Winterberry Spark: A Silver Foxes of Westminster Novella (The Silver Foxes of Westminster #2.5)(11)



Gil came to a stop beside the table and swallowed. “I was just down in the library.” He paused. An unaccountable pain radiated through his chest. “Mrs. Musgrave was in there demanding the Croydons sack you.”

Ruby sniffed wetly and nodded. She lowered her head, picking up her needle and resuming her sewing. “I should finish this before they come to kick me out,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Master James will need it for the winter concert in a few days.”

“They aren’t kicking you out today,” Gil told her.

Ruby snapped her wide eyes up to him. “They’re not?”

The exhaustion of the war between his head and his heart descended on Gil like a sack of bricks. He pulled out one of the child-sized chairs at James’s table and sank to sit in it. His knees shot up at odd angles, and his arms felt longer than usual as he rubbed his face with both hands. “How did we get into this mess, Ruby?”

There was a pause before she said, “We are not in any mess. I am in a mess because the world is an unkind place to anyone unfortunate enough to be born poor and a woman.”

Gil glanced up from his hands to stare at her. If he had said them, those words would have been full of spite and bitterness, but Ruby spoke them with a sigh of resignation. Her eyes were still on her sewing and her shoulders hunched with defeat. He opened his mouth to say…he didn’t know what. No words came, so he closed his mouth and rested his elbows on his knees, shaking his head.

“I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this.”

Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “I’m not calm,” she insisted, a spark of defiance in her eyes. But only a spark. “I am anything but calm. When I leave here, I have nowhere to go.” She lowered her head and resumed sewing. “I’ll be dead within a year.”

“You won’t.” Gil was surprised by the vehemence in his tone. He wanted to tell her that he would save her, that he wouldn’t let it come to that. His heart swelled with longing, but what he ended up saying was, “Mr. Croydon said that he wouldn’t dismiss you from this house until he and Mrs. Croydon found another position for you.”

Ruby glanced up, surprise making her face pink. “He did?” her voice wavered.

Gil nodded. “And I wouldn’t let you die.”

The silence that fell between them was prickly. She studied him as though trying to judge whether he could be believed. Finally, she resumed sewing once again. “You can’t put yourself at risk to save me.”

As desperately as Gil wanted to argue the point, she was righter than he wanted her to be. He’d worked hard, harder than most other men, to claw his way up from poverty and the stigma of being half Irish to earn his position with Mr. Croydon. And as long as the doubt about Ruby’s part in James’s kidnapping lingered, he would always question whether he should be loyal to the woman who could have destroyed so much for the man who was responsible for his position today.

“Fortunately, it won’t come to that,” he said at last. “But I’d be careful around Mrs. Musgrave and the rest of the staff until Mr. Croydon does find you somewhere else to go.”

“I’m always careful,” Ruby said without looking up. “I have to be. Now.”

Gil frowned, uncertain what she meant or why the sadness in her eyes had taken on a guilty hue. He wanted to ask her about it, to get her to open up and talk to him the way she had before James was taken. For months, they’d been close. He’d started having ideas about building a future together. It had felt so wonderful, so right.

Now, all he had was questions and a clock ticking away the time they had left together.

“I’m returning to London with the Croydons next week,” he said.

She didn’t look up. “Yes, I know. Mrs. Croydon hasn’t decided whether James should stay here or go to London with them.”

“James has only been to London the one time,” Gil said.

Neither of them said more. There was no telling how poor James would react to returning to the place that had been such a nightmare for him. He’d been miserable the whole time he was there in the autumn, even after being rescued. Even if he did go with the Croydons, Ruby might not go with them. Gil might never see her again.

The silence between them stretched on. There had to be something he could say, something that would bridge the gap between him, something that would let Ruby know he did care about her, even if he couldn’t go back to the way things had been. But no words came to mind. No thoughts either. For once, both his head and his heart were silent, leaving him lost.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said at last. “I’m sure you have other things to do.”

Gil glanced to the inventory of Alex’s clothes on the table. He hadn’t remembered having it with him when he entered the room or putting it down, but it served as a reminder that responsibilities awaited him.

“I should go downstairs to fetch James soon anyhow,” Ruby continued. “Seeing as I’m not to be cast out immediately. I’ll do my best to look surprised when the Croydons tell me my fate.”

She still didn’t look up at him.

“Ruby, I—” Gil blew out a breath. His words, his thoughts, his emotions, all of them were as frozen solid as the countryside around them, with no sign of a thaw in sight. The only thing he could do was stand, frustration dripping off him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish everything were different.”

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