Chapter 18
Just as Ruby crossed the finish line, she felt a rush of joy, excitement, and accomplishment. This was everything she’d ever wanted, everything she knew she was capable of, and she had done it.
She looked to Abigail first to share this moment of triumph with her, for Abigail had helped her achieve it. But instead of triumph, she saw horror and terror. It caused Ruby to feel utter confusion.
She pulled up her mare’s reins, the horse’s hooves sliding deep into the soft earth.
Ruby looked around, trying to understand where all the other horses were, where her racing companions were.
A few were following behind her. But then Abigail’s arm whipped up and she pointed: Ruby’s stomach dropped.
She forced herself to look back, and she saw Augustus was horseless and saddleless, walking solitary and distraught near a pile of color on the ground.
Her mind refused to register it. It couldn’t be. It could not be. Everyone was always so afraid that she was the one who was going to get hurt, that she would have a consequence for racing. Not him.
Not her big, strong, beautiful Peter.
She’d whipped her mare around, raced back down the track, and even while her mare was still dashing forward, she whipped her leg over the horse’s neck and jumped down, running to a stop.
The mare went to Augustus and stopped with the animal, as if she could seek comfort there. Ruby fell to her knees.
“Peter,” she cried as her gaze darted over his face, searching for any sign he was alive. “Peter.”
His eyes were closed. His face was streaked with dirt. His body was sprawled as if it had been broken in parts.
The Duke of Windbourne was beside him, already checking his body, being very careful, speaking calmly. “Lady Ruby,” he said, “You must back away. I’m trying to ascertain what is wrong with him.”
“You’re a doctor?” she asked, shocked, barely able to understand.
“I am not a doctor, but if you can believe it, I served as an assistant to many a physician on the ships I took in my travels. I learned a great deal from them. Now, wait a moment. At least he is still breathing.”
“Still breathing?” she echoed, her voice catching in her throat. He had to be breathing. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t die. She had finally found happiness. She had finally found something worth fighting for and stopping all her running for.
The crowd was surging.
People were coming up behind them, desperate to get a look at what had happened.
“Oh, Peter,” Ruby tried to call, but her voice broke. “Can I hold his hand?” she asked the Duke of Windbourne.
The duke nodded, his face grave.
She laced her fingers with Peter’s, but he did not move or squeeze her hand back. His eyes did not flicker.
Ruby’s heart slammed hard in her chest. “You must save him. You must help him,” she urged the duke.
And then, suddenly, there was a voice crying out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it would be like this. I just wanted to scare him, to hurt him. I didn’t want to kill him. I hated him. I hated him so much because…”
Ruby whipped towards that frantic voice, and she spotted a young boy of about fourteen years in the clothes of a stable hand. His eyes were wild, his curled hair waving about his frantic face.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
The Duke of Rivers crossed up to him. “What have you done, lad?”
“I cut at his saddle girth,” the boy sobbed. “I was so angry. So angry. I’m sorry.” The boy kept repeating himself as if somehow that would make everything change.
“Why, lad?” the Duke of Rivers asked gently, even though his voice was deep with emotion. “Why did you do it? Has he done something to you? Has Lord Skyburn done something to you?”
Rivers also kept repeating himself, as if he also could not believe what was happening.
“He’s my brother,” the boy managed between sobs. “And I hated him for having everything, while I have had nothing.”
And when Ruby really looked at the boy, she saw it.
His clothes were rags and his breeches barely hung on his hips; his shoes had holes; he was missing a tooth, and his face was gaunt. He should have looked youthful, beautiful, but he didn’t. For his fourteen-year-old frame, he looked like an old man.
Even his shoulders were bent.
And she wanted to curse Peter’s father, for he had left a wake of suffering, a wake of misery, ruining so many lives with his cruelty and carelessness.
And now it could result in the death of his own son. His heir. Apparently, the only thing the dead man had cared about, even if he didn’t care about Peter himself.
“Please,” she begged, turning back to the man she loved. “Please, Peter, open your eyes.”
“Make way, make way,” someone said quite forcefully. A physician was pushing his way through the people packed in around Peter.
He knelt beside them. “Give me a moment,” the physician ordered, and they all retreated slowly. Even the Duke of Windbourne, though he looked relieved that someone who knew more than he did had arrived.
But Ruby would not let go of his hand. “Young man, I need his hand.”
At first, she didn’t realize the physician was speaking to her because she’d forgotten her disguise, but when the doctor gave her a firm look, she understood.
She shook her head. “I’m not letting go.”
“You must,” he said.
And with that, her parents came up behind her.
“Ruby,” her father said, towering over them, his face grim. “Stand up.”
She couldn’t believe it, but for the first time in years, her father had given her a command. And slowly, much to her shock, she did as she was told.
The Duke of Windbourne looked into her eyes. “I’ll make certain that he’s all right. And as soon as I have it, I’ll send you news.”
“Yes, please,” she said, though her throat was so tight she could barely get the words out. “Send me news as soon as you can. And I want to come to his side as soon as possible.”
And then, much to her agony, she had to watch as he was put on a stretcher. The Duke of Windbourne, and a man she did not know, Lord Philip, and the Duke of Rivers, carried him off the field and towards a coach, where his sister, who Ruby spotted, was waiting.
She was glad Abigail would go with him.
Ruby turned to her parents slowly.
“What are you doing, Ruby?” her father asked.
“Nothing,” she said through tears. “I wanted to race. I thought it would make us happy. I thought it would make me happy. And it did. Until…”
“Ruby,” he said, “what if that had been you?”
Something snapped in her then. Perhaps it was the fear of losing Peter, but she suddenly found she couldn’t listen to her father.
“He didn’t fall because it was dangerous,” she countered. “He fell because of his father, because of the legacy his father left. And you?” she said to her father. “What legacy will you leave?”
Her father’s eyes flared. “What?” he said.
Suddenly, all her pain, all her fear flared out of her. Things she never dared say, and questions she had only just formed poured out of her. “You kept me from Mama. All those years, you kept me from Mama.”
Her mother’s face paled. “Ruby,” she hissed.
“You told her?” he bit out as he turned on his wife.
“Yes, I finally told her,” her mother said, her face pale under the wide brim of her violet straw hat, but her back was ramrod straight.
Her father who loved his parrots and always had a jovial word for Ruby turned ice cold as he confronted his wife. “You swore to me you would never tell her. That was the condition of you coming back, of you getting to see her, that you would never tell her the truth.”
Her mother threw up her hands and gritted, “Well, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I couldn’t bear the way she looked at me, believing that I had abandoned her. I tried to abandon you, but I ended up losing you both.”
With that, her mother pivoted on her heel and strode off towards her own coach.
And Ruby was left standing there in her borrowed boy’s costume, and her borrowed boy’s wig, without any laurels of victory, without the man she loved.
She was left staring at the father she had idealized, the father who had once made her believe that she could be anything and do anything, no matter the fact that she had been born a woman.
“Tell me why,” she whispered.
“Because I love you,” he barked, his eyes flaring with anger.
But then, as he looked on her, the fire dimmed and he looked defeated.
“And I wanted to keep you for myself. I wanted to prove that I could raise you and make you the best, make you strong. Your mother wasn’t going to do that.
She wanted different things for you. She wanted you to be raised like a girl.
She wanted you to be raised with limitations. ”
“And you?” she asked, as her eyes burned and her chest felt tight. For it felt she was losing everything today. Everything she thought she had. “Did you give yourself limitations? You said to me that you were like Peter’s father. Tell me about that now. Did you ever hurt Mama?”
He winced. “I never laid my hands on her,” he said. But his eyes belied the truth.
“You did hurt her though, didn’t you?” Ruby pressed a hand to her mouth, horrified.
He looked away. “Yes,” he said. “But I never hit her.”
“You were cruel,” she managed.
“Yes,” he said. “I was an absolute villain, if you want to know. Pure and simple. Why do you think I’ve hidden myself away from the world?
Why do you think I keep myself with my birds?
Do you think it’s because I like only them?
” her father challenged. “No, it’s because I know if I stay in that pavilion, I can’t hurt anyone else, Ruby. ”
“But you kept me with you,” she protested, hating how it felt as if her heart was being ripped to ribbons. “And you didn’t hurt me.”
“Yes, I did,” her father said softly, lifting his hand to touch her cheek, but then stopping himself.
He dropped his hand. “You know I did. You know it now. I kept your mother from you, because I wanted you all for myself, because I didn’t want you to love her more than you loved me.
I wanted you to think the world of me. And if she had stayed, she would have made you see what I was really like. Do you understand?”
“I do understand, Papa, but it hurts. It hurts so much.”
And with that, she turned on her heel. And she ran, not to be by herself, not to go after the man who would soon be her husband, but she ran after the retreating form of her mother.
Once she got to the coach, she called out to her. Her mother stopped, tensing, and then slowly she turned.
“I’m sorry I didn’t understand, Mama,” Ruby rushed, wishing she could go back years and years and change so many things.
“I’m sorry I’ve punished you all these years with cruel letters and silent comments and judgment.
I pretended that I was fine with all you did.
But I know I wasn’t. And I wasn’t always kind to you about it.
I should have tried to understand you better.
I should have asked for your side of the story. ”
Her mother’s face didn’t soften. Her eyes didn’t fill with tears.
“It is probably too late, my darling, for us to begin again, and that is not your fault,” she said.
“My heart, I have done terrible things. I have done terrible things, trying to hurt your father for what he did to us. None of it worked, and that’s the worst part of it.
He didn’t care how I hurt him, because he knew he had already won. I only hurt myself and you.”
And it was then that tears filled her mother’s eyes.
They began to slip down her cheeks, and then a sob racked her body.
“Oh, how I hurt you, my love. If only I had stayed. If only I had not tried to leave. I thought I could take you with me. What a fool I was thinking that, since I was the daughter of a duke, born with power, born with money, I could ever keep my own child. It was never possible. Not when faced with your father. Not when faced with English laws.”
Her mother let out a dry, horrible laugh. “I could never win. Not with all of that against me. And so I had to become something else. They all thought I was a scandalous woman. But your father did not cast me out. He would not divorce me. And so I remained attached and imprisoned in his name.”
Her mother’s shoulders shook. “In many ways, I still am. He still owns me. I must do whatever he says if I ever wish to see you.”
“Not for long, Mama,” Ruby soothed, raising her chin. “Soon I will reach my majority, and then he won’t be able to say a single thing. Not a single thing.”
And she took her mother’s hands and pulled her close.
“What are you doing?” her mother said.
“I’m hugging you,” she said. “Something I should have done long ago.”
And then her mother wrapped her arms about her. “No, my darling, it’s something that I should have done long ago. I should have stayed. I should have taken whatever I had to in order to protect you. Can you forgive me?”
“No, Mama. You did exactly what you had to. And I forgive you because, in the end, there’s nothing to forgive.”