Page 41 of Match Made in Heaven (The Cricket Club #5)

G rief is a devious thing, unnaturally smart.

It waits. It plots. Patience is its tool.

Dominance is its reward. For the uninitiated, it might seem careless or indifferent, but like a lion it can sit for days, biding its time for the perfect moment to strike.

The moment of least resistance. The moment when a person is at her weakest but too busy pretending otherwise to know it.

That was when grief found Ella.

For days after the news, she ran herself ragged inside Sutton House, reacting to everyone else’s sorrow. Her mission was to keep Sonia diverted, spend countless hours walking outdoors, and making sure a maid was there to take her place when she was called away.

Ella’s sanity balanced on a tightrope. Her mind was at the razor’s edge. But she couldn’t stop.

She sprinted from Lady Amelia to Lady Evelyn, providing companionship for the women who had taken to their rooms. Ella told herself it was easy, since they didn’t wish to speak; they used her because being alone was too much to bear.

Ella bore it.

And when the women used laudanum to drift off, Ella sat in the drawing room with the uncles, who’d commandeered the space to stay drunk and tell stories about their puzzling nephew.

With glassy eyes and slurred voices, they laughed about the impolite and prideful ways he’d treated them—while toasting to his adventurous spirit.

Ella knew they meant well. But she listened to their stories wondering how three men could know someone his entire life and never really understand him.

Lord Oliver was the only one who didn’t need her. He hunkered down in his room once more, his doctors the only people admitted, and not very often. She contemplated knocking a few times but eventually decided to leave him to his gloom.

By that point, Ella was slowing anyway. Grief’s tentacles were slinking around her on all sides, threatening inch by inch.

Until one day it happened.

Ella woke up and decided not to get out of bed.

The result wasn’t worth the effort. Her limbs felt like they’d been filled with lead, but her heart and head were impossibly empty.

Food and drink didn’t interest her. Neither did walking, nor listening to more badly recalled stories.

She shivered uncontrollably while saturating her clothes with sweat.

The blankets provided her only comfort, because they weighed her down.

Like water rushing overhead, they dragged her deeper into the ocean.

It reminded her of the thought she’d once had about drowning, wondering if she was worth saving.

In the end, Ella just closed her eyes, helpless to stop it. Maybe she didn’t even want to.

*

Ella’s fever raged for days. In her erratic dreams, her parents came to her, clasping her hands to their chests, praying loudly in case the Lord was distracted.

They talked to her, endless conversations about their family’s happiest moments: her father teaching all of his daughters to fish in the country, Alexandra’s first ball, Suzanne’s first jump with her favorite horse.

Their descriptions became more vivid and frantic as they pleaded with Ella to remember.

Ella tried. She told them—shouted at them—that she was trying. But nothing worked. Nothing flickered inside her. Pain and regret and hopelessness trumped all.

And then she was floating. Riding. Sailing.

Her head in her mother’s lap, her feet curled in her father’s.

For a short time, the smell of decay and sorrow were gone.

Lemon and lavender permeated once more. The sun’s tendrils soaked through the curtains, creating magical dust motes dancing around the room.

Ella’s room. Her childhood room. The room she’d slept in before.

Jack.

She remembered. But she didn’t want to remember.

So she slept more, imagining herself with pale-white skin and ruby lips, encased in a glass coffin. It was comfortable being tucked away. Safe. And there she would wait. Until everything was different.

*

A week later, Ella’s eyes creaked open. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton; her throat burned. She was like a wet rag, soaked and wrung tight, and left out into the sun to dry.

She rubbed her fingers back and forth against each other, hating how sensitive the smooth skin was to the touch.

She recognized it immediately. It had always been there to welcome her after she came out the other side of one of her fevers.

It made Ella feel like she had shed her skin while she slept, and now she was a new person, forced to learn everything all over again.

A knock came to the door, and Cordelia sailed in, a tight smile on her face that fell the moment she saw that Ella was awake.

She stopped at the foot of the bed, her hands on her hips, reminding Ella so much of their mother. “It’s about time,” she said, feigning irritation. Even in her wooziness, Ella could see the relief shudder over her frame. “You’ve had us worried. How do you feel?”

Ella’s movements were sloth-like as she scooted herself higher on the headboard. Her muscles ached with disuse. “Tired,” she groaned. “How did I get here?”

Cordelia tilted her head, her eyes narrowing. “The duke sent a letter after you became sick. Apparently all five of his doctors said that traveling would do harm, but Father wouldn’t listen. They brought you home at once.”

“I’ll have to thank the duke,” Ella said.

Cordelia nodded to the side table. “He’s written every day. He’s anxious for news.”

Ella stared at the letters piled neatly in a stack next to a glass of water. “I’m sorry I scared everyone.”

“Oh, Ella,” her sister sighed, rounding the side of the bed. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

That brutal, hollow feeling planted itself inside Ella’s stomach once more. Her lips quivered. She bit them to get the words out. “Did he tell you… about…?”

Cordelia’s lashes lowered. “Yes. We heard about Lord John. I’m so sorry, Ella. I know you’d come to care for him.”

Ella grimaced. She scooted away from her sister, the events of the last few weeks rushing to the forefront of her mind. Come to care… come to care…

Again, Ella realized that her grief could never be shared.

She’d have to see her way through it on her own.

And though that thought made her even more exhausted, it didn’t terrify her as it once might have.

Because if anything, Ella was good at being alone.

At least then she’d been safe with her books and daydreams. It was only when she’d allowed herself to believe in building a family that everything had gone awry.

She should have listened to her mother.

Cordelia’s expression grew more and more worried. She glanced at the door, and Ella was certain her sister would call for their mother any second. “Don’t,” she warned, giving Cordelia a pointed stare. “I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”

Cordelia’s frown deepened. She contemplated Ella for long seconds, before finally retreating from the bed. Her voice was lofty and light as she took her leave, saying, “We’re here if you need us, Ella.”

But Ella didn’t need anyone.

And that belief flourished as the days dragged on.

As did her bitterness. Ella’s health improved, but her heart didn’t.

She hid in her room, pacing the carpet to while away the hours until falling into more depressive sleeps.

She did manage to respond to Lord Oliver, thanking him for his attention.

She asked about Sonia and the others. But she did not mention Jack.

She couldn’t bring herself to form the letters of his name, afraid that just seeing them might give her hope for something that would never be.

The duke surprised her by writing back the following day.

And the next. His letters started to come as faithfully as the sun.

It wasn’t like before. He wasn’t using Ella’s pleasing nature to distract himself from Jack, as his mother and grandmother had.

Ella sensed that Oliver saw these letters as a medicine of some kind.

A tether—however small—holding them to the world.

She wasn’t sure if the medicine was for him or her.

But, in the end, she could only assume that they both benefited.

Days and weeks passed with Ella keeping mostly to her room. Her mother, although worried, remained patient. She appointed herself to bring the duke’s letters to Ella every afternoon, pocketing the small smile Ella gave her as a reward and a sign of better times ahead.

Ella allowed her mother to dream, but she knew better.

Lord Oliver would recover, as would his family.

He would carry on and marry and produce his heir, and a new generation would start all over again.

Nothing as important as a title depended on Ella’s future, and that reminder served her well.

It meant she could mope and cry and hate the world and its callousness for as long as she liked.

However, some people weren’t known for their patience. Some people couldn’t be kept out, despite Ella’s protestations. And a day came when she met her match in stubbornness.

There was no tentative knock on the door this time.

Ella was seated in her rocking chair in the corner of her room, a copy of The Odyssey in her lap. She’d been torturing herself, tracing its cover with her fingers, daring herself to open it.

Without warning, the door eased open, and the book fell out of Ella’s lap as she shot out of her seat.

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” Lady Everly remarked dryly, regarding Ella from the threshold. She hitched her chin in the air before she stepped into the room. “By what Cordelia told me, I had my doubts.”

Ella sputtered, unable to form words as her cricket club friend meandered around the room. Lady Everly’s mouth remained flat and tight, her posture straight and unyielding while she inspected the stagnant life Ella had created within these four dour walls.