Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Six: The Winter Garden

When Ellini came back to the Academy, stiff from a night spent carrying Robin and sleeping upright in a chair, it was to find the whole community in song. 

She could hear it all the way down the gravel drive, spilling out of the open doorway. It made her footsteps slow in puzzlement, but it also dragged her forwards – out of curiosity, or horrified fascination, or just a helpless love of music, no matter how badly it was sung.

She wondered if there had been some kind of an invasion – if carol singers had come unseasonably early and refused to leave – because she had never heard her girls sing like that.

But there was a very melodious backbone to the music. Beneath the sound of voices that were raucous and cracked from underuse, she could discern some very cool, capable piano playing. 

That slowed her footsteps even more. She was dragging her feet like a sullen schoolgirl by the time she reached the door and peered around it.

He always found her. Fate really was trying to tell her something. And she was afraid – so dreadfully afraid – that if she closed her eyes and listened to the music, she would disappear. The skeleton of independence she had salvaged from her stupid, shipwrecked life would be taken away, and she would be married off and settled down and no good to anyone.

But she couldn't be sullen, once she saw her girls. They were standing in the Entrance Hall with their voices raised in song, so passionate, red-cheeked and full-throated. Some of them were whirling each other round, some clapping their hands, some tapping their toes or calling out encouragement to the other dancers. It was as though the fire-mines had never existed. 

Ellini joined the edge of the crowd, smiling and silent. She would never forget herself so far as to sing, no matter how good the music was. But someone grabbed her hand and swept her up in the dance, and she came to rest, dizzy and laughing, beside the piano, where she felt its last chords trembling against her back before the music broke off. 

Elliott got to his feet. They were both too out of breath to speak, and too nervous to have thought of anything to say in any case.

It took a while for the girls to realize that the music had been whisked out from under them, but when they did, they protested just as loudly as they had been singing a moment before – although there was some teasing and whistling, because they all recognized the look on Elliott's face. 

Only Carrie had the decency to say, "Oh, leave him alone. He's been playing his fingers to the bone for you squealing harridans! Let him have a break, I'll take over."

***

He was very patient with her. He let her go upstairs to wash and change, even though he must have been worried she would climb out of the window and flee to another city. The thought did briefly cross her mind. But she was starting to believe that running away from Elliott would only bring her back to Elliott by a shorter route. The man had narrative necessity on his side. She just had to persuade him that she was not the fairytale heroine he thought she was.

They walked in the winter garden, which was at the back of the Academy, just inside the ring of gargoyles. Its shrubberies were full of winter-flowering plants – holly, heather, cyclamen, and winter aconites, looking like bulbous buttercups – anything that would relieve the greys and browns and putrid greens of an Oxfordshire winter.

Elliott had tied Ellini's black velvet choker round his wrist. He fiddled with it occasionally, when he wasn't staring at her. But he was otherwise quite composed.

"I know I said I wouldn't leave," she muttered, when they'd been walking in silence for a while. "I wanted to send you a note to explain, but I didn't want to draw Jack's attention to you. You see, he found us, and was-"