Ruby McBride (26 page)

Kit swallowed his irritation as he smiled down at her. ‘Then do something about it. You owe me that much, surely, after what I went through for you. Think of some way to make him compensate for how he’s robbed us of our happiness.’

Ruby looked into his eyes and felt her heart clench with fear and guilt. He was right. What hope did they have of ever finding Pearl without money, and she had no wish to fail in that, or to lose Kit. Hadn’t he always been her soul-mate? Just because Bart had softened slightly in his attitude towards her, now that he wanted a family, didn’t make what he had done to her right. And hadn’t she always been able to stand up for herself?

‘All right Kit.’ She almost dragged the words out, but it felt the right thing to do, before she was trapped with a child. Yet even as she spoke the words, something broke inside her, and a new fear pounded in her heart. ‘I’ll ask him, as you suggest, but I’ll never steal from him, so long as that’s understood.’ The prospect of being caught if she ever tried such a thing, of the reformatory and prison loomed too large for her ever to change her mind over that. But it was up to her to break the impasse. ‘I will do what I can, I promise.’

‘There’s my sweetheart.’ And he began to kiss her till her head spun.

Recognising the effect he had upon her, Kit felt an unexpected surge of pity, for he’d absolutely no intention of ever giving up his life here in the canal basin to follow this cock-eyed dream of hers, or of swapping one sister for this one. He’d had a good life once, with nice little earners in place. Then she’d come along and ruined everything. If he’d never got involved with her childish escape from Ignatius House in the first place, he’d never have been caught and sent to the reformatory training ship; never have been forced to endure the birch, the sickness and the sweat box conditions amidships.

Neither would his family have suffered as they had, following that dreadful day. Without his support, and the care he’d taken to keep them fed and provided for, his mother had faded away and died. Largely, Kit believed, of starvation since she would always give her last mouthful to her beloved children. His orphaned brothers and sisters had been put into children’s homes every bit as dreadful as the one Ruby had fled from, and he’d never set eyes on them again. A part of him appreciated that it wasn’t all Ruby’s fault. She was as much a victim of the system as he himself had been, yet she owed him big time. And if there was some way that money could be made out of this unlikely marriage of hers, he was more than willing to take advantage of it. When had he ever turned down an opportunity to make a bit of brass?

Chapter Eighteen

It was a bitterly cold day and the tug was passing by Trafford Park, which had somehow managed to hold on to its rural character despite the encroachment of new manufacturing industries springing up where once children had played, families had picnicked or rowed boats on the lake. They came to Waters Meeting, where a branch of the Bridgewater Canal went off to the left over the Barton Aqueduct until it ultimately joined the Leeds & Liverpool. Keeping to the main canal, the
Blackbird
continued on its way, slowing when they reached the stretch of canal where the coal barges from Worseley were moored.

‘Nip on board, Ruby, and grab some. We’re running a bit low. I’ve been afraid to light the stove in case we ran out altogether before nightfall.’

‘I will hell as like.’

‘Whyever not? You’ve done it before often enough.’
 

This was true, though under protest. She had in fact grown quite nimble at jumping on to passing coal barges and tossing a few cobs of the stuff on to the deck of the
Blackbird.
It reminded her of the scrounging she’d done with Kit on the slag heap. So on this day, as always, she consoled herself it was no worse than that. Not stealing exactly, not from anyone who couldn’t afford to part with a bit. And it was pitch dark for all it wasn’t yet seven o’clock, so who would see? The coal barge had been anchored for the night and the skipper and mate were no doubt either fast asleep or in the pub. And she and Bart were nearly out of coal and freezing cold.
 

She tucked up her skirts so that they did not impede her, tugged the cap she wore to hold her hair in place well down and got herself positioned ready to jump. She made it in one agile leap, graceful as a deer, and heard his soft chuckle follow her over the water. Ruby gathered up a few of the largest pieces she could find and tossed them one at a time over onto the
Blackbird’s
deck. As quickly as they fell, Bart picked them up and dropped them into a sack he kept handy for the purpose.

‘That’ll do, Ruby,’ he called quietly across to her.

‘Just one more.’ She scrabbled about, found one, then another, too tempting to resist as she thought of their need for a warm cabin that night, and the stew she would prepare. When she’d filled his belly and got him all nice and cosy, she’d make her demands clear. No more love making. She deserved, and should be given, proper financial recompense for her work. And as she schemed and picked coal, all the while the
Blackbird
was moving alongside the stationary coal barge, albeit slowly. ‘Quick, Ruby. We’re nearly past.’

Again gathering up the hem of her skirts which were trailing loose, she ran along the edge of the Worseley coal barge and flung herself into the air in a flying leap. She missed the deck by mere inches. Her fingers, grappling for purchase, failed completely and she fell with a resounding splash into the murky waters of the canal. Fear hammered in her breast. She was wearing so many clothes against the cold: the heavy greatcoat, thick socks, boots, the hessian strips wrapped about her legs, and several layers of clothing beneath her dress. Ruby could feel them dragging her down, pulling her under so that she choked as water filled her mouth.

Then something hit her shoulders: a rope. A voice shouted, ordering her to grab it. Somehow, she managed to take hold and Bart pulled her up, finally grasping her by the shoulders and heaving her on board.
 

As she lay floundering on deck gasping
for breath and shaking with cold, he said, ‘Are you going to lie there all day? Go and put some dry clothes on and get that fire lit. I’ll be wanting my supper soon.’

‘Damn you, Barthram Stobbs, you get worse. You’re the nastiest, most ungrateful man I ever . . .’

‘Bedded? I hope I’m the one and only, Ruby, dear. Supper. Now, please?’

Dripping water everywhere, she stalked past him, head held high. ‘And I hope it chokes you.’

Later, when she was stripped off and rubbing herself dry by the stove, he climbed down the ladder, lifted the pan from the heat and took her to his bed where he completed the process of warming her with his own body. Ruby did not protest. Her demands for compensation would have to wait until tomorrow.

There was no time the next day for talking, nor the one after that, as they had a new load of cotton to take on board and transport to Liverpool. A few days after that, it was Bart, as always, who startled her by demanding that she take part in another of his schemes. It came as a bitter blow. Ruby refused, absolutely, to have anything to do with it. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? I thought you were done with all that.’

‘This is the last one, I promise.’

By the time he’d finished explaining his plan, she was slack-jawed with shock. ‘You must be mad if you think I’d agree to waylay a fella in an alley. D’you take me for some sort of trollop?’

‘No, I don’t think you’re a trollop, Ruby.’ He smiled placatingly at her, in a manner she’d come to know well. ‘You needn’t let him actually do anything to you. Besides, I shall be nearby to see that he doesn’t. I want you to make certain that he makes the suggestion. Or, if necessary, you offer and make damn’ sure he accepts.’

‘There you are then, you do want me to be a tart.’ She was outraged, and deeply hurt that he should think so little of her.

‘It is only a trick, Ruby.’

‘And I know the sort of tricks you’re talking about.’

‘No, I’ve told you, I shall be standing by to step in and confront him the moment he walks into our trap. He won’t lay a finger on you. I just need proof that Giles Pickering uses women much as he treats his workers, with callous contempt. I need to find some sort of lever so I can prise out of him what the workers deserve. I want to unmask him as a ruthless, social-climbing, cold-hearted womaniser who doesn’t give a damn who he treads on, so long as he gets what he wants.’
 

There was such loathing, such venom in his voice, Ruby was stunned into silence for a whole half-minute. She cleared her throat, asking the next question in a quieter, more rational tone.

‘And how will that help you get better pay and conditions for the dockers?’

‘Give me the ammunition and I can fire the bullets, believe me. He’ll be a lot more compliant once I can knock him off that self-erected pedestal of his.’

‘You mean blackmail?’

‘If you wish to call it that.’

‘Why do you hate him so much? What’s he ever done to you?’

‘What indeed!’

Bart walked away, his back turned towards her as he considered his answer, and although she couldn’t see his face when he spoke, Ruby was in no doubt of his feelings on the matter. ‘He once hurt someone I cared very deeply about, and I mean to make him pay for that. I mean to take from him all that he holds dear, just as he took it from me.’

She was shocked. ‘Who was this person? Was it a woman. Tell me. What did he do?’

‘The details needn’t concern you, Ruby.’

‘They do if you mean to get me involved.’
 

But his only answer to that was a closed door. He had gone.

Ruby ran to Kit to beg him to help her. ‘What am I to do? I daren’t even imagine what horrors might befall me if I agree to this. How do I know he’ll bother to save me? I could be raped, murdered, anything, in that back alley.’

‘I’m sure that’s unlikely,’ Kit told her, even as his brain furiously turned over the possible implications of the baron’s plan, and any advantages it might bring to his own cause.

‘You don’t understand. He’s utterly ruthless. I’ve only his word that he’ll save me, and I really don’t trust him as far as I can spit.’
 

Desperate to make Kit see her difficulties, Ruby told him how Bart had made her steal coal, and how unsympathetic he’d been when she’d fallen in the canal. It didn’t seem to occur to her that there would be even less sympathy from a young man who had himself taught her the art of coal scrounging years ago. She excluded the part about them falling into bed together at the end of it all, preferring to eradicate this guilty memory from her mind.
 

‘Now he means to turn me into a prostitute in a nasty attempt at blackmail. I can’t bear it. We have to go to Canada. Now! Together. We must make one last effort to find our Pearl, then we can all have a new beginning in a new country. I’m quite sure I could find our Billy, if only we could just get on a ship to take us there.’

Kit struggled to hide his irritation. ‘Nay, lass, don’t talk soft. I’ve told you, it takes a deal of money to emigrate, and we haven’t a bean between us. How could we get on a ship for Canada, even supposing we could find your Pearl?’

He did not say that he knew already where her sister was; that at this precise moment she was no doubt dealing with one of her regulars, earning them a crust if not exactly an honest one, nor one with much butter on it. A state of affairs they meant to change given a decent plan and the right sort of co-operation. Sadly, no such plan had emerged from their endless arguments and discussions and Pearl, as well as Ruby, was growing fretful.
 

In truth, Kit felt under siege from both sisters and was near to throwing in the towel and giving up on the whole deal when Ruby suddenly said something which caught his attention. ‘What was that? He gave you what?’

‘I said, I do have something we could use to make a fresh start in Canada. Not money, but a pendant that he gave me once. He’d stolen it from this woman who was showing us round her house. Not a house that he could afford to buy, mind, but one he was pretending to . . .’

‘What sort of pendant?’ Kit interrupted, his head aching with the effort of restraining himself from shaking the information out of her.

‘A ruby pendant,’ she admitted. ‘He said it was highly appropriate.’

Kit beamed, all the anger seeping from him. ‘And so it is, Ruby, my love. So it is.’

Ruby looked surprisingly convincing in her disguise. She’d grown somewhat taller than when the idea of passing herself off as a cabin boy had first occurred to her, but she was still slender enough to get away with dressing as an ordinary seaman, or so she hoped. She’d suggested that they might both try to get jobs on board. Kit had disagreed.