Authors: Sophie Dash
Ruth found herself back in the courtyard, but now another sat and cried while she stood idly by. The servants within it scattered when the two women came near. Their looks said it all. News travelled fast.
Were it not for the young woman clinging to her, Ruth would have followed Isaac. She’d have protested; she’d have done something – wouldn’t she? God, she didn’t know, not after all she’d seen and heard tonight. It all felt like a test and she was failing it somehow. Though Isaac had failed her first.
Murderer.
Ruth rubbed a soothing circle on Lottie’s back, told her it would turn out right, even though it wouldn’t, because you couldn’t bring back the dead. Lottie cried until her throat was small and her nose ran and her hair was in unravelled bunches, until – Ruth was certain – that she could hardly remember what she was crying about.
Mr Griswell appeared, an unwanted shadow, far too unaffected for Ruth’s tastes.
“I knew the man was that sort.” He was missing the jacket he had worn earlier, despite their chillier surroundings.
“Don’t you start,” said Ruth quickly, a snarl on her lips.
“I am a widow,” sobbed Lottie, her words gravel, as though they’d been raked raw. “I hadn’t planned to be a widow for at least another year or two.”
“Don’t fret now,” said Griswell, smiling at Ruth. “You’ll both be widows soon, when they hang that wretch.”
“
Hang?
”
Lottie suddenly pulled away, red hair wild and flaming around her face.
“Father is right,” she said, her chapped lips parted, face so pale that her freckles stood out like red flecks, as though she had been standing there beside the steps when the body had made contact with marble. “Your husband killed mine.”
“We do not know that, Lottie,” said Ruth levelly, though she did not feel it.
She felt angry and hot and dizzy.
“Did you encourage him? Did you – why would you want to spoil the only thing that I had? Were you jealous? Because I had Albert and you wanted him, didn’t you? Oh, you knew he was rich! Then you went and ruined it all for yourself – yes,
you
ruined it,” she rambled. “Not me – I am not the whore here – it’s you and this is your fault.”
“You cannot say these things to me.”
For they were friends, they were sisters – more than that.
Despite that, Ruth had never been so close to slapping Lottie than she was in that second.
“My husband is dead because – because of
you
.”
“It isn’t like that. This cannot be how it seems – you know me.”
“How does it seem to you, Ruth? Look at you, God, your hands,
my
hands,” she recoiled, staring at her own fingers. “It’s his blood, isn’t it? Albert’s. Oh, God,
look at me
.”
Ruth held her, grabbed her before she fainted, stopping her head from hitting the ground while the girl’s father only stood there, disinterested and bland.
“Give her a few smelling salts. She’ll be fine by the morning and we’ll be back in London by tomorrow night.”
Ruth wished she were Isaac then, in that split second. Liar or not – murderer or not – she wished that she were him. That she knew how to form a fist, had learnt the right way to punch a man, to knock him down.
“One day everyone here will see you for the monster you truly are, Mr Griswell,” said Ruth, passing a useless judgement that did nothing to soothe her. “You will see.”
“Every man is a monster, Mrs Roscoe.”
“Not mine.”
“Are you sure about that?”
This time, Ruth could not be.
Lottie was raised to her feet, limp and barely conscious, and led away by her father. Ruth did not want to let her go. She wanted to follow her, make sure she was all right, help her, somehow.
As the wife of the man who killed the girl’s husband, how could she?
No, he hadn’t. Isaac hadn’t. He couldn’t have done it.
Could he?
“Come now,” said Lady Mawes to her, a sudden firm presence behind her, and Ruth almost fell, almost leant against her, almost let herself be steered away and looked after. “I won’t let you go back to that wretched place you live on your own. You will stay at Trewince Manor with us, your family. Colin has already sent word to prepare your room.”
“No,” said Ruth, barely audible. “I want to go. I want to be there.”
God, she was shaking – why was she shaking? Had she caught it from Lottie? Yes, that was it.
“It won’t be safe at the farmhouse for a woman alone. These country folk are heathens. Once they think there’s a murderer in their midst, they’ll turn savage and they’ll think you had something to do with it.”
“I don’t care,” said Ruth. “It’s our home.”
It was all the normalcy she could find in this strange time.
Lady Mawes protested the entire way back, but the carriage still slowed when it reached the farmhouse and Ruth got out, walked with her back straight and did not hear the calls behind her. The house was quiet. Nessa and Simms were holed up in a tavern elsewhere, given the night off due to the ball taking place. Good. She didn’t want their questions, couldn’t stand to talk – and they’d hear all the night’s events from another source soon enough.
What would they do? Would they stay? Who’d want that link to a so-called murderer?
The dog was fast asleep by the hearth, the fire low, the kitchen sweetly warm. Ruth barely noticed. She stripped off her dress, washed her hands, her face, her body and then did the routine again. She sat on her bed though she knew she’d never sleep. She paced, though her legs felt weak.
Powerless, pathetic, pushed around again…
All the criticisms that had ever been forced upon her resurfaced now. From her only friend, her peers, Miss Lamont and her uncle. About how she was accommodating, insignificant, bland and shapeless. Everyone had overlooked her, written her off, underestimated her again and again. And she had let them. She had let Isaac fool her…
Not this time, not now.
She was not that simple Miss Ruth Osbourne any more.
She was a Roscoe.
On an impulse Ruth pulled on an old dress, shoved her feet into her boots and went out. The coastal path was second nature to her now, even in the dark. She had done this walk more often at night than any other time, when her heart had been lodged in her throat, alongside worry and fear and doubt. Adrenaline pushed through her veins and drove her onwards as she ran to the shack by the sea, smelt the brine and saw a little light in the window.
Thank God.
The door wouldn’t open at her touch. She hammered hard with a blunt fist and it was dragged back, with William standing there, alarm heavy in his eyes.
“Ruth?”
She fell on him, she cried, hard – hating herself for such a female reaction – for being like Lottie.
It wasn’t weakness; it was the shock. It was the utter lack of ability to think on what to do next, on what would happen.
“I’ve got you,” he said gently.
It was a comfort to be held by a man, but the smell was wrong, the feel was wrong, the touch was wrong. He was not Isaac and she pulled back after a minute or two, the heel of her palms against her eyes, brushing at tears, smearing them away as though she could press them back in.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, though she had to have known, or hoped, he would return. “I thought you’d gone?”
“There were men out looking for me, ones who knew my face. I guessed they’d come this far along the shore and they did,” he explained, hands on her shoulders. “I hid away. I kept quiet. There’s a little string of caves nearby; they’re not too dry, but they’re safer than the gallows.”
Gallows.
Ruth’s knees went from under her. William was there, he kept her upright, and led her to a little cot.
“Tell me all that’s happened, tell me what I can do,” he said, so earnest and kind, and the explanation tumbled out from Ruth’s lips without any grace or eloquence.
“It’s Isaac,” she said. “They think he’s killed someone, a man I used to know, one I was almost wed to.”
William had many questions and she answered them, calmer now, mind whirring away, thinking, planning. And William was too – she could see it in his eyes.
When all had been said and Ruth’s voice had long grown hoarse, William asked, “Where is Isaac now?”
“Falmouth Prison, I think. I don’t know and I don’t even know if they’ll let me see him.” Everything she should have done found her now. All the words she should have said crept into her skull. “I should have asked, I didn’t ask, I—”
I don’t know if I want to see him.
Whatever tenderness she had ever felt towards Isaac had been all but erased. Their sham marriage would finally come to an end. It had to, for she could not continue with it.
“I will not let him rot in there, Ruth.”
“What can you do?”
“He once took the lash for me. He risked his life for me,” said William. “I must do all I can to help him now.”
“Help him?” The idea seemed so hopeless that Ruth could have laughed. Only she didn’t. She saw the determination in the man’s eyes and felt her own resolve harden. “What are you proposing?”
“I can get him out – there’ll be a way, there always is.”
“To what end? He’ll be a fugitive, like you?”
“Better that than dead. You’ve got horses, haven’t you? I will have to move fast, as dawn is not far off.” William was already drifting around the shack, tugging on the fresh clothes that Ruth had left for him, for she had always hoped he would come back. “If I can get Isaac to a safe place, it will give him time, then we’ll find out who really did this.”
Ruth averted her gaze as he dressed, though their conversation continued, both too intent on their purpose to care for modesty or what was proper.
“I think I know who did this, only I cannot prove it.”
“And if I cannot release Isaac,” said William, talking to himself more than her, like a promise was being made, “I will take the blame for this crime until the matter is solved.”
“You’ll be
killed
for it, William.”
“It’s what he would’ve done for me, in a time long before, and I am already a dead man.”
“Take me with you,” said Ruth. “I know what I have to do.”
William dragged on a light coat, but he did not argue. “I am not going to like it, am I?”
Ruth did not hear him and did not heed the disapproval in his tone. She smoothed back her hair and swiped her wrist against her runny nose. “Go see to my husband. Get him to safety.”
“What are you going to do, Ruth?”
“I am going to find the one person who can clear his name.”
For if she could free Isaac, then she was free to leave him.
Isaac
Falmouth Prison was not large or imposing. It contained only a few cells near the magistrate’s office, below ground level, which were made to seem as unwelcoming as possible. Isaac felt its damp cold seep through his skin, muscle, sinew, down to the bone and further – until his marrow was infested with it. Until it was as though he would never be warm again. His hands had been tacky at first, stained with another man’s life, before the blood had dried and flaked off and only the rusty brown-red under his fingernails remained.
Ruth thought him a killer.
In the past, he had been called a player, a cad, a crook – but never that, not once. Even in the boxing ring, in the cruellest of matches, he had never gone so far as to cross that damning line. Now he would lose more than his life, for he would lose her. How had she come so quickly to mean so much to him? Many others had failed to leave a mark on his soul, but she had. It wasn’t hard to pin down the exact moment when he had softened towards Ruth, had opened up to the possibility of her. It was when he’d seen her in the orangery at that ball so long ago, playing with a small child, laughing with abandon, glowing. Would he ever have been able to give her that – the life she deserved?
I would have tried.
Isaac pressed his shoulder blades into the stone at his back, needing the pain, wanting the sharpness. If the woman he loved thought him capable of taking a man’s life, then the courts would too.
He had lost everything.
But, more importantly, I have lost her.
There was other evidence to condemn him for murder. He knew that much. Apparently the servant who had passed both he and Griswell in the landing had said Isaac had been violent towards the other man – or at least had intended to be. Raised voices, threats, money demanded. It all worked against him, until he was painted black, a wretched villain, a greedy figure. There was no need for a trial. The outcome could not be changed; he was wise enough to know that much.
It would take place anyway, a farce, until he met his end.
Part of him welcomed it.
His gaoler was not a harsh man, even if he was uncaring and nonchalant towards his charges. At least Isaac got a small cell to himself, in the place where drunks were locked up overnight, not the crowded, busy, stinking holes the common criminals were shoved into. Pride told him to demand the same treatment, to say he was no better than them because of his blue blood, and it was true. But self-preservation had him keep quiet as the hours passed, to be thankful for the dry cot at his back, the clean straw across the floor, the small meal he had been provided with, and the minimal vermin. Captain Gibson may have been a pen-pushing watery sort of man, but he was an efficient one and Isaac wanted for nothing – except the love of a good woman and his freedom.
Only one found him that night.
There was a muffled conversation from the corridor beyond. He heard a low voice, an answer and then a door creaked open. What followed was a scuffle, a short one, finished by a sharp thud. Isaac knew the sounds and what would come next.
Damn.
Careful footsteps, quiet in the rotten air, brought him to the heavy oak door and its small barred window.
“You stupid bastard,” he called out to William as the man walked past, eyes wide, scanning every corner, trying to guess where his friend would be. “What the hell are you doing here?”