To Wed A Rebel (12 page)

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 such 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?”

“Last night, I thought we…” Nothing else came forth and Ruth shook her head, loose hair falling over her face. “Do have a safe journey,” she said, dismissing him with no warmth, only civility, which cut deeper than any insult.

Chapter Six

Ruth

Ruth found herself wearier now than when she had first fallen into her uneasy sleep. He was leaving. Isaac was leaving her. It should not have wounded her. There was relief, a weight stripped from her bones, a knowledge that she need not spend every waking moment, and every unconscious one, with him, beside him, waiting for him to…

Although he’d said she’d done nothing wrong, he had made no move upon her last night. She was not insensible. If anything, Ruth knew herself to be too logical, to overthink every situation, to steel herself against all that was to come.

“Last night, I thought we…” She trailed off, unable to voice what he clearly had not contemplated. Was she not desirable? It stung, that confusion he idly passed her way. Shame reddened her cheeks and she shook her head until her hair obscured them. The conversation had turned sour and she quickly ended it, sparing herself further humiliation. “Do have a safe journey.”

The farewell was one reserved for a stranger and he was one, wasn’t he? No matter their previous interactions and their current hellish situation, she did not truly know him. Ruth only knew how heartless he could be, how utterly cruel and thoughtless.

And that was why she couldn’t understand the way he looked at her, as though she had cut him to the quick. That
she
had somehow wronged him. Was this another game? A chance to injure her pride, to uproot her mind once again? If so, it was surely working.

Have I learnt nothing?

Not another word was exchanged as Isaac slung a coat over his shoulders. The farther away she could get from him, the better. She could not hold a clear head around him, could not remember all he had done, was too ready to forgive and forget. Those cold words Ruth had left him with, on the morning that her world had changed for ever, were as true now as they were then. Or she wanted them to be.

She did hate him. She always would.

Even if she could not take her eyes from his retreating form and could not fight how low her spirits sank when the door closed behind him.

***

Ruth continued alone in the post-chaise, with only the driver for company. The uncomfortable journey to her new home took the better part of a week. With every hour that passed, she grew nearer to a life she could not predict nor plan for. Before long, her nerves faded into the background and she held only a brittle numbness. In another time, when she had been another person, she might have made an effort to be tolerable, to chat to those few souls she encountered when resting the horses or taking a bed for the night in another nameless, faceless structure. Now, she need not bother, need not try.

The longer Ruth was silent, the easier it became.

Only the driver would stir when they reached a stopping place, an inn, giving instructions and ensuring all was seen to with calm efficiency, as if he were steam and clockwork, not flesh and bone.

“I reckon you’ll be dining at Trewince Manor when you’re settled?” The question came when at last it seemed they were nearing their destination. “That Lady Mawes is a fearsome woman, I’ll tell you that.”

Ruth had chosen to sit beside him in the open air, mapping her surroundings, memorising the passing scenery as the day waned. She could see the sea between the hills. It glistened, turquoise, waves winking as the sun slowly fell down.

“Where’s the nearest town?” The question was mumbled and felt clammy on her lips, as though it had been held in her mouth too long.

The driver motioned towards the coast. “That’d be Falmouth. It’s a fair way, along the higher path.” Though it was the first thing she had said to him, he did not start at her words or act surprised to hear them. His plain answer, as he described the journey towards the town, was entirely devoid of hidden meaning or underlying derision. He was a simple man doing a task. There was no room for thoughts or judgement around it.

It was a kindness, in a way. Ruth was grateful for it.

The carriage stopped. She did not want to leave it. It was familiar to her; the world beyond was not. The slightly worn upholstery, the rhythmic noise the wheels made upon the country lanes, the way the windows rattled when they crossed trickier terrain. Out there, in the beyond, was a new home she knew nothing about and a husband she could barely stand.

“Mrs Roscoe?”

At first she did not recognise the name as her own. It brought her out of herself, forced her to climb down, on shaky legs, to a track with waist-high grass on either side. Her luggage – one box – was set down beside her, along with the rest too heavy for her to carry.

When the driver moved to take it, to help her, she shook her head. Bedraggled, with her dark hair falling out of its bun and plain dress cobwebbed with creases, she tried to sound stronger than she felt.

“I can do it,” she told him firmly, though her legs were stiff and ankles weak. “I shall have to.”

He did not argue, only gave her a formal nod and climbed back into the post-chaise, leaving her to stand alone with her meagre belongings and sandy road dust upon her boots.

A pheasant shot out from the path when she took a step forward. Its shrill cry made her heart skitter to her throat. Beyond the yellowed track was a farmhouse. It had old, flaking cob, and ivy ran unchecked along its front. It was an overgrown tangle, unloved and rundown. An old courtyard held cobbles warped from time and weeds. Dandelion clocks shucked their seeds when she walked by, her tired eyes taking it all in. Fields surrounded the property on all sides and a small wood lined one edge, offering shelter from the coastal breeze.