by Merry Farmer
The carriage pulled to a stop in front of the St. Pancras Hospital and its adjoining workhouse. With a weary sigh, Gil pushed open the carriage door and stepped down. He hated workhouses, hated the very idea of them. If not for friends and the grace of God, he would have ended up in a place like the mournful, brick building in front of him.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” he told Ron, Mr. Croydon’s London driver, as he started off toward the workhouse’s yawning front doors.
Scents of lye, carbolic, sickness, and death filled his nose as he crossed into the front hall of the administration building that served both the hospital and the workhouse. The unfortunate souls whose life paths had driven them to the workhouse spent their days washing the hospital’s linens, cleaning its halls, and producing goods that were used at the hospital or sold to help fund it. In theory, it was a good system. The reality was more horrific. Disease, overwork, and malnutrition were the lot of the unfortunate souls who ended up in places like the one Gil strode through, heading toward the administrator’s desk. They were better than they’d been in Charles Dickens’s day, but that wasn’t saying much.
“Can I help you, sir?” the clerk behind the desk asked, adjusting his glasses as Gil approached.
Gil frowned, reaching into his jacket pocket for the papers Mr. Croydon had sent him with. “I’m here to receive an inmate,” he said, presenting the paper. “Miss Ruby Murdoch.”
Once again, the name struck him. Ruby. The same as the Ruby he hadn’t been able to get out of his head for six months. He still dreamed about the poor woman and her baby in their cramped and draughty attic flat. If he were honest, he still dreamed about her magnificent breasts and the way she’d stroked him before he put a stop to things. Guilt over those feelings had faded with time as his imagination had spun their encounter into a glorious night of passion that ended with him rescuing her and taking her away from everything. He wondered if she’d found his two pounds, if they’d helped her to get out of that life.
“Just a moment,” the clerk said, shaking him out of his daydream. “We’ve been expecting you. Miss Murdoch and her baby will be fetched at once.”
“Her baby?” Gil’s heart kicked against his ribs. It couldn’t be. Ruby was as common a name as John or Jane. But a Ruby with a baby?
He glanced anxiously at the door the clerk had disappeared through, hope making his mouth dry and his palms sweaty. Six months he had wondered about his Ruby, berated himself for not going back for her, or for refusing her offer for a fuck. Six months of thinking about her almost constantly in his free moments. It couldn’t possibly be—
But it was. He sucked in a breath as the clerk led Ruby, his Ruby, around the corner.
Instantly, his heart sank. She looked even worse than she had in the winter. Her face was more sunken, and as well as dark circles, her eyes had taken on a haunted look. She flinched when the clerk tried to grasp her arm to hurry her along, clutching her baby tight against her chest.
“Don’t be difficult,” the clerk hissed at her. “You’ve had an astounding bit of luck. This gentleman has come to take you away. You should be grateful.”
Ruby’s suspicious eyes raised to meet his. Instantly, she stood straighter, letting out a cry of shock and joy. “You?”
Gil’s heart flipped in his chest. The sensation was so sudden and so strong, that he rubbed the spot. His head told him he was a sentimental, fecking fool, that it was pure coincidence, and that he was simply following his employer’s orders, but he strode toward Ruby as though he was her knight in shining armor and had come to single-handedly rescue her from the world.
“We meet again,” he said when he reached her.
“Thank God,” she wept, throwing herself into his arms.
Gil embraced her, his eyes stinging like a maudlin idiot. The clerk gave them a strange look, but he didn’t care.
“I prayed that you’d come back to me,” Ruby whispered through hysterical breaths and tears. “I looked for you every night, every time I saw a ginger head. I hoped and prayed that you’d come back for me.”
“Ssh.” He stroked her disheveled hair, hugging her closer. “I’m here now. Mr. Croydon is a good man, and you’ll have a safe place in his household. And I’ll be there.”
“Thank God,” Ruby continued to weep. “I would have died if you hadn’t come.”
“You’re safe now,” Gil told her. The urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but he couldn’t cross that line, not with the clerk looking on and Mr. and Mrs. Croydon waiting at home for him to complete his job. “Let me take you home now.”
He shifted, sliding his arm around her shoulder and leading her to the desk so that they could complete all the necessary paperwork for her release. All that mattered was that she was back in his life to stay, no matter how crooked the road she’d taken to get there was. He could forgive anything in her past. It was the future that mattered now.
Chapter 2
Winterberry Park, Wiltshire – January, 1880
She’d ruined everything. Ruby had been handed the most perfect, lucky gift a woman could be given, and with one stunning lapse of judgment, she’d ruined everything. For three months, that thought and that alone had been at the front of her mind. It haunted her when she awoke in the morning, washed, dressed, and fed Faith. It stuck with her when she went down to the nursery, tucking Faith into the bassinet in the corner of the spacious room. And it gripped her with its painful claws when she crossed into Master James’s room to rouse him from sleep, washed and dressed him, and prepared him for his day.
“Did you have any bad dreams last night, Master James?” she asked with as cheery a smile as she could manage.
James nodded somberly as he spooned porridge into his mouth at the child-sized table in the nursery.
Ruby’s heart squeezed in her chest. She crouched beside James’s tiny chair. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
“It was dark,” James said. That was it, his entire explanation.
Guilty tears stung at Ruby’s eyes. It was her fault James was having nightmares. It was her fault he had been kidnapped in the first place. Her lapse of judgment, the speed with which she’d trusted the kidnapper, Miss Goode, and counted her as a friend was unforgivable. If not for her foolishness, James would still be the happy, energetic, smiling boy he’d been when she’d first come to Winterberry Park. James was still a happy child overall, but he’d grown reserved around strangers, and he clung to his mother and father whenever he could.
“It’s not dark now,” Ruby said, kissing his cheek, then standing and stroking James’s dark hair. “We’re safe and sound in Winterberry Park, and your mama and papa are waiting downstairs for you.”
James dropped his spoon on the table and glanced up to Ruby with large, hopeful eyes. “Macky and Mari are waiting?”
“Yes.” Ruby smiled over the strange nicknames James had for his parents. “Finish your porridge and we can go to them.”
James snatched up his spoon and tore through the rest of his breakfast. “Mari is taking me to the river today,” he announced. “It’s frozen.”
“Then we’ll have to be sure to bundle you up,” Ruby replied, crossing the room to check on Faith. She sat up in her large bassinet, playing with a rag doll and a stuffed rabbit. Satisfied, Ruby moved on to fetch James’s coat and other winter things from their pegs near the nursery door and carried them to the table.
If she could bundle James in more than just a coat and muffler, if she could have wrapped him up in safety and comfort, ensuring that nothing bad would happen to him ever again, she would have. James wasn’t the only one who had nightmares about the kidnapping. Barely a night passed when Ruby didn’t dream about someone taking James—and Faith—away from her. But beyond just having the children snatched from her, Ruby dreamed about Gil’s furious frown, about his scorn and disappointment in her. The affection that had once warmed the way he looked at her was gone. She’d ruined everything. That was the worst nightmare of all
, and she woke up cold every morning, inside and out.
“Come along, Master James.” She took the sling she used to carry Faith from the peg beside James’s coat and looped it over her shoulder. It was absolutely unheard of that an unmarried woman would be allowed to keep her one-year-old daughter with her while working as a nursemaid for someone else, but Mrs. Croydon had insisted Faith stay with Ruby instead of being farmed out. Faith fussed a bit as Ruby lifted her from the bassinet and secured her in the sling, which she was growing too big for, but as happened far too often, Ruby ignored Faith’s protests, so she didn’t keep them up.
“Faith wants to stay here,” James said, getting up from his table and grabbing his coat and winter things.
“Faith can’t stay here if we go downstairs,” Ruby explained, meeting James at the door. She took his free hand as they stepped into the hall and made for the stairs.
“Can Faith come to the river with me and Mari?” James asked.
“It’s far too cold for a baby like her,” Ruby answered, working to keep her smile up. More like it was achingly inappropriate for the son of a wealthy and important man like Alexander Croydon to have the bastard daughter of a fallen woman as a playmate. The time was coming when not even Mrs. Croydon’s protests could justify keeping Faith at Winterberry Park.
The thought made Ruby hug her daughter tighter as they descended the final stairs to the main hall. James broke away from her and ran into the morning parlor, dropping his mittens as he went.
“Mari, Mari!” he called as he burst into the room where his mother and father sat after breakfast. “Let’s go to the river.”
Mrs. Marigold Croydon’s musical laughter filled the room as James jumped onto the sofa where she sat and threw himself into her arms. “Someone’s in quite a hurry this morning,” she said, hugging him and kissing his cheeks.
Mrs. Croydon wasn’t James’s natural mother, but after the troubles they’d all been through in the summer and autumn, she’d come to love him as her own. Ruby doubted James would realize she wasn’t truly his until Mr. and Mrs. Croydon saw fit to tell him in years to come.
But it wasn’t the charming scene of mother and son that froze Ruby in place just inside of the parlor door, her heart dropping to her feet. At the other end of the room, Gil stood with Mr. Croydon, poring over some sort of paperwork on the parlor’s table.
Gilbert Phillips. The sight of the handsome, young man scattered Ruby’s thoughts and threw her into turmoil. She’d never owed anyone so much in her life…or let anyone down so devastatingly. She pressed a hand to her stomach, gulping to keep her emotions from welling out of control. Gil, the man whom had treated her kindly when others used her. The man who had appeared like an angel at the workhouse and saved her from what surely would have been death, for both her and Faith. The man who she’d come so close to forming an understanding with over the summer, when she’d come to Winterberry Park. He was responsible for getting her out of London and into the country, she was sure.
He glanced up, his eyes meeting hers as if by accident. The businesslike look on his face as he spoke with Mr. Croydon shifted to a cold, closed stare. His expression went blank even as his back stiffened. He snapped his eyes away from her, focusing on what Mr. Croydon was saying.
“So you’d better complete a full inventory of clothing, shoes, and whatnots before we place the advertisement for a valet,” Mr. Croydon said. “Once applications start coming in, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in interviews.”
“Yes, sir.” Gil nodded to his employer.
Ruby pressed a hand to her stomach to still the butterflies. She didn’t know what upset her more, the thought of Gil so close to her but barely speaking to her or the fact that he would soon be leaving his post as Mr. Croydon’s valet to become his man of business full time. The latter meant he would spend the majority of his time in London, far away from Winterberry Park. Far away from her. James was too young to spend so much time in the city, and if he stayed in Wiltshire, so would Ruby.
“It’s about time to go through things to see what needs to be replaced,” Gil told Mr. Croydon as both men stepped back from the table. Mr. Croydon headed to the sofa to greet James, his smile as wide as the horizon. Gil’s expression remained unreadable. “I’ll parcel up the older things to give to local charities and order new shirts before the new man is hired.”
“Yes, yes, that will be fine.” Mr. Croydon sat beside his wife, and James shifted to jump into his arms. “Hello, my fine young man.”
For all the Croydons were concerned, Ruby and Gil were suddenly part of the furniture. The love that the three of them shared was so potent that it drowned out everything in its presence. Ruby rested her hand on Faith’s head, her heart squeezing. She risked another peek at Gil.
Gil was staring at her, but he instantly turned to the table and started gathering papers to hide the fact. What he couldn’t hide was the frustration that pinched around his mouth, or the kindness in his eyes. It was still there, in spite of how disappointed he was in her. He slipped the papers into a small case, shut it with a snap of finality, then headed out of the room.
“I could help, if you’d like,” Ruby blurted as he passed her.
Without looking her way, jaw tight, Gil said, “No, thank you.” Then he kept walking out to the hall.
Ruby glanced anxiously toward the Croydons. Mrs. Croydon had noticed the exchange and nodded softly. Ruby bobbed a fast curtsy to her, then rushed after Gil, holding Faith close.
“It’s really no trouble,” she said, catching up with Gil as he strode toward the main staircase. “James is with his parents for the day, and I’ve finished most of the mending.”
“All I’m going to be doing is sorting through Mr. Croydon’s clothes,” Gil said, walking on, still not looking at her. “I can manage on my own.”
“But I want to help.”
At last, two steps up the stairs, Gil stopped and let out a breath. He turned to Ruby, seeming even taller than he was so high above her. His glance dropped to Faith, who stared back at him, wide-eyed, for a moment. “What do you want from me, Ruby?” he asked meeting her eyes again, his voice low and his voice tight.
Ruby drew a few shallow breaths, licking her lips and swaying from one foot to the other. She wanted so many things, but all she could think to say was, “I just want to help you,” in a small voice.
Gil descended the two stairs to stand on level with her, but his expression was still dark and tormented. “I don’t need your help. You should stick to your duties.” He paused before saying, “That’s what you should have done in the first place.”
He started back to the stairs, but Ruby caught his hand before he could get away. “I’m sorry,” she said with all the passion of her heart. Faith huddled against her chest, as if she sensed something was wrong. “I’m so, so sorry. You know that. I didn’t know who Miss Goode was. If I had, I never would have let her take James. I wouldn’t have let her anywhere near Winterberry Park.”
Gil slowly turned back to her. “She shouldn’t have been here in the first place. You were breaking the rules to be visiting with her when you were supposed to be working.”
“She said she was here to help.” Ruby blinked back the painful tears that came to her eyes. “I trusted her.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Gil snapped. “James could have been killed. He could have been hurt in that horrid club.”
“I know,” Ruby said, hoarse. “Believe me. I know. More than anyone. And if I could go back and change things, you know I would.”
“But you can’t.” Gil let out a breath. “Every rule was broken for you, every concession made, and you could have been the end of an entire family.”
The pain that welled up in Ruby’s chest closed her throat. Faith squirmed and fussed against her. There was so much she wanted to say, but all she could squeeze out was, “I’m sorry.”
Gil’s expression pinched with regret, and he pressed his lips together as though he too had more he
wanted to say but couldn’t. He went back to frowning, but something deeper, warmer glowed in his eyes. He hadn’t let go of her hand when she grabbed it to stop him. She could feel his warmth radiating from her fingers up her arm. However furious he was with her, he hadn’t let go. And as long as he didn’t let go, there was hope.
“Ruby!” A sharp cry split through the air that crackled between her and Gil. Mary Mull, one of the housemaids, marched toward the stairs from the far end of the hall where the door to the servants’ stairs was. “Mrs. Musgrave wants to see you at once.”
Gil dropped her hand and started up the stairs again, sending her a long, unreadable look as he went. Ruby’s heart sank. Faith wriggled and fussed against her, trying to get down, or perhaps get away from Mary’s peevish expression as she marched up to them.
“Don’t keep Mrs. Musgrave waiting,” Mary said, hands on her hips. She glanced up the stairs to Gil, her lip curling in a sneer. “Now I understand everything.”
Ruby blinked and frowned, confused. But judging by the way Mary looked at her—like she was a bug that needed to be squashed—before turning and marching off toward the servants’ door left Ruby with a gaping sense of dread.
She rushed to follow Mary, her heart racing, doing her best to calm Faith down and keep her from crying outright. She was a good baby and had learned that crying didn’t always earn attention—which was sad in its own way—but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t wail if the mood took her.
“What does Mrs. Musgrave want?” Ruby asked once she caught up to Mary.
They descended the servants’ stairs, passing from the posh, elaborate part of the house to the much simpler, much busier downstairs.