Nor the next afternoon, at Lady Turnbridge’s garden party.
Nor at the Duvall ball the evening after that.
Everything proceeded without a single incident.
Which made Gideon’s retreat all the more impossible to ignore.
He had not simply grown busy, or distracted, or politely distant.
He had changed after Bond Street. When he’d nearly kissed her.
Gideon Rothmore had nearly kissed her.
And if he had since decided that moment was some regrettable lapse, then, dash it all, he could bloody well find the courage to say so to her face.
AN EARLY MORNING VISIT
Lord Longstaffe had completed the lessons Gideon had promised.
It wasn’t perfect, of course—he’d wanted someone to assist him for a reason after all—but Longstaffe had assured Gideon that the ladies had learned enough to strike, twist free, and seize the few crucial seconds escape required.
The members of the Vigilance Society were not trained pugilists, nor did Gideon harbor any illusions that three afternoons could make them so. But they knew where a man was vulnerable now. And that alone made them better prepared than most.
Which left Gideon free to attend to other matters.
Within a day, he had engaged two investigators. Mr. Zebediah Daniels was tasked with tracing Groby’s past and the origins of his claim. Harry “the Hound” Dickerson was given a broader charge: follow whatever trail Groby had left behind him and discover where it led.
Men like Groby did not pass through remote villages without leaving marks somewhere.
A bribed curate. A conveniently amended register. A witness whose memory improved when presented with coin.
If Groby’s claim had been manufactured, Gideon meant to discover how.
As for Beatrice, word was getting about that she had been rather too successful at making herself a nuisance to the wrong men.
Men did not always forgive that.
Blackwell and Longstaffe had both agreed to keep an eye upon her at the assemblies, musicales, and garden parties where their paths naturally crossed. Nothing obvious. Nothing that would draw comment. Nothing that would offend her pride if she noticed.
Only enough to ensure that no gentleman nursing a wounded vanity had the chance to find her alone.
Beatrice Beckman knew how to escape, and with any other woman, the knowledge might have satisfied him. He knew better, though. In so far as his favorite blue-eyed minx was concerned, such newfound skills merely improved her odds. She was the only woman he knew who would recognize danger, take its measure, and then step toward it anyway.
And damn him, he admired her for it.
Admired it enough that the thought of her needing those skills at all nearly drove him mad.
Still.
It was the best arrangement Gideon could devise without placing himself constantly at her side.
Blackwell and Longstaffe could watch the ballrooms.
Gideon would put his attention where it belonged: on the man whose reappearance had introduced a threat none of them could ignore.
Groby.
His movements, his acquaintances, his habits—Gideon would trace them himself.
