A Virtuous Ruby Read Online Free Page B

strong hold. Her midwifing knowledge helped newborn babies, not six-month-olds. She had to get help for Solomon.
    She stepped off of the porch into the red dusty land bordering the Bledsoe property and made her way down the road to the big Winslow house, tugging on the shawl covering her head. She had changed into her heavy work shoes and her feet dragged in the dust, as she rushed by the blossoming fields, feeling stiffness in her knees. Sharp and painful in her lungs, her breath came shallow as she risked the dusk alone. Her activity in town today made her vulnerable to another attack. She didn’t care. She had to get help for her child. He was all that mattered.
    The Winslow house stood in the distance with its impossible whiteness glowing in the near dark. It was not weatherbeaten like the Bledsoe house, no matter how many times John Bledsoe whitewashed it. The difference was money. David’s family had plenty of it. They were going to give her some to make everything better for Solomon. Today, she was not going to the side door, the servants’ door, where she entered with her mother whenever the Winslows needed help for countless entertainments and dinner parties. Today, she knocked on the front door, relishing the feel of the hard wood scraping against her knuckles.
    The maid had gone home by now. As she lowered the shawl from her head, she imagined Paul Winslow stirring his bulk, acting as if he would answer the door. His wife would hold him back, compelling him not to do it because it wouldn’t be proper. It would be David who would answer the door to make this request easier for her. Or harder. Did she have the strength to face her attacker again? Please, God. Give me strength.
    Sure enough, David appeared before her, tall and confused. “Ruby? What are you doing here?”
    Instead of fear, she bristled. Certainly, he meant to question why she had come to the front door, instead of to the back for work, as she always had?
    But nothing was going to stop her from getting help for Solomon. Not even having to face him again. David’s tall, rangy body meant that she could step easily into the front foyer underneath his arm. So she did.
    Smelling the lemon of the pinewood polish, she tried to ignore the grandeur of the Winslow home, knowing intimately the hard work it took to keep it looking so beautiful. She was surprised, however, to see Paul Winslow in the front parlor with the handsome doctor from earlier today, in there with him. He had not been in her imaginings. Not those ones. She turned to David, and her ears pricked at the sound of Miss Mary approaching them both, her dress bustling quietly behind her. She had worked here long enough to know the sound when she heard it.
    Her gaze met David’s confused eyes. David had the same gray eyes as the handsome doctor in the parlor. Goodness. The shock threatened to take her down, but she could not let it. “I need help.” She spoke in a firm but low whisper. “I need money for a real doctor.”
    Miss Mary came and stood between David and Ruby, making her elegantly garbed body a shield between her only son and disaster. “Ruby, why are you here? Go on home.”
    Despite the shock, she did not move her gaze from David’s face. “He knows why I am here. I need a real doctor to help my baby.”
    Now Mr. Paul came and stood in the hallway. “This is all very irregular. Any appeals you people make, you know to come back, and you know to come before dinner, not after. You’re lucky Dr. Morson is here. I’ve brought him down from Tennessee to help treat your people.”
    “I need the best care for my child, Mr. Paul, sir.” The honorific sound for the town’s lead man came from her and sounded disrespectful. “This is to save my baby. I need a real doctor. Mr. David knows why.”
    “I’m sure he doesn’t.”
    She moved her gaze from David and met Miss Mary’s eyes. Miss Mary knew. She was supposed to keep her eyes downcast, to look away, to be ashamed. But she