“A great many. A few of them… asinine.”
Despite herself, her mouth twitched.
“I assumed that if I kept a tight enough hold on every circumstance, I could prevent harm from finding you.”
“And now?”
“Now I have been shot and rescued by a beautiful woman in a silver fox mask wielding a bodkin.” His expression turned dry. “It has been an enlightening evening.”
She might have laughed if her throat had not felt so tight.
Gideon reached for the cloth, gently took it from her hand, and set it aside on the small table. Then he took both her hands in his.
His palms were warm.
Steady.
“I cannot control everything,” he said. The words seemed to cost him. “As much as I would like to.”
“I know.”
He looked down at her hands enclosed in his.
“I cannot control everything,” he said again. “I cannot command the world into being safe. I cannot keep danger from every garden, ballroom, corridor, or terrace. And I cannot keep hold of you so tightly that nothing ever touches you.”
His thumb brushed once over her knuckles.
“But most of all, I cannot let you out of my life.”
Beatrice stopped breathing.
He looked up then. “So there we are,” he said quietly. “I must learn to think differently, because the woman I love will not tolerate being managed, and I find I am quite unable to live without her.”
Hope rose so swiftly, so foolishly, that Beatrice nearly hated him for it.
The woman I love?
Not protect. Love.
“Marry me, will you, Beatrice?”
Marry him?
The thought was so bright, so terrifying, that she could hardly look at it directly.
Because giving herself to Gideon—truly giving herself, not merely her mouth or her hands or those reckless hidden parts of herself that ached, even now, for the heat of his touch, but…
If he decided, once she was his, that loving her gave him the right to manage her…
She could not survive that.
“I want to,” she said.
His hand tightened slightly around hers.
She lifted her chin, forcing herself to speak plainly. “How can I be certain, Gideon? How can I know you will always allow me to make my own choices? To decide what risks are mine to take?”
His mouth opened?—
