Castles in the Air by Sheila Myers

Author:Sheila Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sheila Myers

12

England

Ella felt as though she were in purgatory, waiting for salvation in the form of Gabriel, but he never came to take her to that place she called heaven. He had left town weeks earlier and there was still no word from him. What did arrive in the post was a bill. It came from the Café Royal, where they often dined.

The first few letters from the Café she left unopened, hoping he would be back to retrieve them soon enough. But when the last letter came, it was marked URGENT in red letters, with her name attached to it, so she finally opened it. Unbeknownst to Ella, he had placed their last three meals at the Café on credit and told the management to forward his bills to her address at Cavendish Square. The amounts were staggering. She hadn’t realized how much they ate and drank with their friends.

There was the French wine, the champagne, the sumptuous meals. It all added up. It didn’t help that Gabriel, and she for that matter, were used to the best. So only the Veuve Clicquot would do (and they drank a lot of champagne) and the red wine had to be from Château Haut-Brion. The bills were astronomical. Ella did the math quickly in her head: the wine bill alone was over one hundred dollars, the equivalent of three months’ rent.

Ella was aghast and didn’t know what to do. Her name was associated with the bills. The last thing she needed was a creditor coming after her. William would take it as proof he was right about her inability to look after her inheritance, cut off her allowance and demand she return immediately. She also had a reputation to maintain if she were ever to publish her play on Dante. She had no choice but to pay the bills. It left her with very little of the one thousand her mother had sent, and it plagued Ella to think of Margaret clucking her disapproval and telling her mother ‘I told you so’ on the other side of the Atlantic if she dared asked for more.

Worse, she had received word from Alfred Locock that William was not forthcoming about the estate, and so she was still in the dark about her future finances. It was all too much for her.

She sank into a state of despair. She never left her house and barely wrote. She spent her days sitting in her parlor window, pining away, recalling the lovely hours she had with Gabriel. Although Trixie would bring food, she couldn’t eat it and she lost weight.

Her melancholy was at its height and she hadn’t bathed in days when Anny showed up at her door, brusquely pushing aside Trixie, who insisted that Miss Durant would not see visitors.

“What are you doing here sitting by yourself, wallowing in self-pity?” Anny said accusingly. She stood by the entrance to the parlor, Trixie cowering behind her with a look that said, “I couldn’t stop her.”

Anny’s hands were

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