All she could do was to repeat over and over in her mind the same lifeless question: ‘Oh, Simon. How could you do such a thing?’
The answer to the question was, of course: ‘Quite easily!’
It was obvious that Simon had found no difficulty in choosing a lively woman instead of the hopeless Gabriella. What had she been thinking of? Had she thought that someone, anyone, would find her desirable? Not even the idea of a share in the Paladin fortune had been sufficient to entice him to take her as his wife. Then there had been Dad’s kindheartedness. He’d bought them a home and offered a princely dowry as well – but Simon had turned his back on everything. And all because he couldn’t bear the thought of a life shared with Gabriella.
Mattias was walking ahead of her with Liv, heading back towards the dining hall. As he walked, he called to her over his shoulder: “As you can see, Gabriella, there’s plenty for you to do here!”
Mattias was so far ahead that he didn’t expect any answer, but from close behind her, Kaleb suddenly said in a low voice: “I don’t think so.”
In that instant, Gabriella stopped abruptly and turned to face him. “What exactly do you mean, Kaleb?”
Without flinching, he looked back into her eyes calmly. “What I mean is that we’ve got no use here for people who are wallowing in self-pity in order to prolong it.”
Tears instantly filled Gabriella’s eyes. “And you’re planning to care personally for children, are you? Well, I’d like to inform you, Sir, that you’ve got no gift whatsoever for understanding the feelings of others.”
Kaleb was still staring contemptuously at her, but he made no attempt to answer further.
“Oh, I wish I could lie down and die!” she said finally.
“Yes, I think you should do that. At the moment, you’re of no use to anyone.”
“No,” she whined, “I’m not. I’m not wanted anywhere!”
“Is that so? And just why do you think your grandmother asked you to come?”
“She didn’t. It was my parents who sent me here because they wanted to get rid of me.”
“I’m not surprised!” he said with a note of finality. “And to think I remembered you as a sweet little girl who showed great sympathy for others.”
As he finished speaking, Kaleb added great emphasis to his words by turning and walking away.
Gabriella, for her part, was so angry that what she had planned to say got caught in her throat. Finally she shouted a few words rather lamely at him. “Yes, and to think that all those years ago, I looked up to you, too!”
Whether Kaleb heard or understood wasn’t clear. Without turning to look round at her, he just carried on walking. Soon he had turned off into one of Graastensholm’s great corridors and disappeared.
***
After supper that evening, Are arrived together with Brand, Matilda and Andreas. They all said hello to Gabriella, who remained submerged in her own gloomy world. She answered most of their questions with an absent-minded smile. She made no effort to enquire how life was treating them all or how they were managing their trials and tribulations.
Kaleb’s remarks had disturbed her. She was well aware that she was behaving abysmally, but lacked the power to change. She even convinced herself that she was too broken-hearted to try.
Ever since she’d heard what Simon had done, she felt surrounded by a fog that stopped her from doing anything – and she saw no way out of it.
She didn’t regard it as a betrayal that Simon had left her for another. One cannot help one’s heart and she would never have wanted to be married to him while he still had feelings for the other woman. No, it was the way he’d done it. What she couldn’t forgive was the cruel, brutal cowardice.
She had hardly known him at all, really. They had only dabbled in polite and gentle conversation at receptions held by their parents. She must have always seemed reserved and anxiously prudish because that was how her mother had taught her to behave. But that hadn’t stopped her having fantasies, sometimes quite worrying ones, about him. She couldn’t believe she’d been so lucky and that this handsome young officer should find her attractive. And now she knew the most painful truth of all – he didn’t.
Suddenly she realised that the guests were leaving and she’d been completely absorbed in her own thoughts for the whole evening.
She said goodnight to Andreas as the last, noticing at once how the son of Brand and Matilda was perfectly suited to inherit Linden Avenue. Tengel, of course, had been an exceptional man, but his son, Are, his grandson, Brand, and now his great-grandson, Andreas, were all so evidently men of the earth – stout, taciturn and good-natured. They never fussed or fretted but remained largely in the background, steadfast, firm of purpose and always reliable.
Andreas was one year older than Gabriella and their conversations, she realised, were always confined to everyday subjects. Feelings of hurt, despair and the like were foreign topics to Andreas.
They were the things she could speak to Mattias about. But not just yet – that would have to wait. For the moment, she just wanted to be on her own.
She was given a room on the second floor, at the far end of the corridor where Grandma Liv and the three children's rooms also were. Eli was in the room next to Gabriella. Kaleb and Mattias had rooms closer to Tarald’s part of the house.
After undressing quickly and getting into bed, Gabriella tossed and turned restlessly for the first half hour. There was something bothering her and she couldn’t make any sense of it.
But it obviously didn’t bother her too much because soon afterwards she fell into a deep slumber and slept like a log through that entire first night. She managed this despite the fact that she’d fully convinced herself that she’d never be able to sleep again in her whole life because she was just so unhappy.
Chapter 11
The next morning, Gabriella was put to work caring for the children without any discussion or ceremony. This came as a shock to her system and she tried her hardest to protest and delay matters.
“I need to rest a little before I begin!” she complained to Liv, Mattias and Kaleb in turn. “I simply must!”
“So that you can spend a lot more time nursing your hurt feelings, you mean?” answered Kaleb. “Oh, come on!”
Grandma was quietly amused by this exchange but remained insistent nevertheless. “Take that bowl of soup, my dear,” she said gently, “and see if you can get little Eli to eat some.”
“If she doesn’t want any soup, then she can do without,” muttered Gabriella. “I shan’t put up with any contrariness.”
“It’s not a matter of contrariness,” Liv told her with great patience. “Please just try.”
Reluctantly, and with a melancholy sigh, Gabriella rose and went up to the girl’s room. She found her lying in bed, precisely as she had been the night before, perfectly still, with the covers drawn up to her nose.
“I’ve brought you some soup,” announced Gabriella with an expression that was supposed to represent a smile. “Eat it.”
The tiny figure didn’t move, but her frightened eyes grew wider as she looked at Gabriella.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Gabriella impatiently. “I don’t have the time to stand here all day. Sit up!”
Eli lifted her head slightly as she tried to do as she’d been told but fell back against the pillow.
“Can’t you do better than that?” snapped Gabriella, unable to suppress her exasperation. She put down the tray and placed one arm under the girl’s shoulders to help her sit up, but as she grasped Eli’s flimsy upper arm, she stopped dead.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Eli’s arms were thinner than broomsticks and her shoulders nothing but skin and bone. Her neck was scraggy beyond belief and her shoulder blades protruded beneath her flesh like a grotesque pair of wings.
“Oh, you poor th
ing ...” mumbled Gabriella as she gently lay Eli back down again. “There, there. We’ll get some food into you. Just lie still and let me help you.”
Having led a very sheltered life at Gabrielshus, Gabriella knew little about children. She’d never had to care for one before and was almost at a loss as to what she should do next. Acting purely on instinct, she gently supported Eli’s head with one hand and with a spoon in the other she managed to get her to eat a little of the soup. The girl swallowed obediently but still seemed afraid of Gabriella.
“You don’t have to be scared, I’m not going to smack you,” she said brusquely. “But how could your mum ever let this happen to you?”
Eli’s calf-like eyes stared blankly back at her and she made no effort to reply.
“Maybe you have no mum, is that it?” asked Gabriella in a slightly gentler tone.
Eli nodded her head silently.
“A dad, then?”
This time the girl tried to say something. “Only Granddad,” she managed in the tiniest of whispers.
“But surely he’s an old man?”
Eli nodded. “Sick,” she squeaked.
“So who’s been taking care of you?”
“I worked for ... the Nygaard lady ... Couldn’t ... do things ... she wanted. She ... got very angry ... with me.”
Gabriella closed her eyes for a moment. “Don’t worry. Nobody will get angry with you here,” she said, suddenly feeling the combined weight of a guilty conscience and self-pity on her shoulders. “You must forgive my bad temper. I’m feeling out of sorts myself.”
Eli looked questioningly at her. “Does ... nobody care about ... you, either?”
“No, it was nothing,” said Gabriella shamefaced. All of a sudden her own situation had been put into perspective. “I have many, many people who care about me and there’s only one who doesn’t.”
A tiny, wasted hand touched hers reassuringly. Gabriella took a deep breath and wiped away a tear. ‘This young girl’s trying to comfort me,’ she thought with a shudder of remorse.
Then she said: “What you must do now is rest and eat well.”
“I will,” replied Eli. “It’s not nice ... when somebody doesn’t like you, is it?”
“No, it certainly isn’t. It makes you feel that you’re good for nothing.”
Eli gave a tiny nod of agreement and Gabriella took her bony hand in her own. As she sat holding it, a distant memory came slowly back to her. She saw a set of steps, the stone steps outside at Graastensholm. She was quite small herself but a big boy was speaking softly to her. They were working together, helping another boy with a grazed knee. She couldn’t remember the words the bigger boy was saying, but it was something about how she seemed to be good at caring for people and how they’d both discovered that that was what they liked doing.
She realised with a start that the boy in question was Kaleb.
The memory had disturbed her and she had to make a conscious effort to bring herself back to the present and focus again on young Eli.
“Was the woman at Nygaard unkind to you?” she asked, squeezing her hand in a little gesture of concern.
The answer was a tight-lipped nod of the head.
“What took you there?”
“She came to ... Grandpa. Said she’d look after me ... be my mum.”
“And then she put you to work?”
“Yes.”
“Free labour! Did she feed you?”
“I dared not eat ... she said I ate all her food. But I didn’t, honestly I didn’t ... I got hardly anything. Dared not touch it.”
As Gabriella was thinking of all the good food, love and affection she’d received at Gabrielshus, Eli asked her suddenly: “What’s your name?”
“Gabriella,” she replied quietly, but deliberately didn’t tell Eli that nobody should address a marquise in such a familiar manner.
Eli seemed as if she was about to say something but hesitated and Gabriella noticed this.
“What is it? What were you going to say?”
In an anxious whisper, the girl asked. “Can you stay here in this room ... with me?”
Gabriella was very touched. She glanced across at the second child’s bed on the other side of the room and couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think there’s enough room for me,” she replied. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
Eli nodded shyly. “Everything’s so big here ... and lonely.”
“Don't worry, Eli. Another girl will be joining you soon.”
“Is she nice?”
“I don’t know – she hasn’t arrived yet. Now I must go. But I’ll say that you feel lonely and we’ll see what can be done. I’ll come back again soon.”
Eli gave her a long beseeching look and Gabriella smiled back encouragingly.
Once she was in the corridor again, tray in hand, she paused for a moment.
She was realising that for the first time in several weeks, she’d not thought about her own crisis for what must have been many minutes.
When she reached Grandma Liv’s drawing room, she told the others of Eli’s feelings of loneliness and all three of them could see that a spark of life had returned to her eyes.
“Who might make a suitable companion for her?” asked Liv. “Do we know anybody?”
Mattias looked thoughtful. “The pastor did tell me a while ago that he was trying to help a ten-year old girl he knew. He wondered whether we could take her. But he did say that we might find her unsuitable.”
“Unsuitable? What did he mean by that?” asked Liv.
“She’s from this parish but when her parents died, she went to stay with a sister in Christiania. That’s what makes her unsuitable.”
“How?” Kaleb asked sternly.
“The sister has dragged her down into the gutter. The child’s already corrupted – that’s beyond any doubt. So she could hardly be good company for Eli.”
“Do you know where the sister lives?”
“Yes, the pastor gave me the address – but she’s likely to be quite ruthless. She walks the streets, selling herself to men, stealing and deceiving. She’ll do anything to get money – and she’s already teaching her younger sister the same tricks.”
“It goes without saying that we must help the poor young thing!” said Liv. “Let’s look upon it as a challenge.”
“Yes,” agreed Kaleb. “But both of us should go. Women like her can be very unpleasant. One person alone won’t have much success. We may have to be quite ruthless ourselves.”
Liv smiled at them both. “Take Gabriella with you, too. She can look after your virtue in case the woman tries to seduce you both!”
The two men chuckled.
“Oh, there’s no fear of that with Kaleb,” teased Mattias. “His ideal is a sound uncomplicated girl who’s fair-haired, strong and very pure of heart – and with both feet firmly on the ground. Does that sum it up, Kaleb?”
“I’ve got no time for ladies of the night or women with emotional quirks,” replied Kaleb, frowning at Mattias’s indiscretion.
Liv calmed the situation. “If you leave now, you can be back by suppertime.”
Gabriella spoke up for the first time. “You can’t possibly let Eli share a room with a degraded ten-year-old!” she said, aghast at the thought. “That wouldn’t be right, would it?”
“You leave that to me,” smiled Liv. “Just fetch the young girl and we’ll take it from there.”
“Grandma,” interrupted Gabriella. “I promised Eli that I’d check in on her again very soon.”
“Then get started on your journey,” said Liv with a smile. “Don’t waste any more time.”
***
An hour or two later, Gabriella was sitting between the two men as their sleigh headed towards Christiania. She was a bit anxious about entering the worst parts of the ci
ty, but at the same time her spirits were uplifted. She was about to enter uncharted territory. ‘So what if Simon’s left me?’ she thought as the sleigh sped on through the snow towards the city. ‘So what if men find me unattractive and I never marry! What makes me so important anyway? It’s far better to do something for another and forget oneself. How it warmed my heart that Eli wanted me to share her room. It doesn’t matter either if Kaleb thinks that I’m one of those ‘emotional’ and ‘quirky’ women he was talking about, because I know those words were directed at me. He can think what he likes!’
This new way of thinking was helping her feel stronger and she found she was able to give her attention to what was happening around her more easily.
Mattias was full of ideas and he chatted the whole time. Kaleb, however, was more sceptical and Gabriella found she disliked his suspicious attitude to his fellow man in the same way that he evidently disliked hers. ‘Let him have his fair-haired, down-to-earth peasant girl,’ she thought at one point for no particular reason. ‘That’s entirely his business.’
The address they’d been given by the pastor proved to be outdated. When they knocked on the door to make enquiries, a disheveled old hag opened the door. She screamed at them that she’d “kicked that whore out a long time ago.”
“Where do you suggest that we look for her?” asked Mattias politely.
“The last thing I heard is that she’s living upstairs in a house on the next street. But it beats me what a pair of fine gentlemen like you want with her. She’ll have scabies, I swear it!”
Mattias smiled at her. “We only want to find her younger sister, really.”
“Oh, yeah! I’ve seen her walking around with a kid in tow.”
The old woman gave them directions and Mattias thanked her and pressed a coin into her hand.
They found the address easily in the next street and walked up the stairs to the very top of the building. Beside an attic door lay what Gabriella thought was a bundle of rags, and she was surprised when Mattias walked over and spoke to it. Immediately a little girl with tangled hair stuck out her head and sat up. She was unbelievably dirty and uncared for, yet she looked surprisingly mature for her age.
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