by Sophie Dash
***
One step, a shoe placed over the inn’s threshold, was all it took for the landlady to pounce. It was as though she had been lying in wait for them both or listening to all that had taken place outside. Ruth was certain she had, for the woman who introduced herself as Mrs Bell – exceptionally short, loud and blonde – would not pause for breath for long enough to let Ruth speak. Mrs Bell’s small, strong hands steered Ruth into a narrow room with clean tables and a roasted root vegetable smell.
“We’ve been expecting you! It’s all prepared, don’t fret, m’dear,” crowed the landlady, bustling back and forth with various items of crockery. “Don’t you look famished! These special days are ever so exhausting and the bride always fares the worst.” She placed her hands on her stomach and leant back on her heels. “It’s the excitement – it does so pull on the nerves. I was a wreck when I married our Henry, bless his soul.” A spoon was set before Ruth, and Mrs Bell smiled a broad smile. “There, girl, get that down you.”
A thick broth and a large hunk of bread faced Ruth, along with a rather rustic glass filled with strong gin. Mrs Bell was talking again, to Isaac this time, who was given the same treatment and endless chatter.
“There’s no need to stand on ceremony with us,” were her parting words, before the landlady was off to talk loudly to another customer.
There was a distant cheer from the other end of the room, for word – or rather gossip – had travelled quickly around the inn.
“To the happy pair,” slurred a bearded fellow who raised his tankard high. “And to many healthy children!” Others around him echoed the toast, until the entire inn was ringing with it and other encouragements. “Best you two get started, eh?”
A deep red tarnished Ruth’s cheeks. She risked a glance upwards. Isaac had done the same and was looking straight at her. Without another second passing, Isaac reached for his glass and poured the contents down his throat. It had nothing to do with the toast and everything to do with a dire need to drink.
“Are you going to—”
“Yes,” snapped Ruth, snatching up her own glass before he could take it.
The strong smell crept up her nostrils and her stomach turned at the thought. She had never tried gin, but any small victory had to be claimed, didn’t it? Only, the last time Ruth had consumed alcohol, the drink had been laced with another substance. She could still remember that morning, waking up to find Isaac watching her, marred with pity. The clear liquid swirled around the glass, catching the lamplight. The same panic and horror threatened to dawn on her once more, until another’s hand closed around hers. Isaac’s fingers were on her own and he gently guided the glass back down to the table, as if he knew exactly where her mind had wandered and longed to draw her away from it. The contact made Ruth’s heart skip to her throat, before he pulled away.
The pair ate in silence and Ruth’s appetite returned after the first mouthful. The food was nothing special, but after the past few hours and how little she had eaten in the days before, it tasted wonderful.
“I shall go and check on the room,” said Isaac, a thin excuse to leave that she was grateful for. His chair scraped the floorboards as he stood and she heard every movement he made, every step he took, unable to shut herself off from him.
As soon as he was gone from her immediate surroundings Mrs Bell was back. She took the seat he’d been sitting in, let her strong arm fall across the table, and gripped Ruth’s shoulder.
“Watch yourself, girl,” said Mrs Bell, the jovial tone gone, replaced by one far more serious. “That lad’s famous around these parts for brawling. He’s dangerous. I’ve known his type before. The ones that’ve lost too often to ever seek anything else, who’d rather destroy themselves than let the world do it first. It never bodes well for the young girls caught up with beasts like him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Best you toughen up, child,” she said, with a voice that spoke from experience and bitter wisdom. “Or you’ll never survive him.”
Ruth could not hide her shock at the sudden unwelcome warning. “You don’t know me.”
“I know how this ends,” said Mrs Bell. “If you’ve any sense, you’ll get as far away from him while you still can. I’ve a sister who helps lambs like you. She’ll take you in, give you food and board for a good day’s work—”
“No.” Ruth sat back heavily in her chair, having expected more indecision when faced with such a prospect. Freedom. A life away from the stranger who’d hurt her and all the responsibilities she’d ever had related to her station, her family, herself. This was it, a last chance, a final choice, and that was no choice at all. “I appreciate what it is you are trying to do, but I have never run from anything in my life and I will not start now.”
***
The problem Ruth found upon making any choice was that she pondered on it for hours, days, weeks afterwards. Had she done the right thing? Ruth left the table having asked the location of her sleeping quarters for the night and couldn’t stop her thoughts whirring away. The last door along a narrow hallway was where she would sleep and where Isaac was.
That offer plagued her. A chance to run, to start a new life, one that may be no worse nor better than the one facing her as Mrs Roscoe. Shouldn’t she give it a chance? Give him a chance? A nagging reminder told her that she had put her faith in him before and he’d let her down. Ruth’s hand was steady on the door’s handle and she pushed it down and let it fall open. There he was, facing away from her, bare from the waist up with his hair wet and water running down his back in slow, sluggish drops. A dull lamp stood on the windowsill and it bathed him in amber, shone on his skin. It was not common sense that held sway. It was another part within her, a forbidden corner that wanted to know him – truly know him – in a way she’d never known a man before.
A rustle from her skirts caused him to turn to face her. When he pushed his damp hair back from his face, she noticed his split knuckles and saw that the shadows under his ribs and along his back were not shadows at all. They were scars and bruises and secrets he had not shared with her.
“I am sorry,” said Ruth, casting her eyes away and finding the bed to her left, which hardly helped her harried thoughts. “I did not mean to disturb you.”
Isaac chose not to answer and instead reached for his shirt and shrugged it on. She closed the door, her fingers resting on the handle, hesitant.
Their overnight bags had been brought up to the room and Ruth found her battered case. There was a screen to change behind and too many steps needed to reach it. Once she was there, with a divide between them, she finally released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. It did not matter if Ruth could not see Isaac; she knew exactly where he was in the room at all times. It was a sixth sense, a weight against her chest, an anticipation. The bed creaked when he sat upon it and Ruth began to change quickly, methodically, focusing on that task and trying not to think on any others.
Isaac’s voice disturbed her actions, pausing her fingers as they worked the fastenings on her dress free.
“You had a chance to get away,” he said, giving her no opportunity to respond as she stepped from her petticoat. “I needed another drink. The gin didn’t do the trick. I went back downstairs and there was that old trout offering you a key, an escape from this prison.” The shift slipped over Ruth’s shoulders, though she still felt exposed by his words, by all she hadn’t meant for him to hear. “Why didn’t you take it?”
It was not cold in the room and yet she could not suppress a shiver.
“I have brought enough shame upon my family. I did not want to add to it,” she lied, for the truth was nothing she could admit to herself, let alone to him.
Ruth moved from the screen and saw he was still there on the bed. Sat with his elbows on his knees, facing away from her, giving her privacy, pretending he was a gentleman when they both knew the menace he was.
“Besides,” she added, as she dug her nails into her palm, as s
he tried to rein in her own tumultuous emotions. “I knew my sudden disappearance would make your life all the easier.”
A broken laugh and Isaac said, “And you wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?”
With slow, lazy movements, Isaac got to his feet and rolled his shoulders back, standing straighter, taller, as if to remind Ruth how utterly outmatched she was.
“You heard the woman,” he said, slowly walking around the bed. “I am dangerous.” Although his stroll seemed aimless, distracted, it was clear that he was approaching her. “I am a beast.”
When Mrs Bell had given her the warning, Ruth had been unable to fully believe it, to commit her mind to those dreadful thoughts. Here, now, as he repeated those same sinister words, they were impossible to refute. Every soul has a darker side and she could see his written all over his face. In those unfathomable eyes and lying in the curve of his mouth. She took a step back for those he took forwards. And another, and another, and another, until there was nowhere left to step.
“Here’s a little advice, love,” he growled, as her back hit a solid surface and he fenced her in, an arm either side, palms flat on the wall. “When you’re given the chance to run, you run.”
There was a second – that stretched into a minute – where he watched her as she watched him. Run? That was the logical choice, the one she should’ve made. And she could still make it. There was an alternative path to be taken. One where she darted from him, shoved on her clothes and stole away with all the items she could carry. Despite the thin shift she wore, the mere inches between them, and the predatory pose he had adopted, she stood her ground. It wasn’t much. A set to her jaw, a narrowing of her eyes, a small defiance that told him she would go nowhere.
“You’ll never survive me.”
At last, Ruth said, “You are trying to scare me away.”
“Is it working?”
“I think it’s all too little, too late,” she said softly, holding up her left hand to show the wedding ring. “The damage is done.”
An exasperated grunt fell from him as he pushed away from the wall, distancing himself from her. “I am trying to help you.”
“I am not an idiot; I know you are only trying to help yourself.” It dawned on her, like a freezing gust from an open window. “You believe that woman. You believe all those things she said.”
“Don’t you? No.” Isaac cut off any response she could have given, as though sparing himself, their argument fizzling out when the subject matter strayed too close to a sore subject. “It’s been too long a day.”
And the pair still had a very long night to get through.
***
A few inches away from Ruth, across the peaks and falls the covers made between legs and arms and hands, was Isaac. The close proximity had brought a fever to her skin as she waited and wanted—
I don’t know what I want.
The opportunity to leave had presented itself and she hadn’t taken it. Had she fooled herself when she’d thought relief had flashed across Isaac’s face? She had been so utterly determined to make him the enemy when he’d beaten her to it. Where had his easy arrogance gone and what did it hide? Quietly, with as little sound as she could muster, she turned to him. Isaac’s eyes were closed though she was sure he wasn’t sleeping, his profile highlighted by the lamp’s small glow.
The room was sweltering on that August night and the covers stuck to her skin. She wanted to kick them off. Everything. The bed sheets, her clothes, the heavy air that had pressed her down into the mattress. Anything and everything that had come between herself and him. A feverish anticipation encircled her and sleep wouldn’t find her.
Neither did Isaac.
Doesn’t he want me?
Chapter Five
Isaac
God, he wanted her. Isaac could barely trust himself because of it. He had desired Ruth from that very moment he had spied her in the orangery. When he had grown lost for words at that carefree smile and had not been able to fathom why. Of course, when he had finally worked out the reason, it was far too late to pull back, to not get hurt.
Isaac couldn’t sleep.
He didn’t think he’d ever be able to sleep. Not if it meant that each hour trying to chase slumber was to be spent beside her. He knew every crack in the wall’s plaster. When he closed his eyes, he could still trace the patterns in the dusty cobwebs above, long-abandoned by their architects.
She had stayed.
Ruth had been given one final opportunity to leave him, to escape a lifetime chained to him after all he’d done, and she had stayed.
I don’t understand it.
Every expectation had been quashed today. The woman had turned up to the ceremony for a start and it had all ticked over like clockwork. Isaac had assumed she would take the last chance to refuse him at the altar, that she’d cry hysterically throughout the entire journey, that she would run when given the first opportunity. For that’s what he would have done, were he in her battered shoes.
What did that mean? She hadn’t forgiven him. He doubted she ever would. And he would never delude himself into thinking the pair ever stood a chance at happiness. The slap across his cheek told him it was folly to hope.
Earlier, stood on the inn’s rickety, worn staircase, paused midway down, he’d heard Mrs Bell’s well-meaning comments. The crone had revealed all that he’d ever feared about himself to the woman he was now wed to. And still here she was – Ruth Osbourne – no, Roscoe. She was a Roscoe now and carried his name.
Why hadn’t she heeded the warning?
The slightest rustles from the bed’s other side were maddening: the inhalations and exhalations, soft sounds. It was as though he could even hear the fall her eyelashes made when they dusted the pillow. Isaac had been with many women, and yet to lie here, beside her, felt like the most intimate thing he’d ever known. Those past relationships had been fickle, short-lived, loveless. An agreement between two people who expected nothing more and gave little away. He didn’t want that with Ruth.
He hadn’t known his heart could beat this hard. That his body could be this restless. That the soil beneath his shoes could feel loose whenever he stood there, before her. If he leaned over the bed and kissed her, held her, made her forget that she didn’t love him…
I want what I can’t have.
That’s all this was. A simple fascination with a child’s dream, a notion that love could prevail, because it was pure and good and noble and everything he wasn’t. How could she feel anything aside from utter loathing towards him after all he’d done? Isaac was a monster to her. That’s all he’d ever be.
He’d never try to convince her otherwise. He wouldn’t risk it. He’d never ask her to stay.
Let her keep her disdain and her aloofness. It was better this way, to have a barrier between them, one he would never cross. It was safer. Yes, he wanted her. He had done for a long time, had even tried to get the desire beaten from him. Even worse than wanting her was wanting her to want him back. And that, he knew, was a need that would destroy him.
***
Morning was slow to present itself. Isaac willed the sun to rise faster. Despite his exhaustion, rest never came, for his head would not clear. When colour finally began to return to the world, he slipped from the bed. He was careful not to disturb the other shape beneath the covers, who had found the sleep he’d been deprived of. How at ease she looked, how content. The hardness, the protective shell she wore when facing him, was gone. The small frown line that would appear between her eyebrows had been lost. The slight downward tilt to her mouth had been abandoned. There was even half a smile there, a dream, perhaps, from a better time, before him.
With a ragged sigh, Isaac forced his attention elsewhere and pulled on a set of clean, untravelled clothes. It was too early to start torturing himself, not when he had the whole lonely day ahead for that sole purpose. Was it the right choice to leave her now? It had to be. He could not do this again; he could not survive another night s
uch as this. Lying so close to her, thinking on her, mistrusting himself, hoping that—
The softest sound, a humming exhalation, and she was awake.
There was a mumble, an apology, an averting of eyes when she saw his undressed state that Isaac found all too amusing.
“I…” He trailed off, facing the wall rather than her. “I am going on ahead.”
“Pardon?”
Isaac turned to her while he dragged on his shirt. Ruth was raking her fingers through her mussed hair, knees drawn up under the covers, in a stunning disarray he had never seen her in before.
Damn.
If only he had been forced to marry a woman he didn’t actually want, one who didn’t have the capacity to wound him with the simplest look. How much easier this would all be…
“There are too many preparations to make. It would be irresponsible of me to ignore them any longer.” He had rehearsed those lines in his head so often over the course of the night that they sounded flat and unconvincing now. “It’s best I go on alone.”
That wasn’t disappointment in her features. Isaac wouldn’t fool himself. Perhaps she feared travelling by herself? That explanation made far more sense.
“The driver will be with you,” he assured her, focusing on the dull buttons on his jacket, the scuffs on his boots, anything that wasn’t her.
The sheets were held in bunches in her hands when a question came. “Have I done something wrong?”
Isaac was not sure he’d heard her correctly, because she had done nothing – at all – wrong. Ever. Their entire situation was down to him and him alone, although that bat Griswell had a lot to take responsibility for. Isaac could not read Ruth’s expression either, nor root out wherever that notion had come from. “Why would you think that?”