Still, he could feel her discomfort, see it in the subtle shifts of her body, the tightness of her smile, the way her fingers occasionally clenched around her drink. After a little while, she stepped away from the circle of their friends and glanced toward him. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction as she crossed to him at the window.
“Were we tricked tonight, do you think?” she asked without any preamble.
He laughed. “You also thought it was going to a ball or some other big, ridiculous fete?”
She nodded. “And yet it’s just a few friends. No hiding for us outcasts.” She caught her breath and looked up at him. “Obviously you aren’t?—”
“Of course I am, Jane,” he said and looked toward the three earls across the room. “I like them. They’re the best one can hope for in men of their rank. I would call Ramsbury and Delacourt at least passing friends. But I am definitely an outcast.”
“Well,” she said, and lifted her glass as if to toast him. “Then I say to the outcasts. May we survive the well-meaning intentions of our rich, bored friends.”
“I’ll drink to that.” They both laughed as they did so. Before they’d finished drinking, the butler reappeared.
“Supper is served,” he intoned.
The couples began to pair off and line up to go to the dining room with much laughter about what rank went first. Jane and Ripley hung back together, watching it all, that feeling of being an outcast even heavier.
But at last the pairs began to walk to the dining room and Ripley offered an arm to Jane. “May I?”
She hesitated a moment and then slid her hand through the crook of his elbow. That touch, just like the touch earlier in the week at her shop set off fireworks of electric desire in his body. But he was good at controlling his body, so he knew he didn’t show it.
They made it to the dining room and he escorted her to the chair in front of her nameplate. As he slid out her chair, she looked up at him with a warm, gentle smile and once again his heart thudded. At her, at this. At everything he would deny to everyone else around them but couldn’t deny to himself.
He stepped away and went to his own seat to settle in for supper. But as he smoothed his jacket and smiled at Ramsbury, who was seated next to him and had asked him some question, he glanced once more at Jane.
This woman was the love of his life. But that gave him no joy, for he knew it would never be spoken. To do so was to open himself up to too much potential for pain. He wouldn’t allow it. And he knew she wouldn’t either.
If asked, Jane would have said that it had been a lovely gathering. It wouldn’t be a lie. Despite her knowledge that she didn’t belong in the hallowed halls of earls and countesses, these particular ones were nothing but kind. They treated her as an equal and it was easy to like Marianne and Clarissa, which was what they demanded she call them, just as she adored Esme.
And yet she’d been on edge all night. On some level, that was simply how she lived her life. There had been too many years of danger to lose the habit of preparing for the worst. But it was more than that, too. Having Ripley in the room was comforting, but it was also difficult. To look over and watch him talking, smiling, laughing. To see him watching her and feel heat suffuse her cheeks like she was some innocent maiden rather than a jaded former lightskirt who already knew that depending on a man, even one who was good, was the path to destruction.
Campbell Ripley was a mistake she couldn’t make. And yet reminding herself of that fact got harder every year, with every little interaction where she felt the weight of his regard press down on her and tempt her.
“Oh, Jane, your hair really is so pretty.”
Jane blinked and looked over to find the Countess of Kirkwood, Clarissa, had been the one to speak. “Thank you,” she said with a smile as she reached up to touch her simple chignon.
“I’ve always envied beautiful women like you or Esme with your bright locks.”
Marianne, the Countess of Ramsbury nodded. “Oh, I have too. I always thought my plain brown was so boring.”
Esme laughed. “Your dark hair is gorgeous, both of you!”
“It is,” Jane agreed. “That diamond clip in yours, Lady Ramsbury…Marianne, is especially lovely. It really draws the eye.”
Marianne touched it and blushed. “Sebastian gave it to me a few days ago. He spoils me.”
Jane smiled. Marianne looked so truly happy that for a moment her chest hurt. It had been easy to tell herself love didn’t really exist after all she’d seen and done. After all the men who were betraying their wives and families by burying themselves in her body, and other pleasures they kept away from those they claimed to protect. But being around these three and their husbands all night had been a reminder that for some that golden glow of true connection did exist.
She bent her head focused on her madeira as the others chatted about their husbands for a moment.
“You and Mr. Ripley have been friends for a long time, haven’t you?” Now it was Lady Kirkwood who questioned her and once again Jane jerked her attention back to her companions.
She glanced at Esme with a laugh, happy to have a distraction from the meat of the statement. “Mr. Ripley. When you called him that, did he flinch?”
Esme laughed along with her, for they both knew the man well after so many years. “It’s hard to fathom referring to Campbell with such formality.”
Jane’s lips tightened. Esme was the only one who ever called Ripley by his first name. That fact had occasionally made her a little jealous over the years, even though she knew perfectly well that her friend considered him more like a brother.
