Beatrice exhaled through her nose.
She’d been right that he was frightened.
And even though he denied it, she’d seen it in his eyes.
He was afraid. For her.
The more her thoughts settled, the harder it became to believe that for even a single moment he’d want to hurt her.
Gideon could be arrogant, overbearing, and maddeningly convinced that his judgment ought to prevail. But he was not cruel.
He had stood between her and Hatherleigh. He had helped her teach the ladies. He had listened when she could barely speak. Even in that basement, when she’d fought him as though he was the devil himself, he’d never, not once, even come close to hurting her.
No. His intentions had not been cruel.
That, unfortunately, Beatrice thought bitterly, did not make them any less infuriating.
And that was the truly awful part.
She trusted him. Always would.
But he did not trust her. Not in the way she needed him to.
He trusted her mind when it amused him. Her courage when it did not frighten him. Her independence so long as it didn’t extend beyond his protection. But the moment her choices terrified him, he took them out of her hands.
He did not understand.
He understood danger. He understood vengeance. He understood the savage need to punish whoever had harmed what he loved.
Loved?
Beatrice’s breath caught.
He hadn’t mentioned anything about love.
She’d nearly said the word. She’d stopped herself just in time.
But the truth was… Even before those kisses, before their scandalous intimacy, there had been something about Gideon that made her feel… seen. He’d made her feel interesting. As though there was more to her than anyone else ever imagined there might be.
She had hoped Gideon saw her independence as strength.
That he understood what it cost her to rise each day and refuse to let the worst thing that had happened make her hide.
The past had not won.
She had believed he knew that. Or, at the very least, that he was capable of knowing it.
Capable of standing at her side instead of trying to place her behind him.
None of it had been reckless, not those earlier confrontations, not the Vigilance Society, not even when she’d mistakenly intervened when she thought Lord Longstaffe was attacking Lady Calliope.
None of that had been defiance for defiance’s sake.
And Gideon, of all people, should have known that.
Moments from the past few weeks flashed through her memory. Infuriating moments. Exciting ones. Dangerous ones. And some that had been so tender, so heated, so impossibly good that remembering them now felt like pressing a bruise.
Because she had sent him away.
