The answer should have been simple.
“It is easy to mistake gallantry for safety,” she said at last. “Especially when one wishes very badly to believe in it.” She lifted her chin. “But we cannot build our lives around the hope that a gentleman will arrive in time.”
Her gaze found Gideon despite herself.
He caught her staring, of course.
Heat, swift and unwelcome, moved through her before she could look away. Blast him.
“Even when a gentleman’s heart is in the right place,” she continued, “his person is far too often in the wrong one.”
Lark was quiet for a beat too long. But then, “Is he in the wrong place now?”
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “You are not being helpful.”
“I am trying to understand.” Lark’s expression shifted—not into pity, precisely. Beatrice would never have tolerated pity. “Because from where I am standing, he appears to be exactly where you once would have wanted him.”
Beatrice’s mouth parted, then closed again.
That was unfair.
Entirely unfair.
Before the park, before his edict, before the wretched You will cease acting as protector, she might have been grateful. She might even have admired the efficiency with which he prevented vulnerable young women from being lured into trouble.
She might have looked at him and thought him remarkable.
Now she looked at him and felt…
No.
“He has taken over,” she said. “That is not the same as helping.”
“No,” Lark agreed gently. “It is not.”
The simple agreement should have soothed her. It did not.
She missed his hands.
The thought arrived so suddenly she nearly dropped her fan into the punchbowl.
Stop. Just stop, Beatrice.
She could not miss something she never really had.
Certainly not the warmth of his palm on her back. Not the dry murmur of his voice near her ear. Not the way he had looked at her in his drawing room, after she had behaved with humiliating recklessness. She definitely didn’t miss how he’d touched her in the park…
Lark, naturally, noticed the tension building in her.
“Beatrice,” she said softly.
“Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say that perhaps Lord Hawkins might be forgiven for being in the wrong place now and again, given how hard he tries to be in the right one.” Lark’s voice gentled. “He cares for you, Beatrice.”
