If Gideon meant to do anything useful—truly useful—then he had to stop treating Beatrice as the problem to be managed.
He had to ask her.
Listen to her.
Trust her, damn it.
And she was at Dasborough Park.
Which was why, instead of hunkering down at Hawks Nest, or traveling north to spend the summer with his mother and sister as he’d done in the past, Gideon turned his horse toward Devonshire.
Regardless, Dash was his oldest friend. Practically a brother.
A man did not ignore such a celebration merely because the journey was inconvenient.
That was what Gideon told himself when he left London, but then barely escaped the city before he admitted the truth.
He was going for Beatrice.
God help him, she was all he had thought of for weeks.
Beatrice glaring at him across a ballroom. Beatrice rowing against the current. Beatrice with leaves caught in her hair and her lips wet and red from his kisses.
Beatrice beneath him on the sofa.
He had tried not to think of that last bit. Naturally, this ensured he thought of almost nothing else.
Five days in the saddle ought to have cooled thoughts of that nature.
Instead, with every mile he placed between himself and London, Gideon found those very memories returning with greater persistence.
Beatrice’s mouth. Her breath. The soft, startled sound she made when his hand slid up her leg…
By the third day, he had taken to dismounting more often than necessary.
By the fourth, he had stopped pretending the discomfort was entirely due to the saddle.
Ordinarily, instead of heading towards the village, Gideon would have turned his horse toward Dasborough Park without a second thought. Dash would have opened the door, poured him a drink, and found a place for him at the table.
Dash always had.
But there was a new duchess now.
And Gideon, who had arrived without invitation confirmed, without servant, without trunk properly sent ahead, and without any right to presume upon a newly married couple’s hospitality, stopped instead at the Arms and Stag.
Luck, it seemed, was on his side.
After securing the last available room, Gideon handed the evening clothes from his saddlebag to a chambermaid and set about washing the dust of five days’ riding from himself.
She promised to press the wrinkles from them “well enough, my lord.”
Well enough.
His valet, had the man been present, would have resigned on the spot rather than allow Gideon to appear at a ducal ball in garments deemed hopefully “well enough.” But Gideon had given him the summer months off, and a man could not very well summon his valet from leisure because he had decided, at the last possible moment, to chase a woman half across England.
By the time he mounted again and turned his horse toward the ducal estate, the sky had deepened into late summer blue. Stars had begun appearing, faint at first, then brighter above the darkening line of trees. Ahead, the house rose in the distance, all lit windows and golden glow, as though the whole estate had been set aflame for celebration.
Gideon tugged once at his cuff.
