Chapter Eighteen
Bea sharpened her pencil until the point was fine enough to do damage. Not to anyone in particular, of course. Merely…to reputations.
The household had settled into the quiet rhythm of late evening—footsteps softened, lamps lowered, voices tucked away behind closed doors.
From her little sanctuary of a sitting room, Bea could hear the faint tick of the clock and the distant sigh of London beyond the windows, as if the city were finally exhaling.
Bea, however, could not seem to breathe properly at all.
She stared down at the blank paper in front of her and found her mind stubbornly refusing to land on the subject at hand.
Langford.
Sir Edwin Langford, if one wished to be respectful, which Bea most certainly did not.
She straightened her shoulders, set the page squarely, and began with the thing she always began with: the shape of his head.
It was astonishingly satisfying to reduce a man’s sense of importance into a few cruel lines.
First, the jaw—too square, too self-satisfied. Then the cheeks—fattened with complacency. Then the nose, which Bea elongated just enough to make him look perpetually offended by the scent of other people’s existence.
She darkened the eyebrows until they became two furious caterpillars.
Much better.
Still, her pencil paused as she considered what to do with his mouth.
Langford had the sort of mouth that never smiled without condescension. A man who believed laughter was an instrument: something to wield, not share. She drew it thin and pinched, a line of disdain.
Then she added the smallest suggestion of spit at the corner.
Bea sat back, pleased.
There were some men in this world who deserved to be immortalized.
Not in marble.
In mockery.
She angled the paper toward the lamplight, assessing. The resemblance was excellent—if Langford were ever to see it, he would erupt like a kettle left too long to boil.
Bea’s lips curved faintly.
She could already imagine the caption.
THE GREAT PROTECTOR OF ENGLISH STABILITY, it would read, TERRIFIED OF VOTES FOR THE COMMON MAN.
She raised her pencil to add a ridiculous little crown atop his head—something pompous and absurd—when her hand stalled again.
Because the moment she thought of that salon—of Langford near the hearth, red with self-importance, preaching about “contagion” and “hounds”—she could not help thinking of the other man who had stood there.
Nicholas.
She scowled at the paper as if it were responsible.
She had not meant to think of him.
She had meant to think of Langford’s smug face and the delicious satisfaction of skewering it.
But Nicholas had been there in the middle of it, hadn’t he? Not lurking at the edges like most men did when a woman’s temper threatened to embarrass them. Not tugging her backward with a whispered, Beatrix, do hush. Not glancing around as if to say, Please don’t make this awkward for me.
He had done the exact opposite.
He had stepped forward.
And, damn him, he had taken her with him.
Bea’s pencil hovered.
She closed her eyes for a beat and saw it again: the shift of bodies in the room as Nicholas guided her through, the way conversations had faltered, the way men who had not noticed her at all suddenly had no choice but to.
And then his voice, maddeningly calm, as if he were announcing a change in the weather.
Lady Beatrix has been following the Reform question…
He had said it as though it were natural. As though she belonged in that discussion. As though her mind were not an ornament but a weapon worth unsheathing.
Bea’s throat tightened—an irritating, inexplicable thing—as if she were moved.
She was not moved.
She was…annoyed.
Because she had not expected to be seen that way.
And she had certainly not expected to be seen that way by Nicholas Archer, who was supposed to be a snake, a menace, a smirk in human form.
Yet he had looked at her in that salon with something that had felt dangerously close to respect.
“You were brilliant,” he had said afterward.
Not you were pretty. Not you were spirited. Not you were entertaining.
You were brilliant.
Bea’s fingers curled around the pencil. He didn’t agree with her of course. He was as loyal a Tory as the rest of them. But he hadn’t tried to silence her. He’d listened to her thoughts. And he’d complimented her.
She was not accustomed to compliments. They made her feel as though she’d been handed something she didn’t know she’d been missing.
She bent over the page again and began shading Langford’s cheeks with vigorous displeasure.
Harder. Darker. More ridiculous.
That ought to fix it.
It did not.
Her mind kept slipping back to Hillary House like a toe finding the same worn path inside a slipper.
Nicholas’s quiet interjection. His cool dismantling of Langford’s pompous certainty. The way he’d said, with vexatious ease, that if a man’s argument could not survive being questioned, perhaps it deserved to be replaced.
Bea had nearly choked on the urge to grin.
And then—worse—she had felt a flicker of something warm inside her chest.
Something that was not anger. Something that was not triumph. Something dangerously like…gratitude.
Bea drew Langford’s ears larger. Enormous, in fact. The better to hear the “lower orders” he so feared.
There.
She pressed her lips together, determined to focus.
But the end of the evening insisted on replaying itself.
The coach. The enclosed space. The wheels humming over cobblestone, the city oblivious. Nicholas watching her as if he were still listening to her speak.
His voice softer than it had any right to be.
What if I do mean them?
Bea’s stomach gave a small, traitorous swoop.
She set her pencil down with exaggerated care.
It was appalling. Absolutely appalling.
Not the man. The…feeling.
Because she had spent days convincing herself Nicholas was merely a complication to endure. An obstacle in her path. A handsome irritant with far too much confidence and far too much knowledge of how to tilt his mouth just so.
And then tonight he had done something unpardonable.
He had made her feel as if she mattered.
That was the sort of thing that sank its claws into a woman when she wasn’t looking.
Bea rubbed at her forehead, as if she could smudge the memory away like graphite.
It did not help.
Because right after making her feel like she mattered, Nicholas had gone and reminded her exactly what he was.
If you should care to try your skill at kissing again, do let me know…
Bea’s mouth tightened at the recollection of his drawl, his smile—pure cunning—like a man dangling a sweet in front of a child purely to watch her pretend she didn’t want it.
Her eyes narrowed.
Clever devil.
He had done it on purpose, hadn’t he?
He had been kind—genuinely kind—in the only way that would get past her armor.
And then, once her defenses were softened, he had slid the flirtation back in like a knife between her ribs.
Not cruelly.
Just…efficiently.
Bea’s cheeks warmed.
The worst part was that it had worked.
Not entirely. She had not thrown herself at him in the coach like some heroine in a lurid French novel.
But she had felt it.
That spark again.
That inconvenient, undeniable awareness of him—the warmth of his hand at her elbow, the closeness of his body in the coach, the way his gaze had dipped to her mouth like it belonged to him in some future he’d already decided upon.
Bea stared at the drawing.
Langford looked back at her, ridiculous and smug and crowned like a very stupid king.
Bea sighed. “Well,” she muttered to him, “at least you are simple.”
Langford did not answer, which was one of his better qualities.
Bea reached for her pencil again and, with sharp little strokes, added a tiny speech bubble above his head: WOMEN SHOULD NOT MEDDLE.
Then she drew a tiny teacup in his hand—delicate, trembling—and wrote: CAUTION: MAY SPILL AT THE FIRST FEMALE ARGUMENT.
It was satisfying. It was righteous. It was exactly the sort of thing that made her feel like herself again.
Except…Nicholas still lingered in the corner of her mind, like a smudge she couldn’t quite erase.
Bea tapped the pencil against her lip, thinking.
Georgie’s voice came to her unbidden—practical, amused, maddeningly modern.
You don’t have to marry the man to enjoy him.
Bea’s mouth twisted.
She had nearly thrown a cushion at Georgie when she’d said it. As if Bea could simply…enjoy her sworn enemy.
As if “fun” were something a woman like Bea was allowed without consequences.
But the truth was that Georgie had a point, vile creature.
Bea was being forced to accept Nicholas’s courtship. She could protest until her throat went raw; her father would still arrange their walks, their visits, their appearances, and call it propriety.
So if Bea could not control the fact of it…
Could she control the terms?
She stared at the edge of the paper, watching the lamplight catch the graphite.
Nicholas wanted something from her. That much was obvious.
He wanted her kisses. Her attention. Her reactions. He wanted to win.
But today, at Hillary House, he had also wanted something else. He had wanted her voice to be heard.
And that complicated everything. Because it meant he wasn’t only taking.
He was giving too.
Bea did not like men who gave her things. They made it difficult to hate them properly.
Her gaze drifted to the window. Outside, London sprawled in darkness and lamplight—carriages passing, distant laughter, lives continuing as if a woman had not just stood in a salon and challenged a man who believed women were furniture.
As if Nicholas had not stood beside her and said, in effect, Let her speak.
Bea’s throat tightened again, and she hated it.
She bent over the paper and began sketching again—not Langford this time, but a quick little thumbnail in the margin.
A marquess with wicked eyes and a too-knowing smile.
Bea froze, startled, then scowled at herself and immediately scratched it out.
Ridiculous.
She would not sit here drawing Nicholas Archer like a schoolgirl with a fancy.
She would draw Langford, and she would publish it. If she delivered it to the printer at dawn, it would be in tomorrow morning’s paper.
And she was going to remind the world that men like him were the problem.
That was her mission.
Nicholas was merely…a distraction.
A dangerous distraction.
Bea stared at her page and, despite herself, felt her lips curve.
Kissing him again wasn’t the worst idea in the world.
Not because she liked him.
Not because she trusted him.
Not because she had any intention of letting him win.
But because…well.
It might be satisfying.
It might be the sort of fun that felt like rebellion—delicious and defiant in the face of men who thought they owned her choices.
And if she was going to be forced into this courtship, perhaps she could at least steal a bit of pleasure back for herself.
Georgie would approve.
Bea’s mind flicked back to the coach. To the way Nicholas’s wink had made her toes curl. To the way his voice had dropped low as if it were meant only for her.
You’ve no idea.
Bea swallowed.
Her pencil hovered over the page again, and this time, when she worked on Langford’s crown, she made it even more ridiculous—crooked, unstable, teetering.
As it should be.
Because stability built on contempt deserved to topple.
Bea sat back, satisfied.
Then, because she was not an idiot, she folded the paper carefully and slid it beneath her blotter—out of sight, safe, waiting for the right moment.
She would wake before dawn. She’d have to move quickly. If she could get the sheet into the right hands—before the city woke and the gossip cooled—Langford would be in print by morning.
Her pulse still felt too lively. Her thoughts still felt too tangled. Nicholas still lingered in her mind like a handprint on skin.
Bea rose, smoothing her skirts as if she could smooth her nerves the same way.
She crossed to the mirror and studied her reflection in the dim lamplight.
Her hair was slightly loose. Her eyes looked brighter than they had a right to.
Her mouth…looked like it remembered something.
Bea narrowed her eyes at herself. “Do not,” she said firmly.
Her reflection did not listen.
Bea turned away, extinguished the lamp, and headed for bed with the fierce determination of a woman who would absolutely not be seduced by kindness, or cleverness, or wicked winks in a coach.
Except…as she slipped beneath the covers, her mind offered her one last, traitorous thought.
If Nicholas tried to kiss her again…
She might not stop him. She might not push him away.
Not because she wanted him.
Certainly not.
Only because she was beginning to suspect Georgie was right.
She didn’t have to marry the man.
But perhaps—just perhaps—she could have a little fun while she let him try to convince her.
And that, Bea decided as sleep finally began to creep in, might be its own small kind of revolt.