Читать книгу To Wed A Rebel - Sophie Dash - Страница 10

Chapter Three

Ruth

Just as Isaac promised, the three moved undetected. Windows and doors had been left wide open to coax in the sluggish breeze and it made their journey easier. A side entrance from the greenhouse took them to a drawing room, a narrow hall and then a small study. A servant passed them, but she had been trained to keep her eyes averted from guests and walked on, a tray in her hands, not daring to take in their faces or the little boy hiding behind Ruth’s skirts. The child had been close to tears when Ruth first found him and proposed locating his mother – or even grandmother – in the dancing crowds. Worry lodged in Ruth’s mind all too easily. She remembered how severe her own education had been and how often the girls from the academy were punished and humiliated for minor misdemeanours. It was possible that the boy, Joshua, carried on because he simply wished to avoid going back to sleep. Doubt and anxiety clouded her thoughts. If Ruth could help him, she would. Even if that did mean using Mr Roscoe.

And he was a man who didn’t seem to mind being used. In fact, he invited it. Had she been a weaker woman, she would have taken him up on the offer. There was a way about him, an ease of movement, a knowing look that sent her pulse racing.

If anyone caught them, there would be trouble. At Miss Lamont’s Academy the rules about men had been clear and simple. She knew them back to front. Knew how to please, what social conventions to obey and how get by without any notice taken of her. Now, every step she took seemed to be the wrong one and took her closer to him.

Worse still, a sinful part of her welcomed it.

Ahead was the staircase, rising up from the main entranceway, with polished wood and ornate carvings. There were far too many people nearby, chatting loudly and clinking glasses. Their movements would be seen if they risked venturing from cover now – and so they waited in shadow.

Isaac’s arm was against Ruth’s. A small connection that made her mouth dry. She observed his profile, her frown growing heavier. There was a half-grin on Isaac’s face, as though this were some adventure – and he treated it as such, talking to Joshua in a low voice about how they had to be quiet. It was a game to them both and the little boy loved it, fists bunched into his nightclothes, eyes wide with a rebellious joy. The pair were two peas in a pod: naughty, mischievous and yet somehow making both traits seem endearing. Roscoe was far less alarming in this environment and she let herself admire his well-built form that echoed those heroes from classic mythology. He didn’t notice; he was distracted – and she could risk it, only for tonight.

“They’re leaving,” whispered Isaac. “Be ready.”

Ruth strengthened her grip on Joshua’s hand, only to find Isaac offered his own to her, seemingly without thought. He wasn’t looking her way, eyes on their escape. Ruth hesitated, fingers half-outstretched to his, hovering at a midpoint between them. It wouldn’t mean anything. Practicality told her to take it, as she would have taken Lottie’s hand. But he wasn’t Lottie and such behaviour between a man and a woman was different and surely if she placed her hand in his then—

“Now,” said Isaac quickly, grasping Ruth’s wrist and pulling her and Joshua free from their hiding place. Music brushed against them. The hallway and far ballroom were visible for a flash, before their feet were on the stairs. Ruth adjusted her grip, gloved palm against Isaac’s, holding on tightly. They were almost on the landing, fighting laughter, swept up in the excitement, when Lady Winston appeared. She wore a shawl so fine that it looked like a cobweb across her shoulders, gown glittering in the low candlelight, faded hair and light clothes giving her all the appearance of a ghost.

Isaac pulled up short, Ruth almost tripped over him and the little boy crashed into her legs. The moment Joshua saw his grandmother, he bolted up the final steps and flew at her, arms outstretched. Ruth’s hand was cold from where the boy had dropped it. The other was still in Isaac’s and she quickly stole her fingers back and kept them close, bunched up against her stomach.

“You are meant to be in bed, young man,” said Lady Winston to her grandson, but her tone was warm and banished any worries that Ruth might have had about Joshua’s well-being. “Did you give the maid the slip again?” The older woman, with slow, shrewd movements, turned to Ruth. “I hope he hasn’t been a nuisance to you both?”

“Not at all,” she answered. “I found him in the orangery and thought I could get him upstairs without too much trouble.”

“And you are?”

“Miss Osbourne.” She curtseyed, before turning to introduce Isaac, but Lady Winston got there first.

“Then you must be Albert Pembroke! I have already heard all about you; I know your mother.” Lady Winston, eyes crinkling, held out her hand and Isaac pressed his lips to her glove. “What a handsome couple you make. I can already tell you’re quite suited to one another.”

“No, he’s not…” Ruth trailed off, a stray thread of thought caught on the idea. If only he was, if only he could step into Albert’s place. A man who was everything she hadn’t known she wanted.

“I am her brother,” said Isaac. “And we couldn’t let the child wander around outside alone.”

“Then I am most grateful,” said Lady Winston, though her smile diminished, eyes darting between the two. She dismissed herself from their chat with a polite nod, before addressing her grandson once more and leading him away. “Time to get you back into bed now, isn’t it, Josh?”

The woman’s voice grew fainter. Ruth leant upon the wall, attempting to rope back her calm demeanour, chest rising and falling. God, what had she risked by indulging in such activities? Isaac stood idly beside the bannister, facing her in the quiet. When he almost cracked a laugh, she shot him a dark look. Whatever humour he’d found, she would not share it.

Not after all she’d done, all he’d helped her do.

“You owe me a dance, Miss Osbourne.”

“Dance?” Ruth’s compliant lips failed to drip the usual assuring words they were known for. All she had been told about propriety, doing as she was asked, and acting as a lady should was instantly forgotten. Those carefully laid foundations crumbled in minutes when faced by him. No one else had ever riled her like this. “You failed, Mr Roscoe.” With calm movements, she pulled herself to full height and went downstairs, spine straight and voice coolly quiet. “The boy was spotted and we were discovered, and by Lady Winston, no less.” She did not pause. She did not face him. She would not let him in. “I won’t waste any more time on this foolishness.”

What would her uncle think?

Deep thuds on the wood followed her where Isaac matched her steps. “You cannot mean to refuse me?” There was no anger in the question, Isaac’s mouth ajar, tone baffled.

“You speak as though it’s never happened to you before.”

“It hasn’t.”

It was exhilarating for Ruth, to talk freely, to leave all those self-conscious cares elsewhere. For once, in such a long, long time, she felt like herself – like she knew herself in this impossibly large city.

And she couldn’t let it happen again or else she feared she’d do something dreadful. Because she did want to accept his offer, she did long to dance. But it was not to be. She was engaged to another.

“Then consider this a first,” said Ruth curtly, even though he dogged her movements all the way to the ballroom. Were the other guests looking her way? Did they know what she’d done? Did they know what she truly longed for? No, there was nothing to know, she was certain of it. Ruth still felt guilty, as though there was a black stone in her belly, burning through her gut. She sought out familiar faces, wanting to explain and yet not wanting to give herself away at all. “I am positive that Miss Griswell would be glad to accept a dance on my behalf.”

The redhead, barely a metre away, turned upon hearing her name.

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Ruth heard Isaac mutter, but the distraction was enough to allow her to escape.

The piggish eyes of her future husband were boring into her neck. His face was even pinker than usual, eyes watering and thin hair slicked across his scalp.

“There you are!” Albert grasped her arm with his small hands. “Where have you been? My foot is sore and there aren’t enough seats in here.”

Ruth’s reply was too immediate, too hasty, for she was still ablaze from her earlier encounter, even if she was – despite all that had taken place – smiling. “And what do you want me to do about it?”

It was the wrong response and Albert’s cheeks flushed redder. He did not like being displeased – she knew that. Even as a young boy, he had always wanted his own way, always demanded to be revered. Ruth had played along under her uncle’s watchful eyes, as a young woman ought to. It was what she would do now – and for the rest of her life.

“Forgive me, it’s all been a little too much this evening.” The pat she gave his hand was awkward and uncomfortable, lacking the affection she had hoped to imbue it with. “I think the heat is getting to me.”

And so is Isaac Roscoe.

Albert ignored her excuses and did not even pretend to show concern. “I want a chair. That Griswell chap forbade me from asking a woman to move. He said it was bad form to make a lady stand, so you’ll ask one of them for me, won’t you?”

It was not a question. Fragile pride reminded Ruth that she had at least been able to refuse one man that night – the only real rebellion she had ever made. The one and only time she’d said “no” instead of rushing to please another at the expense of her own happiness.

A realisation came to her: where Isaac had asked, Albert had ordered.

She could not recall the last time anyone had ever given her a choice.

***

The door to Ruth’s bedroom creaked open and light, familiar footsteps slid along the floorboards. Ruth shifted towards the bed’s other side and made way for her friend, both too wide awake to sleep. The ball had ended hours ago, but their droopy eyelids and the open ears of their chaperones had kept their tongues quiet on the journey home. Now, alone and together in the Griswell abode, the two young women could talk in private.

“Are you cross with me?” Lottie held up her arm, the sheet tented between them, faces barely discernible in the gloom.

Ruth shook her head, a rustle upon her pillow.

Lottie’s words were stilted and considered, slow to leave her lips. “I know I have not been kind to you lately, I suppose it’s because I’ll miss you.”

“Only suppose?”

Lottie made a huffing sound, nostrils flaring. “Look, I – I – I don’t like people leaving and I cannot be like you; I cannot be so unmoved by everything.”

“You think I am unmoved?”

“You cope with it all so easily.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” said Lottie sharply. “It’s you that everyone at the academy loved, you they went to when something went wrong.”

“Only when they didn’t want Miss Lamont to find out.”

“Well, no one ever asked for my views, for my help. It’s always you. It’s not fair.”

It was all the apology Ruth would get and so she edged closer to Lottie, a gesture of forgiveness, hearing the other girl’s breathing fall more evenly. “I will miss you too.”

Ever since Lottie’s mother had died when she was eleven, she had been unbearably clingy. Ruth had lost her mother at the early age of five – her father too – to a bad fever. Whereas grief had hardened Ruth and forced her to ignore her emotions for fear of ever hurting so deeply again, it had made Lottie more vulnerable. But they’d known, since they were girls, that they’d always have each other. They were like sisters, even if they bickered or Ruth withdrew into herself – as she was prone to do – or counties separated them. When Ruth’s engagement to Albert had been confirmed, Lottie had been the only one at the academy who hadn’t been happy for her. Because marriage would pull them apart.

“Do you love Albert?” The question was one Ruth had asked herself. To hear it voiced by another gave weight to all the doubts she had collected, nursed and fed in the night-time hours when sleep stayed far away.

“I hardly know him.”

“Do you think you will love him?”

Ruth pulled in a deep breath. “I hope so.”

“Even if he won’t protect you from snakes?”

“If that’s the case, then let’s hope there are always Isaac Roscoes milling around,” said Ruth drily.

“Yes, please,” laughed Lottie, stifling the noise against the blankets. “Though I doubt he mills anywhere, he swaggers.”

“Honestly, Lottie.”

“You can’t deny he’s charming!”

“Men like that are dangerous.” Ruth bunched up one hand, the same Isaac had held, a fist under her pillow as though there were a secret within it.

“Maybe I want danger,” joked Lottie, red hair inky in the darkness as she turned to address the ceiling. “You can keep your safe, happy life and I will be wife to a renegade. Even if he is rude enough to leave a woman mid-dance, I shall forgive him. He’s very easy to forgive.”

“Quiet,” hushed Ruth, pulling the covers back over their heads. “Good looks cannot make up for a man’s faults.” An odd, hot feeling crawled up behind her stomach, a little like jealousy.

“Ugliness doesn’t ensure virtue either,” said Lottie pointedly. They both knew to whom she referred. Ruth could still hear her husband-to-be’s whiny, dire tones in her ear.

“Lottie,” whispered Ruth. “Am I marrying a toad?”

“No, he looked far more like a pig in that waistcoat this evening.”

Another laughing fit grasped them both, petering out as the harsh truth set in. The future had seemed bright and white and idyllic when they were younger. They had waited for ever to grow up and now that they were women, the reality they faced was far harsher and seeded with uncertainty. Their talk ended, silence settled upon them like a second quilt, and the pair curled up together in the sheets for warmth.

“I hope you will be happy,” said Lottie, a well-meaning mumble. “Real happiness, not the pretence you put on to please everyone else. I hate when you do that.”

“Me too,” replied Ruth. “Me too.”

***

It does not happen often, that moment, when you find yourself left with the last tendrils of a dream that you can steer in any direction you wish. Ruth felt sleep slipping away and she held on, pushed through and found herself back in the orangery. The little boy, Joshua, had gone missing again – or had he? No, it wasn’t he that Ruth was looking for. It was another. The glass room was still and dark, the air sickly sweet. A shadow, lost behind large, sweeping leaves, solidified. A man, and not the man she should have sought out.

That infuriating smile, a quiet voice for only her. “You still owe me a dance, Miss Osbourne.”

Ruth’s breath caught in her throat. His hand took hers and she let him, unable to speak, to refuse. And didn’t their hands fit so well together, as though they had been made to hold one another’s? Isaac Roscoe. Every movement he made, she moved with, though there was no music. Nothing but a light breeze that stirred the canopy above, and him – always him – invading her senses, her mind, her soul. Those eyes, such dark, endless eyes, opened into hers. When had they gotten so close? If they were still dancing, it was not a dance she recognised. Her hands on his shoulders, fingers in the softer hair at the nape of his neck. He held her waist and there was a tentative pull at the ties on her dress, a promise that brought with it a sinful need, a cruel lust.

“Isaac,” she hummed, for he was not ‘Mr Roscoe’ now. He was not a stranger here. He was everything Ruth wanted him to be – and nothing like the man she was engaged to.

A rough scratch of stubble brushed her cheek, contrasting with the soft, warm words spoken against her lips that she couldn’t catch.

Daylight broke her eyes open and chased away those fragile moments. Lottie was still fast asleep beside her. A new day had come. Panic flared up in her chest, but it was needless. No one knew, no one would guess, no one would reveal all that had taken place within the crucible of her own skull. It was her secret.

Ruth was resolved, then, to never see Mr Roscoe again. Not only because she was frightened of what she might do – of all she might lose if she did – but because the real man would never match up to the fantasy.

She had Albert, didn’t she? That would be enough; it had to be enough.

There is no other choice.

Her uncle expected it, her financial situation depended on it, and she must do as she was bid. What had her mother told her?

Never be a burden, my darling, never be a burden, never be a burden…

“Ruthie,” muttered Lottie upon waking, her voice a thistle-scratch as it left her throat. “Are you crying?”

“A bad dream, that’s all,” she lied, for once allowing her friend to comfort her, to hold her and stroke her hair. The only bad part of the dream was that it had ended and brought her sharply back to the real world and all its bitter disappointments.

***

The opera was packed. Ruth knew barely anyone and no one she didn’t know cared to know her. It had been the same all week, with social events, dinners and mindless appointments. Lottie was in her element, catching up with those she’d only seen in the short breaks from school: her father’s friends, distant relatives, past acquaintances. Her laughter rang out like a clear bell and she had easily forgotten Ruth. It was not a malicious act; it never was. Lottie was always so invested in the moment that there was nothing beyond it. No one else existed but herself and the people within her direct eyeline. Ruth was used to it and if the alternative was constant, banal chatter, she was happier to sit by herself and take in as many sights as possible.

The air was close and lay upon them all like a clammy, second skin. This was the last performance until winter, when the aristocracy would clear London in favour of their country homes away from the slums that had already eroded half the decent corners of the city.

“It’s the hottest July I have ever known,” said Albert for the fifth time that evening from their private box.

No one paid much attention to the goings-on upon the stage. There was a constant background hum of conversation. People stopped by to visit and chat. Ruth sat near strangers whose talk she could not follow. They laughed at jokes she did not understand and mocked people she did not know. They wrote her off as a simple, artless creature.

“I can’t hear,” she told Lottie, when her friend had deigned to return to her side.

“No one ever can and it’s not like anyone even speaks Italian,” said Lottie loudly, for her companions to laugh at – and laugh they did. A few insipid women threw sympathetic looks Ruth’s way, as one would toss pennies to a beggar on the street.

Ruth sat back in her chair, defeated. Her dress was a poor shade that did not suit her and made her look ill: another borrowed garment, for Lottie refused to let her go out in her own ‘plain’ clothes. It was lifeless and thick, exactly how these people viewed her, and there was nothing she could do to change it. Ruth had not argued over the matter. She rarely did – it wouldn’t be proper. Even so, her gloved hands were tight upon her lap and her lips were pressed together, thin and bloodless.

A creak, a rustle and Mr Griswell’s muttered words soon found her ear, an uncomfortable, ticklish hiss against her neck.

“I recommend a walk, Miss Osbourne,” he said quietly. “Rather than risk losing your temper like the other night.”

Ruth quickly sought out Albert, who was engrossed in a conversation with some retired colonel, their large stomachs heaving with laughter.

“He told you?” Although she had snapped at him while at Lady Winston’s ball, she had thought little of it, had never anticipated he would latch on to the comment or repeat it to another.

“And how is your brother, Miss Osbourne?”

“I don’t have a…” Ruth trailed off. Brother. That man Isaac Roscoe had told Lady Winston they were siblings. Had the news spread so quickly? What must Albert think? If Griswell knew, then this surely spelt trouble, for the man was hardly a gossip – as self-absorbed in his own doings as his daughter.

“Yes, I – I should think a walk would…yes,” announced Ruth, shaking her head when Lottie looked set to go with her. “I – I shan’t be long.”

The musty hallway was scattered with idle bodies filtering from the coffee room. Ruth steadied herself against a panelled wall, her fingers lined up against her collarbone, as though she could press all the disjointed pieces of herself back together. There were too many people packed into the corridor, passing by, talking loudly. Though not a single one glanced her way, she found no solace, no quiet. A woman tried to push a half-dead flower into her hands in exchange for money and Ruth could only shake her head, stomach churning with all the fears and concerns she wrestled with. It felt as though she had been bottling herself up for years, burying shards of worry – and now she was fit to bursting.

“Come on, love, in here,” said a soft voice, a hand in hers.

The pressure on her fingers was gentle, yet firm, guiding her into an empty opera box. God, she was a fool, making an idiot of herself again. There was no way she could survive here, with its viper-quick tongues, conversations that moved too fast for her to understand – all packed together with Albert’s constant whiny and belittling remarks. They would be married soon and this would be her life and there was nothing and no one who could ever save her from it.

I can’t do this.

She wanted to turn back time and go back to the academy. She wanted her cold, barren room, her books and the faces she knew, the girlish chatter that was easy to follow. Real people, who held real concerns, who did not feed on gossip and other people’s misery.

She missed the country, the clean soot-free air, the sun. When had she last glimpsed the sun between those tall, blackened buildings?

God, she hated London. And it surely hated her.

“It will be all right, Miss Osbourne.”

“No, it won’t.”

There was a hand on her back, soothing, as she struggled to calm herself. Whenever she tried to push back the tide of emotions, the foam slipped over her fingers, across her arms, dragging her under. It was humiliating, ridiculous – she was ridiculous – for it was as though her body had forgotten how to breathe and no inhalation was ever enough.

“Stay with me, that’s it, I’ve got you.”

Ruth knew that voice.

At last, when she was able, she looked through her damp eyelashes to the individual sat beside her.

Isaac Roscoe.

“You,” she croaked. “I can’t be here with you.”