love,” replied Isaac softly. “The word will be across London by now, if Griswell is as efficient as I suspect he is.”
“I am not your love,” she snarled. “I am supposed to be Mrs Pembroke.” Even as she said this to herself, the doubt seemed thick on her tongue and he could only watch her face crumple, as realisation set in.
And yet she didn’t cry.
He waited for it, but the tears never came.
“I have some money. I can leave it with you,” said Isaac gently. “I’ve paid for the room until the week’s end.”
“Get out,” she whispered, her words steel and ice and stone.
“Let me at least—”
“You have done enough, sir,” she told him, eyes rimmed red. “Trust me on that.”
Gone was that cautious, awkward creature – the one he’d met barely a few nights ago. This woman knew she was an outcast, soon to be abandoned by society, lost, damaged goods, unless Pembroke still wanted her. No. Isaac knew men like Pembroke. He knew he’d never take her on now.
He could see the thoughts moving behind her eyes, the plans, the mental process, the letters she would surely write and the solutions she would seek.
She was a practical woman, yes, she would be fine – he needn’t worry – this wasn’t his fault. Women like her were survivors, weren’t they? Like he’d had to be.
Isaac moved automatically and without thinking. He grabbed his meagre possessions, all stowed in a satchel across his shoulder. The morning sun was already on the thin, poorly made windows, mottled with grit. He had never been here for the end result, to witness what happened afterwards to those whose fortunes he’d sabotaged. It hadn’t ever been like this before; the others had been different. They’d deserved it – or he’d told himself that to soothe what little conscience he had left.
“Mr Roscoe.” She said his name like a curse, a promise. It forced him to halt in the doorway. He would hear her; he owed her that much. “I never thought I had it in me to hate anyone,” said Ruth coldly, as she pulled herself up onto her feet, hardly strong enough to stand. “Not until this very day, this moment.”
Isaac nodded, his back to her, unwilling to face his sins. He was set on forgetting her, and all he had done, as soon as he stepped from the room and left that rotten city – a city capable of corrupting even the best of men. But fate had a different plan.
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