Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
It was many hours before Lord Treme finally left. Ruby had played him, as she played all men, as though they were a particularly difficult piece on the pianoforte.
It was a challenge to balance her distant beauty with her allure, but men did not come to her to be pandered to.
They came because she made them feel powerful, or she made them feel protected, or perhaps both.
She knew she was popular because of the emotions she drew out of them, because of her ability to understand what they most desired—even if they did not know it themselves—and to make them feel most satisfied.
And in this state, they would whisper their secrets to her with barely any encouragement.
Her mind was a treasure chest of powerful confidences.
The traitorous ones she delivered to the Ramparts, and she found a sense of accomplishment as she did so.
How ironic that although she had not thought she could feel loyalty to anyone or anything, she somehow found herself acting as a loyal subject of the King.
Ruby had worried at first that Lord Treme might stay the night, for he had arrived quite late, but he had an appointment with John Weston, his tailor, whose fastidious exclusivity he would not dare to offend.
As always, her lady’s maid, Jessica, drew a bath for her. She relaxed in the steaming water. Jessica brushed her hair and chatted with her mistress, who was also her friend. “How are you feeling?”
On any other night, she would be asking about dealing with her current paramour, but tonight, she was speaking of her Aunt Laura, and perhaps Phoebe, and Joshua. Even though Clifton did not know the whole of her past, Jessica did.
“To be truthful, I feel very little.” She had once been a lively young girl, adventurous, inquisitive. But since then, she had grown numb. The rancor and torment that used to be constant companions had grown into merely distant acquaintances, but her joy and warmth had also become strangers to her.
There had been a moment in the entrance hall when she had seen the suffering on her Aunt Laura’s face, and she had known that it was real and rooted in her love for Ruby.
For the first time in many years, she had felt something—she did not know if it was joy or sadness or anger.
She had grown so unused to feeling anything, too out of practice in understanding her sentiments.
Frankly, she had been shocked at the tears that had gathered in her eyes, and even more shocked when they fell.
It was such an uncommon occurrence that she had not known what to do with herself.
It had been almost a relief to greet Phoebe.
She was five years older, and so they had not played together as children, their age difference being too great when they were both in the schoolroom.
But she remembered her cousin as a precocious child who had blossomed under her mother’s love but been crushed by her father’s neglect.
Ruby had felt a sort of kinship with her. She had been kind when they were together, and she’d had youthful, heroic dreams of marrying a loving man and being able to offer Phoebe a place of respite during the occasional holiday.
How foolish her dreams had been. Yet how ironic that Ruby could offer her a place of shelter now, when she had thought there was nothing she could possibly be able to give to the proper young lady her cousin had become.
And yet, Phoebe was not a proper young lady any longer, was she? She carried herself like an agent. Ruby had barely recognized her—in men’s attire, she was indistinguishable from a handsome youth just down from university.
“I shall refuse all visitors until you feel you are able to see them,” Jessica said.
Her new house guests would surely wish to speak to Ruby. She admitted she had been rather anxious that Lord Treme would hear the presence of others in the house, but they had all been as quiet as mice in the attic, and he had not suspected a thing.
But she should not have been surprised. They were Mr. Drydale’s team, all trained by the Ramparts—except perhaps for Aunt Laura.
When they had heard the carriage pull up in front of the townhouse, she had seen how Phoebe and Miss Gardinier’s bodies had tensed, and Ruby had been able to tell that they had been trained by Mr. Armstrong.
Ruby’s own training had been more specialized—defending herself from violent patrons, wrestling maneuvers to subdue someone in her bed, and extensive training with knives from the sword master, Mr. Ackerman.
“No, Jessica.” Her voice sounded tired, even to her, so she cleared her throat. “I must speak with Mr. Drydale tonight, and I know my Aunt Laura. She will wish to speak to me as well.”
“You are not obligated to meet with her.” There was a brittleness to Jessica’s words, for she had never quite forgiven Lady Wynwood for Ruby’s treatment at the hands of her servant.
“I must.” She added softly, “I owe her that much.” It had been Ruby’s choice to remain hidden from her family all these years, and while she would rather take a smuggler’s boat to France than speak to her father, her Aunt Laura was different.
She finished her bath, but instead of dressing in a nightgown and dressing gown, she had Jessica help her into a wool morning gown in the crimson colors she was known by and a warm shawl in shades of rose, flame, twilight, and emerald, which Ruby always fancied looked like a rose garden after a bull had thrashed through it and tossed up all the petals.
She sat in front of the fire as Jessica bustled to clean the room, and then she left with the pails of dirty water.
No more than three minutes after she closed the door behind her, there was a gentle knock.
“Come in, Aunt Laura,” Ruby called.
The door opened, and Aunt Laura entered, her cheeks faintly pink. “I apologize for the inconvenience we have caused for you, my dear. Have you a few minutes to spare for me?”
For some reason, her politeness caused a pang in Ruby’s heart.
This was not the same Aunt Laura who had gone blackberry picking with her in the woods, staining their hands and their dresses purple as they stuffed themselves.
This was not the same Aunt Laura who had enacted a mock sword battle with her in the gardens using wooden sticks, who had stood with her head bowed as they were scolded by the gardener for knocking the petals off of the roses.
Ruby reminded herself that she had wanted this distance between them, for too much had happened. She was no longer that innocent child who went blackberry picking or who delightedly swung her imaginary sword. She was as far away from that girl as she could possibly be.
“Of course, Aunt Laura. Do come inside.” Her voice was calm, although she could feel the storm brewing in her chest.
She understood why she had wanted to avoid speaking to her aunt. The encounter in the entrance hall had been just a prelude. The old desolation and wrath that she had buried were beginning to rise to the surface, like bubbles floating up in a swamp to break open at the surface.
Her feelings were vile, messy things like that swamp. She did not want to touch it, to get her hands dirty.
But she must. Aunt Laura would not remain under her roof without speaking to her, no matter that Ruby did not want to endure these agonies again.
Aunt Laura sat down beside her on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Jessica had opened the windows to air out the room after Lord Treme had left, and so she had also lit a blazing fire. But Ruby did not feel the warmth. Instead, she felt cold, as if her legs were blocks of ice.
“I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see that you are safe, my dear girl.” But despite Aunt Laura’s words, her face was pained.
“And yet you look as though you are in distress,” Ruby said before she could stop herself.
Aunt Laura’s eyes of dark gold widened slightly, and her gaze fell to her lap. “Because at last, I must face my failure of eleven years ago.”
Ruby did not pretend that she was unaware. “Several years ago, the Senhora told me about Uncle Wynwood’s valet.”
Her aunt grimaced. “Yes, she knows all that had happened. When I finally went to the Senhora to beg for help, she asked me about the sequence of events. I had been shocked at Wynwood’s death, but it was no excuse for my loss of control of the servants.
Durben should have been let go as soon as his master had died, but I was too despondent to write him a reference or insist that he leave.
I never liked him, but Wynwood had valued his services as his valet.
To this day I cannot understand why he turned you away, for surely you told him who you were, and I was fairly certain that he would have recognized you. ”
Hearing this caused Ruby to remember the man’s sneering face, the malicious triumph as he shut the door, barring her from the house.
She had knocked again and again, but no one had answered, until she was forced to leave with a heart that felt as though it would explode with her rage and anxiety.
“I spurned Durben’s advances once,” Ruby confessed.
Laura’s mouth opened in shock. It was several moments before she exclaimed, “That insolent pig!” The outburst reminded Ruby of the old Aunt Laura she remembered.
“He had mistaken me for one of the under maids, although that hardly excuses him,” Ruby explained. “I should have simply pushed him and run away, but instead I threw an inexpert punch to his eye, and then kicked him between the legs before walking away. He never forgave me for that.”
“And so his resentment caused him to turn you away at the door?” Aunt Laura was livid.
“It is perhaps simply bad luck that he had been the one to answer my knock.” Ruby had told herself this many times over the years, and sometimes she even believed it.