“Oh,” she said, and thought of Ripley’s always-frowning right-hand man. He was very good at his job, anyone who interacted with him for more than a few minutes could see that. And he was fiercely loyal to Ripley. Which made the way he sometimes glowered at Jane feel even more pointed.
“Well, I suppose he doesn’t need one more reason to dislike me,” she said with a sigh.
Ripley tilted his head. “He doesn’t like you?”
She lifted her brows in surprise. “I’m shocked you weren’t already aware. You always notice the little shifts and moods of everyone.”
“A survival technique in my former business.”
She smiled weakly. “And mine.”
“Is he rude to you?” Ripley continued to press, and she saw a flicker of anger enter his stare at the thought. Gone immediately, but heated for the flash it had existed.
“Oh no!” she said. “Never rude. Just…cool. I felt he was pleased when Esme stopped fighting and that meant I came to the club less often to corner and support her.”
Ripley seemed to consider that. “Hmm. Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. Brentwood is serious, that is very true. Sometimes he’s hard to read, even for me. I suppose that’s part of why he’s so good at his job. His reactions are inscrutable most of the time and when things get heated at the club, you need a man who doesn’t add to the upset.”
“I can see that. Certainly I wasn’t saying it to impugn the man. I know he’s vital around the club and a good friend to you.”
“He is that,” Ripley mused softly. “If he doesn’t like you, he’s never told me. And if he had, I wouldn’t give a damn.”
“No?” she said, truly surprised at that answer, despite the tension that had always existed between her and the man across from her. She’d been in the world long enough to know that one friend could poison the other against someone he was attracted to. Men tended to stick together, an often-terrifying united front since they held so much more power.
“No,” he repeated. “Because I like you.”
That sentence was said lightly, perhaps to lift the heavy mood in the dim carriage. She’d known it, of course. Ripley liked her. Ripley wanted her. But Jane still felt a thrill at it. Far more deeply than she ought to considering the circumstances.
“Flatterer,” she said with a laugh that swiftly turned to a sigh. She rested her head back on the seat cushion and thought of what he would see today, the kind of welcome they would likely have. “I know I’ve dragged you into a mess. Perhaps you won’t like me so much when this is done.”
He held her stare evenly for what felt like an eternity, though it couldn’t have even been thirty seconds before he spoke. “Do you know who my mother was?”
She blinked at what felt like a change of subject. “No.”
His mouth tightened, as did his fists on his thick thighs. “Regina Ripley.”
Her mouth dropped open and she leaned forward. “The—the famous courtesan?”
He nodded slowly. “The very one. Famous, celebrated and, sadly, far too long dead. I couldn’t judge you, Jane, because you and I are cut from the same sad and tattered cloth.”
Ripley very rarely spoke of his mother. He’d stopped a decade ago when the cancer had taken her. Even those he’d call friend didn’t know his relationship to her, though people remembered her. She had been the belle of her time, the most sought-after courtesan in all of London.
“I’ve seen Bernard Horner’s portraits of her,” she said. “So I know she was stunning. But what was she like?”
“Horner,” he repeated with a shake of his head. “One of her old protectors. She was his muse. I was an extra nuisance around. Regardless of all that, it’s nice to see her face when I encounter the portraits in galleries.”
He didn’t mention the one in his residence above the club. Jane hadn’t gone into that particular parlor where it hung above his fireplace.
“It must be startling,” Jane said softly. “Painful, even, if you were close.”
“We were,” he said. “You asked what she was like and she was kind and lively…but she was also sad. When she stripped away all the trappings of her sophisticated life, she was wounded.”
Jane’s nostrils flared slightly and he wondered if she was thinking of her own life as a lightskirt and mistress. She hadn’t often reached the lofty heights his mother had, almost always keeping herself to middle class men and women. But she understood. He sometimes saw that same wound in her.
“Was it just the life that hurt her?” she asked gently. “Or something more specific.”
“Yes, the life was hard. You know it. Not always bad, but difficult. But I think what truly broke her was my father. Lord Pottinger.”
“The earl?” Jane gasped.
