He held his hand up. ‘If you were going to say “with Miranda”, don’t trouble yourself about it. She was totally out of order picking on you like that. And if truth be told she’ll benefit greatly from her time at the finishing school. No, you just concentrate on getting well again for now. Meanwhile, if there is anything we can do for you, just tell Miss Wood.’ He stared at her for a time then, making her feel quite uncomfortable, before he turned and quietly left the room.

When the doctor called later that day, he pronounced that Ruby was well enough to get out of bed and sit in a chair for a while, provided she rested her splinted leg on a stool. And so soon after Betty and Miss Wood positioned a chair by the window and Ruby was able to sit and watch the world go by for a time.

Her thoughts were all over the place, for she was still struggling to come to terms with the undeniable fact that she had been going to have a baby. How could she not have known? she asked herself. But then, her mother had never really talked to her about what she had termed ‘the birds and the bees’, apart from to tell her that a girl should always be married before she had a child. And Ruby had led such a sheltered life after leaving school that she had never had any friends her own age to talk to about such things. The thought of giving birth to a child that her adopted father had sired made her feel sick to her stomach and yet she couldn’t help but feel sad for the baby. Worse still was the fact that the doctor has said he didn’t know whether losing the child at such an early age could affect her chances of having any more babies when she was older. She had always dreamed of having her own family one day, but she supposed if what her father had done to her was what married women had to suffer then she would never want to be wed anyway. And then she began to think of what was to become of her when her leg was healed. She wouldn’t be needed now that Miranda was gone and she constantly worried about it. Would she find herself out on the streets again with nowhere to go? All she could do was wait and see.

*

Could she have known it at that moment Mr Pembroke was discussing that very situation with his father in the old man’s room.

‘She’s a good girl,’ the elderly Mr Pembroke told Oscar, and he nodded in agreement.