Sophie Dash - To Wed A Rebel

It was not a question. Fragile pride reminded Ruth that she had at least been able to refuse one man that night – the only real rebellion she had ever made. The one and only time she’d said “no” instead of rushing to please another at the expense of her own happiness.

A realisation came to her: where Isaac had asked, Albert had ordered.

She could not recall the last time anyone had ever given her a choice.

***

The door to Ruth’s bedroom creaked open and light, familiar footsteps slid along the floorboards. Ruth shifted towards the bed’s other side and made way for her friend, both too wide awake to sleep. The ball had ended hours ago, but their droopy eyelids and the open ears of their chaperones had kept their tongues quiet on the journey home. Now, alone and together in the Griswell abode, the two young women could talk in private.

“Are you cross with me?” Lottie held up her arm, the sheet tented between them, faces barely discernible in the gloom.

Ruth shook her head, a rustle upon her pillow.

Lottie’s words were stilted and considered, slow to leave her lips. “I know I have not been kind to you lately, I suppose it’s because I’ll miss you.”

“Only suppose?”

Lottie made a huffing sound, nostrils flaring. “Look, I – I – I don’t like people leaving and I cannot be like you; I cannot be so unmoved by everything.”

“You think I am unmoved?”

“You cope with it all so easily.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” said Lottie sharply. “It’s you that everyone at the academy loved, you they went to when something went wrong.”

“Only when they didn’t want Miss Lamont to find out.”

“Well, no one ever asked for my views, for my help. It’s always you. It’s not fair.”

It was all the apology Ruth would get and so she edged closer to Lottie, a gesture of forgiveness, hearing the other girl’s breathing fall more evenly. “I will miss you too.”

Ever since Lottie’s mother had died when she was eleven, she had been unbearably clingy. Ruth had lost her mother at the early age of five – her father too – to a bad fever. Whereas grief had hardened Ruth and forced her to ignore her emotions for fear of ever hurting so deeply again, it had made Lottie more vulnerable. But they’d known, since they were girls, that they’d always have each other. They were like sisters, even if they bickered or Ruth withdrew into herself – as she was prone to do – or counties separated them. When Ruth’s engagement to Albert had been confirmed, Lottie had been the only one at the academy who hadn’t been happy for her. Because marriage would pull them apart.

“Do you love Albert?” The question was one Ruth had asked herself. To hear it voiced by another gave weight to all the doubts she had collected, nursed and fed in the night-time hours when sleep stayed far away.

“I hardly know him.”

“Do you think you will love him?”

Ruth pulled in a deep breath. “I hope so.”

“Even if he won’t protect you from snakes?”

“If that’s the case, then let’s hope there are always Isaac Roscoes milling around,” said Ruth drily.

“Yes, please,” laughed Lottie, stifling the noise against the blankets. “Though I doubt he mills anywhere, he swaggers .”

“Honestly, Lottie.”

“You can’t deny he’s charming!”

“Men like that are dangerous.” Ruth bunched up one hand, the same Isaac had held, a fist under her pillow as though there were a secret within it.

“Maybe I want danger,” joked Lottie, red hair inky in the darkness as she turned to address the ceiling. “You can keep your safe, happy life and I will be wife to a renegade. Even if he is rude enough to leave a woman mid-dance, I shall forgive him. He’s very easy to forgive.”

“Quiet,” hushed Ruth, pulling the covers back over their heads. “Good looks cannot make up for a man’s faults.” An odd, hot feeling crawled up behind her stomach, a little like jealousy.

“Ugliness doesn’t ensure virtue either,” said Lottie pointedly. They both knew to whom she referred. Ruth could still hear her husband-to-be’s whiny, dire tones in her ear.

“Lottie,” whispered Ruth. “Am I marrying a toad?”

“No, he looked far more like a pig in that waistcoat this evening.”

Another laughing fit grasped them both, petering out as the harsh truth set in. The future had seemed bright and white and idyllic when they were younger. They had waited for ever to grow up and now that they were women, the reality they faced was far harsher and seeded with uncertainty. Their talk ended, silence settled upon them like a second quilt, and the pair curled up together in the sheets for warmth.

“I hope you will be happy,” said Lottie, a well-meaning mumble. “Real happiness, not the pretence you put on to please everyone else. I hate when you do that.”

“Me too,” replied Ruth. “Me too.”

***

It does not happen often, that moment, when you find yourself left with the last tendrils of a dream that you can steer in any direction you wish. Ruth felt sleep slipping away and she held on, pushed through and found herself back in the orangery. The little boy, Joshua, had gone missing again – or had he? No, it wasn’t he that Ruth was looking for. It was another. The glass room was still and dark, the air sickly sweet. A shadow, lost behind large, sweeping leaves, solidified. A man, and not the man she should have sought out.

That infuriating smile, a quiet voice for only her. “You still owe me a dance, Miss Osbourne.”

Ruth’s breath caught in her throat. His hand took hers and she let him, unable to speak, to refuse. And didn’t their hands fit so well together, as though they had been made to hold one another’s? Isaac Roscoe. Every movement he made, she moved with, though there was no music. Nothing but a light breeze that stirred the canopy above, and him – always him – invading her senses, her mind, her soul. Those eyes, such dark, endless eyes, opened into hers. When had they gotten so close? If they were still dancing, it was not a dance she recognised. Her hands on his shoulders, fingers in the softer hair at the nape of his neck. He held her waist and there was a tentative pull at the ties on her dress, a promise that brought with it a sinful need, a cruel lust.

“Isaac,” she hummed, for he was not ‘Mr Roscoe’ now. He was not a stranger here. He was everything Ruth wanted him to be – and nothing like the man she was engaged to.

A rough scratch of stubble brushed her cheek, contrasting with the soft, warm words spoken against her lips that she couldn’t catch.

Daylight broke her eyes open and chased away those fragile moments. Lottie was still fast asleep beside her. A new day had come. Panic flared up in her chest, but it was needless. No one knew, no one would guess, no one would reveal all that had taken place within the crucible of her own skull. It was her secret.

Ruth was resolved, then, to never see Mr Roscoe again. Not only because she was frightened of what she might do – of all she might lose if she did – but because the real man would never match up to the fantasy.

She had Albert, didn’t she? That would be enough; it had to be enough.

There is no other choice.

Her uncle expected it, her financial situation depended on it, and she must do as she was bid. What had her mother told her?

Never be a burden, my darling, never be a burden, never be a burden…

“Ruthie,” muttered Lottie upon waking, her voice a thistle-scratch as it left her throat. “Are you crying?”

“A bad dream, that’s all,” she lied, for once allowing her friend to comfort her, to hold her and stroke her hair. The only bad part of the dream was that it had ended and brought her sharply back to the real world and all its bitter disappointments.