Gideon moved at once.
He withdrew his hand from beneath Beatrice’s skirts, dragged the fabric carefully back into place, and pulled away to help Beatrice sit up.
But she hardly moved at all.
For one terrible, selfish heartbeat, the sight of her nearly destroyed him.
Flushed. Dazed. Boneless against the cushions. Her lips glistening, her eyes almost sleepy from what had just passed between them.
Christ.
“Beatrice,” he murmured.
She blinked at him.
Voices sounded again in the hall. Closer this time.
Gideon pulled her upright, and with careful hands, did his best to put her back to rights. A tug at her sleeve. A smoothing of her skirts. One swift glance over her hair.
Not perfect. Good enough.
Barely.
He had only just settled beside her when the drawing room door opened.
Dash stepped inside—and stopped.
And in that moment, Gideon’s blood went cold.
They were too close on the settee. Both of them flushed. Obviously guilty.
Any man with half his wits about him would have known at once that something had happened.
But Dash’s gaze only sharpened for an instant.
Then passed over them.
Not because there was nothing to see, but because Dash himself wasn’t seeing clearly.
And that was when Gideon truly looked at him.
That worn-out gardening costume. Muddy boots. A smear of soil along one hand. But none of that mattered.
There was devastation in his eyes. His friend, a man who was as close to a brother as he’d ever known, looked haunted.
Defeated.
Hollowed out by the sort of grief a man could not drink away, though Dash, Gideon knew, was determined to try.
Gideon went still.
He would have preferred a dagger in the gut.
Seeing Dash like this—wounded, grieving, still trusting him—made Gideon’s betrayal cut all the deeper.
Her scent still clung to Gideon’s hand. So did the memory of Beatrice shuddering against him, her breath broken, her fingernails scraping his neck as he brought her to the edge and watched her fall apart.
Beatrice, whom he had promised Dash he would protect—and whom he had, quite literally, compromised in her brother’s drawing room.
