Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Wimpole Street, Marylebone
The maid showed Dora into a handsome drawing room on the first floor.
Rococo furniture curved and bowed fussily in armchairs, sofas and side tables, upholstery a mannish navy blue.
Hunting scenes galloped across the walls, red-coated riders after a startled streak of a fox.
Definitely not Ruby’s taste, decided Dora.
‘Madame will be down immediately,’ said the maid, bobbing a curtsey.
Dora chose a seat on the end of the sofa, glad to sit down. She had cramps, her period uncomfortably heavy. The cloth pad secured by a belt around her waist was snug and fresh, but she would have to use Ruby’s closet before returning home or risk an embarrassing accident.
Women’s bodies were annoyingly inconvenient. Men didn’t understand the half of it.
With that thought, she sprang up, worried she might be inadvertently leaving a spot on the sofa cushion. She checked the back of her skirt.
Ruby wafted in, dressed in a flowing white gown secured under her bust but leaving her body free of stays.
‘Whatever is the matter with you, Dora? I’ve not put pins in my cushions.’ She came over to kiss her on both cheeks.
‘It’s the visitor,’ said Dora, returning the affectionate greeting.
‘Poor you; you always do suffer in the first few days. At least I don’t have to worry about that for a few months.’ Ruby patted her stomach.
‘I was worried I might ruin your furniture.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly. It’s horrid old stuff in any case.
I’ve ordered a whole new set from Thomas Sheraton and it arrives in a few weeks.
Do you know you can pick what you want out of a catalogue and it arrives like magic?
Who would’ve thought? Sit down and rest. You appear quite fatigued, not in your best looks at all.
Is it just the visitor or is something else the matter?
’ Ruby sank gracefully into an armchair and put her feet up on a stool.
‘Cook will send up some refreshments. Can you stay long?’
The mantelpiece clock, a gilded affair of Atlas supporting the dial, showed it was approaching dinnertime. ‘Are you expecting company?’
‘Arthur isn’t coming until later if that’s what you are worried about. How about cards? I do get so bored here on my own. There is only so much shopping one can do to pass the time.’
Dora carried a card table over to set it between them ‘Where is the deck?’
‘There’s a box on the bookcase – the silver one.’
Dora returned with the playing cards and shuffled. ‘Piquet?’
Ruby nodded and yawned. ‘Sorry – I was napping when you arrived.’
‘How are you? All well with the baby?’
She rubbed a circle over her tummy. ‘I believe so. She dances around like her mother. Perhaps she’ll try for the ballet – plenty of work in that for a few years and it is suitably scandalous.
Have you seen how the prudes in the periodicals get in a lather over a girl pirouetting?
They don’t understand the difference between art and prostitution. ’
Dora dealt. ‘Still convinced it is going to be a girl?’
Ruby shrugged and picked up her hand. ‘Call it a mother’s instinct.’ She discarded a card and selected another from the undealt pile. ‘I’m sorry about the newspapers.’ She avoided Dora’s eyes.
‘It was a bigger problem for Jacob than for me.’ Dora rearranged her hand to see what runs of suits she held.
‘I hope you can be bothered to score the tricks because I never can be.’ Ruby set a king of hearts down. ‘Perhaps we should have picked a simpler game.’
Dora responded with a knave. ‘Let’s see this one through.’
‘Arthur arrived here in a fury last night. He’d seen Jacob and been given a firm rebuff.’ Ruby collected her win. ‘I can say one thing for him: anger makes him a more interesting lover.’
Dora scowled. ‘Really, Ruby, I do not want to know. He could be my brother-in-law one day.’
‘You still mean to marry?’ An edge developed in Ruby’s tone.
‘Is there any reason why I should not – a reason that does not concern your own interests? What do you think you would do in my place?’
‘Look around for a richer man?’ A little of Ruby’s old mischief returned.
‘Arthur wants me to hold a party to introduce you to some dukes and earls. I think he has it in his head that you are after a title and riches and would accept being a mistress of a higher member of the nobility and jilt a younger son.’
‘He doesn’t know me very well.’ Dora won the next point as Ruby could never concentrate on remembering the cards.
‘He is merely judging as he sees. Most women would think like that.’ She played a low diamond that was bound to be beaten by Dora.
‘Would they? Don’t you think most women would prefer to marry for love?
’ Dora thought of the choices of Jane Austen’s characters.
For Elinor and Edmund, it was love in a cottage – albeit a decent vicarage.
The loss of his fortune was presented as less of a tragedy than the possibility that he would have to marry the awful Lucy Steele.
‘Besides, Jacob is independently wealthy. I’m not choosing poverty if I marry him. ’
‘You’ve been reading too many novels,’ grumbled Ruby, showing she must’ve tapped into Dora’s thoughts, or more likely, watched her in too many green rooms waiting to go on stage with the latest novel in hand. ‘The playwrights have it right. Love leads to death, betrayal or comedy.’
‘You are not a romantic then?’
‘Romance is the icing on the cake. If you don’t have the cake, what good is the icing? It leaves you holding a sticky mess in your hand.’
Dora laughed at that. It was for comments like this that she loved Ruby.
‘If the viscount says he will continue to keep you even if Jacob and I marry, will you be content?’ Dora played a low card, hoping to give Ruby the win.
‘You did that on purpose.’ Ruby collected the point. ‘I would rather not risk his rejection.’
‘But Jacob and I cannot live our lives to please you.’ She placed a high card down.
Ruby conceded the trick. ‘Why not?’ But she said it with a laugh, knowing she was being outrageous.
‘Can you not wait until I have secured the viscount’s affections?
He likes me well enough, but I wouldn’t say it’s a strong attachment, not yet.
I don’t want to be out on the street with the babe on the way – that’s what you might bring about. ’
‘Do you really think the viscount would do that?’
Ruby rubbed her stomach. ‘Oh, he’d pay me off, I’ve no doubt, but I’ve not yet earned more than a diamond bracelet or something of that nature.’
‘And you want the whole Crown Jewels? How about we agree that Jacob and I will not be precipitate. Things will change when you have the child, you must realise that? The viscount might decide that he does not want a mistress who is more concerned with her baby than him.’
Ruby shook her head at that. ‘I’m no fool.
I’ll hire a nurse and keep the child out of the way when Arthur calls.
He will barely know she exists. He is paying for a fantasy – a dream of a woman who lives only for him and is raising a perfect family of pretty little by-blows who think he is wonderful, children who will beg sweets from him and call him Papa.
I intend to provide him with his dream.’
Dora cocked her head to one side. ‘Do you love him, Ruby? Are your feelings the least bit engaged in what you have with him? It sounds to me like you are approaching this as though you were playing a role.’
‘Perhaps I am. If I were you, I would tell me that that was wise.’
‘It sounds a loveless existence.’
Ruby shrugged. ‘I’ll have the children to love.
You know me – I’m not sure I have any strong feelings for men other than fear and annoyance.
I can desire them, find them amusing in bed, but if I could live my life without relying on one, I’d be truly happy.
’ Ruby dumped the rest of her cards. ‘You win. Let’s look at the ladies’ magazines together.
You can help me pick out a gown for my first party. ’
‘Oh, Ruby…’ Dora felt sorrow swamp her. The abuse her friend had suffered as a child had turned her into this cynic.
Ruby swatted her with the rolled magazine. ‘Stop it. I will not be pitied. Why don’t we agree that we will attempt not to ruin each other’s happiness?’
‘Agreed.’ Dora sneaked a look at Ruby. ‘If we do marry, I’ll invite you to the wedding. That will put the fox in the henhouse.’
Ruby chuckled. ‘For that, I’d almost say go wed your doctor immediately. We two actresses, veterans of the northern circuit, live for nothing if not to set the world arsy-varsy.’
Dora did not give Ruby a firm answer as to whether she would attend Ruby’s first party.
It sounded like the viscount would veto Jacob’s presence, so that made it awkward for Dora to attend.
She returned to the carriage that the footman was holding ready for her, grateful to have escaped the house before Arthur arrived.
Encountering him on the doorstep would be deeply awkward.
That was an odd relationship, she thought, as the carriage rocked away over the cobbles, Arthur wanting the facade of a family but none of the commitment.
Did he realise it was a husk, that Ruby had no real loyalty to him?
He probably did at some level. It was as though they had both consented to play their appointed roles and were angry when anyone else broke into their bubble and questioned them.
The viscount was using his money to hold life’s complications at bay, playing it safe in a relationship he could control.
How different was her own arrangement. Jacob could have petitioned her harder to accept a similar place in his life, she realised.
Her feelings were engaged so he might have been able to wear her down, she was not sure.
Yet he had not pressed once he was aware that she held herself to her own standards, ones of independence and choice.
If she married him, by law she would be surrendering some of those choices, the most important ones.
Her body and children would no longer be hers.
Any money she had would become his – not that that was a problem, considering the disparity in their fortune.
She would as far as the law was concerned cease to exist independently and could not detach herself from him if things turned sour.
Ruby had more choices than she did in that respect.
She would have to flee the country and become someone else, if that happened with Jacob.
But would it? She knew in her bones that Jacob was fundamentally decent.
He loved her and would use those powers to protect her.
That would be annoying, of course, but what if they negotiated the limits of what he would ask?
He might not be bound by the law to respect her wishes but he would keep his word, as he had proved time and again.
It meant taking a chance on a man. Ruby wouldn’t, but would Dora?
Pondering these things, Dora let the carriage sweep her back to Mayfair.