This one was not so very different from his own. Most Mayfair townhouses possessed the same proportions, the same polished tables, the same arrangement of sofa and chairs designed to suggest propriety while providing just enough privacy for impropriety to become possible.
He cleared his throat.
Beatrice glanced away first.
“He has hardly eaten anything,” she said quietly. “He sleeps on and off, and when he does not sleep…” Her fingers twisted together in her lap. “The drinking.”
Gideon’s attention sharpened.
“I simply want my brother back.” Her voice did not break, but it came close enough that something in his chest tightened painfully. “And I do not think that will happen so long as he allows Mrs. Bloomington to keep him on her hook like this.”
She winced at once, as though regretting the harshness.
“I thought coming after her would be good for him,” she continued. “I thought once he found her, once they spoke… Instead, she has refused him, and he has only grown worse. And now he will not listen to me. Or Edwards. Or Drake. Or anyone.”
Mrs. Bloomington is bloody killing him.
The thought came sharp and immediate, and Gideon had to bite it back before the words could escape. Beatrice was worried enough without him putting that particular fear into language.
“He’ll come around,” he said instead, gentling his voice. “You know Dash. Broody as hell when he doesn’t get what he wants, drinks like an idiot, and resents anyone who attempts to call him out for his peccadillos.”
That drew the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Not a smile. But Gideon would take it.
“He is not as lost as he looks,” he added, and Gideon hoped it was true. “He is only… being Dash.”
Beatrice looked up then.
For the first time since they had entered the room, she truly met his eyes.
And God help him, Gideon would have done anything in that moment to remove the sadness from hers.
“Perhaps,” he said more carefully, “if the two of us speak with him together…”
She nodded. “Yes. Perhaps.”
But that troubled look remained in her eyes.
Gideon wouldn’t try to fool himself. Not all of that sadness was because of her brother. He was responsible for a good deal of it.
She looked down at her hands again.
“I missed you,” she said at last.
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he reminded her quietly. But he knew what she meant.
He had been in every ballroom. Every supper room. Every overcrowded salon where she turned her sharp little chin away from him and pretended not to notice his presence.
And it had been torment.
The self-inflicted kind.
Because Gideon had committed the cardinal sin of telling Beatrice Beckman what she could and could not do.
Perhaps he had lost the right, but still, he couldn’t help but notice the smooth skin on her wrists above her gloves, the way the sunlight turned the loose strands near her temples to a blazing silk…
His fingers brushed the inside of her wrist. “I missed you too.”
