Authors: Sophie Dash
“I would have thought that was obvious,” he said, jamming a stolen key into the lock.
“
Will
.”
“I could not leave you here, not after everything.”
The door was unlocked. A loud, punishing sound, and it echoed in the small prison. There were a few shouts from the other prisoners, desperate demands for escape. They soon dwindled into watchful silence, leaving only dirty faces staring out into the gloom.
Isaac’s limbs were stiff, almost as though they were telling him to remain, to refuse all that was being offered, to act as the gentleman and retain his honour. To show Ruth he was not the man she thought he was. He could feel the outside air brushing along the narrow corridor. A fresh, cold breeze that urged his feet to move.
“Gullible chap, that one,” said William, when they passed the unconscious man who had been responsible for keeping Isaac – and those old, sickly or simple people in the other cells – locked up tight. Isaac felt a pang of pity for him, for both the hard headache he’d wake up to and the ire of Captain Gibson.
Isaac stopped, arms hanging limply at his sides, fingers clenched into fists he could not use.
“I cannot leave with you,” he said. “I will look even guiltier than I already do.”
William scoffed. “Then you’d prefer to die here?”
“There has to be a way to clear my name,” continued Isaac, hand running along his face. “I know what it looks like. I heard a feud, I tried to stop it, but Griswell was clever. Pembroke’s head was already caved in by the time he was shoved down the stairs and I could not help him.”
“We’ll find a way. For now, I need to get you far from here,” said William, offering him a loaded pistol. “I promised your wife I would help you.”
“How is she?”
And what does she think of me?
“Ruth is well enough,” said William quickly, too quickly, avoiding his gaze. “We have to go now before the whole town wakes up.”
The sky was the darkest of blacks, a sign that dawn would soon be upon them.
“What are you not telling me, William?”
“Nothing that cannot wait.”
“William.”
“It’s not important.”
“She’s my
wife
, of course it’s important
.
”
A lengthy sigh followed before William said, “There’s an inn by the harbour. I left her there. She said there was a woman, a friend she once had, who might know more than she’s letting on, who’ll be able to prove your innocence.”
She thinks I am innocent.
Isaac’s relief was short-lived as he swore loudly and took the weapon offered.
She will get herself killed because of it.
“Don’t be a fool,” said William, a hand on his friend’s arm, guiding him towards the waiting horses, hidden away in the shadows. “If you try to stop her, you’ll be caught and this will all have been for naught.”
“If I don’t find her, she’ll be killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Griswell and I know what he’s capable of. I always have. If Ruth expects Lottie to help us, then she is sorely mistaken,” said Isaac, alert, his focus on every window, alley, doorway, in case they were being watched. After all, Ruth had put her faith in the wrong people before: she had put her faith in him. Now she was set to make the same mistake with Lottie. “Get away from here as fast as you can ride. The forces in town will be distracted and they’ll forget all about you – this is your best chance of escape.”
William did not move with ease, for his injury still plagued him, but he managed to get up onto his horse all the same. “What kind of friend would I be if I left you now, Roscoe?”
“You’d be a living one.”
With a shrug and a half-smile that felt ill-placed for the grim early morning, William said, “I have already put you both in danger. I have forced you to risk your lives to protect mine. The least I can do is return the favour.”
Ruth
The harbour smelt like rotting seaweed and creaked with wet rope, the sighs of the ocean and the odd, erratic cries from the seabirds that awaited the coming daylight. There were two inns beside the harbour and Lottie and her father were staying in one; the girl had told Ruth that much at the ball. The first inn Ruth enquired at held no one matching Lottie’s description, only drunks and vagabonds who stared at her with unkind thoughts rattling through their thick heads. The second was named The Siren’s Call and was much less crude, with reasonable furnishings and an abundance of candles. It had to be this one. The Griswells would tolerate nothing less. She knocked upon the closed door and after a short time, a bleary-eyed woman, thin as a rake, opened it. Her smile, meant to entice customers, soon dropped when she saw Ruth’s appearance. Respectable women did not travel on their own, and certainly not at this time of day.
Arms across her robe, eyes narrowed, she asked in a strong Cornish accent, “Can I help you?”
“There’s a woman staying here, a friend, her name is Charlotte Griswell – I mean, Pembroke,” said Ruth, wishing she had done more to tame her own appearance. “She has red hair and she’s quite tall. I have to speak with her – it’s urgent, please.”
“I cannot wake a guest at this time in the morning.”
“I would not have come were it not a matter of life and death.”
It took a little convincing, but the owner of the inn was a reasonable woman and there was genuine distress in Ruth’s voice. Perhaps she herself had daughters; perhaps she saw in Ruth a memory of a time long gone. The inn door was opened. Ruth was beckoned inside and left alone in a dimly lit hallway. With each creak from the floorboards above, there was a worry that Griswell would find her first. A few moments alone with Lottie – that’s all she needed. The inn’s owner came back in no time at all, adjusting her nightcap and shaking her head in a baffled manner.
“They’re gone, both that girl and her father. It’s very odd. Their belongings remain and I was told they’d be leaving in the morning,” she said. “I know they came back from the ball. I saw them in myself. That girl was in a terrible state. I – I can’t think on where they’d be at this time. I didn’t even hear them leave.”
That was it then.
They had already left.
And with them was Isaac’s only chance at survival.
Because she believed Lottie had to know something. She trusted the woman would see sense; she had faith that all they had been through together wouldn’t mean nothing.
“Stay here by the fire until dawn, there’s a dear,” urged the woman. “It’s not safe out there for a girl your age.”
“I cannot,” murmured Ruth, stepping back, fumbling for the door handle, panic a shrill and constant note within her skull.
She had to save her husband.
Ruth’s feet took her further towards the harbour, where the ships rocked against the muddy morning hues that the sky took on. There were two men who sat idly as they watched over a vessel and played cards in low lantern light. In an age before, she would have been cautious about approaching them, wary, worried. But that was before.
“There was a woman with red hair staying at the inn this evening,” she said loudly, though not a single man moved or was startled by her approach, largely ignoring her in favour of their game. “Do you know when she left there, what time, where she was going – what direction?”
A grunt came from one sailor, his words holding a Yorkshire twinge. “Who wants to know? It’ll cost you.”
“Please, my name is Mrs Roscoe. I do not have any money, I—”
“Roscoe?” The sailor looked up, eyes bright. “You’re Isaac’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“I heard about that business at the ball. I heard a lot. It’s all anyone will talk about tonight.”
Lady Mawes’s warning words came back to Ruth. There was danger in being a Roscoe now, an unsaid threat.
“He did not do it,” said Ruth, hands bunched in her skirts, ready to run if those two were to give chase.
“I know – and I know your husband and all – the name’s Watts.” The man jerked his head to where the hillside rose up against the shore. “There was a girl who left not long ago. We thought she was sneaking back to her cuckolded husband, you know? Then this bastard asked us the same questions you did, only he weren’t half as pretty.”
“Did you tell him where she went?”
“I don’t talk to men like him. Oi, wait,” called the man after Ruth, for she had already turned on her heel, towards the coastal path, the one that stretched all the way back to her farmhouse. “Do you want help?”
“You have been a great help already,” said Ruth, wishing she had a grateful smile to give. “I know what I have to do.”
Ruth broke into a half-run. Their offer had been tempting, but she’d dismissed it in an instant. If she could get to Lottie, talk to her, she’d have the best chance at getting her to see sense. Two strangers would only complicate matters and could drive her friend further away.
The sky’s low morning light made the surroundings grey and cold. The path ahead sloped up, steep enough to burn her calves, and was well worn by the many feet who had trodden it before her own. There was a dangerous drop to her left, rising, falling, merging into sharp hills and sudden heights. If she kept on going like this, she’d go all the way home.
Is that where Lottie’s headed?
Ruth’s fingers were stiff and numb, her lips were chapped, and her boots rubbed against her heels. How far could Lottie have gone and to where? It was not like her to wander off, to leave comfort, to seek the outdoors. She detested it, saw no worth in pleasant scenery and kept far from nature whenever possible. Albert’s death must have affected her so severely to prompt such actions. Perhaps she had loved him? In her own fickle way.
In the distance, far, far away was a shape. It was slim, dark, hard to see.
“Lottie,” called Ruth, while the birds sang for the rising sun and the wind – racing across the sea – snaked up the cliff face to stir the ferns either side. “Lottie, it’s Ruth! Please, wait. I need to talk with you.”
A hand snatched out from the undergrowth and grabbed her. Ruth screamed despite herself, before she was pulled down, beside a scratchy gorse bush, to find Lottie. The girl’s face was as pale as the ashen moon that hung above them, her eyes red-rimmed and fearful. Truly fearful, a genuine emotion, one that was not carefully concocted or intentionally spiteful.
“Lottie,” said Ruth quietly, trying to calm the woman’s hands, ones that grasped for her wrists, her neck, her shoulders. “Calm down; look at me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s – it’s my father,” she stammered. “He – he killed Albert, he killed – he killed him.”
“I know,” said Ruth. “We have to get you inside, back in the warm.”
“He wants to lock me up – lock me away. I said I’d tell everyone what he did and I found this,” she groped in the bushes beside her and pulled out a jacket – Griswell’s jacket – splattered with blood. “It was in the carriage, under a seat. He hid it and he – he hit me when I asked him about it. The coach driver, he – he threatened to kill him too, told him to keep quiet. I can’t do this – Ruthie, I can’t.”
“Breathe. Look at me, copy me and breathe,” urged Ruth, holding her, rocking her, making soothing sounds in her throat. “We can fix this together. It will all be well.”
“He wanted the money,” hiccupped Lottie. “There were all these documents he made Albert sign before. I didn’t think on it; I didn’t realise. Business mergers, investments, agreements putting father in charge, and he’s got friends in high places, you see – he’d arranged it all.”
“We’ll get help.”
“Wait,” she hissed, holding Ruth close, wild and weeping. “I have to confess and you have to forgive me, for I knew what he was doing all those months ago. I helped him to break you and Albert apart, but I never thought he’d kill him. I only wanted what you had.” Ruth stiffened in her hold and Lottie only tried to clutch her tighter. “You were always braver and better than me. Everyone favoured you and I knew you’d leave me and never look back, that you’d be happy and rich and forget we were ever friends – and I – and I wanted to punish you for it, before you had a chance to do it at all.”
“I am not like you,” replied Ruth.
Lottie was crying silently, with large, fat tears running down her cheeks. “I know you’re not and I am sorry and if I could take it all back I would.”
“I wouldn’t, not now, even after everything.” Ruth pressed a kiss to her wet cheek and held her. “I forgive you; I will always forgive you.”
“Truly?”
“A life cannot be lived without mistakes and the chance to learn from them.” Though some, she knew, had been given one chance too many. “Come on, Lottie, we’ll go to the local magistrate. We’ll tell them everything.”
“If we move he’ll find me.”
Ruth heard footsteps, snapping branches, and remembered the person she had seen in the distance moments before Lottie had grabbed her. “I fear he already has.”
There was no way that Griswell had missed Ruth’s shouts, nor her shape. And Lottie had been too hysterical, too relieved at seeing her friend, to keep quiet. They were both fools, caught up in fear and doubt and shock, and now they’d pay for it.
“Why is it that someone so utterly inconsequential as you keeps getting in my way?”
Ruth turned to face Griswell. Her eyes did not meet his, but instead found the pistol he held close to her torso. She rose, slowly, though Lottie made a shivering, whining sound and tried to keep her close.
“All this for money?”
Griswell’s mouth twitched in annoyance. “What else is there?”
“Too many people know what you have done,” said Ruth. “Whatever fortune you have acquired will not save you now.”
“Too many people? Your husband has no chance at being believed and my daughter is a simpering, useless creature,” said the merchant. “She’ll be thought mad and I’ll keep her shut away, until she learns to behave herself.”
A wretched noise left the girl at their feet, for Lottie would not get up and couldn’t compel her legs to work. And yet Ruth saw her shuffle forwards, hiding the jacket under her skirts, shoving it deep into the undergrowth and away from the dawn’s probing fingers.
Clever girl.
No matter what happened to her today, Isaac would be safe. They had proof and a willing witness.