Page 49

THE LONGING FOR HOME

Eliza was so cold she quickly undressed with Polly’s help and slipped into bed.

Their early return was unexpected and the housemaids had yet to prepare the bedrooms. She noticed the fireplace where last night’s ashes lay on the dusty hearth, and shivered; how her heart, her hopes, were now as those ashes!

‘Polly, could you ask that the fire be lit for me, please?’

‘Of course, miss. I’ll bring you some warm broth too. That’ll restore you to yourself.’

I don’t think anything will restore me to myself , was Eliza’s silent riposte.

She lay curled up as the bed slowly brought some warmth to her limbs.

She had the sense that today marked an end to hope and youthful dreams and the start of her new reality.

How more than kind everyone had been to her, a stranger collected off the street, more than generous with their hospitality, but she could no longer be protected by their wealth and charity.

She had to stand on her own feet now and decide what to do with her life.

The burning question that had fuelled her through her youth had been answered; she had discovered who she was, an orphan now but given a glimpse of parents, although she could never know or speak to them.

Her hand reached out for Mr Fox who slumped lopsided by her bed, companion through every vicissitude of her life, and picked up the small box with the portrait miniatures and the two sheets of her parents’ handwriting.

She folded all to her breast and attempted to draw strength for the future.

Not everyone for whom she had longed was lost to her.

Lord Purfoy may have turned away but at least he still existed alongside her in the world.

Eliza told herself, It’s enough that at night I share with him the same canopy of stars .

Would he look up and think about her, as she did about him? This thought alone would be enough.

There was a light knock and Polly entered with the under-housemaid who bobbed a curtsey and began to sweep the hearth and stack the new wood. Polly brought a tray with a bowl of chicken broth and set it on the table beside her. ‘That’ll soon put you right,’ she said with maternal solicitude.

As she helped her to sit up, Eliza felt dizzy and her chest and nose congested. ‘Oh Polly, I hope I’m not sickening with anything.’

‘Nothing that a good sleep won’t fix.’ Polly was brisk with her advice and Eliza gazed up into her face made attractive by her sweet expression, apple cheeks and the soft curls of brown hair that escaped her cap. She smiled. ‘Thank you, Polly.’

‘The gentlemen have just returned from the races, full of roister-doister. It’s probably best you rest here. They’ve been celebrating their successes. All but Lord Purfoy who’s black as thunder. He’s off to London, before breakfast he says.’

Eliza thanked her and added, ‘Would you apologise for my not joining them for dinner? Say I have a chill.’ In fact, she felt strangely weak and tearful.

Her childhood with the Prebbles had taught her not to cry as it only elicited greater ridicule or chastisement.

But she felt like crying now. The last weeks had been filled with so much painful discovery, delight and despair, there had been little time to think about what it meant and how she truly felt.

Eliza lay back on the pillows and listened to the crackling of the newly lit fire.

As she felt the warmth seep into her body, her mind expanded into freewheeling thought.

These six weeks living with the Wolfes at the heart of London Society had shown her she was not trained for anything, especially not for being a lady.

True, she could dance but she could not play the piano and her sewing was of the rough and ready kind.

She neither managed light, meaningless chatter, nor was she educated enough to hold her own with discussions about the great classical authors that engrossed her new-found half-sister, Miss Fairley.

Eliza knew now how naive it had been to think she could become a lady’s maid.

All she excelled at was riding and doing tricks on the back of a horse.

With a heavy heart she faced the confounding of her dreams of freedom, but there was the relief too in returning to the familiar, of going back to the life she had known, returning to the circus where she excelled at something.

Over all these thoughts of her future loomed the large figure of Zadoc Flynn who had offered adventure and a business-like marriage from which love might grow.

He was an attractive prospect and a good man, but accepting him meant she would travel to America with him and never see Miss Fairley again.

Even more impossible to accept was no longer inhabiting the world Lord Purfoy bestrode.

Eliza turned restlessly in her bed. How wilfully blind she was, how deluded, to allow her love for this man to so overbear the sensible decision to marry another.

There was a knock and Polly’s bright face appeared at the door. ‘Miss Gray, Mr Flynn asks if he can see you fleetingly. In my presence of course.’

Eliza felt strangely flustered. Could thinking about someone conjure their presence? She sat upright in bed, feeling dizzy, and pulled the covers up under her chin. ‘Yes, that would be possible. Let him come in.’

Zadoc Flynn had been waiting in the corridor and walked in looking shamefaced in a way Eliza had never seen before.

He stood quietly at the foot of her bed and said, ‘I have to thank you for your extraordinary skill this afternoon, Miss Gray. You have made certain Ohio’s value as a champion dam and I could not be more grateful. ’

‘Well, as you know, I very much regret agreeing to your plan.’

He hung his head. ‘I can see how wrong-headed it was of me to insist on your keeping your bargain. It was selfish and I’m sorry if I’ve caused problems with any of your friends.

’ He met her eyes as colour flamed into her cheeks, then continued.

‘Purfoy’s angry enough with me. He won’t talk except to tell me you were on Horatio when he bolted in the storm.

I’m sorry my taking Ohio so quickly off the course put you in danger and caused you such trouble. ’

Eliza gave him a pale smile. ‘It’s done now.’ She was struck by how weary she was. ‘Mr Flynn, I must rest. I’m fatigued by the events of the day.’

‘Of course. I hope you sleep well, Miss Gray.’ He inclined his head.

‘I just have to say, you know there was no financial prize for winning the race but it seems fair that I offer you 20 per cent of all Ohio’s subsequent earnings in races or as a champion dam.

’ He did not wait for an answer and left with as little fanfare as he had come.

Eliza sighed; how typical that Mr Flynn’s brain for business never ceased. She was too tired to even think what this meant but she knew that even the most generous offer was as ashes and could never compensate for the damage that ride had done.

Polly wiped her hands on her pinafore. ‘Well, that man is easier to like when he’s less cock-a-hoop.’ She then coloured at speaking out of turn. ‘Beg pardon, miss.’

‘Don’t worry, Polly, I know what you mean.

But I’m just too tired to think any more.

’ Eliza slipped down the bed and pulled the quilt over her head.

All her natural optimism was exhausted; all her courage and heart that had helped her survive deprivation and difficulty just drifted away, leaving her with a sense of emptiness and loss.

Her mind groped for sleep but found only wraiths and shifting shadows.

The voices that haunted her were not a loving mother’s; she had been too young to recall her and it was all so long ago.

Instead she heard the exasperated echoes of Mrs Prebbles.

Who are you, that anyone could love you?

asked harshly when she came upon her dreaming of a larger world.

Perhaps Mrs Prebbles was right; who was she, the discarded child, to hope for a love greater than life itself?

She heard the muttering, Your mother lost you on purpose, you must have been such a naughty girl!

These were the interwoven stories of her childhood, the foundation of her memory, that clamoured in her head when weak or ill.

It was hard to stay brave in the face of such ghosts.

As Eliza slipped farther into sleep, a fragment of Mrs Prebbles’s kindness floated to the surface of her mind.

Hope for little and ask for less, my dear, that way you avoid discontent.

Now lying in her warm bed in this oceanic room in Ferdinand Shilton’s mansion, Eliza wondered if all her misfortune had come from her inability to follow this advice.

To have hoped for so much and to have asked for even more; to be reunited with a loving family, but even more boldly to be loved by Raven Purfoy as she loved him, without limit, bound together by Fate for eternity.

Was her own lively fantasy of love the source of her downfall?

Eliza smiled to herself; she knew what Corinna Wolfe would think, what her new sister Marina would say: Life is not like this, love is not as simple; you will learn to trim your sails to the wind and accept what is.

But Eliza knew this was her life, this was her love and how prepared she was to stand by it, even into a solitary old age, the price exacted by her romantic soul.

Eliza’s mind was as tired as her body and she sank into a fitful sleep, filled with dreams of doors slowly shutting before her while she ran down a dark corridor that had no end.

She could not remain in this fearful place but knew not how to awake.

* * *

‘Good morning, Miss Gray.’ Polly’s cheerful country brogue cut through Eliza’s dreams while light streamed in from the drawn-back curtains. ‘Are you feeling better?’