Annie Groves - Ellie Pride

Her sisters, she knew, blamed Robert, and so increasingly did she.

As the youngest child of the family she had perhaps been indulged rather more than the others – she had certainly been far more rebellious. Also her marriage, Lydia knew, was different from those of her sisters, just as her nature was different. If her daughters had inherited that streak of sensuality from her they would need to learn to guard against it, otherwise…

‘Are you sure?’ she heard Ellie asking her.

‘Yes. You go, and, Ellie…’ But as Ellie turned back, Lydia shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

To warn her daughter at this stage against Gideon Walker might do more harm than good. Ellie was a young girl, after all, and Gideon was an extremely handsome young man. Lydia was not so old that she could not remember the way she had felt when Robert had first looked at her with his bold, laughing eyes and his warm smile…

Sunshine danced on the crystal bowl in the middle of the table, and suddenly Ellie was impatient to be outside. Giving her mother a swift kiss, she hurried to the door.

‘John, if you are not careful you will break all your eggs before we even reach the park,’ Ellie scolded, as John, growing bored with his family’s leisurely progression, began to swing his basket of eggs.

The town’s Easter Monday festivities at Avenham Park was a popular and well-attended event, especially the egg-rolling race.

But much as John wanted to hurry them towards what he considered to be the most important and exciting part of the day, his sisters obstinately refused to listen.

‘Oh, Ellie, do look. There is Sukey Jefferies from school. Just look at her dress.’ Connie was tugging on Ellie’s arm.

Judiciously Ellie studied the other girl, who, like them, was accompanied by her family. The Jefferies family were involved in the cotton trade, and considered to be well-to-do, even though they did not actually own any of the town’s mills.

‘The silk is far too rich for a daytime outing,’ she pronounced, ‘and as for all those lace frills and flounces…’

‘It looks very grand,’ Connie breathed enviously. ‘I wish that Mother would allow me to wear a proper grown-up dress, instead of making me wear these stupid pinafores, like a child. After all, Sukey is only a year older than me.’

‘She is two years older,’ Ellie corrected her, ‘and her dress is far too fussy.’

It wasn’t just their beauty that the Barclay sisters were renowned for, it was their taste and stylishness as well, and Ellie knew instinctively just what her mother would have thought of Sukey’s gown, with all its fanciful, overdone trimmings.

Her own dress, for all its simplicity, was, Ellie knew, far more stylish and elegant, but before she could say as much to her sister, John was rudely interrupting their conversation, demanding, ‘Oh, why must we waste time talking about such stuff? If we don’t hurry we won’t get a decent place.’

‘There is plenty of time, and I know the exact spot we need,’ Ellie reassured him, unaware that she was being observed keenly by Gideon, walking slightly behind them with her father, as she gave John an impishly droll look.

‘What, you mean you will show me the spot you’ve won the egg race from three years running?’ John exclaimed in excitement.

This awesome feat by his elder sister had become a part of their family history, and secretly it was John’s goal not just to match it but, with luck, to better it.

‘What’s this? I hadn’t realised that we had a champion egg roller in our midst!’ Gideon exclaimed, joining in the fun.

Flushing a little, Ellie nevertheless held his gaze.

‘I think we shall have to put your skills to the test,’ Gideon announced, ‘since I consider myself to have some sporting skill.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ John encouraged, dancing up and down.

‘What do you say, Miss Pride – will you allow me to challenge you?’ Gideon laughed.

A little uncertainly, Ellie looked at her father, half expecting and even half hoping that he might object and insist, as she suspected her mother would have done, that such behaviour on her part would be unseemly, but to her consternation he just laughed and said, ‘You will have to be very good, Gideon, if you are to best Ellie. Had she been a boy I dare say she would be captaining the Hutton cricket team by now.’

They had nearly reached the end of the elegant colonnaded walk that led into the park. Several family groups had paused to chat, and Ellie recognised her cousin Cecily in one of them, with her fiancé, but she didn’t draw her father’s attention to their presence, sensitively aware that Cecily might not want to acknowledge them if she was with her fiancé’s family.

Cecily’s father-in-law-to-be was, as Aunt Gibson had proudly informed her sister, a very senior Liverpool surgeon, Sir James Charteris, who, through his wife’s family, was connected with the nobility!

A group of girls of around her own age hurried past them, and Ellie guessed from their loud voices that they must work in one of the town’s mills. Everyone knew that the noise inside the weaving sheds turned people deaf and that the millworkers had devised their own sign language for communicating with one another.

One of the girls suddenly stopped. Taller than Ellie, with a wild mane of thick curly red hair and a pale complexion, she gave Ellie an astutely assessing female look before tossing her head dismissively and going boldly up to Gideon, throwing him a look that was openly flirtatious, as she exclaimed in the thickest of the town’s dialect, ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Gideon Walker…’

‘Good afternoon, Miss Nancy,’ Gideon responded with an easy openness that shocked and dismayed Ellie. Immediately she drew herself up to her own full height and pursed her lips every bit as disapprovingly as her mother would have done.

‘Miss Nancy!’ the redhead emphasised, and laughed.

‘Come on, Nance.’ One of the other girls tugged on her skirt. ‘There’s free refreshments for them as gets there first, and I’m fair clemmed…’

Watching the girls hurry away, Ellie had to admit that the cheap dress worn by ‘Miss Nancy’ had far more style about it than those of her companions. Did Gideon find the redheaded mill girl attractive? Did he think her pretty…prettier than she? Did he want to kiss her? Had he perhaps already kissed her?

Ellie’s mother considered that red was not a suitable hair colour for a young lady, and Ellie had been brought up to be proud of her own soft golden curls, but now suddenly she was sharply aware that a woman did not necessarily have to have blonde curls and ladylike manners to attract a man.

‘Who was that?’ John demanded, too young to feel any need to conceal his curiosity.

‘Miss Nancy and some of her co-workers rent rooms in the house next to where I rent my own,’ Gideon explained easily. ‘She came to me for assistance some time ago, when…when one of the girls had…had fainted. I believe that underneath her brash manner she is a good sort, and –’

‘These mill girls have a very hard life,’ Robert Pride interrupted. ‘Every year so many are killed in accidents with the heavy looms. There is much talk of the need to reform the conditions under which the mills are run.’

‘There is always talk,’ Gideon replied sharply, ‘but very rarely any action, and even when there is, the mill owners seem to find a way to circumvent it. I was called into one of the mills the other day to repair a piece of machinery – I think I would go mad had I to work there permanently. The noise alone, never mind anything else.’

Ellie could feel the heaviness that had enveloped the two men as they talked. The looks on their faces reminded her of the man she had seen in the fish market the previous Friday when she had gone there with her mother.