“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.
***
The opera was packed. Ruth knew barely anyone and no one she didn’t know cared to know her. It had been the same all week, with social events, dinners and mindless appointments. Lottie was in her element, catching up with those she’d only seen in the short breaks from school: her father’s friends, distant relatives, past acquaintances. Her laughter rang out like a clear bell and she had easily forgotten Ruth. It was not a malicious act; it never was. Lottie was always so invested in the moment that there was nothing beyond it. No one else existed but herself and the people within her direct eyeline. Ruth was used to it and if the alternative was constant, banal chatter, she was happier to sit by herself and take in as many sights as possible.
The air was close and lay upon them all like a clammy, second skin. This was the last performance until winter, when the aristocracy would clear London in favour of their country homes away from the slums that had already eroded half the decent corners of the city.
“It’s the hottest July I have ever known,” said Albert for the fifth time that evening from their private box.
No one paid much attention to the goings-on upon the stage. There was a constant background hum of conversation. People stopped by to visit and chat. Ruth sat near strangers whose talk she could not follow. They laughed at jokes she did not understand and mocked people she did not know. They wrote her off as a simple, artless creature.
“I can’t hear,” she told Lottie, when her friend had deigned to return to her side.
“No one ever can and it’s not like anyone even speaks Italian,” said Lottie loudly, for her companions to laugh at – and laugh they did. A few insipid women threw sympathetic looks Ruth’s way, as one would toss pennies to a beggar on the street.
Ruth sat back in her chair, defeated. Her dress was a poor shade that