Free Beloved Counterfeit by Kathleen Y'Barbo Page A

doubt being alone would only invite tears. “And the last thing I need to do is cry over something that’s easily fixed.”
    Indeed, Ruby could remedy the problem with a quick trip to the docks and a discreet inquiry to the captain of whatever ship might be sailing soon. This decided, Ruby bypassed the kitchen altogether and walked to the front of the boardinghouse, where the wide parlor windows offered the best view of the street.
    She lifted the corner of the heavy drape and pulled it back. From her vantage point, Ruby watched Emilie stop at the church gates and wave at someone inside. A moment later Isabelle Carter appeared at the gate to embrace her sister.
    Seeing the two conversing put Ruby in mind of her own sister and all the times since the accident when she had wished for Opal. “I will not cry,” she said even as tears stung her eyes.
    Releasing her grip on the fabric, she watched the drape fall back into place. Her fingers traced the heavy brocade, its golden threads burnished to a dull copper along the edges. Mama had had pretty curtains like this. They were green. No. Blue. Yes, a lovely shade that Papa said reminded him of the Cornwall sky.
    She’d had no idea where Cornwall was, but she imagined it was a lovely place where the sun shone most days and danced across a sky painted in Mama’s favorite color. The image had been ruined when Tommy Hawkins told them that Cornwall was a bleak and cold place known more for smugglers than anything else.
    Just one more in a long line of disappointments associated with either Papa or Tommy.
    Or both.
    Why do I do this to myself? “You think too much, Claire. You always did.”
    She jumped away from the window, stunned at how easily the name had slipped from her lips. At how very much she sounded like her sister.
    Indeed, the pronouncement held much truth. From her earliest days, if she wasn’t thinking about the past, she was fretting about some distant part of the future. Neither seemed to do much good.
    Ruby straightened her aching back and felt her bones slide against one another in protest. A corresponding twinge in her neck caused her to massage the ache.
    “I could do that for you.”
    She froze, unable to breathe. Just as she’d conjured up Opal’s voice, surely this one, too, was from her imagination. Then she heard the floorboards creak and knew he’d come to stand behind her. To find her vulnerable.
    Again.
    “What do you want, Jean Luc?” A whisper rather than anything like actual words, but to speak them any louder would be to cast doubt on what she hoped was her calm demeanor.
    “Sweet Claire.”
    Ruby refused to flinch even when Thomas Hawkins’s second in command placed his hands on each side of her neck. Fully expecting the Frenchman to strangle her, she gasped when he used the strength in his fingers to massage her aching muscles.
    In the past, she’d have melted under the tender massage. Today she found his touch repulsive, a reminder of who—of what—she was.
    “I suppose Ben and Jamie are with you.” She paused and said a prayer against it even as she added, “And Tommy.”
    The fingers stopped their movement. Jean Luc Rabelais moved closer. “I’ve come alone, Mrs. O’Shea,” he added in a mock Scottish brogue.
    His meaning was unmistakable. It was also familiar, owing to the times she had perpetrated the fraud of acting as silent wife to his Scottish husband during certain business transactions. At the time, the ruse had seemed harmless, mere window dressing to the actual crime of offering up such contraband as fine silks and baubles to those who could afford them. A genial couple who’d just happened to stumble upon a few trunks of contraband goods made for much better sales. Somehow contemplating a purchase from ruthless smugglers set the well-to-do on edge.
    Ruby had received nothing for this ongoing playacting except continued passage aboard Hawkins’s vessels and the knowledge that she would live to see the girls grow