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.’
‘Oh my love.’
‘Oh my dearest.’
They had said that already, hadn’t they? Why repeat it? What was the matter with them? Squinting through the brush, I tried to get a better look at them. Were they ill, maybe? Well, they definitely both looked slightly crazy. They had silly smiles plastered on their faces and kept staring at each other like there wasn’t a beautiful garden with trees and birds and a lot of other interesting things all around them. In Edmund’s case I might have understood that - my little sister was an eye-catcher. But there really was no excuse for Ella’s blatant staring. Our neighbour’s son was a perfectly ordinary male specimen: brown hair, brown eyes, two legs, two feet, and one head on his shoulders. There was nothing about him to justify such staring. He didn’t even have an interesting hunchback or a boil on his nose.
‘You are growing into a real Lady, Ella,’ Edmund said, his voice thick with emotion. ‘I watched you from the house when you departed in your fine coach.’
He watched her? He watched her, the villain?
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ she said, blushing, and not even because she was offended, no! Was this believable? She was actually pleased! ‘It was not our coach you saw. It was that of Sir Philip Wilkins. He invited my whole family out to his ball tonight.’
‘A ball?’ Edmund sighed with the pathos of a Shakespearean actor. ‘How I wish I could have gone to the ball and danced with you. How I wish I could just hold you in my arms once. But always this infernal barrier of iron keeps us separated!’
My eyes strayed from the pair of them to the ladder that leaned, not ten feet away, against the wall of the Conways’ garden shed. I was almost tempted to say something but wisely kept my mouth shut.
‘Not only this iron wall separates us, my love, as you very well know,’ said Ella. There was something glinting in her eyes. Tears? Tears! That rogue had managed to make my little sister cry! I was strongly tempted to go over there and clobber him over the head with my parasol but stayed where I was. My left foot was still damaged from the atlantean collision, and I wasn’t at all sure I could make it over there without landing on my nose.
‘What else can separate two loving hearts?’ Edmund demanded. ‘Ella… I love you. I wish nothing but to love you until my dying day.’
I heard a strange sound from a sister. Hiccups? No… It sounded more like a gasp of pain. But why the heck would she be in pain? I didn’t see any blood or other signs of injury.
‘Oh Edmund, do not speak thus to me, I beg you!’
‘Why not? Do you not love me?’
He actually looked wounded. No, more than that… devastated. Slight doubts were beginning to gnaw at me. Either he was a darn fine actor, for which I didn’t really think him smart enough, or he really… No! No, that couldn’t be.
‘Of course!’ Ella clutched the iron poles of the fence even tighter, and her knuckles turned white. ‘Of course I love you, Edmund! With all my heart!’
‘Then why conceal our love in the shadows, my dearest? Just think, it could have been me who danced with you at that ball.’
‘Edmund, please! Do not tempt me with these enticing visions!’
‘But why not?’ The desperate fervour of his voice was beginning to get to me. What if he wasn’t just an obnoxious, lecherous rake like ninety-nine per cent of his fellow men? What if he actually loved my little sister? I shuddered at the possibility. And even worse… what if she really loved him back?
‘Why, my dearest Ella, should I not openly proclaim my love for you? My family is not rich, but we’re well-off enough, and I am, while still young, a respectable man. Why should I not gain your love?’
‘You already have it.’
Edmund took a deep breath as if preparing to jump off a cliff into an unknown ocean.
‘What I mean, Ella, is: why should I not gain your love… and your hand?’
Ella paled and only managed to stay upright because she was clutching the iron poles of the fence. My desire to clobber young Edmund was instantly revived. How dare he upset her!
‘Edmund,’ Ella said, her small voice quivering, ‘you know it cannot be.’
‘But you say you love me?’
‘As a sister would her brother.’
This time it was Edmund who paled. Yes! Now you know what it feels like, you chauvinist son of a bachelor!
‘Ella! Consider what you are saying. Do you wish to pierce my heart?’
‘I wish I could love you another way, Edmund. I do, I so desperately do. But I cannot.’
‘Why not?’ Suddenly with colour in his cheeks again, the young blackguard stepped forward. He was now almost at the fence, only inches away from my little sister. I was vigorously massaging my injured foot, preparing to charge and save her from his evil clutches if necessary.
‘There is an impenetrable barrier between us, Edmund.’
‘I will tear it down, my love.’
‘You cannot, my dearest.’
‘I can and I will.’
Now tears were running down Ella’s face.
‘How would you tear down our birth, Edmund?’
‘Our birth doesn't separate us. We were born as soul mates.’
‘We were born worlds apart, Edmund. I am of the gentry. You, though the spirit of a king may live in your breast, are the son of a tradesman.’