Ruby McBride

by Freda Lightfoot

‘Nip on board, Ruby, and grab some. We’re running a bit low. I’ve been afraid to light the stove in case we ran out altogether before nightfall.’

  ‘I will hell as like.’

  ‘Whyever not? You’ve done it before often enough.’

  This was true, though under protest. She had in fact grown quite nimble at jumping on to passing coal barges and tossing a few cobs of the stuff on to the deck of the Blackbird. It reminded her of the scrounging she’d done with Kit on the slag heap. So on this day, as always, she consoled herself it was no worse than that. Not stealing exactly, not from anyone who couldn’t afford to part with a bit. And it was pitch dark for all it wasn’t yet seven o’clock, so who would see? The coal barge had been anchored for the night and the skipper and mate were no doubt either fast asleep or in the pub. And she and Bart were nearly out of coal and freezing cold.

  She tucked up her skirts so that they did not impede her, tugged the cap she wore to hold her hair in place well down and got herself positioned ready to jump. She made it in one agile leap, graceful as a deer, and heard his soft chuckle follow her over the water. Ruby gathered up a few of the largest pieces she could find and tossed them one at a time over onto the Blackbird’s deck. As quickly as they fell, Bart picked them up and dropped them into a sack he kept handy for the purpose.

  ‘That’ll do, Ruby,’ he called quietly across to her.

  ‘Just one more.’ She scrabbled about, found one, then another, too tempting to resist as she thought of their need for a warm cabin that night, and the stew she would prepare. When she’d filled his belly and got him all nice and cosy, she’d make her demands clear. No more love making. She deserved, and should be given, proper financial recompense for her work. And as she schemed and picked coal, all the while the Blackbird was moving alongside the stationary coal barge, albeit slowly. ‘Quick, Ruby. We’re nearly past.’

  Again gathering up the hem of her skirts which were trailing loose, she ran along the edge of the Worseley coal barge and flung herself into the air in a flying leap. She missed the deck by mere inches. Her fingers, grappling for purchase, failed completely and she fell with a resounding splash into the murky waters of the canal. Fear hammered in her breast. She was wearing so many clothes against the cold: the heavy greatcoat, thick socks, boots, the hessian strips wrapped about her legs, and several layers of clothing beneath her dress. Ruby could feel them dragging her down, pulling her under so that she choked as water filled her mouth.

  Then something hit her shoulders: a rope. A voice shouted, ordering her to grab it. Somehow, she managed to take hold and Bart pulled her up, finally grasping her by the shoulders and heaving her on board.

  As she lay floundering on deck gasping for breath and shaking with cold, he said, ‘Are you going to lie there all day? Go and put some dry clothes on and get that fire lit. I’ll be wanting my supper soon.’

  ‘Damn you, Barthram Stobbs, you get worse. You’re the nastiest, most ungrateful man I ever . . .’

  ‘Bedded? I hope I’m the one and only, Ruby, dear. Supper. Now, please?’

  Dripping water everywhere, she stalked past him, head held high. ‘And I hope it chokes you.’

  Later, when she was stripped off and rubbing herself dry by the stove, he climbed down the ladder, lifted the pan from the heat and took her to his bed where he completed the process of warming her with his own body. Ruby did not protest. Her demands for compensation would have to wait until tomorrow.

  There was no time the next day for talking, nor the one after that, as they had a new load of cotton to take on board and transport to Liverpool. A few days after that, it was Bart, as always, who startled her by demanding that she take part in another of his schemes. It came as a bitter blow. Ruby refused, absolutely, to have anything to do with it. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? I thought you were done with all that.’

  ‘This is the last one, I promise.’

  By the time he’d finished explaining his plan, she was slack-jawed with shock. ‘You must be mad if you think I’d agree to waylay a fella in an alley. D’you take me for some sort of trollop?’

  ‘No, I don’t think you’re a trollop, Ruby.’ He smiled placatingly at her, in a manner she’d come to know well. ‘You needn’t let him actually do anything to you. Besides, I shall be nearby to see that he doesn’t. I want you to make certain that he makes the suggestion. Or, if necessary, you offer and make damn’ sure he accepts.’

  ‘There you are then, you do want me to be a tart.’ She was outraged, and deeply hurt that he should think so little of her.

  ‘It is only a trick, Ruby.’

  ‘And I know the sort of tricks you’re talking about.’

  ‘No, I’ve told you, I shall be standing by to step in and confront him the moment he walks into our trap. He won’t lay a finger on you. I just need proof that Giles Pickering uses women much as he treats his workers, with callous contempt. I need to find some sort of lever so I can prise out of him what the workers deserve. I want to unmask him as a ruthless, social-climbing, cold-hearted womaniser who doesn’t give a damn who he treads on, so long as he gets what he wants.’

  There was such loathing, such venom in his voice, Ruby was stunned into silence for a whole half-minute. She cleared her throat, asking the next question in a quieter, more rational tone.

  ‘And how will that help you get better pay and conditions for the dockers?’

  ‘Give me the ammunition and I can fire the bullets, believe me. He’ll be a lot more compliant once I can knock him off that self-erected pedestal of his.’

  ‘You mean blackmail?’

  ‘If you wish to call it that.’

  ‘Why do you hate him so much? What’s he ever done to you?’

  ‘What indeed!’

  Bart walked away, his back turned towards her as he considered his answer, and although she couldn’t see his face when he spoke, Ruby was in no doubt of his feelings on the matter. ‘He once hurt someone I cared very deeply about, and I mean to make him pay for that. I mean to take from him all that he holds dear, just as he took it from me.’

  She was shocked. ‘Who was this person? Was it a woman. Tell me. What did he do?’

  ‘The details needn’t concern you, Ruby.’

  ‘They do if you mean to get me involved.’

  But his only answer to that was a closed door. He had gone.

  Ruby ran to Kit to beg him to help her. ‘What am I to do? I daren’t even imagine what horrors might befall me if I agree to this. How do I know he’ll bother to save me? I could be raped, murdered, anything, in that back alley.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s unlikely,’ Kit told her, even as his brain furiously turned over the possible implications of the baron’s plan, and any advantages it might bring to his own cause.

  ‘You don’t understand. He’s utterly ruthless. I’ve only his word that he’ll save me, and I really don’t trust him as far as I can spit.’

  Desperate to make Kit see her difficulties, Ruby told him how Bart had made her steal coal, and how unsympathetic he’d been when she’d fallen in the canal. It didn’t seem to occur to her that there would be even less sympathy from a young man who had himself taught her the art of coal scrounging years ago. She excluded the part about them falling into bed together at the end of it all, preferring to eradicate this guilty memory from her mind.

  ‘Now he means to turn me into a prostitute in a nasty attempt at blackmail. I can’t bear it. We have to go to Canada. Now! Together. We must make one last effort to find our Pearl, then we can all have a new beginning in a new country. I’m quite sure I could find our Billy, if only we could just get on a ship to take us there.’

  Kit struggled to hide his irritation. ‘Nay, lass, don’t talk soft. I’ve told you, it takes a deal of money to emigrate, and we haven’t a bean between us. How could we get on a ship for Canada, even supposing we could find your Pearl?’

  He did not say that he knew already where her sister was; that at this precise momen
t she was no doubt dealing with one of her regulars, earning them a crust if not exactly an honest one, nor one with much butter on it. A state of affairs they meant to change given a decent plan and the right sort of co-operation. Sadly, no such plan had emerged from their endless arguments and discussions and Pearl, as well as Ruby, was growing fretful.

  In truth, Kit felt under siege from both sisters and was near to throwing in the towel and giving up on the whole deal when Ruby suddenly said something which caught his attention. ‘What was that? He gave you what?’

  ‘I said, I do have something we could use to make a fresh start in Canada. Not money, but a pendant that he gave me once. He’d stolen it from this woman who was showing us round her house. Not a house that he could afford to buy, mind, but one he was pretending to . . .’

  ‘What sort of pendant?’ Kit interrupted, his head aching with the effort of restraining himself from shaking the information out of her.

  ‘A ruby pendant,’ she admitted. ‘He said it was highly appropriate.’

  Kit beamed, all the anger seeping from him. ‘And so it is, Ruby, my love. So it is.’

  Ruby looked surprisingly convincing in her disguise. She’d grown somewhat taller than when the idea of passing herself off as a cabin boy had first occurred to her, but she was still slender enough to get away with dressing as an ordinary seaman, or so she hoped. She’d suggested that they might both try to get jobs on board. Kit had disagreed.

  ‘Why should I work when I can go for nothing? Anyroad, they’d be unlikely to take me on, with my record. And I wouldn’t like you to cut your hair, Ruby.’

  ‘Why not? It’ll grow again.’

  ‘I don’t like women with short hair. Not ladylike. You can wear my slouch cap.’ He made her tuck up her hair into a knot, then pulled the cap over it. ‘Perfect.’

  They were testing out the gear for their plan at the entrance to the tunnel down by the Roman fort, the only place they could think of away from prying eyes. It was cold and damp in there since the tunnel led almost as far as Duke’s Lock at the junction to the Bridgewater Canal. Ruby had no wish to go too far along it in case she should come across the baron waiting at the other end. Even being here, so close to the water, made her feel anxious and jumpy. She kept glancing along it, half expecting him to appear out of the gloom.

  It was Kit who decided that they would stow away in one of the lifeboats. ‘No one will think to look for us there.’ Ruby’s disguise, he explained, would come in useful once the ship was underway and they needed to venture out from time to time to look for food. ‘There must be scores, if not hundreds, employed on a big freighter like that. Most of them won’t even know each other. We can just mingle with the other blokes when we need to for meals and such like, and vanish when we don’t. No one will suspect a thing.’

  Ruby sincerely hoped that was true, but it all seemed much more dangerous than her fanciful imaginings had led her to believe. Yet hadn’t she grown used to taking risks over these last few years? Surely, it was worth the gamble to get away from the baron, go to Canada, and find Billy. ‘I really don’t want to go without our Pearl.’

  Kit laid a finger to the side of his nose. ‘Ah, now, I’ve been asking around again, and got word that she’s working in a pub Rochdale way. I’m going over there this evening, s’matter of fact, see what I can find out.’

  Kit had decided that she might never hand over the pendant if he didn’t offer up Pearl in return.

  Ruby’s face came alight with joy. ‘Really? Oh, Kit, you are so clever.’ She let out a great sigh of happiness. ‘Do you really think you can find her?’

  ‘ I do.’

  ‘`Oh, what would I do without you? I really don’t know how to thank you.’

  ‘That’s easy. I quite fancy you in those trousers, so maybe you could start by considering actions rather than words.’

  He pulled her roughly into his arms, clenching the soft curve of her buttocks and pressing her hard against him. Ruby felt his arousal and chuckled as she shook her head, the fronds of thick brown hair whispering over her flushed cheeks. She pushed his hands away, while at the same time lifting her face to be kissed, almost bubbling over with excitement as she laughed up at him. ‘Not yet, Kit. Not till we’ve left these shores far behind and there’s no further danger from my tyrant husband. Till then, you have to behave yourself. You must see that.’ She playfully tapped his hand away from where it lingered at the buttons of her waistband.

  ‘You’re a lovely lass, Ruby, but hard on a chap. A tease, nothing less.’

  He wasn’t pleased by her refusal, she could tell. But then the growing impatience in his face was more frequently evident these days. She arched a provocative glance at him from beneath her lashes. ‘It’ll be worth the wait in the long run.’

  He might well have been tempted to persist to try his luck, were he not wholly satisfied with Pearl’s offerings in that direction. Besides, he had other, more important matters on his mind. ‘You’d best give me the pendant, pet. It’ll be safer with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  He smiled pityingly at her, as if she were half stupid. ‘Now how would you defend yourself, a skinny little thing like you?’

  ‘Defend myself against what ... against who?’

  Kit could feel the tension in his jaw, just as if his teeth were clenched for all he was actually smiling at her. ‘Theft. Against whoever tried to rob you. It happens all the time on ships. We’ll need eyes in the backs of our heads once we get on board.’

  She smiled brilliantly at him. ‘But I shall always have you beside me, Kit. I’ve nothing to fear. Don’t worry, the pendant is tucked away nice and safe. Go on, go and fetch our Pearl. I can’t wait.’

  Swallowing his fury, he spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll bring her to our meeting place at the end of the tunnel next Thursday, an hour before sailing.’

  Ruby frowned with disappointment. ‘You won’t let me down, will you? You’ll have her with you?’

  ‘When have I ever let you down?’

  As he swaggered away, leaving her to pull her frock back on over the trousers so that Bart wouldn’t suspect what she was about, Ruby wondered why, deep inside, she felt the slightest bit sick, as if something wasn’t quite right. Was it the excitement of being about to see Pearl again after all these years. Or was it fear for the risks they would take, the hazardous journey they were about to embark upon to a new land. Or because the thought of making love to Kit Jarvis suddenly seemed like a betrayal of sorts?

  ‘You daft ha’porth,’ she told herself as she strode away through the tunnel. ‘Now you have lost your marbles. How can you betray a man you never asked to marry in the first place, and don’t even love?

  As she swung around the corner out of sight, a soft voice echoed in the darkness behind her. ‘How indeed, Ruby McBride? How indeed.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ruby lay drowsy in the glowing warmth from the coals, filled with languor after their love making. Beside her lay the long, hard body of her husband. If she wished, her fingers could stretch out and stroke his naked, gleaming flesh. The very thought set her imagination racing, recalling the shameful pleasures of the last hour, reawakening that hunger in her which never seemed to be quenched. The merest butterfly kiss from her finger tips and he would turn to her, filling that aching need once more. She did no such thing, of course. Wouldn’t that be a true betrayal of her beloved Kit? This man didn’t give twopence for her, his own wife. Kit, on the other hand, had sacrificed his life and suffered untold privation and punishment on her behalf. That was the difference between them, the evidence of their love.

  Yet she could not sleep.

  This was proving to be the longest night of her life. Ruby lay, tossing and turning, agonising over whether she was doing the right thing, whether Kit really would manage to find Pearl, and whether she would be willing to drop everything and come with them to Canada at a moment’s notice. It was a great deal to ask of anyone, and her sister had ever bee
n self-obsessed. She might have a good job in that pub, friends, a lover, even a husband. For the first time, Ruby realised that she’d given no consideration to this possibility.

  ‘Are you awake, Ruby?’ Bart’s voice came to her out of the soft dark.

  ‘I’m restless,’ she admitted, wanting to blame him for her sleeplessness.

  ‘Shall I soothe you?’ He lifted the heavy curtain of brown hair, smoothed it back from her hot brow. ‘You are over-warm. Are you sickening for something?’

  ‘More like we used too much coal on the flippin’ stove.’

  ‘Are you happy, Ruby?’

  ‘Why would I be?’

  ‘You gave every impression of it just now.’

  She fell silent, unsure how to respond.

  ‘Have you yet forgiven me for making you marry me?’ His teeth glowed white in the light from the fire as he grinned down at her, wickedly sensuous in the gloom.

  ‘I certainly haven’t forgiven you for the risks you’ve made me take, most of them for no reason.’

  ‘For every reason. The work I do is vital for the dockers. I’ve explained all of that.’

  ‘You’ve explained very little. Who is this Giles Pickering you seem to have it in for? Why him, and none of the other employers? Why not the Ship Canal Company, who likewise have a long way to go to make life easier for their workers? Why always this Pickering chap?’

  ‘If I tell you, Ruby, will you keep it a secret? Just between the two of us?’

  She looked at him, puzzled, his eyes glittering in the semi-darkness. Was that with anger or passion? She couldn’t quite decide. Even after all these years, he was still an enigma to her.

  ‘I know how to keep a secret.’

  ‘Very well. Giles Pickering is my father.’

  Ruby was stunned into silence. This was the last thing she’d expected.

  He abruptly sat up, rested his arms on his knees as he stared into the flickering flames. He began to speak, his voice hollow and bleak with remembered pain. ‘He was the one who disapproved of the girl I was to marry. She was called Alice, the sweetest, gentlest, prettiest creature you could ever imagine.