Authors: Sophie Dash
Was her mind back in the garden’s maze as his was?
When Ruth finally left, Lady Mawes gave Isaac a significant look and it compelled him to follow her, even though he was sure that the last thing she wanted was company. However, given the choice, he would rather be with an unhappy wife than spend another minute with his dour family.
Although Ruth marched forwards down the hallways, up the wide staircase and kept on walking, hands bunched into her sides, it was clear she did not know
where
she was going.
“A little ahead, second door on the right,” supplied Isaac, watching her knuckles whiten further.
Ruth spun around, holding the same expression she’d had on the first evening of their marriage, when they’d confronted one another on a lonely track after a long journey. It was such a fearsome anger and frustration, that he had to fight hard not to smile at it. Isaac liked her like this, when she’d stopped caring about all the things she was so set on caring about. It was the real woman, behind those layers and masks. In all his days, he’d never known a person to be so dedicated to burying their own feelings – and he’d thought himself an expert at it.
“That – that woman,” hissed Ruth, teeth gritted. “Whenever I speak to her it’s as though she’s trying to take the measure of me, as though I have wronged her – or still yet will.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Is she always like this?”
“She’s never normally this bad.”
A huffy sound left Ruth’s mouth, before she headed towards their shared room and almost slammed the door closed behind her, until, of course, she remembered that the space was for them both. There was no study for Isaac to hide away in now, no way for them to keep to the distances that had accommodated them so well in the farmhouse.
Their meagre luggage had been brought upstairs and sat below one wide window. Isaac hesitantly entered the room and stared at Ruth’s back. Strands of hair had escaped their plain fixings, falling at her neck, coiling down to brush her skin. If he felt an urge to see the rest of her hair tumble around her shoulders, he forced it down, as though the thought had never occurred at all.
If she was as unsure with him as he was with her, she did not show it. There was only a slight tension around her shoulders and in the way she held her herself. Upright, cautious. He wanted to smooth it away. The mannerisms, throwaway gestures, unsaid words – all had him guessing at her mood and it was as easy as trying to catch smoke.
“I shall take the chair,” he said, moving stiffly to a chaise longue at the bed’s end. Relief found her. He heard it in her breathy exhalation. God, was she still so afraid of him? What more did he have to do?
Her next words stopped him in his tracks.
“If we are to get through this, we cannot do it separately.”
“What do you mean?” Isaac fixed her with an intense look, trying to draw from her all the poison he had fed into her life, seeking forgiveness. Had she chosen to be a governess, she would have been suited to it, for her resolved manner made him feel far out of his depth and he enjoyed it, that she had the upper hand. She stood like the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena, with knowledge beyond her years.
“Lady Mawes expects much from you – from us both,” she said, slowly, mind ticking away.
“I know,” he answered, keen for her to talk. She was rarely so open and he would latch on to every word she offered.
“Therefore, I propose we declare a truce between us, for now.”
It was progress, wasn’t it? More than he deserved.
“We will act as we should,” agreed Isaac. “Play our roles and sit through the dinners and the dancing.”
“Then, when Lady Mawes is satisfied,” said Ruth, “we need not hear from her again. She will assume we are, well, everything she wants us to be.”
And though Isaac still held immeasurable guilt, it had lessened somehow – through Ruth’s sensible words and in the way she met his eyes, held his gaze and did not hate him. At least, not for today.
“We’ll share the bed,” she said, taking a bolster cushion from a chair and placing it atop the covers, directly in the centre. “I shall have this side and you the other.”
Isaac studied her, hoping it was not sympathy that drove her to make such a move. She had seen his life, his family, his past. All that was enough to conjure pity.
But she too has suffered
, he recalled. Perhaps, in this case, it was merely an understanding she had come to find and nothing more.
“Are you certain?”
“We will both need our wits about us if we’re to do this together,” she said, a half-whisper. “For that, we’ll need a good night’s sleep in a proper bed.”
“I can agree to that.”
When she began to undress, he averted his eyes, for the most part. Yes, he did present himself as a gentleman, but he’d spent far too much time amongst the rogues and villains not to watch her, even if it was only via her reflection in the dressing table’s mirror. She was not what he’d expected. At the inn, on their first night together, he had never got a proper look, too absorbed in his own dark musings to appreciate her. Underneath those awful clothes and frumpy layers, she was beautiful. Smooth skin that held the sun’s warmth and enticing curves that he’d already felt that day, when he’d caught her in the garden. Were she any other woman, like those he’d been with in the past, he’d have let his hold find her again, without all that material in the way. To let his hands wander along her bare arms, down over her full breasts, to her stomach. He’d kiss those indents on her lower back and the dip at the hollow of her throat. And he’d wait for that moment, that soft sigh, when she gave way entirely to him.
A nightdress soon covered what he had seen of her, but it had been enough.
Enough to keep him awake, as he lay beside her, in his shirt and breeches, with only a thin barrier between them. Did she listen to him breathe as he did her? Isaac dared not move and she did not stir either, both staring up at the canopy above. If he reached over, if he – no,
no.
It was better to keep a small shield between them, to preserve the little progress they had made in their standoffish, untested relationship, two strangers forced together under impossible circumstances. The last thing he needed was to push her away, to frighten her, to be the brute she’d taken him for. It had been three weeks since they’d been in this very same position and so much had changed and yet so little. A ridiculous, naïve hope drifted into his head before he found sleep: perhaps one day, a long time from now, they would be friends.
He would settle for that, if he could have nothing more.
Even though he wanted everything.
***
The night had been cold. Isaac had slept little. He had remained immobile, unwilling to startle the woman and reveal all that went on inside his head. Ruth remained statue still for the longest time. Eventually he heard her tossing and turning and waited until her breathing had fallen into a deep rhythm. Only then did he let himself nod off too.
Dawn gave them pale sunlight and a chorus of birdsong. Isaac was up with it, dragging on his boots and heading for the door. Stiff and bruised, he rolled back his shoulders, working the aches from them. Ruth did not stir and he only gave her a cursory glance as he left her, her hair splayed out on the pillow, mouth a small cupid’s bow, skin deliciously darker from the sun’s attentions. He had been with many women and yet not a single one looked as she did that morning.
Beautiful.
And he wanted to protect her, even though he knew the only thing she needed protecting from was himself.
With a scowl he turned away, fled down the corridor and kept walking.
He had never thought about marriage, not really, only in the vague sense that one day it would happen and his wife would at least have some partial liking to him.
Instead he had this charade.
Maybe under different circumstances, we would have—
No, it was not worth dwelling on. Women like her did not love men like him.
The early routines of the servants were disturbed as he strode past them, into the gardens, taking in the air that had yet to be warmed by the new sun. It was crisp and welcome on his skin, better than the muggy, oppressive heat that would come later.
He was not alone. There was another soul out for a stroll in the day’s first hours.
Before he could escape from her view and secure his solitude, Lady Mawes spotted him.
“Making a nuisance of yourself already?”
“Now you’ve come to expect it, I feel obliged to do so.”
“Walk with me,” she commanded and he could not refuse. Her gloved hands found his arm, taking away any chance of escape, fixing him to her. “The older you get, the less sleep you need. It’s as though your body knows it is getting closer to an eternal rest and is compelled to steer itself as far away from it as possible.”
“I am fairly certain that you will outlive us all.”
“If that were the case, then I would not need to worry about all of you.”
Isaac hummed in answer. “Is that what all this is? Worry?”
“Hardly.” The unaffected, wry air she carried wavered a fraction. “This is merely forward-thinking. That wife of Colin’s has yet to produce an heir. I suspect she’s as barren as they come. That means there will be no one left to inherit Trewince Manor. No one but you.”
Isaac’s footfalls grew heavier, words stilted, jaw clenched. “I am sure Colin will manage. Those who should never breed are usually the ones who do.”
“I would not be so sure; he may not have the time.” Isaac could feel Lady Mawes’s eyes on him, stony and watchful. “For you see, Colin’s health has never been as it should, even when he was young. Surely you must remember how often we kept him in from the cold as a boy? Last winter he almost left us altogether.”
That news had Isaac’s step falter. “You never wrote to me about it.”
“Would you have cared?”
“Not at the time, no.” He had been living through women he’d never remember the names of, almost a kept man, roaming gambling halls and making a name for himself on the underground boxing circuit. It had been a good life, he’d told himself. Some days he had believed it too.
“We have consulted all the physicians we can send for, even the specialist we had for the late Lord Mawes was called up from London, what little good that did. The man couldn’t save my husband; what chance would he have with my great-nephew? It is impossible to predict if Colin’s health will survive another cold season.”
“That is why you want me here.”
“If you are to inherit this place one day—”
“I do not want it.”
“It is your duty.”
“Burn it, raze it to the ground, let it fall to ruin.”
Lady Mawes increased her grip on his arm. “Do not let this stubborn, pig-headedness of yours destroy what I have worked so hard to protect.”
“Does Colin know you’re thinking this? Planning this? Practically willing him into the dirt?”
“Yes,” she replied coolly. “In fact, it was he who suggested you stay at the house rather than in that decrepit little shack you cling to. Now, your cousin may yet live to a ripe old age and produce many strong sons who will be as equally abhorrent as he is. But unless that happens, you must face what could come to pass. You
must
give up the sordid ways you have clung to and be a better man. This is the Roscoe legacy and I shall not have it fall.”
Isaac extracted himself from her, taking a step back, staring up through the imposing hedgerows to see the house staring back.
“Ever since I was little, you have all – every single one of you – done your best to make me feel like an outcast. And now I am to save the family name?” Isaac swallowed thickly, barely able to believe what he had heard, to understand and piece it all together. “I do not want it. I never did, not if it means being tied to you people for ever.”
“Did it ever occur to you that your cousin is jealous of you?”
“What?”
“Colin has lived in your shadow from the moment you arrived here as a boy, knowing you were the rightful heir. And now you have returned, with a wife who manages to be far more demure, intelligent and attractive than his own by far. And you, even with that hiccup with the Navy—”
“I would not call a near mutiny a ‘hiccup’.”
“But
even so
, fate has looked favourably upon you.”
“I will not be manipulated,” he snarled, the viciousness in his tone briefly silencing Lady Mawes.
She pursed her lips and the thin lines around them deepened, like weathered cracks in old stonework. “Compare the life you have lived to his own, trapped here, barely well enough to travel far.”
“Is that to be my fate too?”
“We cannot know what turns the future will take; we can only prepare for them,” she said, heaving a great sigh that made him feel as though he had lost this argument. “It is what I have done for you all your life, to try to ensure that you became the man I always intended you to be.”
“I do not need your interference. I’ve had enough of it already.” A sudden notion struck Isaac, a blunt force. “With all the women I have had…uh…” He tried to supply a word that would not offend the older woman’s ears, his own temper flaring.
“Dalliances with,” she supplied crisply.
“Yes, with all the
dalliances
I have had, many with creatures far above Ruth’s station, you have never once insisted on marriage or threatened me with destitution before. Why now? Why her?”
“Well, that’s simple,” said Lady Mawes. “It’s because I like this one.”
Ruth
The sheets were cool against her feverish skin. It was not the warm weather that brought the prickle of sweat down her spine. It was the man lying beside her, on the other side of the bed, on her first night staying at Trewince Manor. Ruth’s nails bit into the covers, her breath caught in her throat, waiting for him, for the possibility that he might cross that divide. The expectation was worse. It brought wanting, longing, a dangerous need – and a doubt, an anxiety.
What if he does not want me?
And then, later, while he lay still.