AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was here to applaud her triumph, and he wanted her to see him watching.
The rolling wooden bower appeared with Miss Mayberry and Miss Beaton pushing it from behind, trailed by some very confused looking footmen.
They wheeled it into the center of the ballroom, and the footmen opened the hinged sides of the platform to reveal Beatrice reclining in her boudoir, propped up on one elbow.
She plucked an apple from the basket of fruit and took a large bite.
The room went completely silent.
The dowager duchess emitted a high squeaking sound.
Beatrice smiled that breathtaking, lopsided smile of hers, and stepped down from her bower with the aid of her friends.
Instead of a frothing silk ball gown, she wore the simple blue dress. The one he liked the best.
Her hair was loose and long. She looked like a dreamy Arthurian maiden from a painting in a museum, coppery red curls rioting over her shoulders and down nearly to her waist.
She held the apple in one hand, and a book in the other.
She wore no mask, and her spectacles caught and reflected the light from the chandeliers overhead. She held her head high, regal as any princess, as she stepped forth, setting the apple down but keeping the book.
“Greetings,” she said, nodding to a guest. “How are you this evening, Lady Livingstone?”
It came to him in a blinding flash. This wasn’t the costume she was meant to be wearing.
She’d thrown her mother’s elaborate costume away. She was taking a stand. Drawing a line in the sand.
This was Beatrice in all of her bookish glory.
And Ford wanted to fall at her feet.
He began applauding, loudly, wanting her to know that he understood the purpose of her performance and he celebrated her choice. At first it was just him standing there, clapping his hands, but then Thorndon joined in the applause.
Once the duke was clapping, everyone had to join in.
Thorndon gave him a brief smile as the applause swelled.
Beatrice met his gaze from across the room. She gave him a smile, and his heart expanded to fill his entire body.
She was too gorgeous, his Beatrice. The one with ink stains on her fingers and books in her pockets.
He’d been deluding himself since the day he met her.
She was the reason he’d agreed to work on the bookshop—not his grandfather.
When she’d visited him at the docks in that travesty of a bonnet that blinkered her from the world, he’d thrown it away, and latched on to her like a life preserver in a stormy sea.
Cold, unwelcoming London had grown a heart, and that heart beat inside a woman brave enough to defy her mother in public. Bold enough to claim this ballroom as her own.
She’d claimed his heart from the very first moment he saw her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Well that went as well as could be expected, I’d say,” said Viola.
“Is my mother still breathing?” asked Beatrice.
“Mina is there with her, offering her a glass of punch,” Isobel reported.
