by Merry Farmer
Ruby’s skin prickled. Something had happened. Something monumental. Gil took a step back from Mr. Croydon and clasped his hands behind his back. Mr. Croydon wound his scarf around his neck, glancing from Gil to Ruby. A thousand questions popped into Ruby’s head. Did Mr. Croydon know what had happened between her and Gil the day before? Did he know that she’d essentially turned down Gil’s offer of marriage? None of it explained the stiffness in Gil’s back or the way his jaw was set. Nothing could explain why the air between all of them was crackling with tension.
“You should come to the concert with us, Ruby,” Mrs. Croydon said at last, breaking the tense silence. “James obviously wants you there.”
“Yes,” James shouted, grabbing Ruby’s hand. “Ruby must come with us.”
“I couldn’t,” Ruby said, trying to let go of James’s hand. He wouldn’t let her go. “It wouldn’t be right, Master James.”
“Miss Ruby and I have things we need to talk about, Master James,” Gil added.
Ruby’s heart dropped into her stomach. She sent a pleading look to Gil, not sure she could bear it if he pressed her about marrying him. As a last, desperate measure, she looked to Mrs. Croydon.
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be any trouble at all for you to come,” Mrs. Croydon said, hesitantly, as if she knew she was part of a bigger drama, but couldn’t figure out how.
“I—” Ruby wasn’t sure if she should protest or not. She didn’t know what to do. She was faced with a choice between throwing herself into the lion’s den at the concert, surrounded by the same women who had turned her away from the school just a few days ago, or stay behind and disappoint Gil yet again.
“We’ll be late if we don’t leave right now,” Mr. Croydon said, his voice somewhat distant.
Ruby glanced once more to Gil, shaking her head slightly to let him know any further conversation would be fruitless. He stared back at her with single-minded focus.
James broke the standoff by tugging on her hand. “Come on, Ruby. We have to sing.”
In a way, Ruby felt like a coward for allowing a four-year-old to decide her fate, but with her nerves frayed raw, she wasn’t sure she could stand to stay behind and face Gil. She let James pull her out of the house and toward the carriage. It was too crowded, not to mention inappropriate, for her to sit inside with the fine people, so once James, Mr. and Mrs. Croydon, Mr. Edward, and Lady Evangeline were settled inside, she climbed up to the driver’s seat.
But as soon as the carriage set off, Ruby twisted to glance behind, only to find Gil following them on foot. He wasn’t wearing his coat, but that didn’t stop him from striding determinedly through the snowy grounds of Winterberry Park.
The carriage outpaced him in no time, but Ruby was under no illusion that Gil would give up and go home. They drove down the lane and into Lanhill, to the town hall, which was situated directly across the street from the train station. It didn’t take long, and Gil would catch up to them in no time. Ruby hopped down from the driver’s seat as the train parked at the station sounded its whistle and began to chug away, and searched this way and that for a way to avoid what would be a miserable confrontation.
“This way, Ruby,” James called to her, thwarting any attempt at escape she might make.
All the same, as townspeople stopped to watch the Croydon’s arrival—and to whisper behind their hands and point at her—Ruby’s heart pounded.
“I’m drawing attention, ma’am,” she whispered to Mrs. Croydon as the driver helped her out of the carriage. “And not in a good way.”
Mrs. Croydon hummed and frowned, glancing around. “I see what you mean. Perhaps you could secret yourself in a corner of the hall during the concert.” She met Ruby’s eyes with more kindness than anyone other than Clara Fallon had ever shown her. “I’m truly sorry for all this, Ruby. If there was something I could do….”
Ruby shook her head. “You’ve done so much already.”
Mrs. Croydon glanced to her husband, who was waiting in the doorway of the town hall. “If you enter with us, no one will question your right to be here,” she reasoned. “I’ll make sure you have a place inside.”
Ruby nodded. Part of her felt as though being there at all was a terrible idea, but there was no going back. They hurried into the town hall. The blast of warmth from the building didn’t go far enough to steady Ruby’s nerves. She kept looking over her shoulder, searching for Gil, even as Mrs. Croydon escorted her inside of the concert hall, to a corner beside a side door.
“I don’t know where this door leads,” Mrs. Croydon whispered, “but hopefully it will help with your escape, if you need one. Which I sincerely hope you don’t.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Ruby curtsied, then made herself as small as possible as Mrs. Croydon left to take up a seat with the rest of her family in the front row.
A dozen or more people glared at her once Mrs. Croydon left, but none of them stepped forward to accost her. It was as if Mrs. Croydon had placed an invisible mantle of protection over her. Ruby shook her head at the irony of class. Where human decency and compassion failed, the British class system endured. No one would dare to confront Ruby or throw her out as long as the Croydons were present. As long as they were there, she could settle into her corner as the children gathered on the makeshift stage to sing in peace.
The lonely sound of a train whistle in the distance was all that kept Gil company as he marched through Lanhill in pursuit of Ruby. He’d been a fool to leave Winterberry Park without his coat or a hat, but the biting January cold barely made a dent in the heat that radiated through him. The sparks of anger and love had lit a fire in him that winter couldn’t dull. It was time for him to stand up for what he believed in, and for the woman he loved.
The concert was already well underway when he reached the town hall. A few people glanced his way and jumped out of his path as he stomped into the concert hall, but he hardly gave them a second thought. The room was crowded, in spite of it being the middle of the day. Most of the mothers of children in Tim Turnbridge’s school had come to see the performance, and plenty of them had brought children with them who were too young to attend school. There was as much movement and fussing in the rows of chairs packing the hall as there was from the children acting out a medieval play on the stage.
Gil wasn’t interested in any of it. He stood at the back of the room, scanning for Ruby and growing more restless as he failed to find her. But at last, just as he was turning to leave and look for her elsewhere, he spotted her standing in the far corner, beside a door. She hugged herself and stood so close against the wall that he wouldn’t have noticed her, but for the fact that she was staring right at him with wide eyes.
He didn’t hesitate. As the children on the stage burst into song, he pushed his way along the back of the hall, dodging several people who were trying to watch the concert. A few snapped at him or tried to hold him back, but he pressed on.
“Gil, what are you doing?” Ruby whispered, coming out of her corner as he approached. She glanced anxiously around at the growing number of people more interested in what they were doing than on the children’s song.
“I’m here because you’ve been avoiding me since yesterday,” he whispered, emotion keeping him from being as quiet as he should have been. “We need to talk.”
“Not now,” Ruby hissed. “Not here.”
“Where then? You keep running away from me.”
“Ssh,” someone at the back of the audience shushed.
Gil glared at several people staring at them, then took Ruby’s hand. She didn’t protest as he drew her away from the wall. He pulled open the nearby door and tugged Ruby through.
Instead of finding themselves in a hallway or some other place that would allow them to leave, they ended up in a long, empty closet. Gil guessed at once that it was where the chairs currently in the concert hall were kept when they weren’t in use. There was no other way out.
“We can’t go on like this,” he said as soon as he
’d shut the door behind them.
Ruby glanced anxiously at the door, then at the small window that let light into the closet, as if she were thinking of escape. She swayed from one foot to the other, wringing her hands in front of her. “There’s nothing left to talk about, Gil. I’m leaving with Mr. Edward and Lady Evangeline as soon as the concert is over.”
Gil shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”
Frustration pinched her face. “We’ve discussed this, Gil. It doesn’t matter how much we love each other. This won’t work.”
“And I think it will.” He surged forward, taking her hands. “We’ll go away, start over somewhere where people don’t know who we are. We can go to America, Australia, South Africa. Anywhere but here.”
She blinked at him in surprise. “But your job. Mr. Croydon needs you.”
Gil shook his head. “Mr. Croydon informed me yesterday that if I pursue a marriage with you, he’d sack me.”
She gasped and stared at him in disbelief. “He wouldn’t say that. Mrs. Croydon would never let him.”
In spite of himself, Gil grinned. She had a point. But all too soon, the seriousness of the situation collapsed back on him. He took her hands, stepping closer to her. “I don’t care what it takes or what the risk is. I can’t sit idly by and let these injustices keep happening to you. You deserve so much better, Ruby. You deserve someone who will stop the wrongs that people keep piling on you.”
“I’m not sure if you can,” she said. She pulled her hands out of his, but instead of backing away, she gripped the lapels of his suit jacket. “This is bigger than both of us.”
“And love is bigger than prejudice,” he insisted. “Even if no one else stands with us, we’ll stand together.”
He leaned in, slanting his mouth over hers. But their lips only met for a brief moment before she made a pained sound and pulled away.
“It’s too hard,” she said. “There are too many strikes against us. I don’t want to be the reason you can’t reach your dreams.”
“You are my dreams,” he said, sliding his arms around her. “You are my dreams and what keeps me awake at night. And I promise you, I’ll fight for you whenever you need someone in your corner.”
“Gil.” She sighed. He couldn’t tell if he was winning her to his side or if he was on the verge of losing her, so he did the last thing he could think of to keep her. He pulled her close, kissing her with all the fire and passion he felt blazing inside of him.
She loosened in his arms, kissing him back with a soft moan of surrender. Everything within Gil rejoiced. At last, he was convincing her.
No sooner had that thought struck when the closet door flew open.
“I knew it,” Mrs. Jones, one of the women who had accosted Ruby the other day, shouted. “I knew you were a little whore.”
Gasps rang out from several people sitting near the door. Mrs. Jones threw the door all the way open. Moments later, the crowd erupted into applause. It took Gil aback, but as he grasped Ruby’s hand and stepped out of the closet, he saw that the applause was for the end of the concert, not for them.
“How do you hope to explain this?” Mrs. Jones demanded, shouting to be heard over the applause. “What will Mr. Croydon say once he finds out that his lackey was cozied up in a closet with this trollop? It’s a disgrace, I tell you, and an affront to decent people.”
She continued to rail at them, even as the applause died down. A murmur of confusion rose up as more and more people turned away from the stage to see what the fuss was at the back of the room.
“Leave at once,” Mrs. Jones shouted on. A few other mothers rose from their seats, either to join her or to usher their young children away from the scene. “Your kind is not welcome here.”
Gil wasn’t certain whether she was speaking to Ruby or to him, but either way, he wasn’t going to have it. “Ruby has as much right to be here as any of you,” he said, knowing his voice was too loud. “And she has a heart that is far bigger than any I see around me.”
The rest of the hall shifted as the children left the stage and the audience turned to watch the new drama unfolding. Gil wasn’t deterred. He held tight to Ruby’s hand, marching through the buzzing crowd toward the clear space in the center aisle.
“My patience with all of you is at an end,” he said, addressing anyone who would listen. “You call yourselves good, respectable people, but when someone chances into your world in need of help, you not only turn your backs on them, you actively seek to make their lives as difficult as possible. Where is the Christian charity in that?”
“There’s nothing Christian in a fallen woman,” another of the women who had bullied Ruby the other day, Mrs. Martin, said.
“Would you say the same if you were the one who found yourself in an impossible situation through no fault of your own?” he asked her.
“I would never do what she said,” Mrs. Martin snapped back, standing straight.
“Not even if it was the difference between life and death for your children?” Gil fired back at her, his temper reaching towering heights. “Is it more Christian to let your children starve so that you can call yourself morally upright?”
Mrs. Martin turned red and retreated into the crowd. Gil would have continued his tirade against her and all the other women who dared to point fingers at Ruby, but Alex pushed his way through the increasingly agitated onlookers.
“This is neither the time nor the place to make a scene, Phillips,” he said. “There are children present.”
“And when is the time, sir?” Gil bit back. “Behind closed doors? Where no one can see the injustice being inflicted on an innocent woman? When we can all just ignore the slights Ruby has received and pat ourselves on the back for being better than others?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Alex said.
“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.” Gil turned to stand toe to toe with his employer, the man he’d thought was his friend. “You of all people had the chance to do more for Ruby than anyone else. But instead of showing compassion for the hardships beyond her control, you are not only turning her out, you’re washing your hands of me as well.”
“I never said—”
“I won’t have it,” Gil cut him off. He felt as though he were coming apart at the seams and being broken down to the only thing that mattered, his heart. “If you won’t stand up for just one person who relies on you, then how can you hope to serve this country as a minister? Do you really support the rights of women, or is that simply a means to your own ends?”
Alex snapped his mouth shut, his eyes going wide and deep color crossing his face. But Gil wasn’t willing to stop there.
“I will stand by Ruby, if no one else will,” he said, threading his fingers through hers and turning to her. “I love her.”
“Gil,” Ruby began, blinking fast, tears shining in her eyes. “I—”
“James?” Mrs. Croydon called near the front of the room. “Has anyone seen where James went?”
The interruption completely derailed Gil’s declaration of love. For a split second, he felt like a fool for venting his emotions in front of so many people. But he stood by everything he’d said.
“I love you, Ruby,” he told her as the tension in the room shifted. The people who had been watching them moments before backed away and gathered their things to leave.
“James?” Mrs. Croydon called again.
Ruby squeezed Gil’s hand, smiling up at him, but whatever she’d been about to say must have fluttered from her mind. She glanced quickly around, searching. “Where did he go?” she said. “He was standing on the stage just a few minutes ago.”
Gil blinked, hardly believing that the speech of his life, one that had probably just ruined him, had been forgotten in favor of a missing child.
“James?” Ruby called out, letting go of Gil’s hand. Color splashed her cheeks, and she whispered, “Not again. Not this time.”
That was all it took. Gil instantly forgot h
is anger, forgot his indignation at the injustices of the world. He forgot everything but the one thing that mattered most to Ruby, and to the Croydons. “He can’t have gone far,” he said, standing taller and looking to the far edges of the room.
“I didn’t see him,” Ruby said. “I didn’t see where he went. I thought he was in good hands. There were so many people around who could have seen him, could have stopped him, could have—”
She was cut off as a train whistle sounded. It was loud enough to be heard through the open doors of the town hall as people left. Gil wouldn’t have paid it any notice, but that Ruby’s eyes suddenly went wide and all color drained from her face.
“The train,” she gasped.
“What about it?”
She didn’t answer. She was already dashing for the door.
Chapter 10
She couldn’t explain it. Six months of taking care of James had given Ruby an instinct for the kind of things the boy would do. The moment it dawned on her that he couldn’t be found, that he hadn’t rushed to Mrs. Croydon’s side as soon as the performance was over, ignited a fear in her that eclipsed everything else. Even the beautiful things Gil was saying about her. Her heart overflowed with love, but panic won out.
“James?” she called, pushing through the townspeople, many of whom sent her dismissive or disgusted looks. She didn’t care a wit about any of them. James was all that mattered.
A blast of cold air hit her as soon as she rushed through the town hall’s open door. With it came the piercing cry of a train whistle. It was still far off, but growing closer. Her heart pounded. Part of her was terrified of the possibility that someone had snatched James again, that Mr. Turpin and his friends hadn’t given up after the first time, and that they still had devious designs against the entire Croydon family. But sense whispered to her through that panic. If there was one thing James loved more than singing, it was trains. If he’d heard the train coming, he would have wanted to take a look.