She started as Chloe’s visage pulled into focus behind her. The young lady settled a soft hand on her shoulder. “I do not know your story.” Which story did the young woman refer to? The lies of her birth? Or the lies that brought her into this household? “Nor is it my place to know.” In the glass, she searched Jane’s face with her gaze. “Unless you wish to tell me.”
Gabriel’s lethal promise last evening snaked about her. She closed her eyes. Tell her. Tell her, not in the hope she’d understand the desperation that brought forth this deception. But tell her so she could be freed of attending this ball and any other…and Gabriel.
“It does not have to be now,” Chloe said softly with a slight squeeze of her shoulder. “Come along, we are off to your first performance.” She made to leave.
Jane could not do this. Not anymore. The ruse had been different when they were cold, calculated strangers. Now they were people; loyal brothers, loving sisters. These people she could not deceive. “I was not sent here by Mrs. Belden,” she said quietly. The words echoed damningly in the quiet room, and yet Chloe continued forward, as though they’d never been uttered.
At last her words registered. Chloe turned back, her brow furrowed in consternation.
With a painful breath, Jane dropped her gaze to the tips of her slippers. Slippers she would one day pay for with the funds given her by the duke. Would it matter to Chloe and Gabriel if she paid for those stolen gifts—gifts she did not want nor desire? Gabriel deserved the truth. Her throat swelled with emotion. Both Chloe and Gabriel, but mostly the man who’d flagellated himself with guilt for kissing a member of his staff. When in truth, she’d never been a member of his staff. She was a liar. A charlatan. A pretender of the worst sort. Guilt stabbed at her heart.
A thousand questions filled Chloe’s eyes. “Jane?” The perplexity in the young woman’s eyes only deepened the guilt rolling through Jane in waves.
Before her courage deserted her, she continued. “I was an instructor at Mrs. Belden’s.”
“Was.”
Jane nodded, and too cowardly to focus on that emotionless utterance, pressed ahead. “I was there for a year but deemed unsuitable.” The Duke of Ravenscourt’s very legitimate daughter flashed to her mind. With her cruel smile and taunting words, the young woman had hated Jane for no fault that was her own. “She did not take to my sharing Mrs. Wollstonecraft with the young ladies.” Did she imagine the smile on the other woman’s lips? “I was turned out for it, without a reference.” Jane folded her arms at her chest. “There was a note,” she forced out the most shameful part of her truth past numb lips. “From your brother. A request for a companion.”
“And you pilfered the note?” Shocked outrage would be preferable to the gentle question there. There was no recrimination. Just a desire to understand and those dratted tears filled her eyes. She blinked them back.
“I did. Your brother requested a companion for you, for two months’ time. In two months I will—” She flattened her lips.
Chloe searched her face. “What will happen in two months, Jane?”
Except for the lies and deception she’d practiced upon the Edgertons, at the very least she could provide this small truth. She drew in a breath. “Funds were settled on me, by my father.” Surprise lit the young woman’s eyes—the first outward reaction from the collected young lady. Guilt twinged at the likely erroneous assumption drawn that presented Jane as a lady, an assumption she did not bother to correct. “In two months I will receive funds which will be mine to use as I wish.”
“What will you do with your funds?”
“I will set up a school. A finishing school,” she said softly. “It will be different than the schools run by the Mrs. Belden’s of the world,” she spoke on a rush at the frown that formed on Chloe’s lips. Jane lifted her palms up. “It will be a place where young women,” who dwelled on the fringe of respectability, like her, “will be encouraged to use their minds and trust their judgments. I am so, so sorry about the lies between us.” You and Gabriel.