Winterberry Spark: A Silver Foxes of Westminster Novella (The Silver Foxes of Westminster #2.5)(5)

“Did you have any bad dreams last night, Master James?” she asked with as cheery a smile as she could manage.

James nodded somberly as he spooned porridge into his mouth at the child-sized table in the nursery.

Ruby’s heart squeezed in her chest. She crouched beside James’s tiny chair. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“It was dark,” James said. That was it, his entire explanation.

Guilty tears stung at Ruby’s eyes. It was her fault James was having nightmares. It was her fault he had been kidnapped in the first place. Her lapse of judgment, the speed with which she’d trusted the kidnapper, Miss Goode, and counted her as a friend was unforgivable. If not for her foolishness, James would still be the happy, energetic, smiling boy he’d been when she’d first come to Winterberry Park. James was still a happy child overall, but he’d grown reserved around strangers, and he clung to his mother and father whenever he could.

“It’s not dark now,” Ruby said, kissing his cheek, then standing and stroking James’s dark hair. “We’re safe and sound in Winterberry Park, and your mama and papa are waiting downstairs for you.”

James dropped his spoon on the table and glanced up to Ruby with large, hopeful eyes. “Macky and Mari are waiting?”

“Yes.” Ruby smiled over the strange nicknames James had for his parents. “Finish your porridge and we can go to them.”

James snatched up his spoon and tore through the rest of his breakfast. “Mari is taking me to the river today,” he announced. “It’s frozen.”

“Then we’ll have to be sure to bundle you up,” Ruby replied, crossing the room to check on Faith. She sat up in her large bassinet, playing with a rag doll and a stuffed rabbit. Satisfied, Ruby moved on to fetch James’s coat and other winter things from their pegs near the nursery door and carried them to the table.

If she could bundle James in more than just a coat and muffler, if she could have wrapped him up in safety and comfort, ensuring that nothing bad would happen to him ever again, she would have. James wasn’t the only one who had nightmares about the kidnapping. Barely a night passed when Ruby didn’t dream about someone taking James—and Faith—away from her. But beyond just having the children snatched from her, Ruby dreamed about Gil’s furious frown, about his scorn and disappointment in her. The affection that had once warmed the way he looked at her was gone. She’d ruined everything. That was the worst nightmare of all, and she woke up cold every morning, inside and out.

“Come along, Master James.” She took the sling she used to carry Faith from the peg beside James’s coat and looped it over her shoulder. It was absolutely unheard of that an unmarried woman would be allowed to keep her one-year-old daughter with her while working as a nursemaid for someone else, but Mrs. Croydon had insisted Faith stay with Ruby instead of being farmed out. Faith fussed a bit as Ruby lifted her from the bassinet and secured her in the sling, which she was growing too big for, but as happened far too often, Ruby ignored Faith’s protests, so she didn’t keep them up.

“Faith wants to stay here,” James said, getting up from his table and grabbing his coat and winter things.

“Faith can’t stay here if we go downstairs,” Ruby explained, meeting James at the door. She took his free hand as they stepped into the hall and made for the stairs.

“Can Faith come to the river with me and Mari?” James asked.

“It’s far too cold for a baby like her,” Ruby answered, working to keep her smile up. More like it was achingly inappropriate for the son of a wealthy and important man like Alexander Croydon to have the bastard daughter of a fallen woman as a playmate. The time was coming when not even Mrs. Croydon’s protests could justify keeping Faith at Winterberry Park.

The thought made Ruby hug her daughter tighter as they descended the final stairs to the main hall. James broke away from her and ran into the morning parlor, dropping his mittens as he went.

“Mari, Mari!” he called as he burst into the room where his mother and father sat after breakfast. “Let’s go to the river.”

Mrs. Marigold Croydon’s musical laughter filled the room as James jumped onto the sofa where she sat and threw himself into her arms. “Someone’s in quite a hurry this morning,” she said, hugging him and kissing his cheeks.

Mrs. Croydon wasn’t James’s natural mother, but after the troubles they’d all been through in the summer and autumn, she’d come to love him as her own. Ruby doubted James would realize she wasn’t truly his until Mr. and Mrs. Croydon saw fit to tell him in years to come.

But it wasn’t the charming scene of mother and son that froze Ruby in place just inside of the parlor door, her heart dropping to her feet. At the other end of the room, Gil stood with Mr. Croydon, poring over some sort of paperwork on the parlor’s table.

Gilbert Phillips. The sight of the handsome, young man scattered Ruby’s thoughts and threw her into turmoil. She’d never owed anyone so much in her life…or let anyone down so devastatingly. She pressed a hand to her stomach, gulping to keep her emotions from welling out of control. Gil, the man whom had treated her kindly when others used her. The man who had appeared like an angel at the workhouse and saved her from what surely would have been death, for both her and Faith. The man who she’d come so close to forming an understanding with over the summer, when she’d come to Winterberry Park. He was responsible for getting her out of London and into the country, she was sure.