Chapter Twenty-Four
The great doors to the building rose before them like a fortress of power and possibility, all stern stone and soaring arches.
Bea had seen it from the outside countless times, but never like this, never while being ushered through its private entrance by a man who strode as though he belonged to every chamber, every echoing corridor, every whisper of influence that traveled through those walls.
Nicholas offered his arm. She took it, her heart still beating so quickly she thought she might need assistance.
“Try not to look so nervous,” he murmured as they crossed the threshold.
“Nervous?” she scoffed. “I’m perfectly— Oh.” Her breath caught.
The interior was a cathedral of political history. The scent of ink and old wood. The low murmur of distant voices behind closed doors. The weight of decisions made centuries before her birth.
It was magnificent.
As Nicholas watched her take it all in, his expression softened into something unbearably warm. He knew. He knew exactly what this would do to her.
Blast him.
“You brought me here on purpose,” she said under her breath.
“Of course,” he replied lightly. “Why else does one bring Lady Beatrix Winslow anywhere?”
“Usually to irritate her,” she said with a laugh.
“Irritating you is a privilege, not a purpose,” he said with a smile that said I know precisely what I’m doing.
“Here,” he continued, guiding her to the first gallery. “Members’ Entrance. You’ll want to remember it for the day you take over Parliament yourself.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
He nodded seriously. “I’ve no doubt you will run the place someday.”
She eyed him carefully.
“You think I haven’t noticed the way you watch debates at your father’s salon? Or the way you listen, not for rhetoric, but for subtext? The way you analyze who holds which opinion and why?”
Her pulse skipped. She hoped it did not show. “You notice far too much,” she muttered.
“I notice precisely enough.”
He gestured her through the doorway, his hand hovering politely at the small of her back, close but not touching. It sent a line of heat along her spine, regardless.
“This,” he continued, “is the antechamber outside the Lords. Here is where the real arguments occur. Quiet ones, between men who pretend to be on the same side.”
She inhaled sharply. This was the heart of the world she’d studied in secret. The place behind all the doors she’d only imagined. The place where the reform bill would be voted upon in only a matter of days.
Nicholas leaned closer, his voice brushing her ear. “Would you like to see the voting records?”
Her breath stilled.
Was he teasing her? Mocking her? She studied him. No, he was looking at her with the same keen, knowing awareness he always did.
“Very much,” she said before she could stop herself.
Nicholas smiled—slow and pleased—and led her deeper into Parliament.
Parliament was not in session today, but as they walked, she noticed the way he nodded respectfully to clerks, how some bowed slightly, how others greeted him with quiet deference. He belonged here. He thrived here.
And somehow, impossibly, he had brought her.
In a private alcove lined with shelves, Nicholas pulled a ledger free and set it gently on the table before her.
She opened it.
Her breath hitched. There they were. Votes, dates, debates, amendments, exactly as she’d imagined them. Oh, the papers reported on the important stories, but never the details. Never the intricate things she wanted to know. Now, she devoured them.
She combed through every vote Nicholas had cast in the last few years, page after page.
And he was right. He had voted moderately more often than not, frustratingly principled in all the places she’d assumed he was merely posturing.
Which only raised the far more aggravating question.
If he were not a blind Tory loyalist, then why exactly was he so close with her father and the other Tories? It made no sense.
Then another thought occurred to her. According to the papers, the reform bill vote was so close that even a whispered rumor could tip the vote.
Another reason she’d decided on her fox cartoon.
But if Nicholas truly wasn’t a hardline Tory, with his influence over the Tories, he might well be able to swing the vote for reform.
Bea looked up to find Nicholas watching her, arms folded lightly. Not arrogant. Not triumphant. Just…present. Aware.
Awaiting her reaction.
“It’s true. You did vote moderately more often than not,” she said, her voice softer than she intended.
“Mm,” he murmured. “You sound disappointed.”
“I’m not disappointed,” she said quickly.
He arched a brow.
“All right, I might be slightly disappointed,” she admitted. “I do hate to admit I was wrong.”
He laughed, a soft, rich sound that warmed her as thoroughly as a touch.
“But if that’s true,” she continued, turning a page, “why do you agree with everything my father says?”
Nicholas paused, just long enough for her to notice. “Do I?” he asked mildly.
Bea kept her eyes on the book. Her stomach dropped. Had she revealed too much? Said more than she should have?
She pressed a hand to her throat. “I mean…I presumed…”
“You presumed incorrectly,” he informed her with a wink.
Bea swallowed hard. “But if you disagree with them, why are you such friends with Father? Hargrave? Hillary? Any of them?” The question escaped before she could temper it. “Not to mention your father can hardly approve.”
His expression softened. “Well, for one thing. Arguing with my father is an exercise in futility. I allow him to believe I agree with him because it suits my purposes. And for another…I realized long ago that I can’t change men like Hargrave and Hillary by declaring war on them.
I have to earn the right to disagree. I’ve never lied to your father. Or any of the Tories.”
The certainty in his voice unsettled her. This was not the answer she had prepared herself to dismiss. It shifted the ground beneath her feet, rearranging assumptions she had taken for fact.
“Is that why you brought me here?” she whispered at last. “To prove to me that I’ve been wrong about you?”
He did not answer at once. His gaze dropped briefly to the stone beneath their feet, as though choosing his words with care.
“Honestly, yes…partially. But also because you deserve to see the world you care about. Because you care more deeply, more honestly, than any woman—or man—I’ve ever met. I knew you would appreciate it.”
Her breath left her. Just…left, as if it had been stolen from her lungs.
And then it hit her. She’d been wrong about him. This entire time…she’d been wrong about him. The enormity of her mistake settled heavily in her mind.
“Nicholas—” She swallowed.
“And also…” He looked at her—truly looked—and there was no calculation in his expression, no easy charm to soften the moment.
“I brought you here because I want you to know me as I truly am. Not as you imagine me to be. And I want”—he hesitated, rare and telling—“the chance to know you as well. All of you.”
The silence that followed was heavy, taut with things unsaid.
With implications she could no longer pretend not to see.
Guilt pressed low and sharp beneath her ribs—the cartoon, the accusation she had inked without certainty, the ease with which she had assumed the worst of him, simply based on the company he kept.
Nicholas extended his arm once more. “Come,” he said gently. “There’s a gallery above the chamber. It’s for observers when we’re in session. Would you like to see it?”
She hesitated for only a heartbeat.
Then she took his arm, not because it was easy, and not because it felt right, but because walking away would not undo what she had done.
Because she suspected she would soon have to tell him the truth.
And because, guilt or no, she could not deny the pull of standing beside a man who had offered her honesty… and who deserved it in return.
An hour later, they were back in Nicholas’s coach, headed toward her father’s town house. The day had been…well, one of the best of her life. Nearly a dream, if dreams came laced with a sharp, persistent thread of guilt tightening around her ribs.
Bea stared out the window, watching London blur past. Her chest felt too tight. Too full.
Because all she could think about was the cruel precision of her own drawings. The fox’s smirk. The coins in the duke’s pocket. The sly, insinuating lines she’d drawn as if she knew Nicholas.
As if she’d understood anything.
But she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
Any of it—why she’d formed such a firm opinion of him, how she’d overheard her father’s conversations.
Overheard them and apparently misinterpreted them.
Or that she was B. Adroit. That secret was dangerous, fragile, and more deeply kept than anything else she possessed.
So she sat there in silence, desperately searching for some appropriate, dignified way to thank him for taking her to Parliament. Something that didn’t sound inadequate.
Soon, the coach pulled to a stop outside her father’s house.
After the footman pulled down the coach steps, Nicholas helped her alight and then walked her slowly to the door.
Just as she gathered her courage to speak, she looked down to see the afternoon’s paper sitting on the top step.
And there it was…on the front page.
The latest caricature. The one she’d delivered this very morning. Her caricature.
Nicholas looked down at it and then scrubbed his face with a weary groan.
“I can hardly blame you for thinking I was a devout Tory,” he said dryly. “Most of London does. Everyone’s seen these blasted caricatures in the papers.” He nudged the paper with one booted foot. “Whoever this fellow is, he’s got me entirely wrong.”
Bea forced herself to breathe, shallow, careful.
Nicholas shifted his weight, exhaling through his nose. “But don’t worry,” he added with a note of irritation, “I have it on the best authority that the Bow Street Runner I hired is about to run the scoundrel down. B. Adroit is about to regret the day he was born.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Nicholas had hired the Bow Street Runner? Nicholas was the one hunting her?
He glanced up and met her gaze, his brow furrowing. “Do you know who B. Adroit is?”
Her throat clenched. She swallowed hard, too hard. The guilt punched low in her stomach, thick and sickening. They’d spent the afternoon together. He’d shown her who he truly was, and now he was no longer implying. He was asking her directly. She could not lie.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”