She blinked. What was she thinking? The future wasn’t in this room. And yet she didn’t stop her tour. She found a study next. The desk was big, piled with papers and letters and accounts. This was clearly where he managed the business of the club at night. She moved around, looking at his even handwriting, recalling every time he’d written her name over the years.
Jane. My Janie.
She also noted a portrait above the fire on the desk. She moved to it and lifted her lantern to see it better. It was a woman and judging from the dark eyes that she knew so well, she thought it was Ripley’s mother. One of the paintings by her former protector, it seemed, and a beautiful one. Jane smiled. Regina Ripley had been so very pretty and she had a kind expression. Sad, perhaps, but very kind. Sometimes she saw that same look on her son’s face. The same little wrinkle to his forehead.
Once again, it was too easy to think about being comfortable here. Perhaps she would help him organize his paperwork better. She’d sit at the window while he worked, talking to him about his day. He’d pour her tea…or whisky. Or both. She smiled at the thought before she once again shoved it away. This look into his life was too dangerous, it seemed.
She stepped from that room and went to the end of the hallway. There was a short staircase there and it led up to a third floor that had two doors. She opened the first, a small bedchamber, though the furniture was all covered with sheets.
The last door she hesitated at. This was his bedroom. She knew it, and though she had made full use of her freedom to explore, going into this chamber felt different. Her hand shook as she turned the knob and stepped inside.
It was a big chamber, though simply appointed. A door to one side likely led to his dressing room. Beside it was a small table adorned with some writing implements. There were two chairs before the fire with another table between them where a few books were stacked.
And then there was the bed. Their encounters before this had been in smaller beds in inns. But this bed was different, bigger, laid with a soft coverlet that she traced her fingers along until she reached the pillow where the man she loved placed his head each night.
“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath, and then turned to the cold fireplace. She set her lamp aside and set a fire, tending it until it came to life to warm the room for him later. That was the least she could do after everything he’d done for her in these last weeks.
She was just finishing up when she heard Ripley clear his throat from the door behind her. She faced him and found him staring at her and then at the flames.
“You set a fire?”
She nodded, even though her cheeks burned. To do that was a simple act, but one of love. Now it felt like she was under scrutiny.
He stared for a second more and then shook his head. “Supper is ready, though it isn’t much.”
“I’m sure it will be perfect,” she assured him.
Together they returned to the kitchen and the simple table there that he’d set for them. He’d roasted some vegetables that smelled like heaven and there was bread and cheese.
“As I said, not much since I haven’t been home,” he said as he pulled back her chair and helped her in.
“I cannot wait,” she assured him, and smiled up at him as he filled her plate.
He sat across from her and did the same for himself. But when she started eating, he didn’t. He moved his food around, but he was quiet and hardly raised the fork to his lips.
After a few moments like that, she covered his hand and squeezed gently. “You must be worried about meeting with your father tomorrow.”
He lifted his gaze to her. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about.” His voice was rough, low.
She wrinkled her brow. “No?”
“Jane…Jane, I love you.”
CHAPTER 16
Ripley understood something about the idea of pressure. He’d faced a great deal of it in his life. He knew that if it got too high, whatever it surged against would burst. And that was what had just happened as he sat at his table across from Jane. The words he’d kept silent in his heart for years had finally pressed too hard. Burned too bright. He’d had to say them, there was no escaping it.
And now she stared at him, her eyes bright with a joy that was unmistakable. A joy that faded even as she drew her hand away from his.
“Please don’t say that,” she whispered.
He shook his head. He’d never thought she’d accept that. At least not immediately. Her difficult life gave her too many reasons to fear it. And yet he had no energy to deny the truth anymore, not to protect himself from rejection. Not to protect her from whatever terror those words inspired.
“But I must,” he said. “All I want is you. All I dream of is you. I know that frightens you. Hell, it scares me, too. But there it is.”
She bent her head and he could see her struggle. The fight that was within her was as clear as any he had taken in a ring. Would he win? He hoped so. He hoped that she’d find the strength to tell him she loved him, too, even if she still believed that wasn’t enough.
But she didn’t. Her hands fell into her lap beneath the table and she didn’t speak, just looked down at her half-full plate. It was disappointing. And yet he still understood it.
