Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Ellen enjoyed the opera on occasion, though she hadn’t gone in years.
Her parents had tempted her from time to time, but she was either exhausted from a good day at work or morose from a bad one that she’d often gone to bed instead.
The opera started late and ended past midnight more often than not, and she couldn’t keep those hours while still working at the dispensary.
The carriage ride over to the opera house had been silent.
She'd opened her mouth once to assure Mark everything would still be well, she wasn’t that upset, then closed her mouth.
Because the truth was he had done poorly.
She was that upset. And he should be apologetic.
Mark, in contrast, sat calmly nearby—not too close, not too far, and stared a hole in the headrest opposite him.
If she didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t have noticed the tension in his legs.
Ellen distracted herself by thinking of her list of duties tomorrow. Earlier that day Amelia had clutched the doorframe and leaned toward Ellen. “Ellen,” she began in an exaggerated, wheedling tone.
Ellen turned to face her friend. “Oh dear,” she deadpanned. “Yes?”
“I received a note from Mrs. Chisom. She said she is willing to donate a cheque to us, and we’re supposed to meet her in three days.”
Ellen raised her eyebrows. “‘We?’”
“At the Church of St. Barnabas in Pimlico,” Amelia continued.
Ellen wrinkled her nose. “I dealt with her last time.”
Amelia beamed. “And you did so brilliantly you convinced her to give us pounds sterling! Please come with me? You’re better at this than I am.”
Ellen sighed, shoulders drooping in defeat. “Oh, very well.”
Now, at the opera, Mark had placed a hand above her lower back, not touching her, enough that she felt the air pressure change, and escorted her inside and through the crowded foyer. A smartly-dressed usher looked at the note in Mark’s hand and pointed the way up to the box entrances.
Mark opened the door to box 12, and Ellen stepped in to find a slightly younger, more handsome version of Mark. Luke was two years younger with twinkling brown eyes and sensuous, pouting lips. He was very pretty, and Ellen idly wondered how many hearts he’d broken.
“You came!” Luke stood from his seat and embraced Ellen. “It’s been far too long. Come, how is my favorite sister-in-law?”
Ellen laughed despite herself. “I’m your only sister-in-law.” Luke was the charmer in the family. She’d forgotten. Compared to his younger brother, Mark was serious and earnest. She returned the embrace, then looked at the five chairs facing the stage. “Are we your only guests?”
“Yes, where’s Baker?” Mark spoke up beside her, leaning forward to shake his brother’s hand.
“Baker?” Ellen inquired.
Luke waved away her question. “My valet. Not here. Sick at home, poor man.”
Mark sounded amused. “So we’re his replacements?”
Ellen asked at the same time, “You bring your valet to the opera?”
Luke winked at her. “I’m a fop. It’s too much work for me to hold my own refreshments, so I make him stand in a corner and hold them for me.”
Ellen laughed, shaking her head in confusion. Luke was utterly delightful but incomprehensible at times. She sat in her chair and the brothers joined her, one on either side.
“This is my favorite of Gilbert and Sullivan’s.” Luke sighed with satisfaction as the electric lights dimmed and the red curtain rose. He was one of the few people, Ellen learned, who came to the opera to enjoy it, and not watch others in Society.
“Mark has never seen it,” she whispered.
Luke gasped in mock horror and slapped a hand to his heart, whipping his head to glare at his brother. “Sir! And you call yourself an Englishman.”
Mark merely rolled his eyes and set his chin in his hand. “Shut it or I won’t be able to watch it tonight, either.”
Ellen and Luke acquiesced, but they did whisper their thoughts on the basses to one another. At intermission, Mark stood. “I see one of my old commodores over in the box across the way. He’s waving me over. Do you mind if I step away?” He glanced at Ellen, who gave a stiff nod.
Luke nodded. “I understand completely about those sorts of things. Go on.” Luke was a captain working in the War Office.
Ellen sagged with relief as Mark slipped out the door. Her feelings for him were so muddled, and whenever he was near she couldn’t make heads or tails of them.
Luke glanced at her. “Trouble in paradise?”
She’d forgotten he was so perceptive. “Oh, nothing major.” She pasted a smile on her face. “Just little adjustments now he’s out of the Navy.”
He nodded sagely. “He seemed nervous back in October, when he was going to you.”
“Dreading it, you mean.” Ellen laughed when Luke tugged at the collar of his shirt in consternation. “We’ve been honest with one another, I assure you. He’s explained exactly why he left for the Navy and why he was dreading seeing me again. He has also decided he was wrong.”
Luke sighed in relief. “Glad he’s come to his senses. I, for one, never thought you were dull.”
Ellen smiled. “So glad to have a champion.” She paused. “Goodness, we haven’t seen one another in…five years?”
“At a ball, wasn’t it?” Luke mused. “And before that it was…” He trailed off, uncomfortable again.
“You can say it,” Ellen said quietly. “I’d rather people mentioned her than pretended she never existed.”
Luke flashed her an apologetic look. “I didn’t visit as much as I should’ve. After.”
Ellen forced a nonchalant shrug. “You were a first year at Sandhurst at the time. It was hard to sneak away to London, I’d imagine. You did more than Mark, anyway, with those awful flowers.”
“Those tulips I delivered were hideous.” Luke grinned. “I bought you tulips because Mark said they were your favorite flower and I saw how you treated his bouquet, but those tulips were wilting by the time I’d arrived.”
Ellen shook her head. “Wait, you were there when I received Mark’s sympathy bouquet?”
“Who do you think delivered them?” Luke’s grin widened. “I didn’t know girls had such good arms. I should’ve had you on our cricket team!”
She blushed. “I didn’t know you were in the room.”
“You weren’t noticing much at that time,” Luke said kindly. “I wasn’t offended. Frankly, I was relieved!” He laughed. “And to think I was the one who chose the purple hyacinths. I believe you called them Satan’s color as you stomped on the remains.”
“What?” Ellen turned in her seat to face him squarely. “Start over. From the beginning.”
Luke blinked. “I…”
“We spoke about this today and I want to understand.”
“Very well.” He wrinkled his brow, thinking.
“I got a telegram from Mark saying he needed me to send you flowers. That telegram must’ve been damn expensive, because I think they were in Bermuda.
I don’t even know if they have telegraphs in Bermuda, but I also can’t imagine him successfully bribing the ship’s communications officer.
Anyway. He said to send you a dozen striped tulips with a note.
But striped tulips mean ‘you have beautiful eyes,’ and I didn't think that fit, so I swapped them out for purple hyacinths. Because they represent sorrow.”
Ellen’s mouth fell open in surprise. She’d never once considered the language of flowers.
“Then he gave me the note to add.” Luke grimaced. “It was short. I wasn’t impressed, but I wasn’t going to change that part without his permission, and they were already leaving Bermuda.”
Striped tulips are my favorite flower.
“When he came to Cottesloe on leave a few months later, he mentioned he didn’t know what to say to you. One of his fellow officers suggested the phrase, ‘my condolences.’” Luke snorted. “Thankfully Mark had the good sense to go with something a little longer than that.”
“Four words longer,” Ellen murmured.
“I know he wanted to visit you,” Luke added.
Ellen threw him a skeptical look.
“I mean, he felt like he ought to check on you,” he amended. “But by then it had been seven months since your baby had passed away, and he was fairly certain you didn’t want to see him.”
Correct on that score. Ellen shook her head. “I didn’t know this. I didn’t know any of this.”
“Mark is a private person. It doesn’t surprise me he didn’t share this. He probably knows what he did was insufficient, and he’s embarrassed by it.” Luke eased back in his chair.
Ellen put a hand to her face. “I need a moment to refresh myself.”
“Are you well?” Luke peered at her, concern etched across his features.
“Yes,” Ellen told him distractedly, and rose to find the water closet. After she splashed water across her face and took five deep breaths, she raised her chin and went back to their box.
The show had already started when Ellen slipped in, thankfully, so she quietly took her seat and stared at the glittering figures on the stage for the next hour and a half, not a single complete thought in her head.
When the show ended, Mark and Ellen hung around to thank Luke for his box and suggest he come by for a visit.
The opera had been timed to end so the cream of Society could reach their next destination, usually a ball, just in time for the clock to strike midnight. For Mark and Ellen, they rode home in a full cab in conflicted silence.
What he did was bad. And insufficient, Ellen mused as she watched him reread the program in snatches as they went past gaslights. He did try. He wasn’t as cold and uncaring as I thought.
She fidgeted, trying to get comfortable with her bustle. She so rarely wore one in a cab, due to her work. Quietly, before she lost her courage, Ellen told him, “I would’ve been pleased with striped tulips.”
Mark’s gaze flew to hers. “What?”
“And while your six words were, well, pathetic, and I deserved at least a six-page letter, it was much better than ‘my condolences.’”
Mark scowled. “Luke’s been talking.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ellen scooted down her seat to be directly across him, her twisted bustle causing her skirt to rise a few inches from her ankles. Their knees bumped together.