Page 3 of The Courtesan’s Protector (About An Earl #4)

CHAPTER 2

W hen Ripley accepted Delacourt’s invitation to a fete at his estate, he’d expected it to be a large gathering where he could fade into the woodwork except when someone from the club recognized him. Or an old admirer from his boxing days. He had ready responses for that and in the end, those who approached him weren’t really interested in him , just what they believed him to be.

But he was surprised to discover, as he was led to the parlor where he had been told the rest of the party was gathered, that it was an intimate group.

Delacourt crossed to him after he’d been announced, hand outstretched in what seemed to be genuine friendship. It was returned, in truth. Ripley liked Delacourt. He was good for Esme and good to her, which was even more important. And he had a wicked right cross that anyone could respect.

“Ripley,” he said as they shook. “I’m so glad you made it.”

Esme was already coming across the room toward him. Ripley smiled. She was no longer the terrified woman he’d saved in an alleyway. Nor was she the rough fighter he’d helped her become. She was lovely in a green gown that matched her eyes. She looked like a lady.

And yet she still grasped his hands with both her own. “Campbell,” she said with a smile. She was one of the few people who ever referred to him by his first name.

“Es,” he returned, and lifted her hand to his lips for a brief kiss. “You look well.”

“I’m more than well,” Esme assured him. “You know some in the room, I think. Ramsbury goes to the club with Finn, I know.”

“Ripley,” Ramsbury said. “And you’ve met Marianne.”

“My lady,” Ripley said to Ramsbury’s wife. She was a lovely woman, quiet but always kind. And from the way Ramsbury sometimes went on about her, deeply loved.

“And these are our very good friends, the Earl and Countess of Kirkwood.”

Ripley nodded at Kirkwood, who also belonged to his club, though he didn’t attend quite as often as Ramsbury and Delacourt. “My lord. And it’s a pleasure to meet your wife. I’ve heard a great deal about you, my lady, all good things.”

The countess, a pretty petite woman with dark hair and eyes, smiled broadly at him. “And I of you, Mr. Ripley. All these gentlemen have such high regard for you, it’s impossible not to admire you without even knowing you.”

“Ah,” he said with a smile. “I’ll try not to let you down with the reality.”

The group laughed at the quip and Ripley realized in that moment that Jane wasn’t there. He wrinkled his brow. “But where is Jane? Miss Kendall, I mean?”

Esme’s lips tightened a fraction. “Not here yet. Though she did say she was coming, so I still have hopes she’ll do so.”

“Perhaps she just wished to be fashionably late,” Ripley suggested, but he doubted that was true.

As the group fell back into conversation that he tried to follow while he watched the door, he worried the inside of his lip. Jane wouldn’t want the attention that fashionably late would bring, especially if she had, just as he had, believed this was a large fete.

He shifted his weight a little as discomfort rose in him. She wouldn’t just not show up without sending word. Had something happened? He couldn’t help but be dragged back to a few months before when Esme and Delacourt’s troubles had led to an attack on Jane. The fear from that night returned far too easily and he was so focused on it that he jumped when Delacourt touched his arm.

“Worried?”

“Me? Never,” Ripley lied. “She did say she would attend.”

Delacourt held his stare a moment and then nodded. “I’m sure she will.”

Just as he said it, the butler appeared in the door again and said, “Miss Jane Kendall, my lords and ladies.”

He stepped away and Jane entered the room. Ripley couldn’t breathe for a moment. He’d seen Jane in all kinds of dress over the years. Seductive as a courtesan, barely covered so that there was little imagination to her shape. But also comfortable and casual in the home she once shared with Esme. And of course, he sometimes saw her dressed for her duties as shop owner, where she was staid but fashionable to send a message to those who entered her place.

But he had only ever seen her dressed as formally she was now once before. At Esme and Delacourt’s wedding ball she had worn the same gown that draped across her body presently. A dark blue with a crisscross pattern on the hem, bodice and at the end of the short, puffed sleeves. Her hair was done up simply, but she didn’t need frivolities in order to make her beautiful. Her long neck, her pale skin, her dark eyes, her full lips. Everything about her was stunning and he was, as ever, stunned.

“Jane!” Esme called out, and hustled across the room to throw her arms around her friend.

Jane squeezed her back and then looked around the room. “Oh, am I early?”

“Late,” Esme teased. “It’s only us friends tonight.”

Jane glanced at Ripley for a moment and he saw her swallow hard. Like him, she didn’t feel comfortable in such a small group of very important people. It was harder to hide.

He gave her a smile that he hoped would shore her up and she returned it a little weakly, but she allowed Esme to take her arm and all but drag her into the group. She was introduced and re-introduced to all in attendance and Ripley was pleased to see how easily she was accepted by Lady Ramsbury and Lady Kirkwood. Both were kind women and if they knew what Jane had once been, they didn’t seem bothered by it or by her current standing in life, despite it being so different from their own.

Still, he could feel her discomfort, see it in the subtle shifts of her body, the tightness of her smile, the way her fingers occasionally clenched around her drink. After a little while, she stepped away from the circle of their friends and glanced toward him. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction as she crossed to him at the window.

“Were we tricked tonight, do you think?” she asked without any preamble.

He laughed. “You also thought it was going to a ball or some other big, ridiculous fete?”

She nodded. “And yet it’s just a few friends. No hiding for us outcasts.” She caught her breath and looked up at him. “Obviously you aren’t?—”

“Of course I am, Jane,” he said and looked toward the three earls across the room. “I like them. They’re the best one can hope for in men of their rank. I would call Ramsbury and Delacourt at least passing friends. But I am definitely an outcast.”

“Well,” she said, and lifted her glass as if to toast him. “Then I say to the outcasts. May we survive the well-meaning intentions of our rich, bored friends.”

“I’ll drink to that.” They both laughed as they did so. Before they’d finished drinking, the butler reappeared.

“Supper is served,” he intoned.

The couples began to pair off and line up to go to the dining room with much laughter about what rank went first. Jane and Ripley hung back together, watching it all, that feeling of being an outcast even heavier.

But at last the pairs began to walk to the dining room and Ripley offered an arm to Jane. “May I?”

She hesitated a moment and then slid her hand through the crook of his elbow. That touch, just like the touch earlier in the week at her shop set off fireworks of electric desire in his body. But he was good at controlling his body, so he knew he didn’t show it.

They made it to the dining room and he escorted her to the chair in front of her nameplate. As he slid out her chair, she looked up at him with a warm, gentle smile and once again his heart thudded. At her, at this. At everything he would deny to everyone else around them but couldn’t deny to himself.

He stepped away and went to his own seat to settle in for supper. But as he smoothed his jacket and smiled at Ramsbury, who was seated next to him and had asked him some question, he glanced once more at Jane.

This woman was the love of his life. But that gave him no joy, for he knew it would never be spoken. To do so was to open himself up to too much potential for pain. He wouldn’t allow it. And he knew she wouldn’t either.

* * *

I f asked, Jane would have said that it had been a lovely gathering. It wouldn’t be a lie. Despite her knowledge that she didn’t belong in the hallowed halls of earls and countesses, these particular ones were nothing but kind. They treated her as an equal and it was easy to like Marianne and Clarissa, which was what they demanded she call them, just as she adored Esme.

And yet she’d been on edge all night. On some level, that was simply how she lived her life. There had been too many years of danger to lose the habit of preparing for the worst. But it was more than that, too. Having Ripley in the room was comforting, but it was also difficult. To look over and watch him talking, smiling, laughing. To see him watching her and feel heat suffuse her cheeks like she was some innocent maiden rather than a jaded former lightskirt who already knew that depending on a man, even one who was good, was the path to destruction.

Campbell Ripley was a mistake she couldn’t make. And yet reminding herself of that fact got harder every year, with every little interaction where she felt the weight of his regard press down on her and tempt her.

“Oh, Jane, your hair really is so pretty.”

Jane blinked and looked over to find the Countess of Kirkwood, Clarissa, had been the one to speak. “Thank you,” she said with a smile as she reached up to touch her simple chignon.

“I’ve always envied beautiful women like you or Esme with your bright locks.”

Marianne, the Countess of Ramsbury nodded. “Oh, I have too. I always thought my plain brown was so boring.”

Esme laughed. “Your dark hair is gorgeous, both of you!”

“It is,” Jane agreed. “That diamond clip in yours, Lady Ramsbury…Marianne, is especially lovely. It really draws the eye.”

Marianne touched it and blushed. “Sebastian gave it to me a few days ago. He spoils me.”

Jane smiled. Marianne looked so truly happy that for a moment her chest hurt. It had been easy to tell herself love didn’t really exist after all she’d seen and done. After all the men who were betraying their wives and families by burying themselves in her body, and other pleasures they kept away from those they claimed to protect. But being around these three and their husbands all night had been a reminder that for some that golden glow of true connection did exist.

She bent her head focused on her madeira as the others chatted about their husbands for a moment.

“You and Mr. Ripley have been friends for a long time, haven’t you?” Now it was Lady Kirkwood who questioned her and once again Jane jerked her attention back to her companions.

She glanced at Esme with a laugh, happy to have a distraction from the meat of the statement. “ Mr. Ripley . When you called him that, did he flinch?”

Esme laughed along with her, for they both knew the man well after so many years. “It’s hard to fathom referring to Campbell with such formality.”

Jane’s lips tightened. Esme was the only one who ever called Ripley by his first name. That fact had occasionally made her a little jealous over the years, even though she knew perfectly well that her friend considered him more like a brother.

“He’s very interesting,” Marianne said. “I understand from Esme and from Sebastian that he’s led a fascinating life.”

Jane thought of the years she’d known him, about his powerful career as a pugilist, about how he’d pulled himself from that life and created a whole new one, a very successful one, with his club. “Yes. Fascinating.”

Esme arched a brow. “I think my two dear friends are trying to pry very politely into what the two of you are to each other.”

Jane swallowed. “What we are?”

Marianne and Clarissa exchanged a look. “He’s very handsome," Clarissa said carefully. “And he always seems to be watching you. You are very comfortable when you’re talking. It does make one wonder if there might be something more, something deeper than the friendship we understand you two share.”

Jane looked at Esme. “You aren’t involving yourself in this silliness, are you? You know that Ripley and I are friends. There’s nothing more to it.”

“Isn’t there?” Esme asked, and there was no teasing to her tone.

“I think I’ll get more madeira if I’m to entertain such foolishness,” Jane said with a forced laugh as she walked away to the sideboard.

When she was no longer facing the other women, her smile fell. Her heart was racing. She knew none of them meant any harm. All of them, her dear friend included, were just rich, bored women, just as she’d told Ripley. They’d found love and they wanted to see it everywhere else they looked. It was kindly meant, but they didn’t understand her world. Even Esme, who had inhabited it for several years, had only been a passing visitor. They didn’t understand that love was a liability for some. That it could create weakness. Cause pain.

“Why isn’t this whisky?” she muttered as she picked up the bottle of wine and began to uncork it.

“I have whisky.”

Jane jumped as Esme appeared at her shoulder like a wisp. She laughed as she bent to the cabinet at Jane’s knees and brought out a bottle. She waggled it playfully and then poured it into Jane’s empty glass.

“Are you well?” she asked as she did so.

Jane gripped the glass tighter. Once upon a time she might have poured out her troubles to her friend. But that was when she was just Esme, champion female pugilist and runaway heiress.

But now she was Lady Delacourt. Charlotte Esmerelda. A former lightskirt couldn’t give over her troubles to someone with all those honorifics, could she?

“Of course,” Jane said instead.

“The shop is going well?” Esme pressed.

Jane swallowed. “Yes.”

She hoped she didn’t sound as uncertain as she felt. It wasn’t just that the visitors to her general store were few and far between, probably fewer and further between since Elizabeth had made her unpleasant stop there a few days before. It was that when Jane was in the shop she felt…itchy. Uncomfortable. Out of place.

Esme had meant well in helping her procure the place, helping her step away from a life made on the wages of sin. But it didn’t feel like a place that…fit.

“I’m worried about you,” Esme said, taking her hand and squeezing. “Worried about us. I don’t see you anymore and I miss my friend.”

Jane shut her eyes and hated that tears stung behind them. Ones she refused to allow to fall. “Oh, you know how it is. Just so busy. And you are, too. A freshly married lady must have all kinds of things to do. Both the mundane and the much more exciting if the way Delacourt always has to touch you is any indication.”

Esme’s expression softened. “He is wonderful. I do adore him to distraction. But I’m never too busy for you. If you need me, I’ll always be here.”

Jane was mercifully saved from having to answer that statement by the gentlemen returning to the room together after their port and billiards. Esme squeezed her hand and returned to Delacourt, as the others did to their own husbands. But Ripley didn’t come to her as he had earlier in the night. He smiled at her, but then he went to the fireplace and lit a cigar.

And she was left alone. Which was what she’d always claimed she wanted: to be independent. And yet it didn’t feel as good as she wished it was.

In that moment, it felt empty.