“Does he know who you really are?” he snapped.
She opened and shut her mouth, but couldn’t find the words.
Ripley threw his head back and cursed a streak that would have burned the ears of most ladies clear off. “He does. I can see it written on your face. He’s anearl, Esme. You had to run from that life. How could you ever go back and be safe?”
He was only saying all the things she already knew, but Esme’s eyes stung with unbidden tears nonetheless. She let out a shaky sigh. “I don’t know. I-I can’t.”
Ripley’s expression softened as if he understood something in that moment that he hadn’t before. Then he patted her shoulder, pivoted on his heel, and started across the room toward Finn.
Finn found Esme at last in the big room, standing beside a ring in a black leather corset over a thick-strapped chemise that went to her knee. She was currently barefoot with her red hair frizzy from exertion, one hand still wrapped from where she must have been sparring.
He caught his breath at the sight of her, here in her element, watching him across the room. She looked like a goddess, asirresistible beside the ring as she was in his bed or would be in a ballroom.
But before he could move to her, he also noticed something else. Campbell Ripley, the owner of the club and his own boxing teacher, heading toward him, shoulders thrown back and the look of an angry bull on his face.
Finn squared his shoulders as Ripley reached him, setting one foot back out of habit and adjusting his hands at his sides in case he was about to have his own fight.
Ripley’s gaze moved up and down him in a moment. “Well, you aren’t a useless student, are you, my lord? Your stance is good.”
“I’m wondering if I’ll need to use it with you coming across to me like that,” Finn said cautiously.
Ripley jerked his head back toward Esme. “You know who she is?”
Finn chest tightened. It seemed Ripley was here to protect Esme from him. She’d said several times that the boxing master had helped protect her when she first ran from her cousin. For that, Finn couldn’t be more grateful. But seeing this man, who was properly considered handsome, come to her rescue like he had a place to do so made Finn…
Jealous.
“Oy, answer me,” Ripley snapped. “You know who she is?”
Finn nodded. “I do. Do you?”
“I know exactly who she is,” Ripley growled. “I saw what she was like after she ran, I protected her all those years ago from a man of power just like you.”
“Not like me,” Finn said with a shake of his head. “But likeyou, all I want to do is defend her. Help her.”
“Oh, how lovely, agentlemanwho likes to go around saving ladies who have virtually nothing to fall back on. That always ends well when they run out of interest in them,” Ripley said,and there was something bitter in his tone that made Finn wonder what personal attachment he had to that story.
“I’m not going to run out of interest, Ripley.”
“That’s what they all say,” the other man grunted.
Finn looked at Esme. She was still standing across the room, watching them, but she made no move to join them. It was as if she was seeing how this would play out. If Finn would be put off and abandon her, perhaps.
“I’ve known you a long time, Ripley,” he said, calming his tone. “I respect you, and for the fact that you’ve helped her and continue to help her, I can only feel friendship and gratitude.”
Ripley’s brow knitted but his mouth had begun to relax a fraction. “You didn’t look none too grateful a minute ago.”
“Because…” Finn drew a long breath. He hadn’t intended to say this out loud for the first time to a man who was no more than an acquaintance, but sometimes in stories about knights, they had to pay a toll to cross a bridge. Pass a test to reach the princess, didn’t they? “I’m in love with her,” he said softly.
Ripley stared at him for a moment that felt like it stretched a lifetime. “Does she know that?” he asked, gentler now.
Finn shook his head. “I think we both know she isn’t in a place to accept that from me. Not yet.”
“No. Her shell is very strong, life led in your high society made her so.” Ripley glanced back at her and then back to Finn. “Would you love her enough to let her go, if that was what was best for her?”
The pain that ripped through Finn at that question was almost enough to drop him to his knees. But he managed to maintain calm. He had been clinging to the notion that somehow he could work this out, get Esme out of danger and then find a way to welcome her back into his world. But Ripley was only presenting an option that Finn knew was very much also available.
He might never find a way to bring her home. She might not want to come home after everything she’d endured. She might not want Finn and all his life entailed.
