Chapter 4 #2
The heavy door scraped against the floor as they entered, and Ruby was forced to revise her estimation of this wing’s most recent use to three centuries ago at least. Every part of the room looked as though it had been plucked straight from Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace.
Half a dozen paintings leaned against a monstrous bed that she didn’t think she could enter without a stool.
In contrast with the corridor’s gloom, light poured into the chamber—because the draperies and bed hangings had been mostly devoured by moths.
“Good news,” Tamsin said. “At least these windows have glass.”
Ruby collapsed onto the bed. A plume of dust shot into the air.
“This is insane.” Tamsin prowled around the perimeter of the room, nudging chewed-on velvet fabrics out of the way with the toe of her boot. “This can’t be right. Are you certain this is Pomeroy House?”
“Relatively.” They’d stopped at Bridestowe to visit Tamsin’s Aunt Frankie, who’d sent them along to Pomeroy House in her private coach. “The coachman said it was. It’s on a cliff at the edge of the sea. And it looks like the pictures, more or less.”
“From the outside, maybe!” Tamsin made a wild sweep of her arm that nearly knocked over one of the leaning paintings. “This does not look like a princess’s holiday home.”
“The staff did say—”
“The staff,” Tamsin repeated. “What staff? Did those fellows strike you as working servitors? Because I cannot say I was struck by their professionalism or”—she gestured again—“the results of their labors!”
Alice’s soft voice broke in. “They didn’t know we were coming, Tam. You can’t blame them for not having the rooms prepared. It’s our fault, really.”
Tamsin stopped pacing to stare at Alice. “Are you just saying that because they were so beautiful to look at?”
“No,” Alice protested.
Ruby brushed at the dust on the counterpane, which served to transfer it to her skirts. “She’s saying that because they gave her a dog.”
“No,” Alice said again, though she hugged the puppy closer to her chest. “It’s only that they were very kind.”
“Oh my God.” Tamsin shoved her fingers into her hair. “It is because they gave you a dog.”
“I suppose it was all of it together.” Alice set her puppy on the ground and examined one of the paintings that Tamsin had nearly toppled.
“They were awfully welcoming to a trio of unexpected”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“faux ladies-in-waiting. And they were very attractive. Do you think there could be something especially salutary about the Cornish air?”
Tamsin groaned, leaned back against the wall, and slowly sank down to the ground.
Ruby wrapped her arms around her legs and put her chin on her knees. She looked out across the room and then to the nearest window, which might have afforded a view of the sea if she could see through the grimy glass.
There was something hard and cold in her chest, like a stone lodged in her breastbone.
How many times had she done this? Envisioned some fantastic scheme only to be confronted by a reality not half so shining and luminous?
Perhaps there was no way to reinvent herself. Perhaps—even here, in Cornwall, as far away as she could get from her past—she was still the same old Ruby Ballimore.
It felt hard to breathe. Difficult to swallow against the pressure in her throat.
“I think we should go back,” Tam said. “Back to Bridestowe. For God’s sake, what if this isn’t the staff, and they’ve thrown the real servants into the sea?”
“I can’t imagine that’s the case,” Alice said. “They seem very pleasant.”
Tamsin shot her a perturbed look. “Alice, darling, I’m concerned by how easily you succumb to a handsome sea captain with a dog.”
“To Alice’s credit,” Ruby managed to say, “the man has eight dogs. Eight times the persuasive power of a single canine.”
Alice picked up her puppy again, which had piddled on the floor and was now engaged in a pitched battle with her boot laces. “He only has seven now. This one’s mine. I’m not giving her back.”
Tamsin made a faint despairing sound.
And Ruby found herself looking at Alice.
Alice was nuzzling the puppy’s ear. Her face was pink and flecked with dirt and plaster; her boots were scuffed. She looked a thousand times more windblown and disheveled than Ruby had ever seen her in all their years of friendship in London.
And she looked happy.
It had been a long time since Ruby had seen her look so happy.
In the years since her father’s disgrace, Alice had not asked Ruby or Tamsin for anything. She wanted to please—everyone, all the time. She never let her desires show on her face like this, lest her wanting prove an inconvenience. Lest she lose what little she had left to her that she loved.
But she had asked for the dog. And the captain had responded as though her request had been no hardship. As though it were in his nature to give.
Ruby bit her lip. She looked around the room: the moth-eaten drapes, the bare stone floor, the bizarre furniture and abundance of paintings.
She murmured, “Why not?”
Tamsin looked up from her position on the ground. There was dust on her face too, camouflaging the freckles on her cheeks. “What was that?”
“Why not?” Ruby said, louder this time. “Why not stay? What does it matter to us if the house is peculiar? If it’s scarcely staffed? What of it?”
“What do you—”
“Why should we mind?” She scrambled off the bed.
“We’re here. We’ve made it. They did not bar the door or send us back to London in disgrace.
” She hiked up the topmost layer of her skirts and used it to clean away the begrimed window, letting in more light.
“We can stay for the summer, exactly as we planned. We don’t need a palace or a cadre of servants.
What we need is a place to be together.”
Perhaps it was not precisely what she’d imagined. But that didn’t mean she had to give up. The house didn’t matter—only that they were together and happy, with freedom enough to fill their lungs with air.
She dropped her skirt. Light speared through the glass, illuminating Alice’s flushed cheeks, glancing red off Tamsin’s hair.
“We can fix it up,” Alice said softly. She set the puppy back down and moved to the other window, scrubbing at it with her handkerchief.
“Yes!” Through the glass, Ruby could see the ocean, and a tiny bird, white against the summer blue of the sky. “Why shouldn’t we spend the summer restoring the house? We’re the princess’s ladies-in-waiting, and this is her home.”
“We’re not, actually,” Tamsin said. “You do recall that pertinent fact?”
Ruby held out one of the moth-eaten drapes. The sunlight glanced through dozens of tiny holes, casting dappled shadows across the floor.
“That looks very pretty,” Alice murmured.
It did. Somehow the pattern of light and dark looked like lacework: delicate and fine.
“God save me from the two of you and your imaginations,” Tamsin said. But there was something lurking in her voice, a hint of weakening she couldn’t quite suppress.
Ruby locked eyes with Tamsin and let her conviction show on her face. “We can make it beautiful here.”
“It already is beautiful,” Alice said. “It only needs a little shine.”
Ruby bit her lip. “I think we should stay, Tam. I want to stay.” And Alice, she wanted to say. Look at Alice. Look how much easier it is for her to breathe.
But Ruby didn’t have to say it. Tamsin was already gazing at Alice, and by the expression on Tamsin’s face, Ruby knew that she had noticed as well.
The puppy waddled over to Tamsin’s place on the floor, and she put out her hand. The dog licked at her palm, then, delicately, bit the tip of her ungloved finger.
Tamsin took a breath and looked up. Her dark-blue eyes took in Ruby and Alice at once. “All right.” Her mouth firmed; her freckled face went set and determined. “You win. We’re staying.”