by Annie Groves
The ache in her back had intensified and she decided that perhaps the walk might help to ease it a little. Henrietta was upstairs in the care of the smiling young nursemaid Gideon had insisted on hiring.
As Ellie stepped out into the street she hesitated, realising that their aunt was crossing the square. Ellie had not forgotten the way her Aunt Gibson had ignored her when she had seen her outside Booths. Her chin firmed. Let her Aunt Gibson refuse to acknowledge her if she wished. Ellie did not care.
But instead of walking past her, her aunt came up to her, her face an angry shade of crimson.
‘How can you shame us like this, Ellie? Remarrying before you are out of mourning! What your poor mother would think…After all she did for you…for all of you.’
‘I love Mama and I always will,’ Ellie replied fiercely, ‘but I am an adult now, Aunt, and not a child, and I can tell you this. Never, ever would I want to inflict on my children the pain my mother has unintentionally inflicted upon us – separating us in the way that she did, taking us away from our father and from each other.’ Angry tears filled Ellie’s eyes but she dashed them away.
‘You dare to question her decision?’ her aunt breathed. ‘She only wanted what was best for you.’
‘Best for me? I have come to believe that my poor mother was overly influenced by the opinions of her sisters, and that because of that –’
‘What! How dare you say such a thing?’ her aunt stopped her furiously. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Ellie, and not just for your criticism of your poor mother! You have not yet been widowed a twelve-month and yet here you are remarried, and to Gideon Walker of all men.’
Neither of them were aware that Gideon, who had been working in his study, had come outside and could hear what they were saying.
‘And pray what is wrong with that?’ Ellie challenged her aunt. ‘I would have you know that I am proud to call myself Gideon’s wife, and that I wish more than I can say that I had had the good sense and the strength to follow my own heart years ago, Aunt, and accept his proposal.’
‘Oh, how can you be so ungrateful? When I think of the advantages you have had, Ellie. Your Aunt Parkes, my sister, took you into her home and gave you the very best of everything, and her husband, Mr Parkes –’
‘Mr Parkes!’ Ellie wondered what her aunt would say if she told her the truth about him! ‘Gideon is worth a dozen of him – no, a hundred,’ Ellie corrected herself passionately. ‘And I can tell you this, Aunt, I would far rather have married Gideon when he had nothing and known the happiness of that marriage than been given a hundred times more than my Aunt and Uncle Parkes gave me. And what is more –’ Ellie had to stop speaking as a sudden surge of pain caught her unawares, making her gasp and hold her side.
‘It is just as I have always thought,’ her aunt told her bitterly. ‘You and your sister both have no Barclay in you. You are all Pride. And as for Connie –’
‘Don’t you speak against my sister,’ Ellie warned her. ‘Foolish she might be, but at least she has had the courage to stand up for her love. You cannot know how much I wish that I had done the same,’ she added in a low voice. ‘Gideon is –’
As another pain tore at her, she gave a sharp gasp.
‘Ellie?’
Gideon could feel his emotions choking his throat. There was so much he wanted to say to her, so much he wanted to show her, but suddenly she gasped and clutched her body, and his longing to tell her how much he loved her was banished by his fear for her.
Relief filled Ellie to find that Gideon was there.
‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know. There is a pain in my side and my back.’ Beads of sweat had begun to form above her top lip and against her hairline.
Amelia Gibson had already turned her back on them both and walked away.
Anxiously, Gideon reached out to support Ellie, aware of the fierce tremors galvanising her body, and immediately fearful for her. If he should lose her now…But no; he must not think like that, even though the fate of her mother was haunting him!
‘Gideon, I think it might be the baby,’ Ellie told him anxiously. ‘Help me inside, please.’
The pains came in waves, sometimes receding but always returning, until her whole world was a fiery red-hot torment of them. She was a girl again, hearing the sounds of her mother giving birth to Connie and then John, and then…
Ellie cried out sharply as an extra fierce surge of pain gripped her. What if she should die like her mother? What if…? The pain surged and grew and she cried out against it. Someone stroked her damp hair back from her forehead and tried to soothe her. She could hear the midwife urging her to push.
A primeval urgency gripped her, and she began to pant. Everything was pain; a hot-red mist of it that clawed and tore at her, but something was urging her to keep on, to deliver the new life that was demanding to be born; that need was stronger than her fear, stronger than anything else she had ever experienced.
Downstairs, where he had been banished by the midwife, Gideon paced the floor, praying as he had never prayed in his life – not for himself and not even for his child but for Ellie. Ellie, his beloved Ellie, his love, his life. Please God…He tensed as he heard her agonised cries, tears running down his face.
‘Ellie…Oh, please God, let her be all right.’
Determinedly Ellie battled with the pain, willing her child to be born. There was a sudden rushing surge of pressure, a pain that gripped and coiled itself around her and then suddenly a swift release.
As she lay drained and exhausted, she could hear the thin newborn cry of her child. Tears of joy and release filled her eyes.
‘It’s a boy – aye, and a right fine one too,’ the midwife was saying.
‘Give him to me,’ Ellie demanded urgently and possessively, struggling to sit up and take the baby from her as she finished cleaning him.
Unsteadily Ellie reached out and touched him – her son. Gideon’s son. A fierce shock of intense maternal love surged through her. He had his father’s eyes, and his nose too, and his unnerving, unwavering stare. Her heart jumped and skittered as girlishly as it had done that first time she had seen Gideon himself. A feeling of helpless adoring love filled her. Tears momentarily blinded her as she gently explored the small body.
How could she have ever not wanted this precious wonderful new life, this precious wonderful child? The intensity of her feelings awed her, choking her of breath, filling her with emotions she could barely comprehend.
All the time the midwife was working, Ellie clung to her child, refusing to let him go. The most profound sense of pride and fear consumed her. How could she ever bear to let him out of her sight? He was so precious.
Gideon couldn’t endure it any more. The silence after that gut-wrenching cry he had heard Ellie give was killing him. He had to see her, had to be with her.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he thrust open the door, ignoring the indignant cluckings of the midwife.
Over her head Ellie smiled proudly at him, and lifted up the tiny bundle she was cradling as she said softly, ‘Gideon, come and see your son.’
She was laughing and crying, and so too, Gideon realised, was he. His hands trembled as he held the baby, but his hungry gaze was for Ellie and not for his son. Still holding the baby, Gideon leaned over and kissed Ellie passionately on the mouth. For a second they looked at one another in silence. Never to him had Ellie looked more beautiful than she did right now, her still-short hair clinging to her face in damp wisps, her eyes brilliant with exhilaration and exhaustion, her lips curving in a warm, proud maternal smile, Gideon decided. The baby cried, and instinctively Ellie took him from Gideon, lifting him to her breast.
The midwife was still tutting but Gideon ignored her. His heart felt as though it would burst with love and pain. He so much wanted to tell Ellie everything but now was not the time.
Ellie’s eyes burned with disappointed tears as Gideon got up and left the
bedroom. When she had seen that look he had given the baby and then her she had so much hoped…How foolish of her. His love for her had died long ago, she knew that.
‘We shall have to register the birth.’
Ellie managed to stop gazing adoringly at her son for long enough to look at Gideon’s stiff back. He was standing in front of her bedroom window with his back to her. Tenderly she nursed her son, smiling indulgently as he tugged fiercely on her nipple. He had been a good weight and the monthly nurse had told her that she had never seen a healthier male child.
There was no mistaking the resemblance between father and son. The little one was every inch his father’s child, and no mistake!
‘Yes, we shall,’ Ellie agreed.
‘We shall name Henry as his father, of course,’ Gideon announced curtly.
Ellie froze. ‘No,’ she told him tersely.
Gideon turned round. ‘What are you saying, Ellie? We have no option, not unless we want the whole world to know that –’
‘I don’t care about the whole world,’ Ellie told him. ‘What I care about is our son and the fact that I want him to grow up knowing who his father is and not believing…He is your son, Gideon, and if you are ashamed of acknowledging him as such –’
‘Ashamed! Never. But there will be gossip, Ellie, and –’
‘There is always gossip of some sort or another.’
A strange sensation was running through his body, a feeling of weightlessness and joy. ‘You are sure about this?’ he questioned.
‘Yes!’ Ellie confirmed vehemently. ‘And I thought,’ – she hesitated, her skin colouring up – ‘I thought we might call him Richard, for your father.’
Gideon discovered that he was looking at her through a haze of tears. Turning away, he wiped his hand across his eyes. ‘Aye, if you want to,’ he responded, shrugging as though he had no real interest in the matter, but Ellie had seen his quick secret gesture, and her own heart lifted.
‘Cecily has sent a lovely dress for the baby,’ she told Gideon conversationally, ‘and Iris has written me the most cross letter demanding to know why I didn’t tell her about the baby so that she could deliver him herself. I should like very much to ask her to be Richard’s godmama, Gideon.’ Her face clouded. ‘I should also have liked to have asked Connie. I am so worried about her. No one knows where she has gone, and John said she and Kieron had talked of emigrating to America!’
‘I’ll find her for you, Ellie.’
Ellie looked at him. Something seemed to quiver in the air between them, something soft and sweet.
Gideon looked at Ellie. He couldn’t find the words to tell her what it had meant to him to hear her saying that she wanted to acknowledge him as Richard’s father. He was already fiercely proud of his son and wished passionately that Mary might have lived to see him. And it wasn’t just his son who filled his heart with emotion, Gideon acknowledged.
Clearing his throat, he began, ‘I heard what you were saying to your aunt the day you went into labour with Richard. Ellie, I own that I have misjudged you – not made allowances for your youth or the pressure your family put on you. There are many wrongs between us that perhaps cannot be righted, but if they could be, is it possible…could we…You are a very special woman, Ellie Pride. Aye, and you carry that name deservedly, for if ever a woman had the right to be proud, Ellie, it is you. You are a woman it would be very easy for a man to love if he were allowed to do so, Ellie, especially this man! I know I have not always treated you as I should – indeed, I am ashamed that I –’
Ellie didn’t want to see him humble himself any further. Instinctively she knew what he was trying to say to her but, like him, she had been hurt and had grown cautious.
‘I’ll thank you to remember, Gideon Walker,’ she announced determinedly, ‘that I am not Ellie Pride any longer. I am Mrs Gideon Walker, and proud to be so. Very proud to be so. In fact, I am more proud to be your wife than I am of anything else I have ever done,’ she told him softly, whilst tears shimmered in her eyes.
‘Ellie!’ She heard Gideon’s groan and barely had time to put the baby down before she was in Gideon’s arms, held fast there whilst he rained eager kisses on her face, before finally taking her mouth in a kiss of fierce possessive passion.
Ellie’s lips trembled beneath his, passive and soft, whilst his own hardened in pent-up demand. ‘Ellie!’
He breathed her name and suddenly she was a girl again, her body coming alive for him, wanting him, her emotions filled by him.
Her lips parted, and Gideon seized his opportunity. It was only the sudden lusty cry of their son that brought an end to their passionate kiss.
‘I love you, Ellie Walker,’ Gideon told her softly. ‘Before, I loved you with a boy’s love, and with a boy’s foolish pride, but now I love you with a man’s love, and with a man’s humble recognition of his good fortune in loving such a special woman.’
‘Oh, Gideon, you cannot know what it means to me to hear you say such words. I have been so unhappy without you, even though I would not let myself acknowledge it,’ Ellie admitted huskily.
‘You will never be unhappy again,’ Gideon said to her fiercely. ‘I promise you that.’
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help:
Lynne Drew, who gave me the opportunity to write this book.
Maxine Hitchcock, Jo Craig and Yvonne Holland, my editors and my support system.
My brother for providing me with our family tree.
My parents who giving me so much information about Preston.
Tony without whose driving I could not have done my research in Liverpool and Preston.
And last, but certainly not least, my fellow writers and friends for supporting me through Ellie Pride’s birth pangs.
About the Author
ELLIE PRIDE
Annie Groves lives in the North-West and has done so all of her life. This is her first saga, for which she has drawn upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her grandmother’s great pride in her hometown – Preston – inspired Annie when naming her heroine, who is also a butcher’s daughter, just like Annie’s grandmother was.
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © Annie Groves 2003
Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39787-7
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
PART TWO
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN