“Ripley,” she whispered. “You don’t have to?—”
“You knew about this relationship he had or desired to have with Nora,” Ripley snapped as he turned his attention back to Pottinger. “So you must know that if she disappeared, it is likely with him. I ask again, where is he?”
“See here,” his father said, almost gently. “You’re very angry, that’s apparent. I cannot just send you after Hugo to mete out some justice. Not only do I think he would be defenseless against you, but there are appearances to be maintained. Protected.”
“Protected,” Ripley repeated, all the pains he’d felt as a lonely child making new appearances. Stealing some of the control he’d so carefully crafted to protect himself from them. “You dare to speak to me about protection? To tell me you wish to protect your son when you knew about me? You must have known about my mother’s situation. And you did nothing.”
He hated that there was a quiver to his voice and he snapped his mouth shut. He didn’t want to show that vulnerability to this man. And he also knew he was dancing precariously close to the edge where the earl might simply deny Jane any further information about Hugo’s whereabouts. They could possibly still track him, but without Pottinger’s help it would take far longer. Ripley had to set his own feelings aside for her. He would not fail her as so many selfish men in her life had done before.
The earl shifted and at least had the decency to look slightly chagrined. “I know I wasn’t present for you, but look how strong it made you. It made you a champion, a fighter.”
Jane made a soft sound in her throat and to Ripley’s shock she staggered to her feet. She stared at his father, a man with fifty times her power, and held him in place with the strength of her rage.
“You judge that as a good thing? The pain people like us suffered, it didn’t make us stronger. It made us broken. You cannot break a person and then claim credit for how they survived, as if you did them a favor.” She motioned toward Ripley with a trembling hand. “Campbell Ripley is powerful and good and decent despite you, my lord. Not because you abandoned him and his mother.”
Ripley couldn’t take his eyes off her. All this time he’d fought to protect her, as was his nature. But now she stood, sword unsheathed, eyes flashing, ready to go to war without thought to the cost.
His father opened and shut his mouth, his eyes wide. Ripley wasn’t certain if that was because he was shocked that someone like Jane would speak to him this way, or truly taking in her words.
Then he bent his head. “I-I failed you, Campbell. I failed your mother. And I’m sorry.”
Ripley caught his breath. There was the apology he’d never thought he’d receive. The one he’d dreamed of as a boy when he stared at the cracked ceiling, when he listened to his mother softly cry in another room. Or watched her pack up to go live with a lover, her eyes hollow and sad as she left him with a friend or a neighbor because her current protector didn’t want another man’s by-blow around in whatever accommodation he provided her.
He shook his head. “If you are sorry, truly sorry, then you will do as I ask and tell me where Hugo is. Jane is the most important person in the world to me, the only one who has any real meaning in my life. I want to help her find her sister.”
“If he truly loves her, if he has defied your edict to walk away, then there’s no threat to him from us,” Jane said.
“Yes. That would make him a far greater man than his father. Our father,” Ripley said.
“And if he hasn’t? If he has only kept her? What then?” Pottinger asked. “You still ask me to trade away the security of one son to the other.”
Ripley sighed and looked at Jane. She nodded, as if she understood. “If he is as craven a coward as our father has turned out to be,” he said slowly, and turned his gaze back on the earl. “Then Jane and I will simply remove Nora from his company. There will be no consequence, at least none to him. Just as your kind like and expect it, entitled as you are.”
The earl let out a shaky breath, shifted on the settee. It seemed he was having a struggle and so both Jane and Ripley remained silent to allow that to continue. If it led to what they desired, Ripley could wait.
At last, the earl shook his head and said, “Hugo is my youngest son. When he came into his majority, he was gifted an estate just outside of London. It’s rather run down—he rarely goes there—but if I were to guess where he might take someone, where he might escape, that would be it.”
Jane sagged next to Ripley and he wrapped an arm around her, no longer giving a damn what his father would think of it. He locked eyes with the man. “Thank you, my lord. And now we’ll trouble you no longer.”
As he stood, so did the earl. Pottinger was very pale now, eyes wide. “I-I loved your mother.” That stopped Ripley in his tracks. “And when you say I’m a coward, that’s true. I didn’t defy my own father to be with her, much as I desired to do so.”
Ripley pinched his lips together. Some good that so-called love did him or his mother now. But it could still do some good for Jane and for her sister, and even for Pottinger’s youngest son. “If you are truly sorry for your actions, then if Hugo has eloped with Jane’s sister you will show him more consideration than you were shown.”
The earl seemed to ponder that and then he nodded slowly. “I-I cannot speak for his grandfather. The duke won’t be happy with this turn of events if it has gone that way. But I’m not powerless. I won’t deny Hugo and any woman he marries the same future and support that I would give his older brothers. I…I promise you that, Ripley.”
“Good,” Ripley said. “Then we’ll leave you.”
If the earl wished to stop them, wished to make some further connection with Ripley, he didn’t make a move to do so. He let them go with only a soft goodbye.
Jane held tightly to Ripley as they returned to the drive and the phaeton the earl’s man brought around for them. After they’d entered the vehicle and Ripley urged the horses to ride, she looked at him.
“Ripley,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “Not—not yet, Jane. I cannot think about it or talk about it yet. Let’s focus on your sister, finding her and deciding our next step.”
She reached a hand up to tangle through his hair as he drove. It was a loving action, a soothing action. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
And as they drove in silence for a while, he knew that what he needed more than anything was her. In his life, at his side, fighting his demons just as she’d done a few moments before. When this was over, he hoped she’d still be there to do just that.
