Page 40 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

A ll the way to Sutton Park, Ella worked on the speech she would give to Lady Evelyn about returning to her home.

She and Jack had discussed that it might be easier for her to wait for him there, away from the pressures of his family.

But the closer she came, the more she recognized how silly she was being.

Lord Oliver had asked for Ella’s help in his recovery.

She couldn’t leave without seeing it through.

Her days settled into a comfortable pattern. Ella spent most of her mornings with Sonia and Lady Evelyn as they navigated their never-ending hunt for a proper nanny, and in the afternoon, she met with Lord Oliver.

What they did was entirely dependent on how he was feeling.

Sometimes, the duke pleaded with Ella to entertain him while reading the racing pages (which she begrudgingly did), while other times, he had the energy to leave his room.

The first week was spent trudging up and down the hallway, regaining his strength and balance, and by the second, the duke was confident enough to navigate the stairs.

Those days left him depleted and irritable, but Lord Oliver couldn’t hide his pleasure at finally making progress.

Ella had to admit, the duke was the perfect companion for those who wanted to keep their minds busy.

She rarely had time to worry about Jack even as the days dragged on.

Lord Oliver was as entertaining as he was wicked.

One of his favorite ways to pass the time while roaming the halls was to tell Ella about all the times he and Jack got into mischief when they were younger.

Unfortunately, most of them involved tormenting their poor uncles.

Ella did not love the duke, but she did grow to genuinely like him.

He was friendly and carefree, quick with a quip or a naughty joke.

He was the kind of man who never said what he meant and never meant what he said.

Ella’s head always felt like it was spinning whenever he was near.

But not in a romantic way, more like the way one felt when a misbehaving toddler came to visit.

At first, she had been apprehensive when Lord Oliver insisted that Sonia accompany her on her visits.

In her eyes, the child seemed an exact replica of her biological father, just with a warmer complexion.

But nothing paternal ever came from him as he teased and laughed with the girl.

Soon, Ella understood that Lord Oliver was a man who enjoyed being around other people.

He thrived on amusing them with his clever wit. He thrived even more on shocking them.

It was not lost on the duke that he’d been given a second chance.

And Lord Oliver was keen to take it. Headaches still plagued him, and his nights were more restless than not, but a silver lining wasn’t as far out of sight as he’d once believed.

Ella had worried that the duke would ask her questions about their previous relationship, in hope of sparking his memory; however, those questions never came.

He was too mired in his present, driven by his future.

The past didn’t seem important. When Ella proposed that Lord Oliver reach out to his old friends, inviting them to Sutton Park, he quickly closed down, his hand immediately retreating to his scar.

The duke still wasn’t ready to rejoin Society, not willing to do so, he said, until he was back to the man he was before the accident.

Even though Ella considered the duke a true friend, she hadn’t the heart to tell him that that man might never return. Lord Oliver had been through too much. He’d faced true struggle.

But she remained patient, optimistic. The man was finally taking steps toward reclaiming his home and birthright. She couldn’t ask for more, especially when she remembered that it had taken Odysseus—the greatest hero of his age—far longer.

*

Ella didn’t notice the knock on the door.

In the drawing room waiting to go into dinner, she was mid-belly laugh.

Uncle Christopher was delighting the group with a perplexing story about his first (and only) day working for Sutton Shipping.

It seemed the poor man wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as a work week , and he had been mighty put out when Mr. Sinclair sent him a letter the day after his first, inquiring of his whereabouts.

Lord Oliver, fully clothed in a jacket, cravat, and trousers for the first time in months, threw a tortuous look at his uncle, putting the room into hysterics, made worse by the friendly argument that ensued when Christopher attempted to defend his ignorant position.

The duke eviscerated all points—with an insouciant smile on his face, of course.

However, Ella did notice when a grim-faced Carlisle entered the room, telling the duchess she was needed.

And the entire party fell completely silent when Lady Evelyn’s scream rang out moments later.

Ella rushed into the foyer, stopping short when she spotted Mr. Sinclair, looking ashen and lost as the duchess sobbed against him, smacking her fists against his skinny chest.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He kept repeating himself in a low, monotone voice that sounded nothing like him.

Ella’s throat tightened, but she couldn’t understand. As the scene played out in front of her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a ruse, a theater act between amateurs—one with too much emotion, and one with too little.

Quietly, the duke walked past Ella, steady and stoic, as if his accident had never occurred.

His shoulder brushed hers as he went to his mother.

Crying out, the duchess turned to her eldest son.

She clawed at his jacket for purchase, but her hands trembled too much.

She collapsed to the floor in her pile of skirts, which had only started to be more colorful.

A cane hit the ground, and Ella watched as Lady Amelia came up behind her.

She knelt by her daughter, cocooning her in her thin arms.

Mr. Sinclair held out a letter to the duke before wiping his eyes behind his glasses. “It was a storm,” he said in that odd tone, void of inflection. “Off the coast of Aberdeen. The men tell me that he was the last to flee, wanting to help everyone else first.”

Lord Oliver kept his head down at the letter. “Did his body make it to shore?”

Mr. Sinclair sighed, his chest trembling. “No, Your Grace. He wasn’t found. The sea is merciless.”

The duke lifted his gaze from the letter. “So I’ve heard.” Lord Oliver folded the paper with painstaking care and placed it in his inside pocket. “Edward, Christopher, Andrew? Help Mother and Grandmother to their rooms, please.”

The men hurried to do as their nephew asked, their trembling hands the only signs that they were as affected as everyone else.

Mr. Sutton found Ella. His large eyes seemed imploring, almost like he was begging for forgiveness. But Ella just shook her head. What did all this mean ?

The atmosphere appeared final. Something terrible had happened, and now… that was it. Lord Oliver had taken the news and hidden it away in his pocket. It was over.

A pain Ella had never experienced before wrenched her insides. The certitude of it tore at her. The idea that there was nothing to be done. Because it was done.

Jack was done.

Her breathing came on fast. Ella clutched her chest, her heart beating too quickly and shallow to be of use.

She reached for the banister, hanging on the newel post as her legs lost their strength.

She heard the duke’s deep voice as he thanked Mr. Sinclair for coming.

She felt the uncles shuffle by with the sobbing women.

She heard some of the doctors—she didn’t know how many—clear their throats as they watched this intimate scene from the periphery.

And then she heard Sonia.

The little girl’s head was bowed, her hands closed into fists at her sides, as if she wanted to crush the overwhelming sadness before it had a chance to crush her.

That tiny, quaking puff of a cry broke Ella from her misery, and she scooped the girl up into her arms, holding her head against her shoulder.

Sonia cried on that shoulder as Ella climbed the stairs. She’d never know how the strength came to her, but her feet never stumbled. Her body didn’t crumble once on the way to the little girl’s room.

A maid looked on while Ella placed Sonia on her bed, swiftly joining her. She pulled the covers tightly over them before encapsulating the girl once more in her solid embrace. Ella didn’t know how long they stayed that way.

Minutes or hours later, Sonia’s tears slowed enough for her to lift her head out of the safe cavern of Ella’s neck. Her small body shuddered from all the tears still waiting to fall.

“Do you think it was Charybdis or Scylla who took Jack?” she asked, her desolate voice ragged with emotion.

Ella stared into Sonia’s innocent face, thinking of all the loved ones who had been stolen from the young girl—her mother, and now Jack, a man who wasn’t her real father but wanted to be. She’d been cheated.

Ella caressed Sonia’s hair off her face, urging it back on the tear-stained pillow. She gritted her teeth to steel her voice as she replied, “To keep him from you, it could only have been both of them.”

She’d wanted to say “us.”

Because Ella had been cheated as well. But she was the only one who knew it.

She held the girl long into the night, soothing her chills, humming through her tears, keeping the shadows from sinking their claws in too deep.

And finally, when Sonia’s body couldn’t take it anymore, it relaxed in its grief enough to fall into the sweet respite of sleep.

Then, and only then, did Ella fracture into so many pieces that it would be impossible to count. And she cried for Jack. Her husband. Her true love.

And the reality she’d tasted that must now go back to being just a dream.