NOTHING TO FORGIVE
1902—New York
Ruby took another look at herself in the long, mirrored panel of the ballroom’s back wall and frowned.
“You don’t have to do this,” Theo said, frowning at the outfit she was wearing—or perhaps he was frowning at the lack of it.
He had a point. The peach-colored garment she wore beneath the gown might have covered her from neck to toes, but it left nothing to the imagination. She was portraying Circe, from the John William Waterhouse painting of the witch offering a cup of her potion to Ulysses. Over the nearly nude garment, Ruby’s diaphanous gown was the color of the sea on a cloudy day. It hung loose over one shoulder, exposing more of her than she would ever have chosen to reveal on her own.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Of course I have to do this,” she told him, steeling herself for what was to come. “Being back here gives me access I wouldn’t otherwise have.”
“I don’t like it,” Theo grumbled. “It’s one thing to pass information on in the hopes of seeing what gets stirred up, but it’s another thing altogether to put yourself in the middle of the very storm you’ve created.”
“How am I supposed to know the truth if I’m not in the middle?” she asked, lifting the front of the gown in a vain attempt to get it to cover more. Frustrated, she gave up and let it fall again.
“Last time you insisted on getting in the middle of things, I distinctly remember being shot,” he told her, his tone more dry than truly angry.
Still, Ruby felt guilt flood through her. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for that,” she told him, her voice barely more than a whisper.
His expression softened. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “I’m alive and well. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
Especially since Viola is no longer in our lives. The words hung unspoken between them.
But she wasn’t going to think about Viola, not tonight. She’d wasted too much time not writing and not reporting in the last two weeks, and she was practically desperate to get a story that would make her editor look twice at her again.
She’d been rash, maybe, in passing along to Jack the information Viola had given her about Paul Kelly, even if she had sent it to him anonymously. She had thought to stir up the hornet’s nest that was the Order to see what happened, but in truth, she’d been acting out of hurt and anger and spite. And maybe she had been impetuous to have Theo talk Jack into allowing her to be part of the tableaux. At the time, though, the Order’s gala had seemed like a lifeline, a way back to the person she’d been before she let a pair of violet eyes sway her. But now, it felt like everything she’d once thought she had under control was slipping from her grasp.
She shook off that thought. It was nothing but nerves. Maybe she hadn’t completely thought everything through, but at least she was there, as close as anyone could possibly get to the Order’s biggest event since Khafre Hall had burned. Tonight, R. A. Reynolds would get a story like no one else’s.
Still, the dress was ridiculous. She had never shied away from a little bit of scandal, but now she worried what her wearing it—and wearing it in front of anyone who mattered in her mother’s circle—would do to Theo’s reputation.
“If you don’t want me to—”
Before she could finish, Jack Grew had come around the curtain. He eyed her for a second, looking far too pleased with himself, before he turned to Theo. “Barclay, you’re going to have to go. We’re about to begin.”
Theo gave her a long, unreadable look, and in that instant she thought about changing out of the gown and going with him. But before she could, he was gone.
“You look like perfection, Miss . . .” He frowned. “I’m sorry. I know Theo has introduced us before, but your name seems to have slipped away from me.” He gave her a smile that would have been charming had his eyes not been so calculating. “Product of the accident, I suppose—head injuries will wreak havoc, won’t they?”
“Reynolds,” she told him, wanting more than anything to get away from him and his leering. “Ruby Reynolds.”
“Reynolds?” he asked, his expression darkening.
It was the same thing that had happened a thousand times before. If someone didn’t already know whose daughter she was, their face would transform itself once they found out. But this was different. Jack’s expression was more one of fury than pity, and Ruby realized her misstep.
It had been an Order member who’d ordered her death. It could have been Jack.
“Well, then,” he said, his face still carefully blank. “You have everything you need?”
She nodded, trying to hide her fear with the brilliant smile she’d learned for her debut. “Yes, thank you.”
“Excellent. It should be quite the show.” He gave her an appraising look, and then he was gone, off to the next set of performers.
Ruby prided herself on being an intelligent woman, one whose intuition had gotten her out of countless scrapes over the years, so she knew she’d made a mistake. She needed to find Theo and get out of Morgan’s mansion before anything else could go wrong. She put down the cup and the wand she’d been preparing to carry and started to pull her cloak over the scrap of fabric she was wearing.
“What are you doing, miss?” The costumer was there with a look of horror on her face. “You don’t have time for that.” The woman was already taking off the cloak and tucking it over her arm before Ruby could argue. “Up you go,” she said, leading Ruby to the thronelike seat and handing her the cup and the wand she’d just discarded.
“I need to go,” Ruby tried to tell her, but the woman just gave her an impatient tut-tut.
“Everybody has nerves. It’ll be just fine. You’ll see.”
The music was already starting on the other side of the curtains, a trilling run of a harp and the soft sounds of a violin, and the woman was leaving with her cloak. And it was too late for Ruby to do anything more than carry on and hope that she was wrong about how badly things were about to go.