be entirely bland and undesirable for her. Tatiana needed the sort of brash attention that Peter, himself, craved. She imagined Tatiana lonely and aching, in a big mansion, while Frederick busied himself with one book after another. “Please, Frederick. I want to be in the world. I want to socialise.” It was all imagined, but it felt far too real. Ella ached, knowing she needed to put a stop to it.
When she arrived back at the mansion, she found her mother in the sitting room, stitching swept across her lap. She didn’t lift her head when Ella entered.
“There you are,” she said instead. “Your sister’s been looking for you.”
“Oh?”
“She wants your help making a trousseau,” her mother continued. She stabbed her stitching with a needle, then stretched it high above her head. This act was something Ella had seen her do over and over again since she was just a toddler. It seemed the only natural thing her mother ever did: sit in that slice of sunlight, sewing.
“And mine, of course,” her mother continued. “But to be honest, darling, your sister has expressed concern that you have little interest in her wedding. It’s a rare thing, indeed, for you to take steps away from your sister, so apt were you to follow her around throughout your life.”
Ella swallowed hard, feeling like a target, with many arrows pointed towards her. “I will help her with whatever she needs.”
“Wonderful. Because I know she’ll be a weeping mess if she doesn’t have you around. The girl is an emotional basket case.”
Ella giggled a bit, for a moment feeling on-par with her mother. She swallowed, tapping her fingers along the edge of the doorway. Immediately, she flung them behind her back, realising she hadn’t trimmed the nails in ages, and she looked a bit like a cavewoman.
“Mother, I was thinking that it really is a scary thing, knowing that Tatiana and Frederick don’t know one another so well,” Ella began.
“Hmm?” her mother said, seemingly distracted.
“It’s just. I can’t imagine that they…” Ella started, trying to construct a way to say this that didn’t immediately alert her mother that she was up to something. “I suppose it would be nice to continue to have get-togethers, to allow Tatiana and Frederick to continue to grow in friendship, as well as love. Their romance seemed to come directly from the pages of their letters, rather than actual interaction…”
Her mother’s eyes finally flickered up towards Ella. She paused for a long moment. Ella felt suddenly as though she was in trouble, a much younger girl, caught in the act of doing something she wasn’t meant to do – perhaps stealing from the kitchen, or sneaking into the garden (for continued reading sessions, assuredly).
“What do you propose?” her mother asked, her voice icy. It seemed to tell Ella that she didn’t have all day to listen to her beat around the bush.
“I suppose a dinner party would be a beneficial way to do this,” Ella continued, the words seeming foreign on her lips. She? Proposing a dinner party? Goodness, she was different. “We could invite various people from Tatiana’s friend group. Perhaps we could even find space for Frederick’s cousin, Peter.”
Lady Chesterton’s smile pulled to the side. Her eyes glittered. For a long moment, Ella wasn’t entirely sure why, or what this represented. Her mother swept her sewing to the side, clasped her hands together on her lap.
“I see,” her mother said.
“What do you see?” Ella asked, genuinely unsure.
“I see that you’re interested in this man. And that you want to arrange a better way for you to spend more time with him. I saw the pair of you whispering at the engagement party the other evening. I dare say, it’s not an obvious match. But …”
“Mother, no. That’s not it at all,” Ella stuttered.
But her mother was far down a different path. She rubbed her palms together, casting her eyes towards the glittering glass of the window. “Imagine it. Imagine having both girls married off in a year!” she murmured. “We’ll be the envy of nearly every family in London. Of course, it will take quite a bit of planning. Imagine the parties we’ll have to arrange!” She turned her head swiftly, almost bird-like, towards Ella. “You don’t suppose he’ll propose soon, do you? I dare say that engagement party nearly took all the life from me. Could he wait a month or two?”
“Mother!” Ella sighed, tossing her red curls down her back.
“It’s funny that he still came to like you, despite that wretched haircut you gave yourself,” her mother continued, her eyebrows stitching together. “Really, darling, if he goes back on his attraction to you, you cannot blame him. You look like you’ve gone through some sort of machinery.”
Ella allowed her shoulders to slump forward. When her mother bumbled along in this manner, it was difficult to draw her back. She saw everything precisely the way she wanted to, without rhyme or reason. Her mother dropped her sewing to the side and stretched her arms above her head, making her shoulders crackle. As she stood, she straightened her posture, becoming a stick-straight portrait, her profile stark against the far white wall.
Often, when her mother moved in this manner (her thoughts spinning of her own accord), Ella found herself mesmerised with her beauty. She was a stunning specimen, ageing like fine wine — like the more mature version of Tatiana. Compared to the two of them, Ella felt akin to a puddle in the ground. She very much felt that she was deserving of the sort of machine-like fringe upon her head, a cut that made her look bulbous and off-kilter.
Certainly, with that haircut, no one could possibly love her. This was a fact. Peter couldn’t see through the haircut, nor could Frederick. In fact, Ella knew she had to make peace with being a general laughing stock for the remainder of the cut — which would possibly ruin the majority of her summer.
