‘Um… thank you very much.’
We might have said more to each other, but at that moment my aunt rushed into the room again.
‘Oh Ella, Ella my dearest! Isn’t it wonderful? Such beautiful flowers! Show me again, will you? We have to find a vase for them, so when he comes to visit he will see…’
She was still rotating like an overexcited top, her voice too loud to even think of going to bed in peace. So I took a book out of my uncle’s library and strolled into the garden. I hadn’t indulged in my favourite hobby as much as I would have liked, lately. Too much had been going on. But at least now I had a few hours before I had to go to bed.
What do you think I picked? Some wonderfully romantic novel that dealt with falling in love with tall, dark and handsome strangers? No, thank you! One tall and dark stranger in my life was quite enough. If those books gave help on how to organize a file system, that would have been one thing. But one glance years ago had been enough to tell me that all they were concerned with was strolling around gardens and mooning after men.
I preferred another kind of bedtime story: an atlas of the world from my father’s old book collection. Just my kind of book: no chauvinist heroes, no soppy heroines, and plenty of strange, foreign lands promising adventure. If only I could really go there - just like Anne Thornton, who had dressed up as a man to sneak aboard a ship bound for distant lands! I had never felt so envious in my entire life as when her story had gone through the papers a few years ago. I could hardly imagine how exciting a trip to inner Africa or the unexplored, icy regions of Canada might be. Much more exciting than dreary old London, I was sure.
Slowly, I wandered through the garden and settled in the grass behind a clump of bushes, where I often sat when I wanted to avoid my aunt. The light of the moon was just enough to see by, so I opened the Atlas and started leafing through it.
I had just managed to lose myself in China, somewhere between Peking and Quingdao, when my thoughts were pulled from their Asian idyll back to Ella. I tried concentrating on my book, but just couldn’t. Poor, innocent Ella. After what I had seen at the ball, it was clear as the day that Sir Philip had his eyes on her. She was just hopelessly clueless. I sighed and turned the page. Well, I would just have to talk to her and explain a few things about what went on between men and women. Was my aunt in bed and out of the way yet?
I was just about to move on from Quingdao to Hong Kong when a voice from the garden disturbed me.
‘Psht!’
Or rather, not the voice disturbed me - but the fact that it was a man’s voice. Definitely not Leadfield the butler! And my uncle? He wouldn’t be seen dead in the garden. Who in God’s name…
‘Psht! I’m here, my love.’
My love? Now things were getting a bit thick! I sat up straight and peered through the foliage but couldn’t see anybody. And in the next moment I stopped looking, because what I heard made me forget all about the man.
‘I’m here! I’m here, my love,’ came the answer to the lover’s call in the sweet, innocent tones of my little sister Ella.
I dropped the atlas on my foot.
Unsuitable Suitors
‘Ouch!’
‘What was that, my love? Did you hurt yourself?’
‘No, my dearest Ella. Why do you ask?’
‘I could have sworn I heard somebody crying out.’
‘It must have been my heart crying out in joy at the sight of you, my dearest, my loveliest Ella!’
His heart? My foot, more like! Behind the bushes I was hopping on one foot, my hand clamped over my mouth to prevent any further outcries. I nearly toppled over but was able to grasp a tree and steady myself. Not more than a few feet away, hidden by the brush, I could hear the soft ‘swoosh’ of a gown gliding through the wet grass and my little sister’s light feet as she hurried through the garden.
‘Oh Ella!’
‘Oh Edmund!’
Edmund? Edmund?
Peering between two bushes, I could see my sister standing at the wrought iron fence that separated our garden from that of the neighbours, clutching at the intricate ironwork as though it were prison bars separating her from all she desired in the world. And indeed, beyond the fence stood Edmund Conway, our neighbour’s son, staring at my little sister with an expression on his face that I could only describe as… besotted.
Eww!
‘Oh Ella,’ he said again.
‘Oh Edmund.’