Authors: Sophie Dash
Isaac’s benefactor, Lady Mawes, was insistent that the new couple travel west immediately, to Cornwall, where the vices of the capital would no longer be there to tempt her great-nephew.
Gently, with as much care as he could manage, Isaac lifted the woman into the carriage and placed her upon the back seat. A thick blanket was draped over her and a cushion placed under her head. A need to protect her overwhelmed him, to push back the tide, to keep the wolves from the door, if only to assuage his guilt. How could he fight the wolves, when he was one of them? He brushed Ruth’s brown hair back from her thin face and took the seat opposite her unconscious form.
“I am so sorry,” he said to her. “I never wanted this for you.”
A foolish, youthful hope had taken root within him and her acceptance had fed it, if only for a moment. It had let him believe that the happiness reserved for other people could be his. That somehow everything would turn out for the best. Until he looked at her,
truly
looked at her, to see what he’d done to her. Hollow cheeks, shadows beneath her eyes, a cold band on her finger that was a shackle he could not release her from.
Isaac never expected her to go through with it. He had waited for a reprieve. A long-lost relative to come out from the woodwork and save her from—
To save her from him.
No one came. She accepted and uttered those fateful words – “I will” – much to his surprise.
She truly must be desperate. She truly must have no one.
Beyond the carriage windows, tarnished by gold sunlight, the driver gave a call to the horses. The newlywed pair were whisked away from London and all the wrong decisions, betrayals and losses that had led them to this point.
And there, a stray thought found Isaac, fallen from the ether, from a life they might’ve lived…
She has me now.
Ruth
The carriage’s movements were a comfort. When Ruth found consciousness once more, it was only briefly, to allow her heavy eyes to take in the interior, before she fell into a proper sleep not driven by weakness. She needed it. The sun had grown tired and rested against the horizon when at last she woke for real. Isaac was asleep in the seat across from her, legs splayed, head back to reveal his throat. Ruth could not help herself as she took in his form. He was her husband now. She wanted to know what she was up against. Although she had looked upon him before, she’d never truly had the opportunity for uninterrupted in-depth study.
And for all his sins, he was nice to look at.
Dark, unruly hair was streaked with auburn when the sun hit it. Well-defined cheekbones held a fading bruise along one side. A jawline drawn with the sharpest nib was smattered with stubble. There was an innocence to him as he slept. The faint lines were smoothed from his eyes, a hard life banished from his face and the years stolen away. Here he was, a man in his prime, no more than thirty. He was beautiful.
Hadn’t the Devil been beautiful too?
Those same looks were the ones that had turned her head, had made him suitable for the task of seducing her, had made her a terrible fool. To study him now, in this peaceful state, you would think him incapable of such an act.
And those brown eyes, the deepest brown, were looking straight into hers.
Ruth sat bolt upright.
“Careful,” he said, reaching out to steady her and never quite finishing the movement, contact broken off before it could begin. That outstretched hand hovered there, between them, until he took it back.
Careful.
The word shouldn’t have been amusing to her. A noise, bordering on a laugh and a breathy exhalation, left her, receiving only a searching look from Isaac in return. If she had been careful, she never would have ended up in this position. She had been so lost this past month, like that cloaked girl from the children’s fables, and yet the man who had found her on the path through the endless woods was all wrong. This one brandished teeth and claws to ensnare her, not a shining silver axe to save her.
It had to be too long a time spent in the carriage’s small interior. It had twisted her mind and packed in her warring thoughts too tightly, so that now they all threatened to burst forth, unchecked. The air was hot and stuffy and filled with him. His knees were too close to her own. If she misplaced one limb or forgot her surroundings, she’d be touching him. In another life, on another day, she’d be facing a different man. A shorter, rounder, wretched soul she never would have cared for.
There’d have been celebrations and congratulations, proud smiles and toasts to the happy couple, had she become Mrs Pembroke.
I wouldn’t have been happy.
Ruth knew that.
If all had gone to plan, she would have married Albert and her only role would have been to bear child after child after child.
Until she grew too tired, too old, too dead.
Is this better?
Ruth had dreaded the marriage taking place for so long – sleepless nights, endless days – that now it had come and gone, she did not know how to feel. Anger was there, under the surface, quick to heed her call if she beckoned. Frustration hummed in her throat, tainting any and every word that was pulled from her lips. Not that she had spoken since the vows had been made. How did one talk to one’s husband? If it was her turn to speak, she had nothing to say.
I hate you?
No, that wouldn’t cover it. Besides, it sounded churlish and ridiculous. Of course she hated him. He already knew that. Or if he didn’t, he was an idiot.
Lying with Isaac would be different. She couldn’t escape the notion. Even thinking on heirs brought back all those wicked images from the service.
With this body, I thee worship.
Ruth bit down on her lower lip. She played with the ring on her finger. A cold reminder. It was easier to stare out the window than at him, for he still watched her. Perhaps he thought she hadn’t noticed, perhaps he didn’t care either way, perhaps he was trying to fathom her mood – and so was she. There was too much to feel. She couldn’t settle on one emotion and her mind raced from one dilemma to the next. At least sleep had been an escape. It would not be tonight, for tonight she would sleep beside him.
An unwanted desire tainted her cheeks.
Do not be so weak,
she chided herself.
And to think, at one point, she had wanted him. In all the ways she shouldn’t. Upon her hand was still the ghost of his and it always would be. The same that had caused her heart to race and it beat a mutinous tattoo now.
No, she would not fall prey to him. Not again. Even if a part of herself wanted to. She couldn’t; she had her pride. If she had nothing else, she had that.
Accommodating, compliant, efficient
, that’s how Miss Lamont – a greying woman in her middling years – had described Ruth in the annual academy reports penned to her uncle. She was not that now and she would not be that for Isaac. Not for a single minute, hour, day would she play her role as a doting wife or make his life easier.
Although she had vowed to obey, she did not mean it.
Isaac Roscoe would suffer as she did. She would make sure of it.
***
The newlyweds’ journey was split into stops and starts, with the first rest at an inn that straddled two counties on a lonely drover’s road. Its lights were a beacon set amongst the dark sloping hills that drew them nearer and nearer. The horses seemed to sense that respite was close by – or understood the driver’s desire for a good meal and a warm bed – and quickened their pace.
Evening had captured the countryside. It woke the nocturnal creatures and peppered the sky with stars. A barn owl’s wingtips grazed meadow grass beside them and a fox darted away from the inn’s far side – chased away by a lowly pot scrubber – with a stolen prize in its jaws.
Ruth had passed through exhaustion and come out the other side, more wide awake than before, despite a mild headache. Although, that could have been down to Isaac and she was keen to shift the blame. It was an awareness of him, of his silence and his stare, that brought a prickle across her skin and a fever to her pulse.
And it was Isaac who moved first, getting up from his seat the moment the post-chaise halted, forcing the door open and letting the night air swamp them. He was two strides away, before he stopped and turned back, as though remembering his responsibilities to her. As though remembering he had a wife. Isaac held out his hand for Ruth to take. It lingered between them once more and there was a decision to make there, in that offer.
“I can manage,” said Ruth, as coolly as she could, in a voice that had rusted from disuse. It was the first thing she had said to him since the church. He had tried, throughout their journey, to begin small conversations. A peace offering she squandered, an olive branch she burned. To accept anything from him, even a word, a gesture, a hand, felt like accepting everything. As though she were giving in, surrendering, falling.
And so she didn’t.
Isaac looked like he wanted to throw a harsh reply back. Those lying lips fell apart, ready and armed. Then nothing, only silence, punctured by his drawn-out sigh. The hand he extended soon dropped to his side. Without another gesture, he turned from her and stalked towards the inn’s main entrance.
“I can manage,” repeated Ruth, to herself this time, mocking her own ridiculousness. Her legs were shaky. Weakness plagued her muscles, until she wasn’t sure she still possessed them. However, she’d told Isaac – in words no better than a slap to the face – that she could manage. She wanted to manage. She wanted to do this alone. She didn’t want
anything
from him and at the same time, she didn’t know what she wanted.
There was no code to look at. No rules to obey. No conventions to follow. Ruth had lived her entire life by boundaries. There had always been constant instruction. In the past, she had held a sinful superiority because she had known she was better than the others, because she never forgot herself and she never broke the rules.
But that was the past…
“I can manage,” she said once more, as her fingers gripped the carriage’s upholstery and she clambered out. The driver only passed her a cursory glance, too focused on his horses and their needs, unwilling to get between a man and his wife.
The chillier surroundings grounded Ruth and kept a fainting fit at bay as she breathed in the outdoors. She had not been in the countryside since she’d left Miss Lamont’s strict classroom. It smelt different. Fresher, cleaner, alive. Gone was the coal smoke, the waste, the poverty. Out here, nature reigned and it spoke to her in a way nothing else had. It held a wildness, an unfathomable mystery, with rugged peaks and untameable—
Isaac was in her eyeline again, framed by the inn door’s candlelight, his fierceness fading to something softer. He’d come back for her. Ruth didn’t think, for one second, that he was actually concerned for her welfare.
“Is this what you call managing?”
The confrontational tone was not difficult to miss and it did nothing to unruffle Ruth’s feathers.
“It’s been a long journey,” she countered, pushing her hands down her dress too harshly, as if trying to beat the wrinkles free by sheer stubborn force.
Another exasperated sigh followed, one that irked her considerably, before he said, “Then at least let me help you.”
“I think you have helped enough.”
Isaac ran a hand through his mussed hair. “I cannot leave you out here.”
“Why is that? Because you actually possess a conscience or because it would look strange for a gentleman to abandon his new wife to the cold on his wedding night?” She hadn’t wanted to say that, to bring it up, to think on it further – and so she kept talking, trying to cover up the mistake, the implication, with more words until not a single one could be picked apart from the rest. “I can only imagine what your great-aunt, Lady Mawes, would think. After all, she’s why you agreed to all this, isn’t that so? I was informed that she forced you into this union.”
There it was – the anger, the pain, the betrayal – awakened as though the hurt was a fresh one. Once Ruth had tapped into that reserve, there was no stopping it. “I had such a foolish hope, for at first, when the suggestion was made to marry you, I had thought it was your doing. That either through guilt or kindness, you had tried to do the right thing.” Hadn’t that been her problem all along? Seeing the good in people when it didn’t exist. Trusting that she could depend on others to do what is right and what is decent. “I was utterly wrong. It wasn’t your choice at all. I don’t even think you feel guilt and I know for certain that there’s not a kind bone in your body.” Without realising it, Ruth had crossed the distance between them, standing before him and willing him to prove her wrong. “You only said those vows because you were faced with poverty—”
“And to think,” he interrupted, a wide grin claiming his mouth, “I had feared I’d married a mouse.”
“And I had feared I’d married a monster,” she replied, breathless. “Now every action you make and every word you speak makes me certain I that have.”
Ruth quickly recovered from whatever fragile delusions she had been operating under. That they could make a reasonable go of it, that they – both of them, together – could at least try to make their situation bearable. She’d forgotten, during those weeks of solitude where any company would have been better than none, what a selfish, wretched man he was.
Better to hold on to that knowledge, to never forgive all he’s done, to never expect more, or else be constantly disappointed.
“If you want a monster, I will give one to you,” he replied, with a warning that punctured every syllable. “Neither of us sought this. I was hardly going to encourage the idea, to go after such a poor match.”
“Then I can only apologise for my lower standing,” she said, taking every opportunity to find offence. “But it is not
I
who—”
“I do not refer to you,” he answered, before a bitter laugh bubbled up and over and petered out. “God, if I’d had the choice, I would’ve spared you.”