Need to Know
Behind him, Beatrice shifted. “I could say the same thing, you know.”
Gideon glanced back.
“I told Dash about Lark’s letters. About Lady Hannah. If I had kept silent—”
“No.” The word came out too sharply. He drew a breath. “No, Beatrice. It is not the same.”
Her brow furrowed.
“You gave Dash the truth. You let him decide what to do with it.” His jaw tightened. “But the choice would not have been necessary in the first place… if not for me.”
He looked toward the empty doorway, seeing beyond it, years and miles away.
“If Sebastian had lived, Beresford would never have considered Groby. Instead, I saw us drunk enough to make fools of ourselves, and Sebastian paid for it with his life.”
Gideon’s mouth twisted. “Back then, I could not have seen where that choice would lead—to Lord Beresford and Groby, to Dash and Lady Hannah and all the rest. But that does not remove my responsibility.”
If Sebastian had lived, Dash would not have been asked to save her from that man.
He would not have left Mrs. Bloomington.
Beatrice was quiet for a moment. “That is a great deal to place upon yourself.”
“It belongs there.”
“Does Dash believe that?”
Gideon let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“Dash believes what he must in order to keep breathing.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
But her question brought them back to other things Dash believed. A good deal of it lies.
Gideon shook his head.
He couldn’t rewrite the past, but he needed to set things straight in the present. And that meant telling his friend the truth.
He exhaled a slow breath and then lifted his gaze to hers. “I cannot keep secrets from him, Beatrice,” he said. “Not any longer.”
Her brow furrowed. “Which secrets?”
“All of them. About… us. About the skirmishes you’ve had. The lessons. Your mission, and why–”
“No!” She shot up from the sofa.
“He needs to know.”
“No.” Her voice sharpened. “He does not.”
“Beatrice—”
“You would not dare. That is my secret. Leave Dash out of it.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
She thought he did not understand. But he did.
Dash believed his sister had suffered some ordinary disappointment of the heart. He had no notion what drove her watchfulness. What had driven her to stand between other women and men who ought to have been dragged into the street and beaten senseless.
And while Dash had buried himself in his own misery, Beatrice had carried all of it alone.
“He thinks you were jilted in love,” Gideon said.
Beatrice went very still.
“And that is a convenient explanation,” he continued. “One he can go right on believing.”
Her eyes flashed. “Do not.”
“Dash needs to understand that you have needed him.”
“No.”
“He needs to know what you have carried all these years. And he needs to know that you have been risking yourself because of it.”
“I said no.”
Gideon’s voice lowered. “He needs to be your brother again, Beatrice.”
For one suspended moment, her expression changed.
Then the hurt came back harder.
“And you mean to make that happen by telling him the one thing I trusted you not to tell.”
“Bea—”
“This is my business.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “It has nothing to do with Dash—or with you, for that matter.”
Those words should have stopped him.
Perhaps, if he were his usual self, the calm and collected version of himself, they would have. But Gideon was not calm. Not after the theater corridor. Not after what he had learned over the past few days.
“It damn well will once we marry.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
Of course they would marry. She knew that. She had to know that after…
“You won’t be in danger again.” If he had to lock her in a tower, he’d do it.
The same men were in London now who had been here five years ago. Or near enough.
And worse, a few so-called gentlemen had uttered threats.
Gideon had not yet pinned down who. But he would.
And if his own sister, Veronica, was walking about with danger hovering over her head, Gideon would damn well expect to be told. He would demand it. He would expect to hunt the bastard down and see him ruined.
No.
Not ruined.
Destroyed.
“If Dash knew you were in danger—”
“He would lock me indoors.”
“He would protect you.”
“He would take over.” She threw the words at him. “Just like you’re trying to do!” Her hands trembled at her sides, but her chin lifted. “Just because of what happened between us—just because I—”
Beatrice’s color rose sharply.
“We have been intimate with one another.” She slowed down. “That does not give you the right to take over my life.”
“I’m only trying to do what is necessary to keep you safe. I cannot stand by and allow—” He broke off. Just what he would not allow, he dare not even say. It was unspeakable. “If your well-being comes at the cost of… certain freedoms, then it is a cost I am willing to accept,” he finished.
Her face changed. The hurt vanished beneath fury.
“Beatrice—” He reached out.
“I am not, though.” She stepped back. “I’m not willing to live in a cage to satisfy your worries.””
His mouth tightened. “That’s not it.”
“But it is.” Her voice broke, which only seemed to make her more angry.
“You want to tell Dash because you cannot bear the guilt. You want to marry me because you don’t trust me to make my own decisions.
You want to find the man who hurt me because you cannot bear the failure. But where am I in any of that?”
He said nothing.
“Can you not see how stifling that is?” she demanded. “How insulting?”
“I am trying to do right by you.”
“I did not ask you to do right by me. I asked for your support.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
Beatrice froze.
Gideon heard himself then.
Heard the fear beneath the anger. His own desperation…
But he could not call it back. Not when the thought of her hurt again turned something inside him savage.
“I know you never asked for my protection,” he said. “I have reminded myself of it a hundred times. But I cannot stand aside while you…”
Her expression wavered for one second, as though some part of her understood.
Then she hardened herself again.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Every time I help one of those women, the pain dulls a little. That is what helps me. Not someone coming to my rescue or swearing vengeance upon my enemies for me. I need to prove to myself that… I am not that helpless girl anymore.”
Gideon swallowed.
She straightened. “I cannot let that go simply because you are frightened.”
“I am not frightened.”
“Yes,” she said. “You are.”
She was right. Damn her eyes.
Beatrice drew herself up, dignity wrapping around her like armor. “And so am I. But I won’t let it stop me.” The words landed hard. Uncompromising. “I won’t let you stop me.”
For a moment, he could only look at her.
At her storm-bright eyes. Her flushed cheeks.
This woman who had trusted him, wanted him, fought him, and now looked at him as though he had become just another man determined to steal her choices.
He had come here to make things right.
Instead, for the second time in less than an hour, a Beckman stood before him looking as though he had become the enemy.
“Beatrice,” he said, but the word sounded useless even to him.
She gestured toward the door. “I think you should leave.”
His body went rigid.
Explain again. Make her listen. Make her understand. But that was precisely the problem, wasn’t it?
He had been trying to make her bend to his will all week.
So Gideon just gave one sharp nod.
“Very well.”
He bowed.
Then he turned and walked out, his boots striking the floorboards with steady, unyielding precision.
He ought to have felt satisfied.
He had not given in. Had not yielded to the urge to promise her whatever she wished merely to ease the look in her eyes.
At the threshold, a cold dampness broke across the back of his neck.
What the hell had he accomplished?
Beatrice was still angry. More than angry. Hurt. And he had left her there with every reason to think he wanted to govern her life—and no reason to trust that he would keep her secret.
Dash flashed through his mind then. Dash, shut away in his study, drinking himself hollow over a woman he could not stop loving.
Gideon had thought his friend dramatic.
But if this suffocating weight in his chest—this sick certainty that he had just made everything worse—was what love felt like...
Christ.
Perhaps Dash wasn’t mad after all.