Chapter Seventeen
Bea had attended a hundred drawing rooms in her life. This was not a drawing room. This was Parliament with better upholstery.
Hillary House glittered with polished mahogany and smug men.
The air smelled of beeswax and brandy and the faintest trace of cigar smoke—an invisible border meant to keep women politely to the edges.
Conversation hummed like a hive, all sharp opinions and sharper laughter, the sort that carried the unspoken message: We are the ones who decide things.
Bea’s spine straightened the moment she entered the drawing room.
She had come here for a reason. Not to be dazzled. Not to be charmed. Not to be—she glanced sideways at the man beside her—seduced.
Nicholas offered his arm without looking at her, the gesture so effortless it was almost irksome. As if escorting her into enemy territory was as ordinary as escorting her through Hyde Park.
Bea took his arm. Not because she needed it. But because she refused to give him the satisfaction of a refusal.
A footman announced them. Heads turned—some curious, some assessing, some already bored. A few women looked up from their embroidery circle across the room with the expression of people watching a carriage crash in slow motion.
Lord Hillary swept forward to greet them, radiating the kind of genial smugness that made Bea instantly want to draw him as a plump cat with a powdered wig. His moustache looked very much like whiskers.
“Lady Beatrix,” he boomed, taking her hand as if she were a visiting dignitary. “How good of you to come. And Vanover—” His grin widened. “I hope you’ve brought your famous wit with you. Our guests have been dreadfully civil.”
Nicholas’s mouth curved. “If incivility is what you require, Hillary, you ought to have invited my father.”
Bea felt the slightest jolt of surprise.
Had that been a dig at his father? The powerful Tory Duke of VanDeVere?
Interesting. She’d never really heard him discuss his father before.
The man was older, yet still wielded great power in the House of Lords.
He rarely attended her father’s salons, preferring instead to allow his son to do so in his stead.
Lord Hillary laughed. “You’ll do, Vanover. I have no desire to be flayed alive before luncheon.”
Nicholas’s gaze flicked to Bea. “A wise man.”
Bea continued to watch Nicholas as they moved into the heart of the salon: a broad, elegant chamber with chairs arranged in loose clusters, a tea table at one end, and a low marble hearth at the other.
Men stood in groups of two and three—peers, MPs, younger sons eager to sound clever, older men quick to sound pompous.
Every surface held crystal glasses and small plates of pastries that no one seemed to actually eat.
It was a room built for talking.
And for being heard.
Which made it absolutely perfect.
Bea’s fingers tightened around her reticule.
She had made herself heard in ink—sharp lines, sharper truths, delivered anonymously under cover of night. In person, in rooms like this…she was meant to smile. To nod. To exist prettily in the background like wallpaper. That’s what her father wanted.
But Father wasn’t here today.
She watched Nicholas greet his friends. He was as charming, friendly, and yes, witty as always. But it wasn’t his wit that caught her attention. It was the ease with which he deployed it. A relaxed confidence, not performative—an assuredness that did not need to dominate the room to own it.
She hadn’t noticed that about him before. She’d been far too preoccupied with hating him.
She was contemplating what else about Nicholas she hadn’t noticed before when a familiar voice rose near the hearth. “—if you reward the lower orders with political power, you will spend the next decade cleaning up after their appetites.”
Bea’s stomach turned.
Sir Edwin Langford stood before the fire, flushed with righteousness, his hands clasped behind his back as though he were delivering a sermon. Several men nodded approvingly.
Bea had met Langford before. At Father’s salons. The man was even more odious than Hargrave, if that was possible. At least Hargrave was older and set in his ways. Langford had no excuse. He spoke of “the people” as if they were livestock.
Nicholas angled his head, listening. His expression was neutral, unreadable.
Bea leaned in and murmured, “If I’d known Langford would be here, I’d have brought a bucket.”
Nicholas’s brows lifted. “A bucket?”
“For the nonsense,” she said. “It’s spilling everywhere.”
Nicholas’s mouth twitched. “I’m afraid a bucket wouldn’t be nearly big enough. You’d need the whole Thames.”
Bea bit back the laugh that threatened to escape her. Curse him. Curse him for being…this. Clever, and witty, and…supportive.
Langford’s voice rose again. “The reform bill is a fever. Once you give them a vote, they will demand everything. They will demand land. They will demand titles. They will demand—”
“They will demand to be treated as citizens,” Bea said, too softly to be heard by anyone but Nicholas.
She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.
Nicholas glanced at her. “Do you truly believe that?”
Bea lifted her chin. “I believe men who work twelve hours a day and still cannot feed their children are not the ones threatening the stability of the country.”
Nicholas’s gaze held hers, intent. “And who is?”
Bea’s breath caught at the question—not because it was difficult, but because no man ever asked her such things as if the answer mattered.
“Men like him,” she said, nodding toward Langford. “Men who speak of people as if they are a nuisance rather than the nation itself.”
Nicholas was quiet for a moment.
Then he did something Bea did not expect.
He guided her forward.
Not by pulling—Nicholas never pulled. He simply placed his hand at the small of her back, light, steady, and moved as if the room would part for them.
And it did.
The men turned. The women looked up. Conversations shifted, the way the sea shifts when something large swims beneath it.
Nicholas Archer, Marquess of Vanover, was taking the Duke of Winston’s daughter directly toward the center of the salon.
Bea’s pulse skittered. “Nicholas—”
“If you intend to stab someone, do it where witnesses can appreciate it,” he murmured, giving her a wink.
She huffed a laugh. “I will not stab anyone.”
His voice dropped. “A pity. I daresay it would enliven Hillary’s afternoon.”
Bea shot him a look, but she couldn’t quite summon genuine indignation because her nerves were too alive. Because the room was watching. Because she had never been invited into the middle of such a space.
Nicholas stopped a polite distance from Langford and waited until a pause opened in the man’s monologue—then stepped neatly into it.
“Sir Edwin,” Nicholas said, smooth as silk, “you make it sound as though the English people are a pack of hounds waiting to be loosed.”
Langford’s eyes narrowed, recognition dawning. “Vanover.”
Nicholas dipped his head, all manners. “If you’ll forgive me, I should like to test your argument.”
“Oh?” Langford’s gaze flicked to Bea and dismissed her instantly, as though she were a decorative vase. “And how do you propose to do that?”
Nicholas turned slightly—enough to include Bea. Enough to make it impossible to pretend she was not there.
He did not place her behind him. He did not place her beside him like a possession. He placed her with him.
“Lady Beatrix has been following the Reform question with rather more attention than most men in this room,” Nicholas said mildly. “And she has a habit of spotting the holes in an argument.”
Bea went utterly still.
Langford blinked, then let out a short, humorless laugh. “Surely you do not mean to tell me—”
“I do,” Nicholas said pleasantly.
A ripple went through the room. A few men shifted as if uncertain whether to be amused or offended. A few women straightened, suddenly alert.
Bea could feel heat climbing her throat.
Nicholas looked at her, and there was something in his gaze that made her lungs fill as though she’d been given permission to breathe.
He was not laughing at her.
He was not using her as a prop.
He was—damn him—offering her the floor.
“Tell them,” he murmured.
Bea’s mouth went dry. She didn’t relish being watched. Didn’t particularly enjoy being examined. But the fury that lived in her chest—the one she poured into ink—rose to meet the moment like a pencil finding her palm.
Bea lifted her chin. “Sir Edwin speaks as though the people are infants who must be managed,” she said clearly.
“But the people are the ones who build the wealth this country spends. They work in mills and mines and fields and shipyards. They serve as footmen in the homes of men who would deny them a voice.”
All eyes momentarily turned to the footman, who cleared his throat and glanced away.
“And you would have them vote because they labor?” Langford’s voice dripped with condescension.
“I would have them vote because they are governed,” Bea replied. “Because they pay taxes. Because they fight in wars. Because they are punished by laws they have no hand in shaping.”
“Sentimental nonsense,” Langford snapped. “A vote does not feed a child.”
“No,” Bea said, voice steady. “But laws can. And wages can. And the ability to hold a person accountable can.”
Someone near the hearth made a small sound of interest.
Langford’s face reddened. “It is easy for a duke’s daughter to preach about accountability.”
Bea’s jaw tightened. She would not be shamed into silence. “It is easy for a man with a seat in Parliament to mock hunger.”
A murmur, sharper this time. A few men exchanged glances.
Langford’s eyes flashed. “Women are not meant to meddle in these matters.”
Bea felt the room tilt. The old, familiar pressure. She could hear her father’s voice in her head. Smile, retreat, don’t make a scene.
She opened her mouth—
And Nicholas spoke first.