“You arrogant—” She broke off, clearly searching for a word sufficiently insulting. “Impossible. Overbearing… Espèce d’insupportable tyran!”
“You may call me a tyrant all you like.”
“Oh, I assure you, I intend to.”
“But you will not continue placing yourself in danger.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “You can’t simply take away my purpose because you have suddenly decided I am too fragile to manage it.”
Fragile. Christ.
If only she understood.
“There is nothing fragile about you,” he said quietly. “That is precisely the problem.”
For a heartbeat, something shifted in her expression then. Doubt?
But it vanished as quickly as it had come.
Because Gideon knew that when any man tried to confine her, Beatrice Beckman did not hear protection. She heard betrayal.
“I thought,” she said carefully, “that you of all people… understood.”
Gideon did.
That was the hell of it. Protecting Beatrice ought not to mean taking the choice from her. But neither could he stand aside and wait for someone to hurt her again. She would hate him for that, and that thought… It left him sick. Not because he did not understand, but because he did. And God help him, he even respected her for it, for what she was trying to do. But that was overshadowed by something else now. Something possessive. Something desperate.
“No, Beatrice, you don’t understand,” he said roughly. “Which is precisely why I can’t allow this to continue.”
Her face hardened instantly, twisted with hurt, then rage, then—God help him—rebellion. And with not another word, she turned sharply and marched down the path.
All of Gideon’s instincts demanded he go after her.
Tell her it was temporary. Tell her the lessons need not end. That he would eventually see them continued, safely, once he knew the danger had passed.
It was a fair offer. Or it would have been, had Beatrice been any other woman.
She would hear the bargain for what it was: him placing limits around a life that was not his to govern.
It was another thought that stopped him.
When, precisely, would the danger pass?
There would always be men who resented any woman for seeing what they did not wish seen—for stepping in or speaking out. Such a woman would make enemies.
If Beatrice continued, she would make enemies.
So he would do what he could—take matters into his own hands.
For her.
Because this—whatever had begun between them—had gone far beyond friendship. Far beyond the promise he had made to her brother, his oldest friend.
As Beatrice disappeared through the morning mist, Gideon felt the unvarnished truth of his circumstances.
He was ruined where she was concerned.
Utterly ruined.
