He carried her to the small parlor just inside the entryway and placed her on the settee, then set a fire to warm the room and lit a few lamps. She had stopped crying by then and when he faced her, she was watching him.
He poured her a whisky, handed it over and took a place beside her. He was suddenly aware of how small the settee was. How close he had to sit to her.
“Breathe,” he said gently. “And drink that.”
She nodded, sipping the drink and taking a few shaky breaths. Then she looked at him again. “Please help me, Ripley.”
He nodded. He couldn’t have denied her anyway, but certainly not with her in this fragile, vulnerable state that he doubted she’d shown to anyone, even Esme, in years. He took her hand and lifted it to his chest.
“I will. But first you must tell me everything.”
Everything. Jane shivered at the idea. Had she ever told anyone in her life everything? There had been half-truths. Just enough to explain. Little lies to soften. But the whole truth was something she kept locked in her heart, tucked away where it wouldn’t hurt her or anyone else.
And now Campbell Ripley held her stare and asked for everything. And she wanted to give it. To offer her secrets because she knew he would protect them. Guard them. Even to his own detriment.
She thought of Nora and nodded. “I’ll—I’ll try,” she whispered. “I have a younger sister. Eight years younger, eighteen just a few weeks ago. Her name is Honora…Nora.”
He said nothing but just kept holding her hands, massaging gently.
She continued, “She’s been at a school for girls for half her life. I sent her there.”
“Why?” he asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut as images of anger and pain and drunkenness bombarded her. All those things she’d tried to protect Nora from.
“Our mother,” she said. “She’s…difficult. Unkind. Like me.”
His brow wrinkled and he leaned closer. “You are not difficult and you are so kind under that tough exterior you show the world.”
She stared into his eyes and could almost believe him. After all, Ripley didn’t lie, did he? She broke the stare because it drew her in too easily.
“I meant she was…is…a lightskirt.” She stood and paced away from him, needing distance from his intensity when she told the story. “She didn’t know who my father was. Just another customer. And she never tried to protect me from her work. She’d bring in men past me, close the door and I’d sit in the parlor and cover my ears.”
She heard him make a small sound, but didn’t dare look at him over her shoulder. It was better to keep staring out onto the street. Count the carriages as they passed by in the inky night so that she didn’t get lost. Get emotional again. That was weakness.
“When I was seven, she met a blacksmith and somehow convinced him to marry her when she became with child. Nora was born two days after my own birthday. We became a family, but not a happy one.”
“He wasn’t kind.”
She did look at him then and held his eyes evenly. “No. Not to me, not to my mother. Eventually, not to Nora. None of us mourned when he died in a fire. But he left us with nothing and it didn’t take three months for my mother to return to her old ways. I was fifteen by then. I watched her drink herself into oblivion and drag man after man through our door. And I had to protect Nora from that. From her…and…and from me. I started the trade at fifteen myself—I had no other choice, we needed the money. But I didn’t want my sister to follow that path. So I sent her away to protect her from that life. From my mother, from me.”
He winced. “So she’s been at school ever since.”
She nodded. “But this afternoon I received this.” Her breath hitched as he took the missive. He unfolded it and read the blunt words from the headmistress.
“I see.”
“She ran away.” Jane bent her head. “Or disappeared. Oh God, maybe she was even taken? All I can think of are all the possibilities. Whatever it is, it’s not good. I wanted so much more for her, Ripley. More than this. More than me.”
He crossed to her then in a few long steps. He shook his head and fire flashed in his dark eyes. “Stop saying that, Jane. Stop acting as if you and your past are why this is happening. You did for her what many wouldn’t have. You offered her a better life than the one that was foisted onto you. You are her hero, not her villain.”
“She wouldn’t agree,” Jane said, and now the tears filled her eyes again. “She despises me. She thinks I’ve kept her from our mother, from whatever fairytale life she imagines she would have lived back at home. She stopped answering my letters two years ago. I am her villain.”
He took her hands and pulled her closer, just as he had when she collapsed on his doorstep. But this time she wasn’t quite as overwrought and she realized she was pressed to his bare chest. A very muscular, very warm chest.
“You are perfect, Jane,” he whispered.
She hesitated and then she lifted her chin, leaning up toward him in what felt like half-time. She knew when he realized what she was doing by the way his body went rigid with awareness and his breath got shorter. She should have pulled away, but she couldn’t. Not now when she felt so weak and needed his strength to keep her steady.
