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“I can send him out to stud and continue breeding him on the estate as well. There’s money to be had there if I’m careful and have a bit of luck growing our stock. And maybe Merlin will sire a foal that will make a splash at Ascot in a few years’ time. Then everyone will want a Hollings Thoroughbred.”

“The son righting the wrongs of the father.”

She said it so simply and with such sparkle in her eyes he could almost believe his last-ditch desperate plan might work.

“But what about you?” he asked, happy to turn the conversation around and away from him.

“What about me?” she asked with surprise, as though no one ever thought to ask her about her own story.

“You told me that your father died when you were young.”

“My mother too,” she said.

“And then what happened? How did you come to be riding down the road with me?”

“It isn’t a very interesting story,” she hedged.

“But I’d like to hear it if you’re willing to share it with me.”

Miss Ephram pursed her lips as though weighing where to start—or how much to tell him.

Everything. Tell me everything.

She fascinated him with her willingness to bend or break the rules to do what she deemed was right. That was what this entire insane race to Gretna Green was about, wasn’t it? Pulling a young lady back from the brink of ruin and doing the right thing.

“I suppose it can’t hurt to talk about,” she said. “My father was a vicar in a small village near Oxford. I was seven when he and my mother died of typhoid. Two kind ladies in my father’s parish took care of me for a week, but no one seemed to know what to do with me except to pack me off to Brighton, where my mother’s sister lived. The only problem was that my aunt and uncle had four children of their own to provide for. My uncle’s import business wasn’t what it once was, and they could hardly afford to take me in.”

“What did they do?” he asked, knowing he was bound to dislike wherever this story was going.

“They took my small annuity and used it to send me to Capesthorne.”

“What’s Capesthorne?” he asked.

“A school for girls for whom no one in the world has any expectations.”

“Why do I feel as though I’m about to relive Helen reading Jane Eyre out loud?” he asked. The levity of his tone masked the whiteness of his knuckles and the bunch of his shoulders. If he learned that Miss Ephram’s aunt and uncle had sent her off to one of those horrid schools that mistreated young girls, he’d turn his horse around and ride straight to Brighton.

“Capesthorne is nothing like Lowood School,” she said with a laugh. “I promise. They weren’t cruel to us, although the dormitories were always frigid in the winter.”

“Most of England’s frigid in the winter,” he said.

“Hot-water bottles were a great commodity.”

“What did they teach you at this place?” he asked.

“English, French, German, music, arithmetic, needlework, painting . . . Sometimes it felt like we learned everything and nothing. We were meant to become just talented enough that we might take a position as a governess or companion. Some of the students would stay on and fill the spots of our teachers as they grew too old to stand in front of a classroom. It was all very practical. The headmistress would keep us year-round if our families wished so that they didn’t have to bother with the expense of fetching us at Christmas.”

It might not be as cruel as the Brontë novel, but her schooling still sounded dreadful and stifling to someone who’d run wild for his first ten years and been sent off to Rugby for his eleventh. This Capesthorne place wasn’t where he’d have imagined this vibrant, adventurous lady would’ve hailed from.

“When I turned eighteen, I was given a stack of advertisements to answer,” Jane continued. “I wrote to each one, as I was told, but I only sent one.”

“To Lady Rawson?” he asked.

She nodded. “I wanted so badly to be in London, and I knew that a gentleman of Lord Rawson’s standing must keep a house in town. A few weeks later I found myself on a train.”

“Why London?”

She shot him a little smile. “Because it seemed so grand at the time. All I’d ever known was my aunt and uncle’s home and school.”