To Wed A Rebel

by Sophie Dash

  “She wants me reformed,” he added bitterly.

  Ruth did not hide her unkind expression – reformation seemed far beyond a man like him.

  “It’s a game; it always is with her.” Isaac pressed his palms into the wood grain, teeth gritted. “She’s got vast amounts of money and she’ll play us off against one another until the day she dies. My cousin wants to get his hands on it too. That’s why he puts up with her in the summer months. It’s a competition for her favour and I lost that a long time ago.”

  And now Ruth was caught up in the mix too.

  “Then why even pander to them?” she asked.

  “She is what’s keeping me in this place, keeping my cousin from taking it all. We – we never got on, Colin and I. Even as boys.” He shook his head. “We’ve – he – we’re different. He’s never liked me.”

  “Who couldn’t like you?”

  Isaac gave her a thin smile in return.

  “Oh, but rest assured,” he warned. “Whatever my great-aunt is planning, you can bet you’ll be a part of it, love.”

  Chapter Nine

  Isaac

  An unrequested carriage from Trewince turned up in the courtyard two days after the letter arrived, as had been promised. Isaac wanted to walk the hour or so through fields, woods and brambles, to turn up like a bad penny in a sorry state. The old woman, Lady Mawes, had anticipated his mood. She sent a carriage ahead. She made up his mind for him. A sign that his bad behaviour would not be tolerated. As he readied himself, Ruth barely spoke to him and he had no idea of what to say to her either. With every hour that passed, every day, the black abyss between them was fed and grew wider, until he had no way to cross it – and he did want to.

  Where would he start?

  Every time he saw her, guilt knotted his insides. He was angry, not with her, with himself, only he didn’t know quite how to explain the difference.

  At least their sleeping arrangement was… Well, it wasn’t working. The study was uncomfortable at best, but it was better than the alternative. Than forcing that situation on her, when he’d forced so much. It had been a week since the fight, since he had holed up in the farmhouse, and the pair lived like spectres, passing through spaces, vacant. They barely spoke, only crossing in the hallway to exchange awkward, stilted words. He slept during the day, moving to the bed when she awoke – always early, to occupy herself doing God knows what. The bed always held her shape in the sheets, but if ever he met her eyes in the small evening hours when they were both awake, he received only her vacant stare.

  And he had no way to fix it.

  When she had fallen asleep beside him, exhausted from worry, he had been able to fool himself, however briefly, that she was his. Completely, not only in law. That he’d found a woman who meant something to him. He wasn’t that man, to want such things. And she certainly did not want him. Why open himself up to that, to her, when it would do him no good? Ruth was no better than a forbidden dream, a reminder of all he had forsaken long ago.

  “Are you going to wear that?” The question escaped him before he could rope it back, waiting for her outside the ramshackle farmhouse on the morning they were to leave. Ruth climbed into the phaeton looking more like a governess than his wife, accepting his hand with some hesitation. A bitter thought crept into his mind, unwelcome, unwanted. He’d been with duchesses and countesses, women with spectacular wealth and fine dresses who had grown obsessed with him and lavished him with gifts. Now, caught out, he was saddled with her.

  No, if anything, it was she who had been caught out and stuck with him.

  “Unless you would like to reveal an entire wardrobe packed with elaborate gowns that you have been keeping from me then yes, I am. I should think you’d be more concerned about the state of your face than my appearance,” she snapped, defensive, and Isaac realised he’d said the wrong thing again. “It’s the best I have,” she added, quieter. “It’s what I wore at the academy.”

  “It looks fine,” he said. “My apologies.”

  Lady Mawes would not be pleased, but he kept that thought to himself. The woman seemed nervous enough as it was, hands scrunched into her lap, teeth pressed into her lip. If only he could comfort her, if only he knew what to say that wasn’t I’m sorry.

  “My family aren’t – well – it’s hard to explain,” he said, as their journey began, as he pulled at his cuffs. The split on his mouth had healed a little, but the bruises on his cheek were still noticeable. Faded, purplish, yellowed marks. “Lady Mawes is not a woman you want to displease.”

  “How did she come to have such a hold over you?”

  Over both of us, he guessed she meant to say, for now they came as a pair – however much they wished it otherwise.

  Isaac debated giving her a throwaway answer, but instead settled on the truth. If she didn’t hear it from him, she’d hear it from someone else soon enough and perhaps already had.

  “Lady Mawes has always been frugal and she married for money, while her brother squandered all he’d inherited and passed the debts to his firstborn. After my father lost the estate…” He struggled to find words that did not convey the bitterness he still harboured. “The mines failed, the debts mounted and Lady Mawes would not see her family seat fall into ruin. Colin, my cousin, hasn’t the sense to manage on his own.”

  “All this for a house?”

  “It’s more than that; it’s the place she was happiest,” he surmised. “My great-aunt is clever, her solicitors even more so. She provides me with a small allowance. It’s enough to get by and any further savings I want, I secure myself.”

  Isaac did not miss the distaste in her next question. “By brawling?”

  “I am good for little else.” Ruth did not correct him on that point. “If my great-aunt gave me any further funding, before long I wouldn’t need her and she would lose whatever leverage she still has over me. Now we’re both here, under her thumb, to make pretend at prosperity for all Wessex society to see. This dinner is only the start. It will get much worse.”

  Ruth did not meet his gaze. Instead her attention was on the golden fields, half-shorn now that the harvest had arrived, and on the sky, an oppressive grey that threatened a storm that had yet to arrive.

  “There will be numerous balls to attend, along with dinners and dances with dreary people,” he added, trying to draw her gaze.

  “I am sure it will not be that bad,” she answered automatically, only filling in the gaps in their forced conversation. She was far away from him, mulling over old worries and fresh concerns.

  It irked him.

  “There will be talk about us,” he warned.

  “Yes,” she agreed, blank, listless.

  He’d seen her like this before, when he’d first met her, lifeless amongst all those fakes and fops.

  “The parties I usually attend are a little wilder, more riots, really,” he added casually.

  “Oh?”

  “I should take you to one, though clothes are optional.”

  “Yes, I would like – wait, what?”

  “It’ll be all drunkenness and debauchery. I am sure you’ll enjoy it.”

  “I do not think so,” she said firmly, but he had her attention now, her anger.

  Isaac would rather that than cold indifference.

  He could stand anything but that.

  “There’s a whole world out there you know nothing about, Miss Osbourne.”

  “It is Mrs Roscoe now,” she corrected him quietly. “Remember?”

  How could I forget?

  Isaac went to reply, thought better of it, and sat back in his seat instead. Neither said another word, not until they left the hamlets and endless rolling fields behind, when an intimidating structure peered out through the woods and stained the horizon.

  ***

  Trewince was a grand house, built in an era long gone, when England’s civil war had blighted the country and times were far harder. Wind-breaking trees surrounded it, blocking out the majority of the l
ight. Although the overcast day was warm, it felt as though autumn had already wormed its way into this part of Cornwall and had brought a chill with it.

  The place hadn’t changed. Isaac could spot the oak he’d climbed when he was eleven, the lawn he’d chased the dogs on, the old chapel only the bats attended now. It had been home when his father had lost it all, when the old man had been incapable and incompetent, before they put him in the ground. Isaac had been taken in, much to his cousin’s dislike. They were opposites and one boy’s strengths highlighted the other’s weaknesses. Isaac was wild and strong, whereas his cousin Colin was sickly and sour.

  Or he had been – there was no way to know the man he’d face now.

  The phaeton halted outside the imposing front entrance and Isaac was glad to have something to do, a task to occupy himself with, even if it was only climbing from the carriage and needlessly assisting his wife. It was hard to grow accustomed to that fact. That he had a wife.

  The only one to meet them was an ageing servant, who muttered about how the family was “round the back” in the intermittent sunshine: Lady Mawes’s orders.

  The old man looked set to lead them through the house, until Isaac muttered, “I know the way.”

  Dark wood panels, scowling portraits and rich furnishings lined the hallway. They were not welcoming, each one seeming to give judgement. A door was ahead, wide open, a rectangle of bright sunlight that had escaped the cloud cover. He could hear voices humming in the garden, sharp and unwelcome.

  Isaac had been dreading this moment since the day he’d left, knowing he’d one day have to come back, face them and everything he had tried to leave behind.

  Before he walked forwards onto the outside patio, a hand fell on his arm. The pressure, however light, stung the scrape that was still healing and had him grit his teeth.

  “I – I am sorry – it’s only – hold still,” said Ruth, at his sudden intake of breath. She reached out, crossed the divide between them, and pulled a stray leaf from his hair. It was an awkward, unconscious action that he could tell she regretted the moment it was given.

  For it was given, a gift, a small consideration between two people forced into an impossible situation.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She only nodded, eyes averted until he proffered his arm, the uninjured one.

  A heartbeat, an eternity, skimmed by until she took it.

  The sun blinded them both at first and a stern voice said loudly, “There you are, Isaac. I couldn’t wait around indoors any longer. It’s far too stuffy. Now, come here.”

  Unlike the building’s front, the back was more open, with a large terrace overlooking tidy, soulless grounds. Square hedges fenced in a wide, flat lawn. Pale statues stood to attention by trees that had been butchered into peculiar, symmetrical shapes. It was far different from what Isaac remembered, for now there were no flowers, no overgrown shrubs, no places to explore: it had no heart. Although it was lavish, it was exceedingly dull. A peacock’s shrill cry sounded in the distance – a white speck pecking at a topiary – an albino. Not even the birds had been left their colours.

  “Isaac?”

  He pulled his gaze from the scenery and to his great-aunt, who sat with poise on a garden chair, a plain parasol above her head. Her hair was snowy, her cheekbones high, her eyes sharp – she was a woman who could almost be ageless, a gracefully matured beauty, as striking as the day she was first presented to high society as a bright young thing.

  “Let me look at you.” She took a deep breath. “You are not that gangly boy I saw all those years ago, are you?”

  “It is a pleasure to see you too, Lady Mawes.”

  “Is it?”

  Isaac did not even try to lie.

  “What on earth happened to your face? No, do not tell me, I can guess.”

  “I fell off a horse,” said Isaac unconvincingly, sharing a furtive look with Ruth.

  “It must have been a very tall horse. You have grown, haven’t you? You’re far stronger than you were, what a man ought to be.” The jibe was not aimed at anyone in particular, but Isaac felt his cousin’s stare at his back, heard his boots upon the flagstones.

  “This is my wife,” said Isaac, finally recalling himself.

  “I gathered that,” said Lady Mawes, as she pursed her lips. Isaac felt nervous. Not for himself, but for Ruth, as though she were an extension of him, as though they were the same being. “You will sit beside me, Mrs Roscoe,” added the old woman. “There is much to discuss. You needn’t bother with the others. You will come to know them soon enough, even if you wished you hadn’t.”

  Ruth did as she was bid. Isaac found he wanted to grasp her, stop her, apologise for all he knew would take place though words were beyond use. What could he say that would ever be enough? She’d made it perfectly clear where they stood.

  “Off you go, Isaac,” said Lady Mawes. “Leave us.”

  Dismissed. He locked eyes with Ruth, who gave the slightest nod, and he left them to it.

  A stone’s throw away, waiting for him, stood Colin. Their contrasts could not be more apparent. Colin was fair where Isaac was dark. There was a translucent quality to his skin and a reedy, uneven shape to him. Stomach a little too round, arms a little too thin, face a little too stretched.

  They bypassed the normal greeting, favouring a stilted incline of the head. The man’s wife was nearby, a robust woman who gave him a disinterested smile over her fan, abandoned embroidery on her lap. Beside her was another woman who was equally cheerless: Colin’s sister Jemima. Unmarried and unlikely to ever be, she did not look up from her book.

  “I had the gardens renovated,” said Colin, puffing his chest out.

  Isaac kept his face in check as much as he could. “I can see that.”

  “They are rather famous. Everyone comes to visit them. The Duke of Wellington’s cousin’s niece travelled down especially. She is a friend of Eliza’s.” He nodded to his wife, who did not even blink in acknowledgement.

  “I liked it as it was.”

  “I know,” replied Colin, with due satisfaction. “It was wild before. It lacked structure. Now it is a symbol. It is proof that man can overcome nature. Everything can be tamed, you see, in time.” Everything can be broken, he meant. “A pity about how you ended up with your wife, isn’t it? Such a shame upon the family. I am surprised our great-aunt allows you to visit.”

  Isaac grew rigid, his question a challenge that told his cousin to use his next words carefully: “What do you mean?”

  He had expected this jibe, but not so soon.

  “There’s talk,” said Colin. “People say that she’s little better than a common whore who tricked you into—”

  Isaac swung before he knew he had. The crack of his fist – colliding with Colin’s jaw – met his ears first. Then there was crashing crockery and an “oof” sound, before Isaac’s own actions caught up with his eyes and a throbbing ache settled into his already-bruised knuckles. Colin went down. A shrill cry and the man’s sister was at his side in an instant. Eliza, the wife, remained seated, though she did crane over her chair and attempted to arrange her features into something close to concern.

  Isaac walked. He didn’t know where he was going, but he walked.

  “What in God’s name is going on?” asked Lady Mawes.

  “A bee,” said Isaac over his shoulder, striding down the patio steps and across a manicured lawn.

  “On his face?”

  Isaac didn’t offer a reply. He had nothing to say, no excuse to give that would not embarrass Ruth – embarrass them both – further. As a boy Colin was always attacking Isaac with insults and taunts. When Isaac was younger, he had swallowed it down and never risen to the bait, for he had known he was a lodger. His position was unsafe.

  And he could still lose it all now. The meagre sum his great-aunt gave him, the roof over his head, the small security he had.

  Fool.

  Now it wasn’t only himself he had to look after, it was
Ruth too. What had he risked by losing his temper? Everything. He turned a corner, then another. Hedges rose up around him, the start of a maze, fencing him in, blotting them all out.

  A place to get lost and be lost.

  He kept walking and he wanted to walk for ever.

  Alone, at last.

  Until footsteps crunched along the path behind him.

  Chapter Ten

  Ruth

  Ruth’s nerves had been uneasy all day. It was as though her veins had been pulled tight, stretched thin, close to snapping underneath her skin. The tense way Isaac held himself and the scowl he constantly wore had not helped either. All she knew about the days ahead was communicated through his demeanour. It was not Isaac’s relatives she was worried about. It was Isaac himself. Compared to everyone else she’d ever known, whose behaviour she’d been able to predict (for the most part), Isaac was a wildcard. And she had already been lulled into a false sense of security by him once before.

  Miss Lamont’s Academy for Young Ladies had been the oldest, most refined and ornate building she had ever stayed in. It paled in comparison to Trewince Manor. This place was imposing, bleak and magnificent – and it took her breath away. Whereas Isaac only gave it a cursory glance, she drank it in, slow to follow his lead, catching her own plain reflection in the mirrors they passed.

  As grand as it was, it was cold too.

  Everything around her warned do not touch and do not look.

  The very walls seemed set to push her out and tell her she did not belong.

  Imagine growing up here.

  She looked to Isaac. He did not belong here either, not any more.

  Lady Mawes was as fearsome as their surroundings, and when she ordered Ruth to stay with her, she felt – for the first time – a need for her unconventional husband. Mild panic set in, for he was the only person she knew, even though she barely knew him at all. The gentleman she’d met those few times before their marriage was a fiction – and the man she knew now was an unknown.

  There were no formal introductions to the eccentric family. It seemed as though everyone staying within the house had already been made aware of who she was and why she was there – and she was not welcome for it. Any looks that were thrown her way held little cheer.