Especially after learning what he’d learned.
And then he had gone and nearly kissed her.
On a public street, no less.
Sitting here now, recalling that look on her face, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d not found a proper balance. He had seen it in her eyes. Confusion first. Then hurt.
Gideon’s hand tightened beneath the table.
It was the very opposite of what he intended.
Across the table, Dash was speaking, his voice low and hard, and Gideon forced his attention back to the matter at hand.
Immediately after he and Beatrice had run into Groby on Bond Street, Gideon had returned home and sent word to the men who needed to know.
Groby’s claim could no longer be ignored.
A circumstance that should have commanded every scrap of Gideon’s attention. Because this, at least, was familiar ground. Guilt. Old sins. Duty.
All of that was easier to face than the impossible complication of Beatrice Beckman.
Gideon forced the thought aside and looked again at the men assembled around him, the small circle of friends bound to him since Harrowgate.
All save Grimm, whose absence, under the present circumstances, was perhaps for the best.
The air hung thick with tobacco smoke, and decanters sat half-emptied on the polished table. Beyond the walls, muted sounds of carriages traveling down St. James murmured on, but in that room, the mood was tense.
“According to my source, no petition has been filed,” Blackwell said, one shoulder braced against the mantel. “But he’s secured counsel. Henry Faversham.”
Longstaffe, sprawled along the settee, swore under his breath. “Faversham doesn’t lend his name lightly. If he’s accepted Groby’s case…”
“What case, precisely?” Dash dragged a hand through his hair and then stared into his glass. “Sebastian’s father was meticulous. He would not have left his estate—or his wife—open to challenge.”
“We can’t be certain of that,” Blackwell replied. “Believe me, I have little faith in Groby’s claim. But if there was something Lovington believed buried…”
“No.” Dash’s head came up sharply. “Even then, he would have secured it. He was not careless.”
“He was not,” Gideon said. “But men do not always guard against the past as well as they believe.”
They sat in that silently for a moment before Longstaffe leaned forward. “If Groby does have a legitimate claim, why not bring it forward while Lovington was alive?”
“Because then there would have been someone to contest it.” Gideon grimaced.
Now, with no one but a distant—and very elderly—cousin to stand for the title, any defense would be thin at best. Detached. Lacking weight.
If only?—
Sebastian.
Even thinking the name was enough to summon the memory. The spirits. The muddled thoughts. The illusions of immortality.
Gideon pushed it down.
“If Groby wins,” he said at last, “he’ll do more than take the title.”
The dowager—Sebastian’s mother—still lived upon the estate. If Groby succeeded, her marriage would be erased.
Her home, her income and her title, but also the dignity she had carried for decades would all be called into question. She would not merely be uprooted. She would be exposed.
