Chapter Thirteen
Bea’s heart pounded so loudly she could hardly think. Nicholas Archer stood close enough to disrupt her breathing.
Every breath felt too shallow. Every flutter beneath her ribs far too noticeable. And every nerve she possessed seemed suddenly alive in his presence.
“Now you’re being rude,” she informed him, lifting her chin in what she prayed resembled dignity.
“Oh?” he said, leaning just the slightest bit closer, in a way that made her tilt her head back to keep his gaze in view. “How so?”
Her mouth flattened into a razor-thin line. “If you think for even one moment that I am some sort of harlot who will—”
He raised both hands, palms out, stopping her mid-sentence with an ease that made her want to bite him.
“On the contrary,” he said softly. “I think nothing of the sort.”
And his voice—devil take the man—lost its teasing edge and warmed into something unexpectedly sincere. “In fact, I have the utmost respect for you.”
She crossed her arms tightly to hide the faint, mortifying tremor in her fingers. Her body felt too warm, too aware, too everything.
“If you respected me,” she said sharply, “you wouldn’t think I could be so easily seduced.”
His brow arched, slow, amused, wicked. “I never said I thought it would be easy.”
Her breath hitched traitorously. Which his keen eyes caught instantly. Of course they did. He noticed everything. Every twitch. Every swallow. Every unguarded reaction she prayed he had missed.
He looked entirely too pleased by all of it, moonlight catching in his dark hair, his lips curving in that maddening half-smile that made her stomach misbehave like an unruly child.
“And here I thought you wanted to marry me,” she managed.
“I do,” he drawled, rich and smooth as melted chocolate poured over an ice.
A shiver trailed down her spine at the sound. Her knees wobbled. Absolutely wobbled. Good heavens. Pull yourself together, Bea.
“You are not making any sense,” she said, though her voice came out thinner than she meant. “One does not seduce one’s future wife.”
Nicholas’s smile deepened, slow and devastating, the sort designed to make a woman’s knees consider additional wobbliness. “According to whom?”
Her mind produced an entire chorus of scandalized authorities: My mother. All mothers. Every etiquette book ever written. Society. The Archbishop—
But what came out instead was an embarrassingly strangled, “Why…why would one try to seduce one’s future wife?”
He took one more deliberate step closer.
Just one.
But it was enough for her to feel the heat of his body. Enough to make her lips part in a breath she could not disguise. Enough to make her wonder—furiously—why her pulse responded to him so readily.
“One does what one must…” he said quietly. “Especially when one’s future wife seems determined to resist her own inclinations.”
Her chest tightened.
Because there it was again, that quiet, unnerving truth he wielded as though he’d been reading her for years. Perhaps he had.
That terrifying thought struck her with more force than his nearness.
How was it that a man she had barely spared polite attention to all these years could now look at her and see…everything? Her bravado. Her defiance. Her hunger for something more than the life laid out for her. Her unanswered wants.
Her breath trembled. She prayed he hadn’t noticed.
He did.
Of course he did.
“I believe I’ve had quite enough fresh air,” she said too quickly, stepping back just enough to reclaim the space his body had warmed. Her voice held a steadiness her pulse violently contradicted.
Nicholas only nodded, maddeningly composed. “Of course. Shall I see you back inside?”
“No,” she blurted, wincing internally at how shaken she sounded. “I can manage.”
He inclined his head with maddening calm, neither smug nor apologetic. “As you wish.”
She turned, but the motion felt clumsy, rushed, as though the ground beneath her had become unnervingly unreliable.
He remained where he was—silent, shadowed, far too handsome in the moonlight—as she strode back toward the house.
Don’t look back. Do not look back.
She did not look.
But she felt him. Oh, she felt him, his gaze, steady and sure, trailing her with unnerving awareness, as though he knew precisely how rattled she was. As though he knew he had unmoored her.
She slipped through the open doors into a corridor, heat rushing to her cheeks despite the cool air inside. Her breath came quicker than decorum allowed. She pressed a hand to her stomach, willing her wildly disobedient body to calm down.
She was just about to step into the ballroom once again when her mother found her just outside the doors.
“There you are,” the duchess said, frowning. “The carriage is ready.”
Bea nodded, dazed, and let herself be guided toward the foyer like a woman walking through a dream she was not entirely certain she wanted to wake from.
Because as she moved toward the exit, she could still feel Nicholas’s nearness clinging to her skin—warm, intense, knowing.
And the most alarming part of all was that he seemed to understand her—truly understand her—more than anyone ever had. More than her mother. Certainly more than her father.
And that, she thought, as she stepped into the night air once again, was far more dangerous than seduction.
Far more dangerous indeed.
The inside of the coach was quiet, too quiet, her mother humming a tuneless little melody beside her, her father riffling through papers by the faint lamplight as though nothing in the world were amiss.
Bea sat between them, rigid as a pressed leaf, her gloves clenched in her lap so tightly her fingers ached.
She should say something. She should tell them.
Tell her father that Nicholas had whispered a promise no gentleman should ever speak to a lady of her standing.
That he’d leaned in as though she were a secret he meant to taste.
That he’d said it with confidence, dangerous, deliberate confidence.
Father would call off their courtship immediately. He would have to.
But another thought quickly followed on the heels of the first. Would he call it off? Or was Nicholas correct? Would Father accuse Bea of lying to escape the courtship she hadn’t wanted to begin with?
It was a sobering thought. But she couldn’t bring herself to be angry about it.
All she could think about was how Nicholas looked at her…and asked her questions…and waited for her answers. As if he truly cared.
Her throat tightened.
She should never speak to Nicholas again. She should despise him. She should have slapped him—should have wanted to slap him at least.
And yet.
The memory of his breath against her jaw still lingered, impossible to shake. The sound of his voice—dark, wicked, and scandalously certain—still echoed through her mind.
She stared out the coach’s window as the moonlit buildings marched past, jaw locked in a futile attempt at composure.
Nicholas had been right about her.
She wasn’t the sort to run to her father when something unsettled her. She never had been. She did not flinch, or swoon, or call for assistance. She did not retreat behind her mother’s skirts or seek protection like a frightened hare.
She handled things herself. She made her own decisions. She fought her own battles.
Nicholas knew that.
He had named it—named her—in a way that made her ribcage feel too small.
And that, she realized grimly, was exactly what he was counting on.
Her mouth twisted, though her pulse thudded traitorously on.
He thought she’d melt. Thought her curiosity, her breath hitching, her utterly treacherous reaction would mean something as foolish as surrender.
He thought he could seduce her.
Her. Beatrix Winslow. The one debutante in London who prided herself on seeing through men like him.
She squeezed her hands into fists. Her fingers ached under the pressure of her grip.
Well. Nicholas had better think again.
Because, yes, he had rattled her. Yes, her body had reacted to his words. Yes, his nearness had made her dizzy, and his certainty had shaken something at her core she didn’t want to name.
But that did not mean he had won.
She dragged her gaze away from the window, forcing her breath into something resembling normalcy.
Across the coach, her father turned a page, oblivious. Her mother hummed on, equally oblivious.
They had not noticed a thing. Not her trembling hands. Not her flushed cheeks. Not the storm still roaring in her chest.
Perhaps that was the most peculiar part of all. Nicholas Archer, with his wicked mouth and knowing eyes, had seen more of her in ten minutes of moonlight than her parents had noticed in her entire life.
Bea closed her eyes for one steadying, infuriated moment.
It didn’t matter. She would not be seduced. She would not be undone. She would be ready next time.
Nicholas thought he understood her? Thought he could seduce her? Well, let him try again. She would make certain he regretted it.