“There cannot be.” Gideon met her gaze with more confidence than he felt. “Lovington was not the sort to leave loose ends. Whatever else he may have been, he valued his name. His legacy. He would have seen it secured.”
“So the evidence he claims to have…” Beatrice hesitated, then glanced up at him. “It must be false?”
“It must be,” Gideon said.
She exhaled, the tension easing—just a little.
“Good,” she said softly. “Men like that are dangerous enough without having a title behind them.”
A pause.
Then, almost as though she could not help herself— “He unsettles me.”
That was putting it mildly.
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
Without thinking—without asking—he reached for her, his hand settling at her shoulder, drawing her just slightly closer.
“Then you will not be anywhere near him again,” he said, low and certain.
CONSTRAINTS OF FASHION
Gideon had nearly kissed her.
Beatrice had not imagined that.
She stood just inside her bedchamber, though she could not have said for how long. The familiar furnishings blurred—the writing desk, the chair near the window, the gown she had shed and then tossed onto the ottoman—none of it mattered.
Gideon Rothmore had nearly kissed her.
It hadn’t mattered that they’d been standing on a busy street. It hadn’t mattered that they’d known one another for years. Or that Dash was her brother.
The memory came back with startling clarity.
His hand on her waist. The way his voice had lowered… changed. The look in his eyes—as though nothing else in the world existed but the two of them.
There had simply been that heavy wanting. A feeling so tangled up between them that it was as if they had briefly shared the same mind.
But then?—
Beatrice hugged her arms to her chest and squeezed.
Mr. Groby was worse than she’d imagined. Self-satisfied, gloating in a way that implied some sort of sadistic pleasure, both in his goading of Gideon and also in… Lady Hannah’s final fate.
And after he got Groby to go away… Gideon had looked almost angry.
He’d placed her in a hackney with brisk efficiency, offering some vague remark about her needing to return home, about plans to be made, about seeing her later for their lesson.
He had not met her eyes. “I have kept you long enough already…”
As though that had been the reason. As though he hadn’t nearly kissed her.
She pressed her lips together.
What would have happened if they had not been interrupted?
A soft knock put an end to her thoughts.
