Chapter 6 Ella
Chapter six
Ella
The idea of following Dietrich straight to the duke’s estate and asking to speak to him right away flitted across Ella’s mind as she gave Eugenia a hug, but if there was one thing she knew, it was that she wasn’t prepared to hear that she was a duchess.
She also wasn’t prepared to hear that she wasn’t.
No, it would be better to learn more about being a duchess before she braved the duke.
If it wasn’t true…at least she might have Dietrich’s friendship to distract her from Tabitha and her cruelty. Perhaps being friends with him wouldn’t be so bad.
“I can’t wait to hear what happens,” Eugenia said, a twinkle in her eyes. “Be sure to come and give me an update.”
“Of course I will,” Ella said as she followed Dietrich out of the library, heading out of town toward his mother’s home and hers.
They were quiet until they were nearly to his mother’s home, when Dietrich finally spoke up. “You seem remarkably calm about all of this. I was expecting you to be a little more concerned about it.”
Ella shrugged. “My father, if he even was my father, has been gone for many years now, and I have spent my time since then living with a stepmother who hates me, and stepsisters who make my life much harder than it needs to be. So the idea of having a family other than them is rather appealing.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” he said. “I’ll be honest, I prefer you being like this to you being in hysterics over the idea of your whole life being changed. I wasn’t sure which way it would go.”
“If it’s true, I’m sure I’ll need some time to think about it,” she said. “But at the moment, it all seems like a rather far-fetched dream, and I expect you to wake me up any moment now.”
Perhaps she should worry about it a little more, but there was no point in worrying until after she found out if it was true or not.
“You expect me to be there when you wake up?” he asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “You’re the one joining me in this nightmare.”
“Nightmare?” he asked.
“I’ve spent a whole afternoon with you. I’m pretty sure that counts,” she teased.
Dietrich snorted. “It’s a pity you and Beatrice aren’t friends, because you two would get along fabulously.”
“Oh?” she asked. “Why?”
“The two of you would spend the entire time being mean to me.”
Did he really think that she was just being mean? Her stomach turned.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It was not my intention to be mean. I hope you will forgive me.”
Dietrich stopped walking and turned to her, the light in his eyes dying. “I was jesting,” he said. “You are not bothering me.”
She searched his face. Was he telling the truth?
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Positive,” he said. “You need not concern yourself on my account. I have been teasing you, just as you have been teasing me.”
She nodded slowly. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt anyone, even if she thought they were simply jesting together.
She knew how words could hurt.
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” she began.
Dietrich took her hands in his, and she had to stop herself from squeezing tighter. When was the last time someone had simply held her hands?
It had been a long time.
“You’re not bothering me,” Dietrich said quietly, “so please do not worry that you are.”
Ella nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.
How could she without betraying the fact that she almost always assumed she was bothering someone? She had a sneaking suspicion the truth would only upset Dietrich on her behalf, and she didn’t want that.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “But if you truly are the duchess, there’s nothing I would love more than to help you find your family.”
“Either way, you’ll be fine,” Ella said. “I’m the one who will have to face the bitter disappointment that my life is truly as miserable as it always has been.”
She meant for the words to be a joke, but in the silence that followed, she realized it was no joke, at least not to her, and somehow Dietrich could tell.
After a lifetime of her words not mattering, they mattered to Dietrich, and the thought made her throat feel funny.
“Thank you,” she said softly, “for trying to find the truth.”
He squeezed her hand, then let it go, and somehow the loss hurt. Why did she want to hold his hand again? She barely knew the man, and here he was turning her whole life upside down.
They made their way to his mother’s front door, where Danise opened it and looked at Ella with a compassionate smile.
“How are you holding up, my dear?” his mother asked.
Ella’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
Was this what it was like to have someone care about you?
She shouldn’t get used to this.
She had to get out of here.
Pulling away from Danise, she shook her head. “I must go,” she said before turning and running down the walk.
She was a coward, but she had to protect her heart.
She plunged her hand into her pocket and found her little pumpkin, her fingers rubbing along the barely-there ridges. It had been her way of soothing herself for so long that it was now losing all resemblance to a pumpkin.
It was one of her earliest memories—a boy giving her the pumpkin he had carved just for her.
A boy who looked a little like Dietrich might have all those years ago.
She smiled at the thought. And now she was imagining him in her memories.
She should know better. She could not afford to get close to Dietrich—not when she was already starting to imagine things about him after only knowing him for a few days.
Not when he was trying to fill her head with fanciful notions of her being a duchess.
Perhaps it was foolish of her to ask him to teach her how to be a duchess. Maybe she should pretend she hadn’t asked that, go to the duke, and have him declare she was not his daughter so she could return to her life serving her stepmother and scraping by.
It would be easier that way.
But the thought of telling Dietrich she didn’t want lessons in being a duchess filled her with dread. With him, even as they bickered, she felt at peace.
As she followed the lane back home, her mind kept replaying portions of the conversation—the way Eugenia had looked at her in a new light and the way Danise seemed so sure she was the missing girl.
What if they were right? What if she really was loved and cherished once?
Her throat tightened again, and she shoved the emotion down.
No, it was better not to dream, even if dreaming was all her heart wanted to do.
As she approached the house, the door opened, and Tabitha appeared, a shrill screech filling the air. “Where have you been?”
“I was in town selling eggs,” Ella began.
“I have been waiting for you for the better part of an hour,” her stepmother snapped. “You should not have left without asking me.”
A cold heat filled Ella’s chest. This woman was not her mother, she was not her daughter, and yet she had spent her life taking care of the woman as if that was the only thing she’d been put on this earth to do.
And she didn’t even know who her real mother was.
“Who was my mother?” she demanded, stopping halfway up the walk.
“As if I would tell you,” her stepmother sneered.
“You don’t know, do you?” Ella asked.
Her stepmother frowned. “Why does it matter to you?”
“Because I would like to know who my mother was,” Ella said simply. “Surely that shouldn’t be difficult. I’m sure Father told you. Was I named after her?”
Her stepmother sneered. “We don’t know,” she said. “You turned up on your father’s doorstep a year or so before I married him. You only knew your name, not who your parents were or where you belonged.”
Ella froze.
It was true.
“He was a fool and decided to keep you instead of turning you over to the orphanage like he should have,” Tabitha continued. Her eyes narrowed the way they often did before delivering a particularly cutting remark. “Your parents were lucky to be rid of you.”
She was not her father’s daughter.
And she’d known her name was Ella.
She had to be the missing duchess.
There were too many coincidences.
“And you didn’t think to tell me after all this time?” Ella asked, her voice cracking. “You knew I wasn’t his daughter, but you kept me here with you all these years.”
“Where else would you go?” her stepmother asked. “You have no skills, no family. You have nothing.”
She was wrong.
“I am more than your servant,” Ella said, her voice filled with a strength she hadn’t known she had. “I may not have family, but I have friends, and I have worth, and I deserve to be loved.”
Her stepmother said nothing, and a cold fury filled Ella.
“You ought not to have kept the truth from me all these years. I was still a child when he died. You could have sent me to the orphanage then, but instead, you kept me to be your servant and to pretend you were a good person.”
She could remember the reaction of the townsfolk when her father died, how she’d heard the whispers that Tabitha was a good wife for keeping her despite having only been married to her father for a short time.
“Was that why we’ve had to move so often? Did people notice that you and your daughters took advantage of me?”
Tabitha still said nothing.
The chains holding Ella there for her father’s sake snapped and she took a deep breath.
She didn’t have to put up with their mistreatment any longer.
She had options now.
“Well,” she snapped, stomping past her stepmother into the house. “I wish you luck.”
“What are you doing?” her stepmother demanded.
“I’m leaving,” Ella said firmly, “and you can’t stop me.”
She hurried up the stairs to her little corner, gathered her extra dress and her Bible, and made her way back downstairs.
“You can’t take those!” her stepmother shrieked. “Those are mine!”
“I’d like to see you stop me,” Ella shot back.
She walked out the door and down the walkway.
She didn’t know what would happen next, but she knew Danise would help, and she couldn’t stomach staying in that house another minute.
“Goodbye, Tabitha.”
She ignored the woman shouting behind her and closed the gate as she walked away.
Tears flowed down her face as she made her way to Danise’s home. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was from relief, sadness, or fear, but she knew things could only get better from here.
She was free.
It was only a few minutes before she arrived at Danise’s home and knocked at the door. Danise opened it, and it took less than a moment for her to pull Ella into her arms for a hug when she noticed the tears.
“He wasn’t my father,” Ella choked out. “I’ve been living a lie my whole life.”
Danise didn’t say anything, just held her until the tears slowed and the sobs turned to hiccups.
“I’m here,” Danise said, rubbing Ella’s back.
“I left,” Ella said as she took a step back, gesturing to the dress hanging over her arm. “This is all I have.”
“It’s a good thing my son no longer lives here,” Danise said, “because I have a spare loft, and you can stay as long as you need to.”
Ella nearly started crying again.
“I think we ought to send word to Dietrich about what happened,” Danise added. “But I don’t imagine you’ll want to go to him just yet.”
Ella shook her head. “I want to learn how to be nobility first,” she said. “I don’t want them to think I’m not good enough.”
“Oh, my girl,” Danise said, pulling her into a hug again. “You are more than enough. No matter who it is, no matter the situation, you will always be enough, because you were made with love and you are loved.”
Ella shook her head and pulled away. It was more than she could handle right now, and Danise must have sensed that because she didn’t push the issue.
“We’ll get you sorted,” Danise said. “I’ll send word to Dietrich, and he’ll come. We’ll figure all of this out.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Ella admitted.
“Neither do I,” Danise said cheerfully. “This is my first time hosting a gentlewoman in my home.”
Ella’s eyes widened. She hadn’t heard herself referred to as nobility yet, even if the others had alluded to it. The thought that she might be nobility staying in Danise’s loft was rather funny.
“You mean your loft isn’t used to having a duchess stay in it?” she said, giggling a little. “Are you sure Dietrich doesn’t think he’s a nobleman?”
Danise laughed. “You understand my son. He may put on a good show, but deep down, I think he knows he’s not actually the upper class.”
Ella let out a snort. “I can’t wait to see what he teaches me about being nobility.”
“I can’t, either, to be honest,” Danise said with a grin. “Now, let’s get you settled upstairs, and I’ll send word. Time for your duchess lessons to begin.”