Ruby Flynn (20 page)

Although she had marched down the corridor towards his study as though pursued by the devil’s own handmaidens, once Ruby reached the large oak door, she stopped dead in her tracks. Despite the thickness of the wood, she could hear a voice speaking on the other side.

‘Well, I’m truly glad to hear that and so, the deed is finally done. We are officially a partnership Rory, we must drink to our exciting alliance when you arrive at Ballyford.’

Ruby leaned in to hear better and pressed her ear to the study door.

There was a long period of silence. She could hear only her own breathing and the distant rotating of the blades cutting the grass at the front of the castle. She stepped back and peered over at the minstrels’ gallery, wondering if anyone other than Jane had seen or heard her storming along. But the only living soul was Rufus, stretched out in front of the hearth in the hall. Hearing her move, he lifted his lazy head and looked straight at her. He yawned and put his head back down on the stone floor, satisfied that it was only Ruby, who had never taken him running through the woods or thrown him a sausage from the cool store. Knowing that she was very unlikely to do either at this moment, he made himself comfortable once more.

‘You lazy hound,’ she whispered to him.

Moving back to the office door she heard Charles’s voice again.

‘I shall meet you myself, Rory,’ he was saying. ‘I can’t wait. Everyone is excited about your arrival, especially Mr and Mrs McKinnon. They told your mother to expect you, when they were at the cottages this morning.’

Ruby knew that was a flat-out lie. She had heard enough of the whispered conversation between Amy and the McKinnons to know that, if it was Mr Rory Doyle from Liverpool he was talking to, the McKinnons couldn’t bear him and were living in dread of his being invited as a guest to the ball. Mrs McKinnon had told her he was not to be trusted and if Lord Charles could have found a less well-disposed gentleman to work with, she would be surprised.

After a few moments she heard the click of the handset being replaced and she gently tapped on the door. Ruby was cross with herself. Her temper, usually so dependable, had deserted her. She knocked on the study door once more, slightly louder.

‘Come in,’ he shouted breezily.

He had his back to her and was sitting at his desk in front of the window, facing out over the front lawn.

As she stepped into the room, she had no idea whether or not it was polite or acceptable to walk into his sanctuary and so she stood, stock-still, a few feet inside the door.

‘Ah, Ruby.’ He swung around on the green-leather chair. He lounged back with one hand in his pocket, and his legs splayed out in front of him. She felt thrown by the intimate familiarity of his pose.

She could smell him. She hadn’t expected that.

Ruby felt diminished. The furniture dwarfed her. But she knew that the following moments were important and she took a deep breath before she spoke. She had to get this right, or she would leave this room a fool. The FitzDeane ancestors looked contemptuously down at her from the walls. She thought she saw the mouth of a wigged and pretentious man curl at the corners. She began to wonder, was she mad? Before she could reply, as if sensing her fear he spoke again.

‘Is Lady FitzDeane well?’

Ruby almost sighed in relief. Her hands clasped together tightly in a little ball before her. He had handed her an opening. She wondered, was her hair in place, did she look presentable? Was her apron clean? She had been in such a state of blind anger she hadn’t checked and now, as she stood before him, it was the most important thing on her mind.

‘Yes, m’lord, she is very well indeed.’ Her voice croaked. She was angry with herself. This was not Ruby. Ruby did not cower in front of anyone. As she took another breath she felt her confidence return and she prepared to fire her onslaught.

She licked her lips. She looked him over and pinned him to the chair with her stare. He was her prisoner. She was ready.

‘I hear, Lord FitzDeane, that the clerk from Doohoma was here, making enquiries about myself and I demand to know why I wasn’t told. I demand, I do.’

Ruby’s legs wobbled slightly but she willed herself not to flinch.

Charles FitzDeane was speechless. He couldn’t help but be amused by her ferocity and the sparks in her eyes.

‘He didn’t call at the castle to see you, Ruby, he came to see me and on entirely private business. You must never believe castle gossip.’

‘But, but I know it was about me and that makes it my business too.’ Ruby was flustered. She had expected him to tell her that he had no time to be dealing with such lowly people as town clerks, that he had dismissed Con without even hearing what he had to say, but instead he made her feel as though he were laughing at her standing in his office interrogating him. She was amusing him. His expression altered in an instant.

‘What makes you think it was about you?’ His voice was now cooler and shot through with steel.

Ruby felt scared. This was not turning out as she had planned when she had stormed through the corridors in a fit of indignation. She had expected him to apologize, to pick up the phone right away and call the clerk so that he could speak to Ruby at once. But he did none of that and instead sat and held her in his gaze. The tables turned. She felt as though she might disintegrate before him.

‘It’s Doohoma,’ she whispered. ‘He’s from my home. I wanted to see him, because he’s from Doohoma and it was him who saved me.’

Charles rose from his chair and walked across the floor towards the window. He stood with his back to her and she found that so much easier. It was when he was facing her, his eyes piercing into her, that she found it difficult to speak.

‘Doohoma was where you lived?’ His voice had softened slightly.

She knew it was not really a question, she could tell he already knew the answer and the thought,
How?
fluttered across Ruby’s mind. The McKinnons would know, but surely they didn’t discuss the staff with Lord FitzDeane?

She didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at the red carpet and at the intricate black diamond pattern around the edge.

The atmosphere in the study was tense and she thought,
There’s dust on the desk
.
Betsy, where are you?

She sometimes deployed this diversionary tactic when she thought about Doohoma. It was as if her mind played tricks on her. She distracted her thoughts away from a potential source of pain by concentrating on things of no substance. A bit of dust here, a raindrop winding its way down a window there. In the convent, she would fix her gaze on the second hand of the large wall clock and count the seconds until her thoughts had moved on.

Charles turned from the window and spoke again. His voice took on a very different tone and one that Ruby did not like.

‘Did you live in Doohoma? Did you live in a cottage facing side on to the sea, did your broken boat, with its nets, rest at the bottom of the cliff with the rope fixed to a rock? And did your donkey shelter at the side, under a sod shed?’

Ruby’s mouth opened and closed. She felt as though she had been punched in the stomach and as the blood rushed to her face she tried to remember to breathe. Memories crowded in and completed the landscape. A little boy saving the peat, her brother. A woman hanging out the washing, her mother. A dog running and barking around her, Max. But where was she, was she there? Could she see herself? Of course she could, she was there, handing the washing up to her mother and looking out to the ocean for her father, who waved his hand in greeting as his boat came in closer. As he did even now, every time he caught her unaware and sailed into her dreams.

The noise she made as she cried was inaudible. It had brewed inside her for years, gathering strength, pushing away at the edges in her sleep, and now, Charles had dismantled her defences and with just a few words had left her bare and raw and vulnerable. She had nowhere to hide. She was here, standing before Lord FitzDeane and she could not stop her heart from breaking.

‘I am so sorry,’ he said, moving quickly towards her and gathering her into his arms. He was unprepared for his own reaction as his muscles hardened in response to her yielding feminine softness. ‘I should have explained to you. I did discuss you with the town clerk. He thought he had traced your mother to Ballyford. I’m afraid I had to tell him he was quite wrong. He described the house to me, just in case it jogged my memory, but I am sorry to say he was mistaken. He had thought nothing of it, before, but when he heard you had been brought here, he thought it worth mentioning. I also told him that when you next have a day off, I would lend you one of the new bikes, which I have had delivered to the castle from England, to ride to Doohoma yourself and you could visit him then. He was keen to see you. Said he felt a responsibility, having rescued you from the storm.’

Ruby could not believe what she was hearing. She would see her home again and the clerk. There was a link to her past. Someone from Doohoma, who both knew her and cared about what had happened to her. It meant everything. The things she had wished for in the convent, they would be hers, at last.

‘Thank you so much, Lord FitzDeane,’ she said between sobs.

She knew that she now needed to leave the room. She was in danger of humiliating herself and embarrassing him further. She wouldn’t have to steal a bike, he was giving her one for a day and letting her go.

‘Oh, God, me and my stupid thoughts,’ she said out loud as she wiped her nose. ‘Does he know I will be coming?’

‘He doesn’t, Ruby, but he said you can knock on his door at any time and that you would be most welcome.’

She was now devoid of anger and filled only with elation. She felt ashamed for having lost her temper. Drying her eyes on her apron, she realized he had moved her gently away from the paintings and towards the weak sunlight streaming in through his window. She thought he was wonderful. He had more than redeemed himself. Lord FitzDeane had no idea that he had spoken words that from that moment on would support a lifetime of devotion.

Charles moved to the desk and picked up the Waterford carafe, which was washed and filled with fresh water each day by Betsy. He poured the clear water from Ballyford’s own mountain stream into the crystal cut-glass tumbler which sat, always ready, next to it.

‘Here, before you dash away, have a glass of water. I swear that the water from our streams has fabulous restorative properties. If I could, I would bottle it and sell it, except I know everyone would laugh at me, trying to sell something provided for free by the good Lord.’

Ruby smiled at him through watery eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she gasped gratefully gulping the water. She took the handkerchief from her apron pocket and unselfconsciously blew her nose loudly. She checked that her hair was in place under her hat, before she replaced the handkerchief in her pocket.

Charles found that he didn’t want her to leave his office and his mind scrabbled for a reason to make her stay.

Ruby looked up and her eyes, still full of tears, met his. The moment seemed to stretch into forever, a hundred messages flashing between them as their eyes spoke. She saw the pulse throbbing in the side of his neck and the colour rise in his cheeks. She knew that it was there again, a deep familiarity between them. She was aware, without a shadow of a doubt that he would not have spoken to her, or looked at her in such a way, if they had been in the presence of other servants. There was a knowledge, an acceptance between them. It was there in the way he now said her name and smiled at her. It was as if he regarded her as an equal and not as a servant. But she had no idea why.

Charles dragged his gaze away as he absentmindedly placed the linen cloth back over the carafe. Ruby was filled with gratitude and something else she could not identify. Something which bound her to this man’s life, this castle. His world, past and present.

The phone on his desk rang and the shrill noise ripped apart the ambiance of familiarity which had settled between them. He looked at her apologetically.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered simply. The smile that followed held a deeper meaning, which neither understood.

And with that, Ruby turned and left.

*

Charles dealt with his business call quickly and, once he replaced the receiver, put both hands in his pockets, deep in thought. Through the window, he watched Danny and Jimmy and the rest of the garden boys lay down their raking tools, before they ran inside the castle for lunch.

He smiled to himself, feeling warmed by the things he had once loved to distraction about Ballyford, but from which he had derived no pleasure in recent years. The green of the grass, the laughter of the gardeners as they worked together like generations before them and the feeling of being responsible for the wellbeing of others, all this lifted his heart.

But the lies he had told Ruby lay like a weight in his gut and dragged down the smile from his face, as he thought of her tears.

He had ridden out to Doohoma only yesterday, to find where Iona had lived. Charles thought deeply about what he knew of the past. It wasn’t much. Iona’s arrival in the stable had put the fear of God into everyone. He had to prove to himself that she had really lived, to see what had become of her, and in Ruby he had touched her life. The only other people who knew who Ruby really was were the McKinnons and Charles realized that Mrs McKinnon knew even more than she had ever let on to him.

And now she was here. He was thirty-three years old to Ruby’s eighteen and in her presence he felt like a young man once again. She made his heart beat faster and his mind fill with foolish thoughts. Charles knew he would have to fight hard to conquer his natural responses to Ruby. When he handed her the glass of water, he had felt a burning need to hold her tightly in his arms again. A need that had almost got the better of him. But down the corridor sat his wife.

‘How can a place so beautiful be so cruel?’ he whispered out loud.

He heard his father’s voice. ‘I shall rid this castle of spirits and sin,’
he had shouted to Charles, who had begged and cried as Iona was carried away and handed to a faceless stranger, waiting on the other side of the door.