And stopped.
Surely not!
He stood just inside the ballroom.
Easily recognizable—seeing as he was the only person in the room not wearing a mask.
Everyone else had followed Ambrosia’s theme. But Gideon Rothmore stood there, bare-faced and unsmiling, tall and dark and utterly out of place among the glittering disguises.
And he was…
So handsome, just looking at him made her chest hurt.
Beatrice’s pulse gave one hard, foolish leap.
No.
And then his gaze found hers across the crowded room.
Every sensible thought she possessed scattered like birds from a gunshot.
Because he had come.
After four weeks of silence, after everything she had said, after ordering him out of her life?—
Gideon had come.
THE APOLOGY
Even from behind a mask, the blue of her eyes struck him clean in the chest.
Gideon forgot the music. The room full of guests. The fact that he had arrived without the faintest notion whether she would even speak to him.
None of it mattered.
His feet were moving before he’d made the decision. He cut through the crowd with single-minded purpose, around dancers, past a startled footman carrying champagne, between two gentlemen who broke off their conversation as he passed.
He did not take his eyes from Beatrice.
Who watched him approach without moving.
No smile.
No welcome.
Only that steady, guarded gaze that made him feel every inch of distance he had allowed between them.
He stopped directly before her.
Closer than was strictly proper, but not nearly close enough.
For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke. The waltz swept around them, violins bright and insistent, laughter rising from somewhere near the supper room. Someone brushed past his shoulder. A lady’s fan snapped open nearby.
Gideon had rehearsed this moment for days.
He had assembled his speech with care–sensible and humble words. Words that explained without excusing, apologized without pleading, promised without commanding.
Now that he stood before her, he couldn’t remember a single one.
