‘You mean… you mean the lieutenant was lying?’
I sneaked a glance at the old grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Two hours and twenty-six minutes. Not bad.
‘Exactly. You’ve figured it out. Bravo!’
‘But… that’s horrible!’
I shrugged. ‘Well, depends how you look at it. Lying can be quite useful sometimes, you know. For instance when there’s something going on in your life you don't want anybody to know.’
Ella’s cheeks turned as red as a ripe tomato. I had been thinking of my new occupation when speaking, but it was clear that her thoughts were on something very different, or rather somebody.
‘Um… I suppose so,’ she managed.
‘And? Tell any good lies lately?’ I inquired lightly, propping myself up on my elbows to get a better look at her.
‘No! I didn’t. Definitely not!’
‘I see.’ As hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. Ella, who seemed desperate to change the subject, blurted out:
‘But what will you do? I mean, if Lieutenant Ellingham isn’t the young man you’ve been seeing, what will you do? If he continues to pay attention to you, Aunt Brank will expect you to marry him, you know.’
‘Oh yes, I know. But then, that’s no surprise since Aunt Brank would expect me to marry any willing creature in trousers who walked through the door downstairs, just to get me out of the house.’ I rolled my eyes.
‘What will you do?’ Ella repeated, anxiously. ‘How will you reconcile yourself to having to say goodbye to your true love and marry somebody else?’
Oh right! Ella was still convinced that every time I went to work, I was going on a secret rendezvous with my mystery lover. Opening my mouth, I was about to explain to her that I didn’t have and never would have a love in my life when it occurred to me that this would raise a whole lot of questions regarding my frequent absence. So I just said:
‘Believe me, I’m not going to marry that blighter.’
Once again, Ella seemed to have problems with grasping my thought processes. ‘But… Aunt wants you to marry him!’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re not going to?’
‘No! You can bet your best silk parasol on that!’
‘But… that would mean… defying Aunt.’
I clapped my hands. ‘Bravo! You didn’t even need two hours to figure that one out.’
‘Tell me, my dear sister.’ Eagerly, Ella knelt down on the bed beside me and clasped my hands. ‘How would you do it? How would you bring yourself to walk up to her and say: “No! I do not want to marry this man, for my heart belongs to another!”?’
‘Err… well, I would just do it.’ Apart from the my-heart-belongs-to-another part.
‘Oh Lilly!’ Ella embraced me with all the strength and sisterly affection she was capable of. And while she didn’t have much of the former, she had plenty of the latter. ‘You’re so brave. How I wish I had your courage. And you will truly rebel? Set yourself against this marriage with everything you have?’
I simply nodded and held her tightly, wishing so much that I could help her in her predicament. But unfortunately, she would have to find the strength herself.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will not marry Lieutenant Ellingham.’
‘Oh Lilly!’ She hugged me once more. ‘Tell me about him, will you?’
‘About who? The lieutenant?’
‘No, not him! About your young man! The one you see on your rendezvous! The one whose love inspires you to such bravery!’
My mouth dropped open. Never in a million years had I expected that my brilliant excuse would backfire like this. What the hell could I tell her? I had absolutely no idea. I had absolutely no interest in men. What were women supposed to find attractive in men? Why would they lose their mind and fall in love with one?
Dear Lord, I had to tell her something, but what? Who from my acquaintance could I pick as my supposed lover? The only men I’d known for more than a couple of moments were my father, who was dead for years, and my Uncle Bufford, both of whom were, for obvious reasons, not good candidates. Should I pick one of the men from Sir Philip’s ball? But to be honest, I couldn’t remember a single one of them. Men just never seemed very important to me. They slipped my mind as soon as I left their company.
Well, except perhaps for one. A face appeared in front of my eyes.
‘Um… well…’ I began.
‘Come on,’ Ella urged. ‘Don’t be shy.’
‘Err… he’s tall, with dark hair and dark, sea-coloured eyes, almost black.’
She clapped her hands eagerly, like an excited little girl. ‘Oh, that sounds so dreamy and mysterious.’
‘You can say that again!’ Too mysterious for my liking… he still hadn’t breathed a word about the contents of that infernal file. Could there be something government-related in it? But if anything, Mr Ambrose struck me as the type who did what he wanted without reference to any government, his own or anybody else’s.
‘Is he good-looking?’
‘W-what?’ I resurfaced from my thoughts. Caught off guard, the words escaped me: ‘Yes, he is, definitely.’
Oh God! What have I just said?
But if I was being honest, it was true. Blast!
‘He… he has a chiselled face, and I mean literally chiselled: angular, and hard as stone. Maybe good-looking isn’t even the best word to describe him. Beautiful would be better. A harsh beauty.’
The image of the face in front of my inner eye intensified, and an unwilling smile crept on my face.
‘As for the rest of him… He has a figure like an antique statue, you know? A bit like Myron’s Discus Thrower[28], though he would never dream of assuming such an undignified position.’ I giggled. ‘He walks around most of the time as if he has an iron rod up his behind. He’s very serious, cool and distant, and about as free with his money as Uncle Brank. He always does what he wants, and nasty things happen to people who get in his way.’
Hmm… Perhaps I wasn’t doing a very good a job of portraying him as the fellow I was desperately in love with. Shouldn’t a lovable man have one good quality, at least? So I hurriedly added: ‘But I think he actually may have a good heart, very, very, very deep down.’
Who knew, it might actually be true. He had taken me on, after all.
But not as a girl, said a nasty little voice in the back of my mind. I shook my head, trying to concentrate.
‘Oh Lilly!’ Ella gripped both of my hands with hers. ‘I’m so happy for you! He sounds amazing, like a modern-day Mr Darcy.’
‘Hardly,’ I muttered, smirking at the comparison. ‘He wouldn’t spend ten thousand pounds on anybody, let alone me.’[29]
Ella’s smile only widened. ‘It sounds like you’re very fond of him.’
‘Does it?’
My eyebrows shot up. Apparently, I had done a better job than I’d thought. I had completely fooled her and made her believe I was in love with Mr Ambrose. I had no idea my acting skills were this developed. It seemed that male impersonations weren’t the only thing I did well in that regard.
‘And his name?’ Ella continued eagerly. ‘Tell me, who is he?’
Oops…
What to Do with Pink?
And his name? Tell me, who is he?
For just a moment, Ella’s question hung in the air between us like a big, wet elephant on a washing line.
‘Please, don't ask,’ I blurted out. ‘I, um… promised him to tell nobody. Yes, I promised!’
This was such a lousy excuse that no little sister in England would have accepted it. Other little sisters would have dug and bored and drilled until they had uncovered every last bit of the truth. But all those little sisters probably didn’t have a secret lover.
Moisture sparkled in Ella’s eyes, and the words ‘just like me and Edmund’ practically blinked on her forehead for all the world to see.
‘Of course.’ Nodding eagerly, she enfolding me in her arms. ‘I under
stand. Of course you have to keep your love’s secret. I understand more than you can ever know.’
Somehow I doubted that. I knew perfectly well why she was feeling so deeply for my supposed plight, and it didn’t have anything to do with her general compassionate nature but rather, I suspected, with a certain young man who would soon be waiting for her at the garden fence.
‘I really hope you two will find a way to be together,’ she breathed into my ear, her voice sounding tearful.
Well I sure as hell didn’t. I had to work hard to keep myself from laughing at the idea of my marrying Mr Rikkard Ambrose. It would perhaps make an interesting tragedy for the theatre, with all the participants ending up strangled within the first five minutes, but in reality? No, thank you!
However, I didn’t think that was what Ella wanted to hear.
‘I’m sure we will. I think he’s getting really attached to me, and it’s quite likely that we will spend more time together in the future.’ That last part at least was true. ‘But enough of my problems,’ I continued, holding Ella away from me with both hands. ‘Let us talk about you and the man prowling around you. What about Sir Philip?’
Ella’s face paled. ‘He was here earlier today,’ she muttered.
‘To visit you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he bring flowers?’
‘Quite a lot of them, yes.’
‘And what do you think of him?’
‘He… is a very pleasant gentleman,’ Ella replied, doing her best to sound enthusiastic and failing miserably.
‘That is wonderful! Simply wonderful!’
I was testing my newfound acting skills. Of course I knew Ella’s interests lay in another direction, but I couldn’t tell her that I had overheard her and Edmund pledging their eternal, epic and everlasting love. She would vaporise from embarrassment. And I wouldn’t get another chance to eavesdrop on her and her lover, which was essential both for my plans of furthering the happiness of my little sister and as my favourite evening entertainment.
‘So you want to marry him, do you?’ I asked with a fake, bright smile.
What little colour had remained in Ella’s cheeks vanished. ‘Um… maybe not as such.’
‘Why not?’ I pressed. ‘If he likes you and you like him, why wait?’
‘Well, we’re both so young. Too young, I think, to really think of marriage.’
‘There are girls who get married at fifteen. That is two years younger than you.’
‘True, but still… there’s no need to rush things and… and I…’
She was desperately groping around for another explanation. I had to say I was impressed with her. Of course her flimsy little lies wouldn’t even fool a cocker spaniel with severe concussion, but I was amazed that she even made the attempt. For Ella to lie to anybody, let alone me, was an impressive achievement. She really had to like this fellow Edmund.
*~*~**~*~*
The confirmation of this very theory I received not three hours later. After my nap and an oh-so-delicious meal of porridge and cold potatoes, which I consumed with more relish than usual, I took up my usual post behind the bushes in the garden and waited for the two lovebirds to arrive. Just in case, I had taken the masterpiece of my favourite author with me: Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest, by a Lover of Her Sex.
Hey, I said she’s a great author. I didn’t say she was great at coming up with snappy titles. Secretly, I thought that How to Squash Chauvinists would have been a much better title, since that was what this fabulous book was all about - but I never dared to voice that opinion. If I had a heroine, Mary Astell was it. She had lived over a hundred years ago and already tried to grind the oppressive patriarchy of Great Britain into dust.
Today though, I didn’t get any new tips on man-to-dust-grinding. I had just opened my battered copy of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies when the lovebirds made their appearance. One fluttered in from the direction of the neighbours’ house, and it was not long after that Ella flew out of the back door and towards the fence.
‘Oh Edmund!’
‘Oh Ella!’
They both clutched the fence in their hands. Their eyes were drawn to the other’s as if by some magnetic force.
‘My love,’ Ella breathed, moisture in her eyes - and she didn’t need any onions for it. ‘How I have longed to see you again.’
‘And I you, my love. I have longed to see you again even more than you have longed to see me! Your sweet voice is to my ears as honey to my tongue.’
‘Impossible!’
‘I assure you, it is. The cadence of your speech…’
‘No, no, I don’t mean the bit about the honey! I mean the bit about you longing for me more than I longed for you! I have definitely longed more for you than you for me. How could I not? You are my pillar of strength in the midst of my woe, Edmund. My sole reason to continue living.’
That was laying it on a bit thick, wasn’t it? Nice walks in the park, reading, fighting for women’s rights… I could come up with half a dozen good reasons to continue living off the top of my head. And they most certainly were better reasons than some stupid man!
‘I assure you, my dearest Ella, that I have longed for you more than you for me. That is the only way it could be. For who am I? Nobody but a simple merchant’s son. You are the light of my life, queen of my heart, infinitely more important than me.’
You got that right mister. Satisfied, I nodded to myself. At least the fellow knew his place.
Apparently though, Ella didn’t. ‘You are not a nobody!’ she protested. ‘And I’m not more important than you!’
What the… of course you are! Through a gap in the foliage, I shot a glare at my little sister. She should squash this fellow until he was her willing slave, not try to build his self-esteem! Men’s heads were big enough already.
Ella seemed to think otherwise. ‘You are everything to me, Edmund,’ she declared. ‘Everything!’
‘As are you to me.’
‘Oh, Edmund.’
‘Oh, Ella, my love.’
For a few more minutes they continued their protestations of love and debate about who had missed whom more in the unimaginably long twenty-two hours or so that they had been separated. Finally though, they seemed to run out of sweet compliments and flowery similes for the passionate strength of their love.
The first pause ensued, and then, in a voice as tense as could be, Edmund asked:
‘How do things stand, my love? What of Sir Philip?’
Ella took a moment to answer. Peeking through the bushes, I saw that she was clutching the fence for support.
‘He came to visit me today,’ she whispered.
Edmund’s eyes slid shut, and he let himself fall against the fence. ‘Oh fearful harbinger of doom!’ he groaned.
‘He brought me flowers.’
‘What agony!’
‘They were pink roses.’
‘This is unbearable! Please, God, strike me down with a bolt of lightning!’
I glanced up towards the night sky. It didn’t look like God was in the mood to oblige Edmund. I wished he would. Then at least the moaning and groaning would stop.
‘And he said I was more beautiful than any flower he had ever brought me.’
‘Enough! Enough!’ With another groan, Edmund slid down the fence until he was on his knees in the grass. ‘Have mercy on me!’
‘He also said I was the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes upon,’ Ella continued, blushing. ‘I asked him how it was he had met that few girls, and he laughed.’
‘Please! I beg of you, stop! You are killing me! Stop!’
‘Dearest Edmund!’ For the first time, Ella seemed to realize that he was on the ground, unable to stand. Her face filled with horror, and she raised a hand to her mouth. ‘What are you saying? I would never dream of hurting you!’
Personally, I thought she had done a splendid job of ripping his heart
into tiny little pieces, but if I cheered her on, that would probably alert them to my presence. So I kept quiet and just pulled a branch aside to see better.
‘And yet you are,’ Edmund moaned. ‘You are hurting me more than anyone has ever hurt me in my life! The way you speak of Sir Philip showering you with gifts and compliments… I cannot bear it!’
‘But my love, you wished me to tell you everything! You expressly demanded it.’
‘I know, I know. And yet it tortures me to hear it. Especially to hear the tone in which you speak. You sound as if his attentions are very welcome to you. Oh, I see how it is. Your new suitor brings with him a great name and honourable rank, and I shall soon be forgotten. Winning your love has only been a dream. Oh Eros,[30] why do you torture me so?’
‘A dream?’ Not caring if her dress got dirty, Ella dropped to her knees in the muddy grass to be at eye level with Edmund. My, my, she really had to love him. I remembered very well the talking-to I had received from my aunt the last time I had gotten my dress dirty.
‘Edmund, if my love for you is a dream, then the sun is a phantom and the moon an illusion. My love for you is just as indestructible and everlasting as those two giants of the sky. Yet it is by no means as distant. It is right here.’
With a tender gesture she touched herself right above her heart.
‘It is?’ Edmund whispered. ‘It truly is?’
Oh, come on already! She’s already told you it is, hasn't she?
Honestly, I was a bit frustrated with the fellow. She had told him she loved him about three dozen times now, and he still didn’t seem to have gotten the message. You would have thought once would be enough. How dense could he be?
‘I swear on everything that is holy,’ Ella responded with fervour. ‘I love you.’
‘But the way you spoke of Sir Phillip…’
‘I may have been flattered, Edmund, I do not deny it.’ Shamefully, she let her eyes sink to the ground. ‘It is the first time in my life that I have been noticed by such a great and powerful man, and the strange feeling might for a moment have gone to my head. But that is all it is, Edmund. I swear. I love you, now and forever.’