“I think everyone enjoys a wedding,” he replied. An excellent answer for my purposes.
“Do you plan to marry?” Bold, but it must be asked. I take my attitude from the many novels that proliferate in the lending libraries and booksellers just now. The heroines are so deliciously forward and get what they desire. As will I.
“Perhaps.” A vague answer, but shows promise. “You?”
“Of course. What would a young lady do other than marry? Although I won’t marry without love.”
“Naturally.” He smiled, a knowing smile as if he didn’t believe me, but his blue eyes were so beautiful I forgave him instantly.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I love someone?”
“It’s not my place.” He edged closer to the French door leading to the gardens. Time to take action before he escaped.
“But I love you.” I slid toward him. Close enough to grab him if he tried to dash out.
“Ella.” His voice, deep and gravelly, warned me just like in the novels. “We’ve only encountered each other three times before today.”
“You remember.” I grasped his hand, pulling him toward me. “Only a man in love would know how often we’d met.” I could see he was going to raise some objection so I rushed on. “Kiss me,” I whispered, tilting my head toward his. I’d never been so happy to be abnormally tall as I was at that moment.
Although his face looked as though a horse had just crushed his foot, his arm circled my waist, drawing me in.
Oh, such delights can’t be described except to say the brush of his tongue on mine sounds revolting, but, sweet heavens, wasn’t. I could only compare the sensation to the pop when one’s Christmas cracker first opens. I was waiting to see what prizes fell out when Richard whacked me on the fanny with the Oxford-English Dictionary. No one should be permitted to print books that large.
I’d give my best gown and pin money for the next year to know what Richard said to Jim, but I was sent from the room. And Jim left without another word to me. Richard really is too cruel.
Ella stuffed her diary under the cushion of her chair when Mary entered. Plump and beautiful with the coming baby, Mary raised her dark eyebrow and smirked. Everyone knew Ella and her friend Sophie kept a shared journal of their debutante year, but her personal diary was simply that. Not even her much beloved sister-in-law would gain access.
“I’m on a mission for your brother,” Mary explained, settling herself on the edge of Ella’s bed while carefully balancing her expanding figure.
“Let me guess. I’m not to speak to Mr. Ferguson upon his arrival.” It would suit Richard’s callous sense of humor to dangle a treat before her and not let her feast.
“Not quite. He wants you to share your attentions amongst the suitors. No captivating Mr. Ferguson with your charms.” Mary giggled at her own words.
Ella nearly snorted. Her carefully selected beaux, otherwise known as Baron Wet, Sir Formal, and Lord Gown-crusher, had been in residence for a week, eating and drinking Richard’s finest fare and desperately trying to impress Ella. Thus far, their sojourn in the country had been little more than a continuous meal sprinkled with some outrageous flirting and a fair bit of sport on Richard’s property.
“They’d have to set aside the mutton and claret to notice a rival in Jim.”
“Nevertheless, I’m to extract a promise from you.” Mary almost kept her expression serious as she invoked Richard’s tone.
“I suppose my brother will use some sort of timing device and chart to guarantee I give equal attention to all the gentlemen.”
Mary tipped her head to the side, studying Ella. “Richard’s convinced you’re not serious about Mr. Ferguson and considering your past….”
“Unpredictability?” Ella offered the word, which Mary confirmed with a nod. “Richard underestimates me.”
“I’m afraid he does, but I suggest you comply with his request at least for the first few days of the visit.”
“I guess I can make an effort to be fair.” Ella stood, shaking out her skirts. “How did you convince Richard to invite Jim?”
Mary raised her shoulders in the air and held her palms up. “I tried unsuccessfully for weeks to get Richard to relent, but Annabelle is the one who used some sort of leverage against him.”
“She probably suggested that if I don’t marry, Richard will be stuck with me.” Ella watched the play of morning light on the flowered wallpaper while her mind worked. “That’s quite a good threat now I think on it. Richard doesn’t want me around forever especially with another child on the way. I might be a bad influence as I slip deeper into spinsterhood.”
“Your sister just married and she’s several years older than you,” Mary reminded her. “No one thought of her as a spinster.”
Annabelle ran a successful dressmaking shop in London and a new one in Bath. “No, but that’s because of her business. I wonder,” Ella went to Mary and gave her a hand in rising from the soft edge of the bed, “what if I got a job or started a business? Then I’d be independent like Annabelle, and Richard couldn’t tell me what to do or who to see.”
“What sort of position could you hope to get at not yet nineteen?” Mary questioned.
“I don’t know, but I do have useful skills. I’m a wonderful correspondent. I have fine penmanship. I’m decent with numbers. That must qualify me to do something.”
“I’m sure it does,” Mary said in her kind way, “but perhaps if you have patience for just a little longer everything will work out.”
****
The façade of Oakwood Manor rose out of verdant lawns, sprinkled with statuary and roses. Jim Ferguson grimaced as the carriage rolled closer to his showdown with Ella. What made Ella think he could fit into a life of massive homes, acres of property, and herds of servants?
Mad and delusional.
Something like his feelings for her. His working-class sensibilities disappeared like ice in July in her presence.
Not this time.
He planned to hold firm against her advances, no matter how appealing she was. He tapped his breast pocket as proof of his intentions. Today he’d return the letters she’d written to him and make it clear she couldn’t send any more.
Or, God help him, he’d lose his mind.
Resisting the urge to read the last two made him grumpy and unproductive for days. Finally, he’d given in. He should never have opened any of them. Ella would take that as a sign of interest, but it was more curiosity, he assured himself.
What would a young lady write to him, a man from a different sphere, an innkeeper’s son who’d made his own way in the world for nearly as long as she’d been alive? Her nurse still changed her nappies when Jim ran errands and worked the taproom in his family’s establishment. But her words on the lightly scented, rose-colored paper somehow erased the distance between them.
She wrote of common daily events, a spat between two maids, a new litter of puppies born in the stables. Minor unimportant things intermixed with an absolute belief in their future as a couple. She unnerved him with her certainty and the way the letters read as if they were married and she was simply closing a temporary separation with her words.
No marriage. He stuffed the letters more deeply into his pocket as the carriage stopped and several servants materialized to assist them. He waited for his traveling companions, the recently married Viscount and Viscountess Wolfston, to alight. Traveling with his boss and his wife, who just happened to be Ella’s sister, only made his position as soon-to-be former suitor more difficult.
Extracting himself from the situation was sure to offend someone, but Edmund and Annabelle understood his tenuous position. Sophie, Edmund’s sister and Ella’s closest friend, was less understanding and kept trying to engage him in conversation about Ella. Using business as a defense against her, he’d buried his head in the schematics for a new ship he was designing throughout the drive.
When he stepped down from the carriage, Jim waved away the footmen and moved to
fetch his own bag. Edmund caught his attention with a slight shake of his head. Message received. This was the world of the peerage where servants felt slighted if they didn’t get to do their jobs. Jim backed away, allowing the footman to finish a task he so easily could have done himself. This wasn’t his world.
In the foyer, Ella’s brother, Richard, gave him a tight smile in greeting while the fuss surrounding Annabelle and Edmund subsided. They were greeted by the butler, the housekeeper, and a precocious toddler with her nurse in tow. Through it all, Richard’s glare bore through him like a drill bit through planking. No wonder, since Richard caught him kissing Ella, his baby sister, in the library on his last visit.
An invitation to leave immediately was a better reaction then he’d expected or he’d have given if the situation were reversed. Having spent years protecting a beautiful sister, he would have flattened any man who showed so little respect for her. Even with Belinda safely living and working at Annabelle’s dress shop in Bath, he still worried. His responsibility to Belinda ran deep as Richard’s did for Ella. Violating that made him the worst kind of man.
Amazingly, he stood in Richard’s ancestral hall, which wouldn’t be the case if the man realized how much Jim enjoyed Ella’s kisses and how much he wanted to lay her down on the settee and lose himself in her. That he kept to himself so much he only allowed himself to think about it late at night, which inevitably led to sleeplessness.
Returning here brought those emotions back, but re-enforced why he and Ella could never be together. He didn’t fit here and she didn’t fit in his world. The world of steamships, manufacturing, heat, noise and grit.
“So good to have visitors.” Ella ran down the stairs toward the group in the foyer.
“We’ve had a houseful for the past week,” Richard commented, but stopped when Mary took his arm after her slower descent.
“But not these guests.” Ella kissed her sister, whispering something to her that made Annabelle smile. She shared another secret word with Sophie and gave her brother-in-law a flirtatious thump on the chest and peck on the cheek before she finally turned to Jim.
He’d had thirty seconds to adjust to her presence. It wasn’t enough. With the oxygen gone from his lungs, he felt like a caught fish flopping around on a dock waiting to die or be tossed back into the water.
“Mr. Ferguson.” Ella offered her hand to him. The cavalier action would be to kiss it. Instead, he shook her hand and relinquished it as quickly as possible. Physical contact with Ella clouded his head, making his mumbled greeting sound idiotic even to himself. By the expressions all around him, Ella’s family expected him to do something, say something, but he was paralyzed.
“I’m sure you’d all like some refreshments. Traveling is so dusty this time of year and you must have risen early this morning,” Mary suggested, leading them into a nearby drawing room and saving Jim more embarrassment.
“We would have arrived yesterday as planned if I weren’t traveling with these two,” Edmund said, indicating his wife and Jim. “I had to drag Annabelle out of her shop and Jim out of the works to get underway.”
“Preparing the Bath shop for opening is taking more time than I expected,” Annabelle explained.
“And your excuse?” Ella turned to Jim.
“Working men have to work for a living.” He sounded like an ass saying it in an elaborately decorated room where two servants laid out tea.
“But you know the boss. Surely that helps you get some time off when you need it.” Ella’s arm closed around his. With a gentle tug, she forced him to look down at her. Not too far though, as she rose almost to eye level with him. The flecks of gold in her green eyes sparkled at him and she smiled, all too aware of the effect she had on him.
“The boss?” Edmund scoffed, drawing Jim’s attention away. “Ask anyone at the works or docks at Bristol. They’ll all say Jim is in charge.”
“Your business and investment.” Jim turned away from Ella as he responded, trying to break the connection she made.
“I’d be building rowboats without your knowledge,” Edmund said.
“Not likely.” His boss knew nearly as much as Jim about mechanics and building, but Jim was the designer, the one who could take a concept from a rough sketch to floating at the docks, which required a certain level of brainpower and a lot of hard work. And Jim loved everything about designing something new and developing it.
“You’ll be interested in the water pumping system Richard recently installed here. Let me show it to you,” Ella suggested. Before he could say anything, she pulled him toward the open doors leading onto the terrace. “We’ll take the short cut through the gardens.”
“Ella,” Richard began, but Annabelle caught her brother’s attention with an elaborate arch of her eyebrow. Richard scowled but nodded his approval.
“Give them ten minutes,” Annabelle said loud enough for Jim to hear as Ella dragged him from the room.
Chapter Two
“I thought we’d never escape.” Ella skirted a huge planter, which spilled ivy into the path and blocked anyone’s view of them. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together. The contact of her ungloved palm on his sent little pulses of heat racing up his arm.
“Ella.” He ground to a stop, wanting to make his position clear and retreat to the safety of the drawing room and her family.
“What? We only have a few minutes before Richard sends out a search party. Wait until we get to the rose garden to say anything. It’s my favorite place.” Ella danced ahead of him on the path, leading him along. He could easily force her to stop, but the sun shone on her hair and lit her young, excited face and he was again the flopping fish on the dock. Completely at her mercy.
A few late summer roses still bloomed along the gravel paths. Ella led him deeper into the garden where a massive rose bush formed a secluded spot. Its leaves and flowers were withering with the coming autumn, but it still afforded them privacy.
Too much privacy.
Ella plucked a small pink bud with her free hand, raising it to her face. Jim never spent much time frolicking in gardens, but Ella made everything enchanting. For one reckless moment, he wanted to give in to his desire and kiss her the way he had in the library. But this time, he wouldn’t stop.
She offered him the blossom, holding it just under his nose. The rosy scent reminded him of the letters in his pocket and his mission here at Oakwood Manor. Return the missives, dismiss the girl, get back to Bristol and his work. He fought against the need to pull her long, slim body to his and stepped away from her, extracting his hand in the process.
“Ella, I want to give these back to you.” He pulled the letters into view.
“My letters to you.” She closed the distance between them. Again. She might be the most relentless woman he’d ever known and certainly the most appealing with her bright green eyes focused on him. “You received them. I thought….”
He could guess her thoughts. No response on his part made her assume he’d never received them. If only that were the case. “I can’t accept these, and I want you to have the opportunity to destroy them.” Adopting a business tone, he held them out to her.
“You got them but didn’t write back.” Her hurt expression pained him, but he pushed on.
“You must take them and not write any more to me.” Attempting to return love letters to a young lady must be the height of foolishness for a sensible man. He stood with the packet in his hand, waiting for her to take them.
“Mr. Ferguson.” Her sudden switch to formality made him nervous. “I was under the impression that you cared for me. I see I was mistaken.”
“Yes.” Lying to anyone, especially women, wasn’t his style. His self-worth shrunk by the second, dissipating rapidly as she stood before him contemplating his face. He assumed the expression he used when firing an employee. Serious, sincere, but unyielding. Yet, she seemed to look past that.
“I believe you are being untruthful. Dishonesty doesn’t s
uit you. I know what I felt in that kiss.” She pushed aside his outstretched hand to get closer to him. “And I know what I felt when we waltzed at my debutante ball.” With the soft pads of her fingers, she stroked his cheek. He held his breath, forcing himself to count slowly to twenty while he resisted capturing her fingers and kissing each one. “The moment I met you in the assembly room in Bath I knew you were the only man for me. Why are you fighting this? Why are you fighting me?” She brushed her finger across his lips.
“I’m not fighting you.” Grabbing her hand, he forced some distance between them. “I’m saving you.”
“Saving me?” There was laughter in her voice. “From you?”
“You’re very young.” The ten years between them wasn’t uncommon for couples, but it wasn’t just age. Her family sheltered her, promoting a type of innocence out of his realm.
“Most women marry at my age,” she countered.
“More importantly,” he plowed on, “we’re from different classes.”
“The Feudal System ended several centuries ago as I recall. You’re not really going to try the excuse that I’m a fair princess and you’re a serf.”
“It’s close to the truth. I’m a workingman. I come home at night dirty and tired. I don’t go to balls or dinner parties or the theatre.”
“I’ll fetch your slippers and read to you in the evening.”
“Ella, you won’t be satisfied with that. You’ve been raised with certain privileges that I can’t give you.”
“Is this about money? I have money of my own or will when I come of age. And I know there’s a decent sum set aside for my dowry. Richard has made that clear.”
“I’m not living on money I don’t earn.” His yearly wages from Edmund’s company were more than his family made in twenty years of running the inn. Money itself wasn’t the issue. He had more than he needed now and the expectation of increased earnings as the business expanded.
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