Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

With Connie, John and Rex walking ahead of them, Gideon surreptitiously took Ellie’s hand in his own. Flush-cheeked, Ellie looked at him, but made no attempt to pull away.

‘John! Connie!’

Ellie jumped a little as Gideon called her brother and sister. As they turned round and came over, Gideon released Ellie’s hand.

‘Ellie is feeling rather tired, so if I give you a penny each, can you run to Miller’s Arcade and buy some chocolate-covered ginger for your mother, and, of course, a treat each for yourselves? We will meet you back at Friargate.’

‘Gideon, you should not have done that,’ Ellie reproached him, as John and Connie sped off, clutching their money.

‘Perhaps not,’ Gideon agreed, ‘but they will come to no harm, and it was the only way I could think of to get you to myself.’

Very gently he led her towards a secluded part of the shrubbery, and then took her into his arms.

Helplessly Ellie allowed him to do so, blindly raising her face to his, her eyes closing, her body quivering with excitement and longing.

‘Ellie, Ellie…you are the most beautiful girl in the world. I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you.’

‘Fell in love with me?’ Ellie managed to challenge him breathlessly. ‘You certainly looked at me very boldly.’

‘Boldly?’ Gideon laughed. ‘Is that what you thought? No, I felt anything but bold when I looked up at your window and saw you standing there, Ellie.’

‘So what did you feel?’ Like any woman newly and deeply in love she wanted to possess herself of every single small detail of her lover’s reaction to her.

‘I felt…’ Gideon paused, looking away from her, his eyes narrowed against the sun, ‘I felt that I had met my fate. I looked at you, Ellie, and I knew that my life could never be the same again. That I could never be the same again. That that one single look had changed everything. I love you, Ellie.’

In between each passionate word Gideon paused to kiss her, each kiss taking them both a little further away from the calm waters of sedate courtship and into the much deeper and dangerous ones of intense desire.

Protected from prying eyes by the shrubbery, Ellie pressed ever closer to Gideon, shuddering fiercely when she felt the tentative touch of his hand on her breast. She could feel the heat of his hand right through the fine fabric of her summer dress.

‘Ellie…’

A thrill of female satisfaction shocked through her when she heard the taut male agony in Gideon’s voice. The kisses he pressed on the soft skin of her throat, and then along the neckline of her dress, set off a fierce ache deep down inside her body.

‘I want you, Ellie! I want you now!’ Gideon muttered as he started to push the neckline of her dress out of the way.

The feel of his hand against her almost bare breast made Ellie cry out in awed pleasure. But instead of encouraging him to press her to further intimacy, her helpless sound of arousal made Gideon tense and then gently put her away from him, reminding himself that it was his duty to protect and be responsible for them both, even though that meant denying himself. She was his love, his life, his Ellie. His!

‘Come on. It’s time I took you home,’ he told her huskily, ‘before I truly forget myself.’

The minute they turned into Friargate and Ellie saw her brother and sister standing huddled together outside the closed shop door, she knew that something was wrong. Anxiously she started to walk faster.

‘Ellie, you’ve been ages…’ Connie’s face started to crumple, and she suddenly looked much more like a young girl than the young woman she was always claiming herself to be.

‘What is it? What?’ Ellie began, and then stopped as the door opened and her aunt stood there eyeing her coldly.

‘So you have finally returned, have you, you wretched creature?’ Aunt Gibson hissed bitterly. ‘Do you know what your disobedience has done to your mother?’

Horrified, Ellie looked past her aunt towards her father.

‘That’s enough, Amelia,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not fair to blame Ellie. She –’

‘Not fair?’ Amelia gave Ellie an angry look. ‘Is it fair, Robert Pride, that my poor sister should go into labour ahead of her time because her daughter defied her?’

‘No!’ Ellie protested. What her aunt was saying couldn’t be true. It mustn’t be. She started to tremble, cold now where just a few minutes earlier she had been sweetly warm with the intoxicating memory of the illicit pleasure she and Gideon had just shared, delighting in the precious secret world of their love.

‘Yes!’ Amelia insisted sharply. ‘You are a wicked, wicked girl, Ellie Pride, and if your poor mother and this baby die, then it will be on your conscience.’

‘Amelia, that’s enough,’ Ellie’s father said sternly. ‘I know how upset you are, but if anyone’s to blame for this…’

Her mother die? What on earth was her aunt saying? Frantically Ellie looked towards the stairs.

‘Ellie, no!’ Robert Pride blocked her path. Grasping her arms, he told her in a gentler voice, ‘No, you cannot go up there right now. The midwife is with your mother, and…and your Uncle Alfred.’

‘So it is true,’ Ellie whispered, her eyes huge with distress and despair. ‘The baby is coming.’

‘Yes.’

Glancing past her Robert could see through the still-open door that Gideon had quick-wittedly drawn the two younger children out of earshot and was entertaining them with one of his tricks.

Releasing Ellie, Robert strode out to them, closing the door behind him.

‘Gideon, lad, I wonder if you would be kind enough to take our Connie and John over to Winckley Square? They are to stay there until…for the time being.’

‘What? Why have we got to go there?’ John demanded indignantly.

‘Is Mother really having the baby?’ Connie asked excitedly.

‘Aye, lass, she is,’ Robert confirmed. ‘Now be good children and go with Gideon. Your aunt has sent instructions home that beds are to be prepared for you.’

‘Well, I hope Mother doesn’t take too long to have this baby,’ John grumbled. ‘I don’t like it at Winckley Square. You have to be quiet all the time and not touch things.’

Awkwardly Robert patted his shoulder, but his concentration wasn’t really on his two younger children.

As Gideon ushered them away, Robert glanced up at the closed bedroom window above, his face tight with anxiety and despair.

In the hallway, Ellie was pleading tearfully with her aunt to be allowed to see her mother.

‘Certainly not, miss. It would not be at all proper, and besides –’

Amelia broke off as they both heard the long tortured cry of primeval pain that came from the room above them. Then Ellie pulled free of her aunt and raced up the stairs, pushing open her parents’ bedroom door.

A strong smell of carbolic filled her nostrils, making her catch her breath. The room was hot and lacking in fresh air.

Her mother was lying in bed, her hands gripping the bars of the brass bedstead, her teeth clenched over the twisted piece of cloth in her mouth, her head twisting from side to side as she tried to escape the pain tearing at her.

Ellie froze in shock. Surely this was not her fastidious, elegant mother, this woman who bared her teeth in a feral grimace before uttering a low panting animal grunt of mingled pain and endeavour?

Sweat caked her mother’s hair, which clung stickily to her face. As another wave of pain struck, she began to pant, her fingers gripping the arm of the midwife.

Was this what giving birth was? This primitive agony that filled the air with sights, sounds, scents from which Ellie recoiled, shocked by their visceral rawness.