She narrowed her eyes.
“You are not going to summon my brother? Tell him he needs to send me back to Dasborough Park?”
“If I believed that was in your best interest,” he said calmly, “I would have insisted you go last night.”
As if he could?—
“What about Hatherleigh?” she pressed. “Is he to be punished?”
Gideon did not answer at once.
Instead, he reached for his cup, as though the matter required consideration.
“I—and a few gentlemen of my acquaintance—convinced him that he would no longer find himself welcome in London,” he said at last.
Beatrice tilted her head. “Convinced?”
His gaze flicked briefly to hers. “Painfully.”
She studied him.
“What of the ladies outside of London?” she asked quietly. “Are they to endure his attentions unprotected?”
Gideon drummed his fingers on the table and then exhaled. “The convincing will have been exceedingly… memorable.”
Beatrice stilled. “Why would he not?—”
Gideon cut off her words with a glance.
And something in his expression—something entirely without apology—told her enough.
Not the Thames, then. But rather a… reckoning.
Beatrice studied Gideon then. Properly.
When had her brother’s friend become such a… man?
His hair, still faintly damp at the temples, had been combed back with his usual restraint, though a few dark strands rebelled. His jaw was cleanly shaven, the line of it uncompromising. There was a faint shadow beneath his eyes—fatigue, perhaps—but it did nothing to diminish him. If anything, it lent him a sharper edge.
And when he met her gaze steadily, his hazel eyes looked darker than usual.
She had known Gideon Rothmore for over a decade. Known the steadiness of him, the reliability. The quiet authority that had once placed him firmly in the category of safe.
But this?—
This felt different. And altogether less comfortable.
He leaned back in his chair.
“When he stepped into you,” Gideon said, returning to their discussion of her fighting capabilities—or lack thereof. “Your mistake was assuming the weapon would be enough to make him retreat.”
Her jaw tightened. “I realize that now. It’s only… It’s so foolish! Why would he risk a potentially fatal wound for—for what? His pride? A turn in the gardens with a woman who doesn’t even want him?”
But that was just it, wasn’t it?
“It’s not rational…” she murmured, almost to herself. Frustrated.
Gideon held her gaze. “Men like Hatherleigh are not rational.”
