Beloved Counterfeit (33 page)

Her grin was sufficient response.

“This time I’m feeling as though I need to challenge those in attendance to look within and do some contemplating over what God might be asking them to forgive.”

She nodded. “A worthy exercise.”

“That’s it, indeed.” Micah kissed his wife then forged ahead, knowing how easy it would be to leave this conversation while they were both smiling. “I’ve known for several days that before I could expect the parishioners to search their hearts, I had to search my own.”

Ruby nodded then reached for her hairbrush. “I think that makes good sense.”

Micah leaned back to rest his palms on Ruby’s knees. “The Lord’s been clear in telling me I need to speak to you about some things.” He cupped her chin and directed her gaze to meet his. “Things that are difficult.”

“Difficult?” Her eyes widened. “You’re frightening me.”

He rose to lift her to her feet then wrapped his arms around her. “No, don’t be frightened. The truth is all it is, Ruby, and once it’s out, we’ll both be the better for it.”

Chapter 38

So he knows.

Ruby searched the face of the man she’d come to know as husband and found no trace of the emotions she expected. Had God really given her someone who could know of her many, many sins and still hold such love for her that it showed on his features?

It appeared so.

“Perhaps it is time for such a discussion,” she said. “Though I am a bit confused as to how you—”

“Come and sit with me,” he said, and she followed him to the settee. “Now to begin.”

He took a deep breath and appeared to be waiting for her to start. Again she studied his expression and found nothing to cause her to believe he was angry.

“Yes, well, it all started with a particularly hot afternoon when I was barely out of the nursery. Not that we had a nursery, Opal and I.” Her hand shook, and she hid it in the pocket of her skirt. “Mother wouldn’t have hired anyone decent to staff it, anyway. We ran wild mostly, unless Papa was on the island.”

Micah stared at her as if she’d said something foreign. “What?” she asked.

“Go on,” was all he said, though she distinctly felt he had more on his mind.

“The day came when we couldn’t hide from Papa anymore. And when he found us. . .”

“You and Opal?” Micah supplied.

“Yes. When he found us, well, let’s just say he likely thought he’d killed us, and we let him believe it. If it weren’t for Opal’s friend, we’d have been left on that beach the same way he left our mother.”

“Your mother?” His tone held an unmistakable chill.

The memory of the woman lying in the surf rose only to disappear. She’d not allow herself to spend a moment thinking on it.

Her husband shook his head. “Am I to understand your father murdered your mother and left you and someone named Opal—”

“My sister.”

“Your sister, Opal,” he continued, “for dead?”

Ruby could only nod. In all the years since she had left Connor Plantation, she’d never told the whole sordid tale to anyone, not even Mrs. Campbell. As far as she was concerned, it died with Opal.

“But you were rescued.” He reached for her, and Ruby allowed herself to be drawn against his shoulder. “That’s quite a testimony, Ruby, that God was able to deliver you from that horrible situation.”

“Yes,” she said as she slid a look up to see if perhaps Micah Tate was toying with her. Surely if he knew the rest of her story, he wouldn’t have been so grateful that God allowed her to go from one tragedy to the next without doing much if any delivering.

Micah shifted her around to face him then slid her across his lap. “What happened to Opal?”

Ruby refused to allow her mind to recall the image. Somehow she forced herself to say the words: “Thomas Hawkins killed her.”

“Hawkins.” Micah swallowed hard then set his jaw. A vein in his neck twitched, and he seemed unable to speak. “You were his prisoner.”

Indeed, she did not desire to be aboard the smuggler’s vessel. Had she taken the opportunity Tommy offered to depart in Havana, the girls would have had no one to protect them. He would certainly never let them remain behind.
 

Thus, though she traveled with Hawkins and his men, she
was
truly a prisoner, bound by the ties of family obligations. With only the slightest twinge of guilt, she nodded.

“And this Frenchman?” Now his temper had obviously flared, even though his voice softened. “What was his role?”

“He protected me,” she said without meeting his stare, “and the girls, too.”

Once the statement hung between them, Ruby looked into eyes filled with the closest thing she’d seen to unconditional love. In that moment, also, she knew he had no idea about any of this.

“Ruby?” he said slowly. “Is there something else?”

“No,” she said. Never would she hurt her husband by telling him what Jean Luc Rabelais demanded in return for that protection.

But as she settled against his chest, she felt another twinge of something akin to guilt. Was it really Micah she was protecting, or had she ignored a chance to tell Micah the whole truth?

“Ruby?” His voice rumbled against her ear. “I appreciate your honesty. Might I tell you my story now?”

She almost blurted out a loud no accompanied by the full truth of her life before landing on Fairweather Key. Almost told him about Claire and the piano lessons in Galveston. And the fathers of those girls, the men who made scheduled nighttime assignations with her while, during the day, their daughters learned their scales and plinked out silly tunes.

If what Micah had said in church was the truth, then God had forgiven her for all of it the moment she confessed her actions and promised never to repeat them. Micah had promised everyone present that Sunday that the Lord would cast the ugliness into the depths of the sea where He would think of it no more.

But could she?

More important, could Micah?

Ruby knew the answer to the first question, but she refused to take a chance on the second. Thankfully, she was a wrecker’s wife and not someone who might be expected to be held to a higher standard.

Leave that for women like Mary Carter. I’ve got miles to go before I can manage that sort of spotless reputation.

“Your story?” she said. “Yes, of course.”

“I had a wife,” Micah began, and Ruby closed her eyes. She kept them closed as her husband told the story of a battle he wished he hadn’t gone off to fight and a wife and child he’d expected to be waiting when he returned.

He tightened his grip and spoke of coming home to find graves rather than family, and Ruby felt tears welling. “It wasn’t your fault, Micah,” she whispered. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I’m coming to believe that,” he said, “though I’m still not completely convinced.”

Micah cupped her cheek with his hand and softly kissed her forehead. “I failed my fellow soldiers and my family,” he said, his voice thick with emotion and his eyes full of unshed tears. “You have my word I won’t fail you. Not this time.”

“This time.”

The words carried a much different meaning now that she understood. So, too, did she understand his devotion to his duties as head of Fairweather Key’s militia. More important, she understood his need to protect her and the girls.

She also understood what it must have taken for a man with his principles to admit something like this. Certainly Micah Tate believed what he preached, that God took sins and cast them to the depths.

His faith shamed her, as did the guilt that refused to let up.

“Micah,” she said as she pushed away far enough for him to see her face. “There’s more to my story, though I’ve already told the Lord the details and asked for His forgiveness.” She paused to wait until Micah nodded. “You’ve given me reason to believe that perhaps I should tell you all of it.”

“Shh, Ruby,” he said. “There’s no need of it. You’re forgiven by God and thus by me. Now let me tell you of the news the Carters brought this afternoon.”

“Micah,” she pleaded. “The Lord’s not going to let me rest until the whole truth is out.” A pause. “And neither are the girls.”

“The girls?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You will,” Ruby managed as she steeled herself to tell the rest of the story.

Chapter 39

“I was born the daughter of a man whose anger was offered as quickly as my mother’s charms,” Ruby said. “And both were considerable. Opal was the image of my mother, while I, well, suffice it to say none would wonder whether I belonged to Clement O’Connor. A man proud to tell all who would listen how he had been a prizefighter in his youth,” Ruby said. “He killed more than one with his fists, in and out of the ring.” She had to look away. “Including my mama and her beau.”

Micah’s sharp intake of breath was almost her undoing. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“As am I. Opal and I might have been next. You see, there was this place under the porch steps where we thought he wouldn’t find us, but he did.”

She had to stand. To go to the window where a view of the ocean lapping against the horizon sent her back to that day.

“With Papa chasing us, we ran. He caught Opal when she stopped to fetch Mama’s baubles, but I wouldn’t let him hurt her.” Ruby winced. Even now she could feel the blows and see the glint of Jamaican sunshine against the jeweled necklace hanging from Opal’s fingers.

A mainsail pierced the horizon, and she watched it until her voice returned. “Opal had a friend. I never approved of him, but he was kind to her. His papa hid us away on his ship and told Clement O’Connor he’d shoot him if he tried to fetch us home.”

Micah came to stand behind her, and with care he kissed her neck and wrapped his arms around her. “So he cared for you?”

“In a matter of fashion. He was a trader of slaves and other contraband, so his was not a vessel fit for children. Tommy never seemed to mind, but I don’t recall a single night’s sleep aboard that ship. The sounds. . .” She shook her head. “I still hear them upon occasion.”

“Would that I had known you then,” he said against her ear. “No harm would have come to you.”

“Yes, well, he put us out in Galveston where he offered us up to someone he called a relative, though I have my doubts. They were nice enough and elderly, and they certainly had need of two extra sets of hands to cook and clean.”

Micah came to stand beside her. “So I’ve this woman to thank for the quality of your cooking, then?”

“Yes,” she said as she studied the ship, now fully over the horizon and headed for port. “I certainly learned much in her kitchen, though Opal was hopeless at all of it.”

“You did her work and yours, didn’t you?”

Ruby glanced up sharply. “How did you know?”

He cupped her cheek with his palm and kissed her soundly. “Continue your story,” he urged.

“All right.” She rested her palms on the windowsill. “As I said, they were elderly. The fever came through and claimed them both, leaving us to make do as best we could.”

Micah’s hand moved from her cheek to her shoulder. “Oh, Ruby. This is a tale I’d not wish on anyone.”

“Yet the story is incomplete,” Ruby said, even while everything in her begged for a change of topic. “I was not unskilled. I’d learned to play the piano. I offered lessons for a price, but the money soon proved to be insufficient. I had to seek a second means of employment.”

“And Opal?”

“She did things,” Ruby said, “but it was difficult for her to find something that suited her. Opal was delicate.”

“I see.”

He didn’t; Ruby could tell from his expression. Before Micah asked just what that second career might be, she hurried on. “This is difficult. I’ve not been that person for so long now that I can barely remember what it was to be her. To be Claire.”

“About that,” Micah said. “Why the change of name?”

“When Tommy came for Opal, I left with them. I knew Opal couldn’t care for herself. She’d married him and was no longer an O’Connor.”

His hand fell from her shoulder to wrap around her waist. Ruby leaned back against her husband, a man of strength, faith, and so much more than she ever expected to be blessed with.

“So you chose to rid yourself of the name as well?” he asked.

“In a manner of speaking, though it didn’t happen quite so easily as that.” She paused.

Offered for a price.
The phrase taunted her. Only the look of trust in Micah’s eyes allowed her to go on. “Seeing the city disappear over the horizon made me feel like I had a new beginning. And for a time, it was. Tommy appreciated how I cared for his wife and made sure I was treated well.”

Micah cringed at the mention of the man’s name. That she referred to the fiend as Tommy made it all the worse. “So you lived aboard his vessel? Plying the seas for plunder?”

“No.” She muted the edge in her voice as best she could. “There are many small islands in the southernmost parts of Louisiana. We had a lovely home and lived as normal people do, though the location might be considered a bit remote. Tommy’s vessel carried items of use that were unavailable. He would talk of the many important people who would come or send their agents when his goods were sold upriver.”

“So he was a smuggler?”

She nodded. “Still is, I assume, though if pirating were to pay as well, he’d be likely to have taken it up.”

Micah sighed. Judge Caleb Spencer, grandson of seafaring people of Benning ancestry, had bested Tommy twice. “We’ve become all too well acquainted with Thomas Hawkins here in Fairweather Key. He is no friend to us.”

“No, and with good reason.”

“Ruby,” Micah said gently. “What of your husband?”

She turned to put her back to the window and the ocean beyond. The eyes she saw looking down at her were filled with what she hoped was love, though her husband had not yet declared it verbally. “Perhaps you’ve heard enough. It’s as you say. I am a new person thanks to Jesus, and maybe that’s where we should leave it.”

Micah kissed her, and for what seemed like an eternity, he held her. “Your story pains me, Ruby, and makes me love you all the more for the woman you are now.”

Love. He said it.
Her heart soared even as she realized the silliness of wanting a man who had married her out of an obligation to protect her to actually find feelings for her.