by Dilly Court
‘She never loved me.’ A sudden twinkle lit Jonas’s eyes and his mouth curved into a smile. ‘Rosetta fell for my money and my dubious reputation. Now I’m a reformed character she finds me quite boring, I promise you.’
Lost for words, Ruby could only shake her head.
Taking her hands in his, Jonas stared down at them. ‘You are the one person who is important to me, Ruby. You are going to get back your strength and then …’ he raised her hands to his lips, brushing them with the lightest of kisses, ‘then we’ll see.’
‘Jonas, I …’
Laying a finger on her lips, Jonas shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken out so soon.’ Clearing his throat, he got to his feet. ‘Now, you need your rest. Rosetta is down in the supper room so I’ll send one of the maids up to help you to bed.’
‘I can manage by myself,’ Ruby said, attempting to get up.
‘If you don’t do as you’re told, I shall have to put you to bed myself. And we both know how that ended up on one notable occasion.’
‘I thought you’d given up being a bastard,’ Ruby said, chuckling in response to the laughter in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t force yourself on a sick woman.’
‘You’re right.’ Jonas held out his arm. ‘We’ll compromise. I’ll walk you to your room and you’ll let the maid run your bath and help you into bed.’
Unable to resist his smile, Ruby relaxed and slipped her hand through his arm. If she were truthful, she was glad of the support as her legs had turned to jelly and her heart was thumping so loudly that the drumming in her ears almost deafened her. It was just weakness, of course, nothing more.
‘And tomorrow,’ Jonas said, leading her towards the bedroom, ‘I’ll take you for a ride in the motor car. We’ll go out to Epping Forest and maybe the fresh air will put a bit of colour back in your cheeks.’
‘And Rose can come too?’
‘Are you afraid to be alone with me?’
‘No,’ Ruby said, leaning on his arm. ‘No, of course I’m not.’
With a picnic hamper wedged in the dicky seat and Ruby dressed in a motoring coat complete with hat and veil that Jonas had procured from apparently nowhere, like a conjuror producing a bouquet of paper flowers from his sleeve, they set off in the middle of the morning. Leaving the jostle and bustle of the East End and its refuse-littered streets jumbled with costermongers’ barrows and the polyglot crowd milling in and out of the horse-drawn traffic, the leafy, tree-lined suburbs came as a pleasant relief. Away from the city stench and the smoke and noxious fumes spilling out of the manufactories, the air in Wanstead was fresh and clean. Jonas drew the motor to a halt in a small clearing on the edge of Epping Forest. The sun was high in the sky and Ruby was glad to shed the thick linen coat and shake the dust off her hat. The air beneath the trees smelt delicious, like rich plum cake, and there was just enough breeze to cool the heat of approaching midday. She sat on a fallen tree watching Jonas as he laid out the picnic lunch on a gingham tablecloth.
He paused, cutlery in his hand. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Watching you doing something so homely,’ Ruby said, smiling. ‘Jonas Crowe, the tough gang leader, making a picnic.’
‘Reformed gang leader,’ Jonas said, with a responsive twinkle. ‘My business is on the straight now.’
‘Truly?’
Jonas grinned. ‘Well, mostly.’
A cloud passed across the sun, throwing them into deep shade. Ruby shivered. ‘Pity it’s too late for poor Joe.’
Sitting back on his haunches, Jonas gave her a searching look. ‘You blame me for Joe’s death?’
‘Not entirely, but he wouldn’t have joined the army if you hadn’t held his gambling debts over him.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘It’s what he told me.’
‘It’s true I tried shock tactics to bring him to his senses and stop his obsession with gambling, but I wouldn’t have laid a finger on him, Ruby.’
‘You made him join your gang.’
‘Only to show him what the rotten side of life was like. Joe was just a boy; I wouldn’t have dragged him down to street level. It was just to teach him a lesson.’
‘So why did you make me work for you? And why did you set up a bursary just so that I could train to be a nurse? It wasn’t just for Lily’s sake, was it?’
Getting to his feet, Jonas brushed dead leaves and dust from his knees. ‘In the first place,’ he said slowly, measuring his words, ‘because I wanted to take care of you and Joe.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would you care what happens to a bunch of people you don’t know?’
Jonas stood for a moment, looking down at her, his expression serious. ‘I wasn’t entirely truthful before, when I told you that I wanted you to look after Lily.’
Biting back a sharp retort, Ruby realised that this time he was speaking the truth. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ve never done much good in my life, Ruby. I’ve lived selfishly and with one aim and that was to make money. I cared for nobody and nobody, except poor Lily, cared for me. My father was long dead and my mother had abandoned me when I was a baby. Then I discovered that I did have a family, who quite honestly meant nothing to me at first … that is, until I met you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Jonas sat down beside her, close but not touching, his eyes intent on her face. ‘My name is not Jonas Crowe. My birth name is Gianni Aldo Ravenna and Lottie is my mother. You, Joe and Rosetta are my cousins – you are my family, Ruby.’
Chapter Twenty
If Jonas had slapped her in the face, Ruby could not have been more thunderstruck. ‘Are you joking?’
‘I’ve never been more serious in my life.’
‘I – I don’t understand. I didn’t know that Lottie had a child. You can’t be her son … it’s impossible.’
‘It’s a long story,’ Jonas said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘I knew nothing of my parents until my guardian took me aside one day to tell me that my father had died in Italy. Up until that moment, I thought I was Jonas Crowe, an orphan, taken in by a distant relative when I was just a baby. I didn’t even speak a word of Italian.’
‘I can’t take this in.’ Pulling away from him, Ruby got to her feet, pacing the hard-baked forest floor, her feet crunching the beech mast and dried leaves. ‘I don’t know why you’re making this up, but it’s too ridiculous to be true.’
Watching her warily but not moving from his seat on the log, Jonas shook his head. ‘Nevertheless it is true. Lottie left my father just weeks after I was born. He hired an English nanny to look after me and, when I was one year old, he married her. My stepmother apparently didn’t appreciate having a ready-made son and heir and she produced a baby every year just to prove a point. I don’t know how she did it, but before I was two, she had persuaded my father to send me to England under the guardianship of her brother, Roger Crowe, a miserable old skinflint if ever there was one.’
‘And you grew up not knowing any of this?’ Ruby eyed him suspiciously. ‘Do you really expect me to believe this story?’
‘You might if you’ll stand still long enough to listen to me.’ Catching her by the hand, Jonas pulled her down beside him. ‘The first time I met my half-brothers and sisters was at my father’s funeral. I wasn’t a welcome guest.’
‘I don’t suppose they believed you either.’
‘We were total strangers. The family had closed ranks and written me out of the history books. They were wealthy enough to have had the marriage to Lottie declared null and void, making me a bastard.’
‘And you’ve lived up to your reputation ever since.’ Ruby made an attempt to get up but Jonas held her firmly by the hands.
‘Are you going to let me explain or not?’
‘Only if you let me go.’ He did and Ruby folded her hands in her lap, frowning, but she remained seated.
‘I’ve never pretended to be a good man, unlike your honourable doctor friend. No, don’t get an
gry again,’ Jonas said, laying his finger on her lips. ‘To cut the story short, I had no ties in Italy and there was no reason to stay. My guardian died a bachelor and, surprisingly, he left me his house in Surrey and a modest sum of money. I set myself up in business.’
‘As a criminal?’
Jonas threw back his head and laughed. ‘Not quite. I sold the house, bought the one in Raven Street and went to work for a stockbroker in the City. I learned how to play the market and how to make money both legally and illegally.’
‘So how did you find Lottie?’
‘Once I knew who my mother really was, I began to take an interest in Lottie’s career, which wasn’t difficult as her name was never out of the newspapers.’
‘Why didn’t you get in touch with her?’
‘She’d abandoned me once and I wasn’t going to give her the opportunity of doing it a second time. She was a big star then, feted by society, and I didn’t think she would be too pleased if I turned up and introduced myself as her long lost son.’
‘Then how did she come to buy the house next door to yours? Are you telling me that that was a coincidence?’
‘Of course not. I’d bought it as an investment but when I found out that Lottie had lost a small fortune gambling and fallen on hard times, I sold it to her, through a third party of course, at a knock-down price.’
‘You wanted to gloat over her misfortune. You wanted to hurt her as she’d hurt you. That’s terrible, Jonas.’
‘I may be bad but I’m not evil. I wanted to be sure that Lottie had a roof over her head. I never trusted Silas and I kept the leasehold because I didn’t want to see my own mother end up in the gutter.’
‘You could have told her the truth.’
‘And do you think she would have thanked me for telling her that her latest lover was a two-faced piece of shit? One thing I do understand about the Caprettis is their stubbornness and pride. I inherited most of it from Lottie.’
‘Why are you telling me all this now?’
‘What happened before I met you doesn’t matter. I had to tell you the truth.’ Jonas paused, looking deeply into Ruby’s eyes. ‘The fact is, Ruby, the first moment I saw you, I fell in love.’
‘You love me?’
‘I adore you.’
Ruby jumped to her feet, staring down at him in horror. ‘How can you say that? After everything you’ve done to me and my family, how can you say you love me?’
‘I do love you.’
Anger flamed in her belly. ‘You raped me. You don’t know the meaning of love.’
‘I’m ashamed of what I did, but I can’t honestly say that I’m sorry. I knew then that you were the only woman I could ever really love.’
‘That wasn’t love,’ Ruby said, shuddering. ‘Was it some kind of revenge against women for what Lottie did to you?’
‘No!’ Jonas got slowly to his feet, shaking his head. ‘I’d never hurt you, Ruby. I admit that I lost control, but in that moment I saw myself as I really was. I knew afterwards that I would have to change my whole way of living if I wanted to win your love.’
Ruby met his eyes with a straight gaze. ‘And did you force yourself on Rosetta too?’
‘I swear to you that I never laid a finger on her.’
‘I know Rosetta and she’s been soft on you for a long time. You’d have to be a saint to resist her when she’s got her heart set on something.’
‘A saint I’m not,’ Jonas said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘After she left Billy, I gave Rosetta a job to stop her selling her talents to some sleazy music hall manager. She stayed next door with Lottie and only moved into my house to look after you.’
This time, there was no doubting his sincerity. In her heart Ruby knew that being in love with Jonas had been Rosetta’s fantasy. She wanted to believe him, but suspicion clouded her mind. ‘You encouraged Joe and Lottie to gamble, did you really hate the Caprettis so much that you wanted to ruin them?’
‘Gambling is in their blood. If they hadn’t done it in my club they would both have gone elsewhere.’
‘You expect me to believe that when you destroyed my brother?’
‘I tried to save him from himself, believe me, Ruby.’
‘By allowing him to gamble away a fortune?’
‘Letting Joe gamble in my club gave me a certain amount of control over his losses. I knew Lottie was a hopeless case, but I hoped by scaring the living daylights out of Joe I could bring him to his senses. It didn’t work, as it happened, but don’t ever think that I enjoyed it. I may have gone about it the wrong way but all I wanted to do was to protect all of you, especially after Aldo died.’
‘You didn’t know my father.’
‘No,’ Jonas said, speaking softly. ‘But I would like to have known him. Maybe I would have been a better man if I’d known my uncle.’
‘I thought I knew you so well, Jonas. Now I realise that I don’t know you at all.’
‘This must all have come as a shock to you,’ Jonas said slowly, measuring his words. ‘I promise you I’ll make everything right with Lottie and I’ll help Rosetta and Billy in any way I can. I’m a respectable businessman now. That will please your mother.’
‘What are you saying?’
Taking her hands in his, Jonas held them to his heart. ‘I’m trying to tell you that I love you and I want you to be my wife. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, Ruby, if you’ll just give me a chance.’
‘Marry you? After everything you’ve done?’ Snatching her hands away, Ruby stared at him in anger and disbelief.
‘I know what I’ve done but I’ve turned my life around and it’s all been for you, Ruby. I love you. Can’t you believe that?’
‘Like you loved Lily? You don’t think I’ve forgotten poor Lily, do you? You got tired of her and left her in the sanatorium to die.’
‘You know bloody well that’s not true.’
‘I’ve hit a nerve, haven’t I? I believe you have got some feelings, deep down, Jonas, but you can’t change what you are.’ Turning on her heel, Ruby marched off towards the motor car. ‘Take me home.’ She could hear his feet echoing on the dried mud as he caught up with her.
‘Are you still in love with the doctor?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ruby said, giving him back stare for stare. ‘That’s the honest truth. I just don’t know.’
Taking her roughly in his arms, Jonas kissed her with a passion that was more savage than tender. Barely able to breathe, Ruby closed her eyes; this was the stuff of her dreams during those hot nights in Africa: the racing of her pulses, the thudding of her heart against her ribs, the spiralling sensations that blotted out thought and memory. Her mind told her to fight him off, but her body was perfidious in its response. Her knees were weak, her lips opened, the taste of him was sweet on her tongue and her arms slid round his neck. Ruby knew that she was losing to the hot, aching sensation of longing that made her want him to take her, even as she felt his hardness pressed against her. Her emotions were in turmoil as he released her lips, staring into her eyes, his arms banded around her like steel.
‘You don’t love him, Ruby, you love me. Stop lying to yourself and admit it.’
Staring at him blurrily, Ruby struggled to control her erratic breathing and gather her splintered thoughts. She pulled away, shaking her head. ‘I won’t let you bully me into saying something I’ll regret. Take me home, Jonas.’
The sun was still shining, the plane trees leafy-green and alive with birdsong, the air in the suburbs was sweet with summer scents, but the atmosphere in the motor car was cold and gloomy as a November day. They drove back to Shoreditch in tight-lipped silence and Ruby climbed out of the motor almost before Jonas had drawn it to a halt outside the house. Tucker let her in and even his broad grin faltered when he saw her face. She went straight to her room and began flinging her clothes into a suitcase. Anger tinged with panic had given her a burst of energy and she barely looked up as Rosetta entered the room.
‘Good God, Ruby. What the hell is going on?’
‘I’m going home,’ Ruby said, snapping the locks shut on the case. ‘Something I should have done weeks ago.’
‘But why? I thought you were happy here?’
‘I’m going home,’ Ruby repeated. ‘I’ve been lazing around for too long. It’s time I got back to work at the hospital.’
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Rosetta stared at her, frowning. ‘Have you had a row with Jonas?’
‘No. Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.’
‘Then you’re a fool, that’s all I can say. Can’t you see that Jonas is in love with you?’
‘He asked me to marry him.’
‘What?’ Rosetta’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘Don’t tell me you refused him. You did, didn’t you?’
‘Jonas isn’t what he seems to be. There’s something you should know.’ Sitting down beside Rosetta, Ruby gave her the story as told by Jonas.
Rosetta’s eyes widened and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, stifling a giggle. ‘Blimey! We’ve got a rich relation.’
‘Rose! Can’t you think about anything but money?’
Throwing her arms around Ruby, Rosetta gave her a hug. ‘Honestly, no. But I don’t see why you’re so upset. I’m the one he rejected but I’ve got over it and, even though I can’t have him I quite like the idea of Jonas being in the family. It’s legal for cousins to marry, you know, Ruby.’
‘Rose, you’re the end,’ Sighing, Ruby got to her feet. ‘It’s the lies and deceit I can’t stand. It’s Jonas’s whole way of life.’
‘But he’s a reformed character. He did it all for you. Give him a chance.’
Picking up her suitcase, Ruby went to the door. ‘I don’t see myself as being kept by any man and I want to finish my nursing training.’
‘And you’re still hankering after your doctor friend?’
‘Adam is everything that Jonas isn’t. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel. All I do know is that I need to get away from here so that I can think straight.’
‘So you’re running away. That’s not like you.’
