Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

‘My father is dead now, Mrs Jenkins, and I am mistress here,’ Mary replied. ‘You will, I hope, find me a good and a fair mistress, just so long as you understand that it is I and not my father who now gives the orders. As soon as you have a maid free you will instruct her to light all the fires, please.’

‘Very well, miss…but you cannot mean to remove your father’s portrait,’ the housekeeper blurted out. ‘He was that proud of it; used to stand and look at it every day, he did, before he got poorly.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Jenkins, I am aware of my father’s pride in himself.’ And of every other aspect of his unpleasant personality, Mary could have added.

She still bore the faint scars on her back where he had whipped her as a child. She was forty now, but sometimes at night, when she couldn’t sleep, they still ached.

‘But what is to go in its place?’ the housekeeper was fretting. ‘The wallpaper will have faded, and in such a large space –’

‘If it has then we shall have new wallpaper, Mrs Jenkins. In fact, I believe we shall have new wallpaper anyway. Something light and modern. Now just as soon as the men have finished, I want someone to take them down to the kitchen and give them a good hearty meal before they leave.’

The housekeeper was staring at her, and Mary guessed why. She doubted that anyone in the household knew what a good hearty meal was. Well, they were soon going to discover.

She might have particular plans for the huge inheritance she had received, but that did not mean that she didn’t fully intend to enjoy some of its benefits immediately. Starting with doing something about the house.

As the men brought the painting down the stairs, the artist’s name glittered under the light of the chandelier. Hesitantly, Mary reached out and touched it, running her fingertips over the slightly raised surface of the paint.

Richard Warrender.

Very briefly she closed her eyes. Some memories were too painful for her to recall, even now.

‘A puppy for John, is it, or more like a sweetener to win the favour of young Ellie?’ William Pride laughed as he watched his young helper button the collie pup he had brought with him from the borders inside his jacket.

‘You’re wasting your time there, my lad,’ William told Gideon, shaking his head. ‘She’s a fine-looking girl, I’ll grant you that. Got her mother’s looks and her fancy airs and graces as well. Lyddy will never allow any daughter of hers to get sweet on a working lad like you. Thinks too much of herself for that, she does.’

‘Mr Pride has always made me very welcome in his home,’ Gideon said stiffly.

‘Oh aye, our Robert – Mr Pride – he will, but we’re talking about Mrs Pride now, lad, ’er as was “a Barclay” before she wed our Robert. I remember how it was when they first met. Let us know that she thought herself well above us, she did, allus talking about her father the solicitor in that posh voice of hers. Of course, our Robert was well fixated on her. Daft as a tuppence-halfpenny wristwatch he was – dafter! I could never see the sense in it m’sel’. Never catch me allowing any woman to rule my life. Good enough in their right place, women is, but only that place!’ He winked meaningfully at Gideon. ‘What tha’ wants, lad, is some willing wench – but make sure she’s clean, mind. I don’t mind telling you I had my problems in that way when I was a young green ’un. Don’t you make the mistake of settling for one before you’ve sampled a few like I did, either. Naught wrong with our Gertie, mind, but a bit of choice isn’t a bad thing, if you know what I mean.’ He grinned, tapping the side of his nose.

Grimly, Gideon forced himself not to object. He knew exactly what his employer meant, and he knew too that once they had parted company William would make his way first to the pub, where he would garner the current gossip, and then to the home of the woman who was his ‘wife’ whenever he was in the town, and by whom he had three tow-headed sons.

Gideon wasn’t finding it as easy to get work as he had hoped – but William Pride paid a fair wage to his men, even though the work itself wasn’t what Gideon really wanted to do.

Every time they visited Preston, as well as calling at Friargate, ostensibly to update John on the progress of his pup, Gideon combed the town’s streets, looking for somewhere to set up his business.

So far his search had been disappointing. Those townspeople rich enough to employ a cabinet-maker, instead of buying ready-manufactured furniture, automatically looked to tradesmen they knew and believed they could trust, many often going as far afield as Gideon’s own ex-master in Lancaster.

He had had one small but potentially lucrative job, which had set his hopes soaring – the restoration of a carved banister in a tumbling-down manor house in Lancashire, which had been bought by a newly rich railway shareholder, but the man had refused to pay Gideon the full amount they had agreed, and he had been lucky to cover his costs for the job, never mind make a profit.

He was not about to give up, though. The struggle he was having now would make his eventual success very sweet, and even sweeter if he were able to have Ellie to share it with him.

Ellie. How she teased and tantalised him, giving him bold, tormenting looks one minute, and the next blushing a softly delicious pink just because he had happened to comment on her mother’s pregnancy.

Gideon frowned as he thought about Lydia Pride. There was a very different atmosphere in the Pride household now, in April, than there had been when he had first been invited there in Guild Week.

Robert Pride himself had changed, Gideon believed. He no longer seemed to laugh as easily or as heartily, and there was a hangdog, sheepish look about him whenever he was around his wife.

Even Ellie seemed to be affected by the change in her parents’ relationship, and Gideon had seen how very protective she had become of her mother.

The pup inside his jacket struggled and yelped, reminding him of its presence and his plans. He had first to take his bag to his lodgings – a small but reasonably clean room tucked away at the back of a small courtyard – and then he would deliver the puppy – and set eyes again on Ellie.

‘Show me again, Gideon,’ John pleaded as the balls he had been trying to juggle refused to move as dextrously in his hands as they did in Gideon’s.

Laughing, Gideon did so. They were standing outside Robert’s shop in the sharp spring sunlight, waiting for the rest of the Pride family. Robert had invited Gideon to join them for the traditional Easter Monday egg rolling in Avenham Park, and Gideon had accepted gratefully, only too pleased to have a legitimate excuse to spend some time with Ellie.

‘If you don’t want to go to the park, Mother, would you like me to stay here with you?’ Ellie offered anxiously.

‘No, you must go, Ellie, if only to keep an eye on John and that wretched dog of his,’ Lydia sighed tiredly.

The combination of a boldly inquisitive and danger-prone ten-year-old and an equally adventurous collie pup was not one that was designed to soothe a mother’s natural fears.

John had become devoted to his pet. They went everywhere together, and virtually every day he insisted that they all watch whilst this wondrous creature performed some new trick he had taught it.

‘And look out for Connie too. You know what she’s like.’

The closer it got to her due date, the more haunted Lydia was becoming by the warnings she had been given. It was all very well for Robert to say that doctors always tended to look on the black side, and to remind her that she had already produced three healthy children with no risk to herself whatsoever. Sometimes in the night she dreamed that she was a girl again, her body slender and empty, and she would wake up full of relief until she realised the truth.