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.’
‘An honest and prosperous tradesman. I could support you in the style to which you are accustomed. I would not dare seek the hand of a lady such as you if that were not the case.’
‘Oh Edmund!’ My little sister’s lower lip quivered so piteously that I almost started to cry myself. Only the knowledge that this fuzz was all about nothing but a load of romantic balderdash kept me from losing my dignity. ‘I have told you this a thousand times. The wealth of your family does not matter. It is the position of your family that troubles me. I know you to be good and kind and loving, but that counts for nothing with my aunt, who holds rank and pedigree above everything else. If she were to discover my love for you, the son of a common tradesman, we would be separated and never see each other again.’
‘So this is it? This is why nobody must know of our attachment?’
‘Nobody. Not even my dearest sister Lilly, the one who after you, Edmund, I love most in the world, knows of this, my dark and sinful secret. I have kept it close to my heart and have been most cunning in concealing it from the world.’
Covering my eyes with my hand, I slumped back into the grass. Yes, most cunning indeed - conducting a secret romance in the back garden of your