Ellie Pride. Annie Groves

      ‘I don’t know. Her note simply asked me to call.’ Gideon shrugged. ‘I dare say I shall know more once I have spoken with her. Perhaps someone recommended me to her. If so, I hope it was not the railway magnate who cheated me out of my fee.’ He paused and looked at her before revealing diffidently, ‘Had it been possible I should have liked to have studied to become an architect.’

      He waited tensely for Ellie’s reaction. If she were to laugh and deride him for being foolish enough to have cherished such an impossible ambition he knew it would damage for ever that secret vulnerable part of himself he had learned to hide away from others.

      ‘An architect!’ Ellie’s eyes rounded in awe. ‘Oh Gideon!’

      ‘It’s not possible, of course. But, oh, Ellie, if it had been I would have built such buildings, and the most wonderful of all of them would have been the house I would have built for you.’

      The passion in his voice sent a quiver of fiercely protective emotion shivering through Ellie, the brilliance of her eyes and the tenderness of her expression revealing to him what she was feeling.

      ‘I am just a foolish man with even more foolish dreams,’ Gideon mocked himself.

      ‘No, you are anything but foolish,’ Ellie told him sturdily, ‘and as for your dreams –’

      ‘Ah, but I have another dream now,’ Gideon whispered softly to her, looking deep into her eyes. ‘You are my dream now, Ellie. You and the future I hope we shall share together.’

      ‘As you are mine,’ Ellie responded shyly.

      ‘I shall be a good husband to you, Ellie. I shall work hard for you. A cabinet-maker may not be as grand as an architect, but he can still make a good living for himself. There is wealth in Preston,’ he told her enthusiastically, ‘and I aim to make sure that my name gets known in all the right quarters, and that I am the first choice of those wealthy residents looking for the best craftsman. And I shall be the best, Ellie.’

      Just listening to him made Ellie’s heart swell with love and excitement, and a sharp sweet longing for the future he was drawing for her.

      They had reached land, and Gideon busied himself helping his charges out of the boat, deliberately making sure that he placed the two younger ones, and the wretched Rex, on dry land first.

      ‘No, Gideon!’ Ellie protested breathlessly when he finally turned to take hold of her carefully, swinging her into his arms. ‘I can manage. You do not need…’

      ‘Oh, but I do need. Have you any idea just how much I want to kiss you, Ellie Pride?’ he demanded huskily.

      His lips were only inches from hers and Ellie couldn’t stop herself from looking betrayingly at his mouth, her own lips parting slightly, her pretty pink tongue unknowingly revealing her feelings as she touched it against them.

      She heard Gideon make a strangled sound, and saw his eyes darken, his grip on her tightening as he lowered her slightly.

      ‘Ellie…Ellie…I want you so much!’

      Ellie shuddered excitedly at the passionate words.

      ‘If only I had you to myself right now…’ Gideon continued.

      Silently they looked at one another in mutual longing, their rapt concentration broken only when John, tired of waiting for them, called out to them to hurry up.

      With Connie, John and Rex walking ahead of them, Gideon surreptitiously took Ellie’s hand in his own. Flush-cheeked, Ellie looked at him, but made no attempt to pull away.

      ‘John! Connie!’

      Ellie jumped a little as Gideon called her brother and sister. As they turned round and came over, Gideon released Ellie’s hand.

      ‘Ellie is feeling rather tired, so if I give you a penny each, can you run to Miller’s Arcade and buy some chocolate-covered ginger for your mother, and, of course, a treat each for yourselves? We will meet you back at Friargate.’

      ‘Gideon, you should not have done that,’ Ellie reproached him, as John and Connie sped off, clutching their money.

      ‘Perhaps not,’ Gideon agreed, ‘but they will come to no harm, and it was the only way I could think of to get you to myself.’

      Very gently he led her towards a secluded part of the shrubbery, and then took her into his arms.

      Helplessly Ellie allowed him to do so, blindly raising her face to his, her eyes closing, her body quivering with excitement and longing.

      ‘Ellie, Ellie…you are the most beautiful girl in the world. I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you.’

      ‘Fell in love with me?’ Ellie managed to challenge him breathlessly. ‘You certainly looked at me very boldly.’

      ‘Boldly?’ Gideon laughed. ‘Is that what you thought? No, I felt anything but bold when I looked up at your window and saw you standing there, Ellie.’

      ‘So what did you feel?’ Like any woman newly and deeply in love she wanted to possess herself of every single small detail of her lover’s reaction to her.

      ‘I felt…’ Gideon paused, looking away from her, his eyes narrowed against the sun, ‘I felt that I had met my fate. I looked at you, Ellie, and I knew that my life could never be the same again. That I could never be the same again. That that one single look had changed everything. I love you, Ellie.’

      In between each passionate word Gideon paused to kiss her, each kiss taking them both a little further away from the calm waters of sedate courtship and into the much deeper and dangerous ones of intense desire.

      Protected from prying eyes by the shrubbery, Ellie pressed ever closer to Gideon, shuddering fiercely when she felt the tentative touch of his hand on her breast. She could feel the heat of his hand right through the fine fabric of her summer dress.

      ‘Ellie…’

      A thrill of female satisfaction shocked through her when she heard the taut male agony in Gideon’s voice. The kisses he pressed on the soft skin of her throat, and then along the neckline of her dress, set off a fierce ache deep down inside her body.

      ‘I want you, Ellie! I want you now!’ Gideon muttered as he started to push the neckline of her dress out of the way.

      The feel of his hand against her almost bare breast made Ellie cry out in awed pleasure. But instead of encouraging him to press her to further intimacy, her helpless sound of arousal made Gideon tense and then gently put her away from him, reminding himself that it was his duty to protect and be responsible for them both, even though that meant denying himself. She was his love, his life, his Ellie. His!

      ‘Come on. It’s time I took you home,’ he told her huskily, ‘before I truly forget myself.’

       SEVEN

      The minute they turned into Friargate and Ellie saw her brother and sister standing huddled together outside the closed shop door, she knew that something was wrong. Anxiously she started to walk faster.

      ‘Ellie, you’ve been ages…’ Connie’s face started to crumple, and she suddenly looked much more like a young girl than the young woman she was always claiming herself to be.

      ‘What is it? What?’ Ellie began, and then stopped as the door opened and her aunt stood there eyeing her coldly.

      ‘So you have finally returned, have you, you wretched creature?’ Aunt Gibson hissed bitterly. ‘Do you know what your disobedience has done to your mother?’

      Horrified, Ellie looked past her aunt towards her father.

      ‘That’s enough, Amelia,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s not fair to blame Ellie. She –’