“Hmm.” She was noncommittal in that response and turned the figurine in her hand.
He slipped it from her grasp gently and placed it back on the mantel. She glanced up at him a second time and this time she held his gaze. “If you need me, you know I’m here, don’t you?” he asked and meant it.
Her lips parted and she seemed to struggle with something for a moment. But then she reached up and patted his cheek. “I know. The same goes for you.”
The conversation should have assuaged his worry. Marianne was distracted, but she’d just recently lost a friend. Perhaps that was what she and Ramsbury had been discussing. He was seeing something else because he was so tangled up in his own romantic issues. There was no use looking for trouble. He had enough already.
“Why don’t we dance?” he suggested, and motioned to where a few of the others were mangling a country jig while someone played piano for them.
She took his arm and her worries seemed to evaporate, so he forced his own to do the same. “I’d like that.”
“What do you think about a match on Tuesday?”
Esme blinked and forced herself to pay attention to Ripley as he looked over a schedule on his desk in the back of his boxing club. “I’m sorry?”
His brow wrinkled. “I know you came to the club to spar, but usually you want to discuss fights to be made. You had the exhibition recently, but you haven’t had a real match since you won that night against Hilde Parson down at Seven Dials. I’d think you’d want to get out there and there’s a space available in a round of matches coming to the Dog and Pony Hell.”
She shook away her distractions and nodded. “Who would be the opponent?”
He flipped through the pages. “Viall is trying to build up Murder Mary.”
She rolled her eyes. “Murder Mary. I fought her back at the beginning, if you recall.”
“I do. You put her on her arse after five minutes.” He laughed. “I knew I’d picked the right woman to train after that night.”
“She hardly has a left hook at all.” Esme sighed. “But yes, I’ll take the fight. The blunt will be nice.”
Ripley leaned back in his chair. “You’re miles away.”
She pursed her lips. She was, even though she’d never admit to him or to Jane or to anyone else where her mind took her. But since Finn’s departure from London a week before, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. It was ridiculous, for surely he’d erased her from his memory. After she’d rejected his request for a fuck twice? A man like that had certainly written her off and moved on to someone willing.
“Esme.”
She looked up at Ripley. “Do you ever think of getting out of it all?”
He held her gaze for a moment. “I did get out of it all. Took my blunt and started the boxing club so I’d stopped getting punched in the head.”
“You just teach others how to take that punch.” She said with a laugh.
He smiled a little. “You’ve been doing this a while, Es. Most women don’t last more than a few years in the circuit. And you’ve set aside a lot of blunt doing it and living as simply as you and Jane do. So if you’re starting to think about moving on, letting go, it makes sense. You’ve nothing to prove.”
She bent her head. “Sometimes I try to picture what would come next, but it’s always blank. I had the idea I’d be some fop’s wife for so long back when I was someone else. I could imagine that life forever. And then I started doing this and it saved me. But when I look to the next thing it just seems…”
“I know.” Ripley drew in a long breath. “I know what it seems like. So think on it. What would you like to be next? You don’t have to know today or tomorrow, but preparing for the future is never a waste of time.”
She smiled and then got up. “I’ll go punch the bags a bit. Will you write up that information on the fight so I can give it to Jane when I get home?”
He shifted slightly. “I will. I’ll write her a little note, too.”
Her smile widened as she exited his office to go into the half-empty fighting area where a few other ladies were sparring and practicing for their own bouts down the line. “She always loves that,” she called back to him.
If he answered, she didn’t hear it. She focused instead on the heavy bag hanging from a beam on the ceiling. She slung a half-hearted punch at it and felt it shiver in response. She thought of Ripley’s question. Whatdidshe want in the future?
A brief image of Finn kissing her jumped to her mind. Finn holding her down on a bed as she rose beneath him in writhingpleasure. She blinked the unwanted image away. That wasn’t possible. There was no future there, no matter how many times she dreamed of the man.
She had to move on. That was all there was to it.
The ball was in full swing but Finn was hardly attending. He looked around the room for what felt like the fifth time and then shook his head at his butler, Bentley. “I don’t see her. Where could Marianne be?”
