Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

‘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.