Rosa helpfully filled in, when the cook became stuck for words.
Ella blushed. ‘Don’t say that. I looked after children in my last employment. I expect I’m just used to being around them. Maybe John recognises this somehow.’
She couldn’t bring herself to mention her niece Beth, whom she missed so badly and who was growing up without her being there to see any of it. Every time she thought of her family back in Nortonstall it gave her a pang. She wondered how Beth was getting on, and how her mother was coping with a small and lively grandchild to care for. Reading between the lines of her last letter, which Mr Stevens had kindly read out to her, her mother wasn’t as well as she would have Ella believe. Although they were well into springtime now, spending winter in a cold, dank cottage was cruel when you were hale and hearty, and nothing but a feat of endurance if you were ailing. It would be a long while before she had earned enough leave to give her time to travel home to stay the night, and see the true state of things.
She loved spending time with John, but it was also bittersweet – or at least at first. After a month or two, she appreciated it for what it meant to him – a respite from the loneliness of being in a big house with siblings so much older – and for the pleasure it brought to her amidst the routine of her working day.
Miss Gilbert’s employment as governess only covered weekdays and Saturday mornings, and for the rest of the weekend a young girl, Betsy, from outside the city was engaged to come in and keep John company. However, it soon became apparent that he was devoting his energies to giving her the slip so that he could roam the house and grounds in search of his ‘Lella’. As he sat and watched the work going on around him in the kitchen, or trailed around after Ella as she returned laundry to bedrooms, he chattered constantly. They would hear plaintive cries of ‘John!’ echoing around the house and garden as Betsy, the poor child, as Ella thought of her, searched high and low for her missing charge.
Mr and Mrs Ward seemed to have lost the inclination to involve themselves in John’s upbringing. It was as though their older children had exhausted all their parental feelings, leaving none for John at all. As Mr Ward’s business had grown, their weekends revolved around entertaining, attending dinners or leaving York to spend the weekends at house parties around the country. When they came across John as they drifted down for a late breakfast or returned after a weekend away, their luggage piled in the hall as they divested themselves of the coats, hats, scarves and gloves that their car journey demanded, and Mrs Ward’s perfume wafting around her with her every movement, Mr Ward would bend slightly to ruffle John’s hair, murmuring ‘All right, son?’ as if he had forgotten his name, before heading upstairs to his library and shutting the door. Mrs Ward would crouch down to John’s level and look him in the eyes, saying ‘Darling! Have you had a lovely weekend? What have you been up to?’ before standing up to adjust her hair in the mirror or look through the post, while making absent-minded, although encouraging, noises as though she were listening to his responses.
It upset Ella to see the hurt on his face as his efforts to engage with his parents were ignored, and she would hover as discreetly as possible in the background, waiting to bustle him down to the kitchen for cake, or out into the garden to see the hens that their gardener had introduced into a pen tucked away at the bottom of the kitchen garden, out of earshot of the house. The servants’ duties were lighter at the weekends when the Wards went away, so Ella was free to spend more time with John, by common consent. Eventually the older Ward girls, who generally remained at home during their parents’ absences, chaperoned by an aunt on the maternal side, remarked that the ‘little miss from Tadcaster’ was a rather pointless addition to the staff given that John preferred to spend his time with Ella – and so it was that Betsy was quietly let go. Ella took over her role, in addition to her other duties and at no extra pay. She didn’t mind though. John had become a substitute for her own family whom she missed so very much.
‘Ella, didn’t you mention that you were from a village somewhere near Halifax?’
Busy with her own thoughts, Ella was startled to realise that she was being addressed. She had carried the tea tray into the parlour and, as always, was admiring the delicacy of the cups as she poured. The porcelain was so fine, you could almost see your fingers through it. Boughs of painted cherry blossom wreathed each cup, with stripes as blue as a summer sky edging the saucers. Ella paused as she prepared to set the tea cups in front of the visitors.
‘Why, yes miss, thereabouts.’
‘I have forgotten the name of it. Where was it again?’ Grace persisted.
‘It was a town, miss, not a village. Nortonstall.’ Ella answered cautiously, economical with the truth, not sure that she had divulged these details to Grace previously. She had a sudden premonition of danger. Mr Stevens had told her that Grace had a visitor and that they would both require tea in the parlour, but she had had no inkling as to who the visitor might be. She stole a glance at Grace’s friend as she set her cup in front of her. A little older than both Ella and Grace, she was neatly dressed in a restrained, rather than fashionable, manner. She was unmarried, Ella gathered, as she wore no ring on her wedding finger, but Ella could glean nothing else from her appearance.
‘Esther, didn’t your family live somewhere around there?’ Grace turned to her friend, whom Ella was surprised to see looking a little uncomfortable, too, at the line the questioning was taking.
‘Very close, in fact. Northwaite.’ Esther’s tone discouraged further questions but Grace pressed on, as Ella offered milk and sugar, trying to prevent her hands from shaking.
‘What a coincidence! Perhaps your paths have crossed in the past? Esther’s family, the Weatheralls, owned one of the mills in the area. Where was it that you were working, Ella?’
‘At the Ottershaws’ in Nortonstall, miss. I think it is very unlikely we would have met.’ Ella had no intention of revealing her brief period of employment at Hobbs’ Mill in Northwaite, which belonged to the Weatheralls, let alone the fact that she was originally from Northwaite rather than Nortonstall. Her heart was thumping so loudly in her chest she was sure that the two young ladies would hear it, as she edged towards the door. She kept her head down, but even so she was aware of Grace looking at her curiously and it was all she could do not to turn and run. She prayed that Grace wouldn’t mention her full name to Esther – if she even knew it – for then Esther would be in no doubt that Ella was the sister of Alice Bancroft, dead nearly seven years and blamed for the fire that had destroyed the Weatherall’s mill and caused the death of their eldest son Richard, Esther’s brother.
‘Thank you, Ella. Actually, would you mind seeing whether Mrs Dawson has any of her sponge cake left? It’s Esther’s favourite, isn’t it?’ said Grace, waving away her friend’s protests that the seed cake already served to them was perfect.
Ella was trembling as she pushed through the door into the kitchen. If her background was discovered, her job would be lost and with it the income that her mother and the family so relied upon. Her mind raced, trying to work out the connection between the Weatherall and Ward families. Mr Ward had mentioned some business in the area when she had first encountered him in Nortonstall, with his broken-down motorcar. Was it business on behalf of Mr Weatherall that had brought him to Nortonstall?
‘Whatever is the matter with you?’ Mrs Dawson asked, as Ella passed on the request for sponge cake. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. You’re as white as a sheet. Sponge cake, indeed: and what’s wrong with that nice seed cake, baked just this morning, I might ask? Here, take this up for them. It’s yesterday’s and not as fresh as what they already have, and I was putting it by for Master John.’
The cook, put in a bad humour by Grace’s request, didn’t question Ella further but it was with dread that she knocked again at the parlour door. To her great relief, when she entered Mrs Ward was in the room and the conversation had turned from the earlier topic, but Ella was aware of Grace watching her keenly as she set down the sponge cake, offered Mrs