She frowned.
“I know him.” Gideon’s gaze shifted briefly toward the path. “He is a decent fellow. Rather too broad. Occasionally irritating. But decent.”
How simple he made it sound.
To know a man. To trust him.
Beatrice wondered what that would be like.
“I do not know him,” she said.
“No,” Gideon answered, softer now. “You do not.”
For a moment, the night seemed to hold them there, filled only with distant music and the soft whisper of leaves in the breeze.
Then Gideon offered his arm. “Shall we return inside to find Lady Calliope’s mother?”
Beatrice looked at his arm.
Then at him.
“Why didn’t you come forward earlier?”
His expression changed, just slightly. “Because you were handling it.”
She blinked, then, after a moment, placed her hand on his sleeve.
You were handling it.
No one had ever said anything like that to her. Not even Lark. Not Dash. And her mother certainly hadn’t.
His hand came down over hers where it rested on his sleeve.
A simple touch. Nothing more.
And yet, Beatrice felt it through her glove, through her skin.
She forced herself to breathe.
DASH AND HIS SCOTCH
Gideon lifted the teapot and poured the steaming tea into his cup, adding two lumps of sugar with the tongs.
The afternoon light filtered in through the tall windows of his study, catching on polished wood and orderly shelves—everything precisely as it ought to be.
It was his third cup of the day.
Across from him, the Duke of Dasborough finished off a full tumbler of scotch.
Dash was not himself.
Hadn’t been, really, for the past two years.
And in that time, Gideon had tolerated a great many things. The brooding. The drinking. And more recently, the increasingly unorthodox attempts to court a woman who appeared determined to want nothing whatsoever to do with him.
But even Gideon’s patience had limits.
In addition to the duke’s ongoing romantic catastrophe, there was now another matter requiring his attention.
