Which had required more discipline than any gentleman ought to need while discussing ladies’ lessons in self-defense.
But it had not been so simple as desire.
That was the trouble.
Yesterday, in his drawing room, he had watched Beatrice explain her plan with more than just practical conviction. Lessons. Prevention. Women protecting women. The failures of those who were meant to protect women.
And listening, he’d realized that this was not theory to her.
She knew.
Somehow, Beatrice knew what it was to be unsafe.
He had seen it when he asked why. The pause. The shuttering of her expression. Not so much in what she’d said, but in what she’d not said.
Gideon’s fingers tightened around his cup.
If he was right, Beatrice had been hurt. Not simply offended. Not merely disappointed by society. Hurt.
Perhaps he did not know the manner of it.
But he knew that for five years, she had stayed away from London. She had stayed away until Lady Hannah’s predicament stirred something in her. Until she found a way to take her pain and make it useful.
Gideon should have felt only the need to protect her.
He did feel that. But threaded through it was something far more troubling.
Admiration.
Fierce enough that he did not quite know what to do with it.
He exhaled slowly into his cup.
No.
Whatever had happened to Beatrice—whatever she had not quite told him—meant he had no business indulging those thoughts.
Gideon reached again for his tea.
He would do precisely as he had been asked. See to her safety. Ensure propriety. That was the end of it.
He set his cup aside and leaned forward.
“You’ve been mooning for hours,” Gideon finally said. “A man can only drink so much tea in solidarity, Dash. Go home.”
It is a truth rarely acknowledged that once a man determines to behave sensibly, the universe takes it as a challenge.
And so, the very next morning, as Gideon stepped out of his preferred tea shop on Bond Street, his resolution was tested.
Shop windows gleamed. Ladies drifted past beneath bright parasols, their companions trailing half a step behind. Gentlemen loitered outside the tailors, flicking canes and pretending not to admire themselves in the glass.
Ordinary morning bustle.
And then, through a gap between two curricles rattling past, he saw her.
Beatrice.
She strolled along the pavement in one of her lavender gowns, clutching her reticule in front of her. Instead of a bonnet, she wore a jaunty little hat, angled just so over her dark hair.
