Ellie Pride

Robert’s hungry, demanding kisses distracted her. It was a hot night; the sounds of the revelry outside echoing into their bedroom.

‘Robert, please be careful,’ she pleaded with him as he slipped her dress off her shoulders and started to unlace her.

She always worried when, as now, he was in one of his ebullient, boisterous moods, filled with energy and excitement, just in case he should forget himself and the precautions they were obliged to take. She gave a small moan as she felt him touching her, her body tensing and then quivering as the aching sensation of wanting him began its familiar dance with her fear. Outside, the raucous laughter of some late revellers masked the small groan of pleasure she gave as her own need overwhelmed her fear. It had always been like this between them for her; her own secret cause of joy and shame. She had no idea where it had come from, this deep, dangerous chord of sensuality, so strong that it could override everything else.

Calling out to Robert, she dug her nails into the strong muscles of his arms, lifting her body against his, driven by her own hunger. Wrapping herself around him, she drew him down against her and into her body, glorying in the hot, strong feel of him inside her.

No, her sisters would never have known anything like this. Even now, Robert still had the power to make her want him with a ferocity that shocked her in the cold light of day as much as it thrilled her in the sweaty, secret, dark heat of night.

And it had been so long. Weeks…Passionately she bit at his mouth, and felt him shudder as she urged him to thrust deeper.

‘Lyddy…’ Robert tried to protest, but he ached so much for her – as much now, after nearly twenty years of marriage, as he had done when they had first met. But they had to be careful. There must be no child…he must not…

Gritting his teeth, Robert made to withdraw from her, but Lyddy refused to let him, moaning in protest, clinging to him, locking her muscles and writhing frantically against him.

‘No. Lyddy…we must not…’ Robert repeated, but the words were lost, torn from him by Lydia’s passionate kiss.

It had always been like this between them, and Lydia desperately hoped that she might not have passed on to her daughters this wanton strain in her nature of which she was so ashamed.

As the sensation inside her swelled and grew, it became impossible for her to think any longer – only to feel, to ache, to want…

She was almost there. Almost…

‘Robert!’ As she cried his name and clung to him she felt him groan and jerk back from her.

The spill of his completion fell hot and sticky against her thigh.

Shuddering, and gripped only by her own sense of aching frustration, Lydia reached out to guide his hand to her body so that he might complete what he had started.

TWO

‘Now remember, we are all to stay together,’ Robert warned his family as they stepped out into the street to join the crowds already there, intent on watching the final torch-lit procession of the Guild celebrations as it made its way through the streets to the barracks.

It had been a long day. After attending a subscription lunch they had seen the matinée performance of The Yeomen of the Guard at the Theatre Royal in Fishergate. From there Robert had taken John to watch the traditional football match played by the Guild against Woolwich Arsenal. And now they were joining the crowds pouring through the streets to watch and follow the procession.

Just the noise from the revellers was enough to make Ellie want to cover her ears.

‘I don’t think there’s any point in trying to get to Fishergate,’ her father was saying. ‘There’s even more people here than I expected. They’re saying that the shopkeepers in Fishergate have made hundreds of guineas letting out viewing space from their windows.’

‘Well, we have had just as good a view from our own home,’ Lydia told him, ‘and it hasn’t cost us a single penny!’

She gave a small gasp and clung tightly to her husband’s arm as the crowd swirled round them. ‘Stay close together, children,’ she urged them anxiously. ‘Connie, you hold on to me and, Ellie, you take charge of John and keep close to us. Robert, are you sure it’s safe to be out?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘The street is packed so close with people that in the heat I feel I can hardly breathe.’

‘They are saying that it is the best-attended Guild on record,’ Robert confirmed happily. ‘And we shall be perfectly all right just so long as we stay together.’

‘Dad, just look at that,’ John called out excitedly, as a group of ghostly looking grotesques walked past, their torches held aloft to illuminate their eerie masks and costumes.

Ellie shuddered, as repelled by their appearance as her younger brother was admiring.

The noise from the revellers watching and the participants in the procession was ear-shatteringly strident: young children blew shrill toy trumpets, girls screamed, and each group participating in the parade seemed to have its own musical accompaniment. A group of boisterous young men, shouldering their way through the crowds, were singing bawdy music-hall songs, whilst another group sang a rousing military anthem.

All around the Prides the warm night air was punctuated by the sounds of people’s enthusiastic excitement, and as for the smells…! Ellie wrinkled her nose as one of the Southport shrimpers walked past in her distinctive local dress, carrying a tray of her wares. The wings of her white hat were so wide that Ellie marvelled they weren’t crushed by the crowd, but then everyone knew that the shrimpers were a formidable band of women and took care not to jostle them.

John started to beg for some, but Lydia shook her head. It had been a hot day, and heaven alone knew just how long the shrimps had been on those trays. A scuffle broke out amongst the crowd and Robert started to move his family out of the way.

‘Ellie, let go of me,’ John demanded. He had seen a school friend a few yards away and was determined to boast to him about how close he had been able to get to the balloon in Avenham Park before it had begun its ascent.

‘John!’ Ellie protested, as he finally broke her hold and darted into the crowd. ‘Come back here.’

She went after him, calling crossly to him as she did so, but he refused to pay any attention to her.

Having gained his freedom, John quickly abandoned his original goal of reaching his friend and instead started to make for the front of the street, intent on getting a better view of the procession. He thought it a poor thing that his father had refused to allow him out on his own or, at the very least, agreed that they could walk alongside the procession.

For an agile ten-year-old, wriggling through the tight-packed mass of people was relatively easy; for Ellie, following furiously in his wake, it was very much more difficult.

With her hair up and her new dress on she was not a young girl any more but a young woman. Disapproving matrons and high-spirited young men both commented on her progress through their midst in terms that brought a hot sting of colour to her face, although for very different reasons.

When one young gallant actually dared to refuse to let her pass until she had allowed him a kiss, she gave him such a look of fulminating fury and disdain that he immediately stepped back. Where on earth was John? Despairingly Ellie searched the crowd. She had come only a few yards down Friargate, but the press of people was such that she felt almost as though she was in an alien land. All around her she could hear the hum of unfamiliar accents mingling with those of the townsfolk.

‘John!’ she called out, relief filling her as she suddenly saw his familiar tow-coloured head only feet away from her.

The procession was almost out of Friargate now and, as Ellie plunged into the crowd to grab hold of John, it suddenly became a dangerous maelstrom of humanity as it poured into the space left by the procession and surged down the street behind it. To Ellie’s shock she suddenly found herself being lifted off her feet by the sheer force of the tightly packed bodies and carried forward, totally helpless. She started to panic, frantically trying to turn round and make her way back to where she had last seen John, but the press of the crowd made it impossible for her to do so. It was the most frightening sensation she had ever experienced.

She gave a small cry of pain as her new straw hat was tugged off, causing its pins to pull on her hair. She could hardly breathe, let alone move. She could hear other women screaming and men calling out but somehow she felt oddly distanced from the sounds. Her chest felt so tight, she could feel her own heart pounding, and her head too. Someone’s elbow jarred accidentally into her body but she barely felt the blow. She wanted her father! Her mother! She tried to call for them but could only make a tiny pitiful mew of sound, it was becoming so hard for her to breathe. There was a dreadful pain inside her chest, as though it was being crushed…

Gideon Walker had seen Ellie as he made his way through the crowd and had immediately recognised her as the pretty blonde girl he had seen standing in the upper window embrasure of Robert Pride’s Friargate butcher’s shop. His eyes had been drawn to her. She was very pretty, and he had spent more time than he wanted to admit thinking about her since then.

He had seen what was happening to her, but by the time Gideon, who had been less than ten feet away from her, finally managed to push through the crowd to reach her, she was in very grave danger of being trampled by the crowd as it surged after the procession.

Terrified and scarcely able to breathe, Ellie was at first too relieved to be aware of just who her rescuer was when a pair of strong male hands grabbed hold of her and dragged her upright, but by the time Gideon had guided her free of the crowd she was acutely conscious not just of the fact that he had probably saved her life but also of his identity. Now that she was standing so close to him she could see just how tall and broad-shouldered he was, and how mesmerising those silver-grey eyes of his actually were.

‘You shouldn’t be out alone. It isn’t safe,’ Gideon told her, his voice gruff with the mixed emotions of protectiveness and desire that she was arousing in him.

‘I was trying to find my brother,’ Ellie defended herself. Her head ached, and her hands were shaking as she reached up to try to straighten her hair. She knew how dishevelled and untidy she must look. There was a tear in the flounce of her new dress and several grubby stains marked its original pristine freshness.

‘Ellie! There you are! Thank goodness!’ Robert Pride was frowning at Gideon as he studied him.

‘Father, this young man has just been kind enough to help me,’ Ellie explained, guessing what her father was thinking. ‘John ran off and I was trying to find him and…and the crowd…’

As her emotions overcame her, Gideon stepped forward. ‘I saw Miss Pride. And fortunately I was close enough to be able to go to her assistance.’

Robert’s frown deepened. ‘You know my daughter?’ he demanded suspiciously.

‘I know your brother, William Pride, the drover. I have been working for him. He pointed out your shop to me and Miss Pride happened to…to be there,’ Gideon responded equably.

‘I see.’ Robert’s frown relaxed. ‘Well, we are indeed indebted to you, Mr…?’

‘Walker. Gideon Walker.’

‘And you say you work for my brother?’

‘Only on a temporary basis. I was apprenticed to a master cabinet-maker in Lancaster.’ Gideon gave a small shrug. ‘He has three sons of his own to follow him into the business. Now that I am out of my apprenticeship, and have done my time as a journeyman, it is my intention to set up in business on my own.’

‘So you come from Lancaster. Do you have family there?’

‘Robert, I want to get Ellie inside,’ Lydia interrupted her husband. ‘She is very much shocked.’

‘Of course,’ Robert agreed.

‘Oh, it is too bad,’ John was complaining. ‘I wanted to go all the way to the barracks with the parade and buy myself some souvenirs.’

‘I’m sorry, son, but with this crowd it would be far too dangerous.’

Sensing that John was about to argue, and aware of Ellie’s need to get inside, Gideon shook his own head. ‘I must say, I would not want to do anything so foolhardy. I dare say there must be a hundred pickpockets in that crowd and –’

‘Pickpockets?’

Over his son’s head Robert gave Gideon a grateful look. John cared far more for his pocket than his person and Gideon had hit on exactly the right means of dampening his eagerness to follow the parade.

‘I don’t know what your plans are for the rest of the evening,’ Robert smiled at Gideon, ‘but you would be more than welcome to join us for supper.’

‘That would be very kind,’ Gideon responded, ‘but I wouldn’t want to impose.’

‘There would be no imposition,’ Robert assured him, ‘and, besides, you will be able to furnish me with the latest news of my brother.’

The two men exchanged a complicit look and Gideon recognised that it was no secret to Ellie’s father that his brother had a woman in the town whom he visited whenever he was there, as well as a wife in Lancaster.

‘So, Gideon, tell me a little bit more about yourself,’ Robert insisted, as they all took their places around the supper table.

‘There is very little to tell.’

Ellie had disappeared upstairs with her mother once they had returned to the house, but Gideon was pleased to see that she was feeling well enough to sit down to supper, even if she was still looking very pale.

‘My father was one of Earl Peel’s gamekeepers until his death some years ago. He had met my mother originally when she was a personal maid to the Countess of Derby. Later she worked here in Preston, I believe, but moved back to the country when she married. My mother only survived my father by a few months and I was very fortunate in that the Earl paid for my indenture for me.’

‘So both your parents were in service then, Mr Walker?’ Lydia stated coolly.

Calmly Gideon inclined his head in assent.

It was already plain to him that Lydia considered herself to be something above the common run. The china from which they were eating was of high quality, the tablecloth elegantly embroidered Irish linen – Gideon knew that because he had been taught to recognise and appreciate such things by his mother. There was no snobbery as sharp and keen as that of the nobility’s household servants.

‘Well, Preston is a thriving town,’ Robert assured him, apparently oblivious to his wife’s coolness towards their guest.

‘But it won’t be easy for you, Mr Walker, to establish yourself in such a business without any financial or family support,’ Lydia was quick to point out.

She was already aware of the discreet interest Gideon was showing in Ellie, and she was determined to make it plain to Gideon that Ellie was beyond his reach. When she had married out of her own class, at least Robert had had a thriving business, and she her own inheritance. Gideon, it was obvious, had nothing. She might have ignored the warnings of her own mother, but she did not want either of her daughters to copy her mistakes. Love was all very well, and she did love Robert, but she also felt many sharp pangs of envy and regret whenever she visited her sisters and compared their lives to her own.

‘It won’t be easy, no,’ Gideon responded, ‘but certainly it is not impossible either.’

There was no way he was going to reveal his childhood dreams to Lydia. He could still remember how his mother had reacted when she had found him meticulously drawing a plan of Earl Peel’s house.

‘Gideon, what are you doing?’ she had asked him in an angry scolding voice. ‘You are supposed to be practising your handwriting, not wasting time drawing.’

‘But, Mam, just look at this. See how this part of the house comes out here – well, if it were to be brought out further and –’

‘Give that to me!’ his mother had demanded, tearing in pieces the sheet he had been drawing on, her mouth compressing and her face very red. ‘Don’t let me catch you wasting time on such silliness again, otherwise your father will be taking his belt to you.’

Gideon had loved his mother and he knew that she had loved him, but he had often felt that she did not understand him, and as a child that had both confused and hurt him at times. To him, the drawing that she considered to be a waste of time was as instinctive and necessary as breathing, but he had quickly learned that it was a pleasure it was best to keep hidden.

He had been twelve when he had realised that he wanted to be an architect – having read about the profession in one of the Earl’s discarded newspapers – and not very much older when he had recognised that for someone like him, this was an impossible dream. At least as a cabinet-maker he was able to satisfy in some small measure his hunger to create and build.

Was Gideon Walker challenging her, Lydia wondered, as she absorbed both his answer and the thoughtful look he had given her. If so…

A quick glance at her daughter’s still-pale face assured her that Ellie was in far too distressed a state to be aware of the young man’s interest in her, never mind return it.

‘Robert, we have all had a tiring day,’ she began firmly. ‘Ellie in particular. Perhaps it might be a good idea if you took Mr Walker into your office, if you wish to talk further with him.’

Ruefully, Gideon accepted her hint and got to his feet, calmly thanking her for her hospitality.

Ellie could feel herself flushing slightly when he shook her hand. She wanted him to keep on holding it, but at the same time she wanted to pull away. Without meaning to she looked at his mouth and then sucked in her breath as she suddenly felt hot and giddy. But that was nothing to how she felt when she realised that Gideon was looking at her mouth.

Gideon whistled happily as he made his way back to his lodgings. The crowd had dispersed and the late evening air was softly balmy.

Ellie Pride! One day soon, very soon, if he had his way, she was going to find out just what happened when a girl looked at a man’s mouth the way she had looked at his tonight!

Ellie Pride…Ellie Walker!

THREE

‘And Gideon said the next time he comes down with our uncle he will bring me a sheepdog puppy of my very own, and…’

Lydia frowned as she listened to John’s excited chatter. It was nearly five months since the Guild festivities, and in those months Gideon Walker had become a far more frequent visitor to Friargate than she liked.

Right now, though, she had other things to concern her in addition to her anxiety about the dangerous effect such a handsome and masculine young man was likely to have on her vulnerable sixteen-year-old daughter.

Automatically she put her hand on her stomach. The child she had conceived the night of Robert’s Guild parade was already swelling her body. Robert had been shocked and contrite when she told him. Looming over both of them was the warning she had been given after the stillbirth of her last child.

‘Are you sure you want to go to Aunt Gibson’s, Mother?’ Ellie asked anxiously.

Her mother had told her earlier in the week that she was to have another child, and this confidence had confirmed to Ellie her status in the household of a grown-up and adult daughter, and not a child. She had automatically begun to mother Lydia in much the same busy way she did her own younger siblings, and Lydia, exhausted by the sickness of her early months of pregnancy and her fear, had wearily allowed her to do so.

She still had her sisters to face. By now Amelia’s doctor husband was bound to have informed his wife of her condition. Which was, no doubt, why Amelia had summoned her to take tea with her this afternoon.

‘The walk will do me good,’ Lydia responded.

They were almost in February, and the cold air misted their breath as Ellie and her mother stepped out into the street.

‘Gideon is so good, offering to bring John a puppy,’ Ellie commented happily to her mother as they walked towards Winckley Square.

‘He is certainly a very handsome and determined young man,’ Lydia agreed coolly, ‘but as to him being “good”…’

Ellie gave her mother a surprised look. ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘I do,’ Lydia agreed. ‘But…’ She paused and shook her head.

‘But what, Mother?’

But Lydia refused to be drawn.

They had reached Winckley Square now, and stopped in surprise at the comings and goings at the large mansion on the opposite side of the square to the Gibsons.

‘It looks as though someone is moving into Mr Isherwood’s old house,’ Ellie commented.

It was over a month since the elderly widowed mill owner, who had lived in the house, had died, and despite the busyness of the removal men, the house still had an air of bleakness about it.

Ten minutes after they had been shown into Amelia Gibson’s parlour, Lydia asked her sister, ‘Has the Isherwood house been sold, only we saw someone moving in when we walked past?’

‘No,’ Amelia replied. ‘It seems that Mr Isherwood’s daughter has decided to return to Preston. She was his only heir and, despite the fact that they quarrelled so badly that she left home, he left everything to her, apparently. I shall call and leave a card, of course, but I must say I always thought her rather odd. I mean, going off to London like that to live virtually on her own…

‘You look very pale, Lydia,’ she announced, changing the subject. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I am well enough,’ Lydia replied.

As she stood protectively beside her mother, Ellie saw the sisters exchanging looks.

‘Ellie, why don’t you go upstairs and join your cousins?’ Amelia suggested firmly.

A little uncertainly, Ellie looked at her mother.

‘Yes, Ellie,’ Lydia agreed. ‘Do as your aunt says.’

Obediently, Ellie got up, but once she was outside the parlour door she hesitated. From inside the room she could hear her Aunt Gibson’s voice quite plainly.

‘So it is true, then?’

Ellie could discern the anger in her aunt’s voice, but before she could learn any more her cousin Cecily suddenly appeared on the stairs.

‘Ellie, come up quickly. I can’t wait to show you the trimmings I have got for my new hat. Mother and I saw them last week in Miller’s Arcade.’

Reluctantly, Ellie started to climb the stairs.

In the parlour Amelia Gibson shook her head as she looked at her youngest sister.

‘Lyddy, Mr Pride knew you were not to have another child. He was told that it would be too dangerous. Alfred is most concerned. He has sought the advice of an eminent specialist on your behalf but he confirms what has already been said.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Lydia replied wanly, before bursting out in a panic-stricken voice, ‘I am so afraid, Melia, and not just for myself. I have my girls to think about, especially Ellie. If anything were to happen I would want them –’

‘Lyddy, please, you must not distress yourself like this,’ Amelia said firmly. ‘You may rest assured that we, your sisters, shall always do what is right and proper for your daughters. Even though you defied and hurt our mother when you went against her to marry Robert Pride, I know she would want and expect us to treat your daughters as our own.’

‘He has provided well for us,’ Lydia defended her husband quickly. ‘He has a good business and –’

‘He has got you with child again, Lydia,’ her sister interrupted, speaking with unusual bluntness. ‘And he was warned the last time. Had you married a man of our own class such a thing would not have happened. I’m afraid that men of Mr Pride’s class have…appetites that should never be inflicted on a lady!’ She added delicately, ‘Alfred made it quite plain to him that if he wished to indulge in…marital relations he must adopt certain…safeguards.’