To Wed A Rebel (7 page)

“Not if you’re lucky,” he replied over his shoulder, feeling his guilt lessen with every step that took him from the girl and everything he might have done. “Goodbye, Miss Osbourne.”

Chapter Five

Ruth

“A toast,” announced Griswell. “To the happy couple.”

The merchant had returned to the opera box shortly after Ruth and she did not miss the cryptic look he gave her, nor the annoyed flicker on his beak-like face. Roscoe’s warning was still in her ears, the warmth of his hands still on her skin, bringing an unsettled knot to her stomach. It was over, whatever
it
had been. Weakness – every human was prone to it, even she. This had been her one slip-up, the stumble before the rest of her life began.
Mrs Pembroke
. She knew who she was meant to be. Who everyone expected her to be.

The evening passed by without event, until the moment when a glass was positioned in Ruth’s hand. Although she’d had wine before, it had always been little sips, a drink in moderation, for her uncle disapproved. Not due to religious reasons, but due to the price. Alcohol was expensive and mishaps caused by intoxication even more so, both to a man’s pockets and his character.

Albert spotted her hesitation and gave her a meaningful look. The evening at the opera had gone poorly. Ruth knew she had been inattentive and lacking in enthusiasm. Her husband-to-be had noticed. To not drink would be to further insult him. Even Lottie shot Ruth a severe glance. Did they sense her reluctance? Ruth could not help but think on what her uncle might say at her conduct, at how she jeopardised all their futures.

Don’t be a burden
, her mother had said.
Don’t be a burden, my darling.

The wine had a queer, familiar taste.

Another toast, fuzzed words, Griswell’s piercing eyes.

Ruth put the glass to her lips again, until the entertainment before them was a distorted blur. The costumes, at first enchanting, now seemed like twisted, mocking devils. The floor sloped, her seat tipped, distant singers split in half, two bodies with mirror movements.

“A little air is all she needs.”

The glass was wrenched from her hand, barely touched, a few mere mouthfuls gone.

Griswell’s voice, she heard her name, a clicking tongue followed by Albert’s wet words, thick fingers, and Lottie’s fan inches from her face.

Cobblestones.

There shouldn’t be cobblestones in a theatre.

The air was sharper, a sudden coldness. They were outside.

Movement – a carriage – brought a half-formed question, perched on her lips, clumsy. Her chaperone didn’t answer.

“That’s right, don’t fight it,” she heard Griswell say. “Sleep. It will make this all the easier for you – for both of us.”

Chapter Six

Isaac

Isaac wasn’t drunk, more’s the pity, but he was getting there. Port added a welcome numbness to his movements, until his joints were liquid and his head swam. It wasn’t enough. He was still painfully in the present. London grime was thick on his skin. The gin bars and brothels on Drury Lane were packed in the humid evening. The noise – like a locust’s hum – filtered up through the floorboards to his rented room. He missed the clear Cornish air and the old, rundown house his father had left to him – the only thing he’d left. It had to be a ruin by now. Isaac hadn’t seen it in years, but he needed a place to lie low and that would do. Tonight hadn’t gone as planned. The merchant had been meant to catch him with Ruth, in a compromising position – or something that could have been misconstrued as such. But he couldn’t do it, not to her. He’d take Griswell’s money and flee, revisit the haunted place he’d not set eyes on since he went off to sea.

A knock rattled the door.

“There’s a gentleman to see you, sir,” said the kitchen boy, a grubby, reedy child who probably wouldn’t live to see the year’s end.

Isaac didn’t answer. It was either someone he owed money to, a cuckolded husband, or an irate gambler who’d bet too much money on him and lost it over the last fight he’d thrown.

“Sir?” Another insistent knock. “Look, see I told ya, he’s not in.”

“Roscoe, open the damned door.” Griswell’s instruction was sharp. “It’s time to fulfil your end of the bargain.”

Isaac eyed the window. It was too great a drop onto the street below. No way out, nowhere to run. And he was
so
good at running. It was all he’d known for a long time.

The kitchen boy spoke again. “That lady going to be all right, sir? She’s all pale-lookin’. Want me to send for someone?”

Lady.
Isaac stood, braced over the wash-table, with water dripping into the basin.
No.
A loping stumble and he was at the door, sliding back the lock and dragging it open with a stiff creak. The kitchen boy’s eyes – sunken with poverty – were wide and round as he looked from Griswell to Isaac to the third person; a half-conscious woman, propped up on the merchant’s arm like a scarecrow.

“Miss Osbourne?”

The girl didn’t answer and Griswell forced himself into their room, pulling the lifeless woman in with him, to the ragged cot in the corner.

“What did you do?” Isaac was beside her, pushing her hair back from her bloodless face, finding her unresponsive.

“Laudanum,” said Griswell.

“You could’ve killed her.” She was breathing. He could feel her chest rise and fall, though it was a shallow movement. She’d live, she’d live.

“It was a calculated risk I had to take.”

“We need a doctor – anyone, someone.”

“No.” There was no concern on Griswell’s part, as he stood, unruffled, over the young woman. He turned to the kitchen boy, dropped a few coins into his expectant palm, and told him there’d be more if he kept quiet, before dismissing him. No one had seen them enter. The merchant had made sure of that – Griswell’s own reputation would be fine. Isaac was known to be a cad. This would not affect him in the least. The girl, however, was ruined. Even if Isaac managed to get her out and back across the city, it was all in Griswell’s hands – the puppetmaster, who had set the scene and controlled the outcome.

Isaac shook his head, a hand to his mouth. “I didn’t – I didn’t agree to this.”

“So long as you take my money, you’ll agree to whatever I want.”

“You cannot leave her here, they’ll all think—”

“Yes,” confirmed Griswell. “They will.”

“The deal is off.” Isaac pushed himself to his feet. He was broad, tall and strong. The merchant was an old, sallow man. There was no competition between them and Isaac enjoyed the sudden fear in his eyes. “Take her home, to where she belongs. I will not let you compromise her like this.”

Griswell flinched, but his tone remained level. “Don’t say you’ve grown soft, Roscoe?”

“I want no part in this.”

“If you’d done as I asked, these drastic measures could have been avoided.” The merchant looked over to where the sleeping girl lay, boredom etched into his features. “And stop posturing. There’s no need for violence; let’s not get the authorities involved. No one will care much for the girl’s fate, but strike a gentleman and there shall certainly be consequences.”

“You will pay for this.”

“I already have: I paid you.”

Isaac clenched his fists around empty air. A quick jab to the throat and Griswell would be on the floor, eyes bulging, clawing for air. But as impulsive as Isaac was, he wasn’t a simpleton. Hurting him wouldn’t help the matter.

Although,
he thought,
it would make me feel a lot better.

“The discovery will be made in the morning, when she’s had time to wake up. I’d advise you to leave this place early, Roscoe, and to make sure you’re seen, so that the wrong conclusions can be made by the right people.”

They’d assume it was a secret meeting, an affair, two lovers who could keep apart no longer. Because they didn’t know Ruth; they weren’t to know she was a perfect, bland and dowdy housewife. No, not a housewife, not yet, and now she never would be.
Poor fool.

“She doesn’t deserve this.”

“Don’t tell me you like the girl?” The merchant paused in the doorway, with a pitying expression. “Oh, it’s more than that, I see.” A callous, mocking laugh almost tipped Isaac over the edge and had him forget common sense, the deal, his money. “You two do make a fine pair, Roscoe.”

In the slim seconds before a fight is to take place, there’s a calm rage, a quiet anger. Isaac felt it now. “If it’s to be like this, then give me what you promised or you will not leave this room intact.”

Griswell was too clever to be within hitting range. He took a hasty step backwards, one hand reaching out to ensure the door was where he’d left it. “What’s owed to you will be paid once my daughter is wed to Pembroke and no sooner.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

To any of this, to that lost girl lying a short distance away.

“What choice do you have?”

None.

And he’d gone too far to back out now.

***

Only when the sky grew pale, with the colour running away at the edges, did Ruth stir. Isaac hadn’t slept. He kept his back to the door, legs splayed across the uneven floorboards, having listened to the downstairs sounds reach their drunken crescendo, before petering out in the early morning hours.

There was a groggy noise – a strangled, startled sound – and Ruth dragged herself up – too quickly, it seemed, for her fingers folded around the cot’s sides for support. Her bleary gaze finally settled on Isaac and he did not shy from it, though shame rankled in his guts.

Isaac didn’t move. “I couldn’t leave without making sure you were…” Again, as seemed to be the pattern around her, his usual charisma drained away. What was he meant to say after all that had taken place?

“You?” She was not yet fully lucid, though her gaze spun around the room wildly. “What?”

“Griswell brought you here last night. He arranged it all, to make it look as if…as if we…” Isaac trailed off, slowly getting to his feet, body knotted with dull aches. “He wants his own daughter married to that buffoon, but I didn’t think that he would…that it would come to this…”

Would she scream, shriek, throw things? He wouldn’t blame her; he wouldn’t stop her either. Let her punish him. He could take a hit; he could take a thousand.

“No.” Ruth bent forwards, still in her frumpy gown, hands pressed to her face. Silence found root and Isaac wouldn’t break it, not until she was ready. After a few minutes, Ruth spoke. “I will explain this to my uncle; he will believe me,” she said hurriedly into her palms, staring at them as though they didn’t belong to her. “If you tell him what you know, then—”

“The damage is done, love,” replied Isaac softly. “The word will be across London by now, if Griswell is as efficient as I suspect he is.”

“I am not your
love
,” she snarled. “I am supposed to be Mrs Pembroke.” Even as she said this to herself, the doubt seemed thick on her tongue and he could only watch her face crumple, as realisation set in.

And yet she didn’t cry.

He waited for it, but the tears never came.

“I have some money. I can leave it with you,” said Isaac gently. “I’ve paid for the room until the week’s end.”

“Get out,” she whispered, her words steel and ice and stone.

“Let me at least—”

“You have done enough, sir,” she told him, eyes rimmed red. “Trust me on that.”

Gone was that cautious, awkward creature – the one he’d met barely a few nights ago. This woman knew she was an outcast, soon to be abandoned by society, lost, damaged goods, unless Pembroke still wanted her.
No.
Isaac knew men like Pembroke. He knew he’d never take her on now.

He could see the thoughts moving behind her eyes, the plans, the mental process, the letters she would surely write and the solutions she would seek.

She was a practical woman, yes, she would be fine – he needn’t worry – this wasn’t his fault. Women like her were survivors, weren’t they? Like he’d had to be.

Isaac moved automatically and without thinking. He grabbed his meagre possessions, all stowed in a satchel across his shoulder. The morning sun was already on the thin, poorly made windows, mottled with grit. He had never been here for the end result, to witness what happened afterwards to those whose fortunes he’d sabotaged. It hadn’t ever been like this before; the others had been different. They’d deserved it – or he’d told himself that to soothe what little conscience he had left.

“Mr Roscoe.” She said his name like a curse, a promise. It forced him to halt in the doorway. He would hear her; he owed her that much. “I never thought I had it in me to hate anyone,” said Ruth coldly, as she pulled herself up onto her feet, hardly strong enough to stand. “Not until this very day, this moment.”

Isaac nodded, his back to her, unwilling to face his sins. He was set on forgetting her, and all he had done, as soon as he stepped from the room and left that rotten city – a city capable of corrupting even the best of men. But fate had a different plan.

Part Two

Chapter One

Isaac

A wild swing caught Isaac across his jaw. The smack thudded through his skull, head snapping back. That would hurt tomorrow. But tomorrow was a world away, unreachable, intangible. All that he felt now was the copper tang on his tongue, the ringing in his ears, the aches and bruises darkening his ribs. His opponent was as bare-chested as he was, a brute twice his bulk, with a face not even a mother could love. Well, unless she was blind, deaf and dumb.

The Oak, they called him, thick as a tree – in body and mind. Though he was slow, he made up for it in strength. One good blow and it would be all over. Everyone knew what the Oak could do and everyone remembered the men he’d killed. And no one would bet against him on that mild, drizzly, August afternoon in Brighton. Isaac was as good as dead.

Knuckles split, Isaac grinned, a red sheen across his teeth.

He’d never felt more alive.

“Come on then,” he beckoned. “Is that it?”

There was no fear, no thought to the end result, nothing, only that moment – the fight, the thrill, the adrenaline in his system – the money waiting when he won. Because he would win this one, not like the others when he’d been paid to throw it, to fall. That would be suicide, to lose a fight with a man this size. He wasn’t that desperate, not yet.