Wedded to War (47 page)

“Lord have mercy,” Ruby blurted out as she threw a glance up to the ceiling. “But you can’t marry him, miss. You just can’t.”

Stunned silence.

“What is it, Ruby?”

“He’s not who you think he is.” Her gaze flitted to each woman in the room. “He’s not a good man.”

“What do you mean?” Caroline asked, her eyes intent on Ruby. Charlotte’s heart seemed to stop while she waited for the response.

“He isn’t honest,” Ruby choked out. “He—he—finds
pleasure
in female company. He uses prostitutes.”

The sound of Alice and Caroline gasping sounded strangely far away to Charlotte. The room spun. She looked down at her pristine white
wedding gown and steadied herself with one hand on the bedpost.

“I wish it weren’t true, miss, I didn’t want to have to say it, but you can’t marry him. He’ll not be faithful to you. You deserve better than him. He’s an awful man, he is!”

“Are you sure?” Alice put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “How would you know?”

Ruby dropped her face into her hands, her feather duster now forgotten on the floor at her feet.

“You might as well—hear it—from me,” she sobbed.

Caroline’s face drained of all color. “Out with it then,” she said quietly.

Charlotte sat down on her bed, wrinkling her gown and not caring a bit about it.

“’Tis better if I start from the beginning,” Ruby said, taking deep, shuddering breaths. Then the floodgates of her history opened to the spellbound circle of women. Pain seeped through the cracks in her voice as she told them about the potato famine, Meghan and Matthew, coming to America. The hope and eviction from Seneca Village, the tenements, Fiona, her crippling outworker sewing, Matthew’s enlistment, Five Points. And finally, Brooks Brothers, Mrs. Hatch, and Phineas.

Charlotte felt sick. She wanted to say it couldn’t be true, but what reason would Ruby have to lie about such a thing?

“Wait a minute.” Charlotte looked at the cooing baby on the floor. “Aiden. Matthew couldn’t have been the father! Are you telling us Phineas is Aiden’s father?” Her composure was beginning to crumble.

Ruby shook her head.

A wave of relief was quickly replaced by a new shock. “Then who is his father?”

Ruby bit her trembling lip. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

“What are you telling us, Ruby? That you were a working prostitute before you went down to Washington? Before I vouched for your character throughout our work for the Sanitary Commission?”

Tears streamed down Ruby’s face. “I didn’t want to do it! I hated
every minute of it! But after Phineas had his way with me, I was already sullied. I had to do it just to survive, just once every few weeks, you understand.”

Charlotte was shaking her head and pacing the room now. She put a hand over her thudding heart. Her mind reeled in confusion and hurt swelled in her chest until she thought it would burst out of her.

Charlotte did not want to believe Phineas capable of such vice. Neither did she want to remember that he’d grabbed her in Central Park last year, or that last week he’d taken her mouth with such force she thought her lips would be bruised, or that yesterday in his carriage his hands had roamed too far …

Ruby’s story rang true.

She let out a shaky breath. “Ruby, why didn’t you tell us before?”

“Phineas said if I told you about his—activities—he would tell you about me. You would believe him, not me, and I would be back in Five Points. He as much as said he would take Aiden away from me if I told you the truth.”

“What?” Disbelief creased Alice’s brow.

“He said people out West are sending for unwanted children to adopt,” Ruby responded. “Aiden’s all I have. But I couldn’t stand it anymore. I can’t just stand by and let you marry that … that monster while you have done so much for me.”

Alice nodded. “I believe you, Ruby.” She turned to Charlotte and Caroline then. “Haven’t either of you read Victor Hugo’s
Les Miserables
? It just came out in June—I read it after Jacob and I returned home. It’s a similar story—Fantine, the poor factory girl is taken advantage of and has a baby, Cosette. To provide for her, she does everything she can before resorting to becoming a ‘lady of the night.’ Sometimes, there really is no other way out—at least, that these poor women know about.”

Wringing her hands, Caroline shook her head. “This is no novel, my dear, this is my life! A prostitute, living and working in my house … and her bastard son!”

Charlotte groaned inwardly.
If Mother couldn’t stand the thought of
Father going to Five Points, how will she ever allow Ruby to stay?
“Mother, plea—”

“No, Charlotte. I’m still the mistress here. I won’t have you filling my head with any more of your revolutionary ideas.”

Ruby took Aiden from Alice’s arms and held him close. “I s’pose you’ll no longer be needing me here, then.”

All eyes were on Caroline for her verdict, but moments passed in silence.

“What about ‘Amazing Grace’?” It was Alice who finally spoke—Alice, who had never disagreed with her elders in her life.

“I beg your pardon?” Caroline’s head snapped up.

“Father’s favorite hymn. ‘How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.’ You and Father taught us that God’s grace has no limits. Does yours? Maybe it just doesn’t cover a woman like Ruby. But you know what, Mother? Father’s would have.”

Caroline gasped. “Why, Alice! You’ve never crossed me before!”

Alice bowed her head for a moment before looking up at Ruby and the baby, then back at Caroline. “Forgive me, Mother, but sometimes the stakes are too high to keep silent.” Alice winked at Charlotte, who was stunned beyond words.

“Be merciful,” whispered Ruby, and Charlotte’s head snapped up.

“What did you say?” Charlotte asked.

“Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.”

“Was,” corrected Caroline. “Her father is dead, remember.”

Ruby shook her head. “No. Her Father is alive. He is merciful. And He is my Father, too.” Her voice was steady once again.

“Excuse me?” said Caroline. Caroline’s tone bordered on indignation. But Charlotte understood perfectly.

“My old life is behind me now,” Ruby continued. “I won’t go back to it, I won’t, even if it means we starve instead. ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’” She paused, allowing the words to penetrate. “I’m a new creature, Mrs. Waverly. In Christ.”

A slow smile lifted the corners of Charlotte’s mouth. Compared to the wisp of a woman Ruby had been last fall, she was a new woman now indeed. Though Charlotte’s mind still reeled from the revelation of Phineas’s character, her heart warmed as she looked at Ruby, standing tall now, in front of her. If what she said was true, how could her mother possibly turn her out now?

Moments of agonizing suspense ticked by before Caroline dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and crossed the room to Ruby. “Forgive me, Ruby,” she said, taking her hands in her own. “You are all right—you, my daughters, and my late husband. We all need mercy, and grace. I need it, too. If it were up to us to earn it, all of us would fall short. God gives it freely, and so should we if we are His children.”

Her gaze fell to the black skirts draping her knees, a symbol of mourning for a husband who had proven to be far more merciful than she.

“Mr. Waverly, bless his soul, would have wanted you to stay,” she said, smiling sadly through her tears. “He would have said we should love our neighbors, and I’m sure he would have thought of you as such. Surely I can do more than wear mourning attire to honor his legacy. Please stay.”

Charlotte breathed a prayer of thanks, then caught her sister’s eye. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

Ruby closed her eyes and sighed. “And the truth shall make you free,” she whispered with a smile. Then she jerked her head toward Charlotte. “But will you marry Phineas?”

Charlotte felt three pairs of eyes on her.

All of her arguments with Phineas came rushing back to Charlotte. Caleb’s face surged before her.
Don’t you think that instead of yanking you back into place, the right partner would step out with you? Daring to believe that another dance, a different dance, could be just as elegant—or even more so?
Phineas had never been the right partner. It had always been Caleb, but he had rejected her by his silence.

“I will marry no one,” she said, and unfastened the veil from her hair.

“There is nothing more to say, Mr. Hastings.” Charlotte’s tone was the only cool thing in the stifling parlor. The cicadas outside the open window grew to a deafening pitch in the lull of their conversation. He should have known there would be trouble this evening when it was Ruby who had opened the door.

Phineas squeezed his fist around the sapphire and diamond engagement ring Charlotte had pressed into his hand, his nails slicing into his palm. He set his jaw and held his breath to keep the rage from boiling out of him.

She sat there so calmly on the settee behind her fluttering fan, as if this were simply a business deal she was reneging on. The corner of his mouth twitched with the irony. It was a business deal, after all. But he had never imagined he wouldn’t actually close the deal.

“Tell me again,” he said, careful to keep his voice even. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

Her fan stilled for only a moment before stirring up the thick air again. “We’re not the best match.” She shifted her position, fluffing the skirts over her hoops. “Even if you loved me before the war, you cannot love me now. I have changed too much, grown too independent for you. I’m afraid I’ve been ruined for any hope of being marriageable.”

He stared at her. The weight she had lost during the war only made her more beautiful. Her cheekbones were more prominent, her jawline sharper. Her body looked frail, as a woman’s should. But her eyes sparkled with rebellion.

“Go on,” he said. “I’m just waiting for one speck of anything that makes sense.”

“I could not be subject to you, Mr. Hastings. I don’t respect you. I can never marry you.”

The words might as well have been a slap to his face.
She doesn’t
respect me?
Blood pulsed loudly in his
ears. Just like my mother
, he thought, his heart racing.
Just
like my mother. Just like my mother.

He reached into his pocket and fumbled for the gold pocket watch. He pulled it out and stared at it as he ran this thumb over the inscription of his father’s initials. Of his own initials.
Am I just like my father?
The thought sent a jolt of electricity through his being.
Weak, unable to take control of his woman, a doormat. A coward.

Phineas narrowed his gaze at Charlotte once again and saw genuine fear register in her eyes. Good. A woman should fear her man.

“This was Ruby’s doing.” A muscle near his eye twitched, then one in his cheek, until his face felt like it was going into spasms. “Wasn’t it?”

Charlotte held his gaze but said nothing.

“She’s nothing. She’s lower than nothing; don’t you know by now what kind of a
lady
she is? Don’t you listen to her!”

Charlotte slapped her fan closed in her palm and curled her fingers around it. “And how would you know anything about her, Mr. Hastings? You only met her at Christmas for the first time, right?”

“Well, she’s from Five Points—that says it all, doesn’t it?”

A grim smile lifted Charlotte’s lips as Dickens bounded into her lap and nudged his head under her palm. “I never told you that.” She set her fan on the table next to her. “I fear there is something you aren’t telling me. But I really don’t want to hear the details. My mind is made up. Please do not call again.” She stood, clasping her hands. Dickens sauntered over and rubbed against Phineas’s trousers. “Good day,” she said coolly. “You know where the door is.”

How dare she!
Fury swelled and writhed within his chest until it could be kept inside no longer. With a swing of his leg, he sent the bundle of fur, yowling, aross the parlor. His hand flew up and struck Charlotte in the face with such a force that she fell back on the settee.

“I do not retreat!” he shouted shrilly, incensed that she had not remained cowering on the settee, but was now standing upright again, chin lifted high though a bright red welt had already formed on her cheek.

“You will take your leave,
sir
!”

Phineas looked up, chest heaving with anger, to find a man in uniform standing before him.

With a hand still pressed to her burning cheek, Charlotte watched in fascination as the two men sparred.

“You will not lay another finger on her.” The calmness in her brother-in-law’s tone belied the glint of warning in his eyes. His were hands raised, palms out, as if he were approaching a wild animal. Charlotte’s skin crawled at the resemblance.

“And who do you think you are?” A feral smile curved Phineas’s lips, but he backed away.

“I am Colonel Jacob Carlisle,” Alice’s husband announced, “and I am this woman’s protector. You will leave now.”