Chapter Twenty-Five
Nicholas had risen this morning with an unusual sense of purpose, and not merely because he would be seeing Bea again tonight. His early meeting with Fletcher, the Bow Street Runner he’d hired, had finally produced a genuine lead.
Bea had admitted she knew B. Adroit’s identity.
And for now, that truth had to be enough.
She had not given him a name. And he did not press her for one.
She’d looked terribly distressed. But Nicholas had assured her she needn’t betray her friend.
Fletcher was close to learning the truth.
He already had an address. It was only a matter of time before he had a name.
It would be easier this way for both of them.
And Fletcher hadn’t disappointed. He’d informed Nicholas this morning that the anonymous caricaturist delivered his drawings with predictable regularity.
Fletcher had traced the bloke to a residence in Mayfair.
He’d assured Nicholas he had only to conduct a bit more investigating to learn the precise identity of the cartoonist. Apparently, Fletcher suspected the man had used a household servant to deliver the drawings for him.
The thought had simmered in Nicholas’s mind all afternoon, the slow burn of impending revelation.
At last, he might meet the culprit behind those maddening drawings, might demand an explanation, or a correction, or perhaps a cessation entirely.
One way or another, the sketches would end.
Nicholas would see to it. He would not allow B.
Adroit to ruin everything Nicholas had worked for.
However, like most things in his world, this too took patience. And Nicholas could wait for confirmation. He wanted the cartoonist’s identity to be certain, after all. Despite his father’s demands for immediacy, certainty took time.
Speaking of his father, the man hadn’t even bothered to summon him this time. Instead, he’d merely sent a note. So certain he’d be obeyed by his only son that he didn’t even feel a meeting was necessary.
The Winslow chit makes rash statements, the missive had read. See to it that you marry her soon and teach her to keep her mouth shut. The outburst at Hillary’s salon was unforgivable.
So, Father had heard about the incident at Hillary’s salon, just as Nicholas suspected he would. Predictable, but no matter. It was better that Father didn’t see him again until after the older man learned he’d voted against his wishes.
And he did have every intention of voting for the reform bill.
He’d been privately weighing the decision, but after Bea’s impassioned speech to Sir Edwin, he’d been convinced.
Not just by her words but by her conviction.
Bea was right. And her certainty was appealing.
His father would be furious, but for the first time in his life, Nicholas no longer cared.
Instead of replying, he’d crumpled his father’s note in his fist and tossed it directly into the fire where it belonged.
By the time Nicholas reached Winslow’s town house that evening, all thoughts were eclipsed by the sight before him.
Bea stood in the foyer in a gown of pale pink muslin, light, summery, impeccably chosen. The color warmed against her skin, the neckline framed the graceful line of her collarbone, and the bows at her sleeves lent her a softness in direct contrast to the restless tension he sensed beneath it.
Something in her posture—too correct, too contained—made Nicholas’s own breath draw tighter.
Her coolness toward him wasn’t disdain. He knew that tone well, could recognize it at twenty paces. This was different. This was distance. A retreat. A silent pulling inward that he could not, for the life of him, explain.
Especially after the way she’d looked at him in Parliament yesterday.
“Are you all right?” he whispered as he escorted her outside.
“Did you…m…meet with the Bow Street Runner?” she asked, her voice shaking a little.
Was that what she was worried about? That he would learn the identity of someone she was protecting? He understood her concern, but he would not lie to her. “Yes,” he replied. “He’s close to getting a name.”
Her shoulders dropped a bit as if with relief. But she remained tense.
His words from yesterday echoed through his head…
B. Adroit is about to regret the day he was born.
He hadn’t meant it as a physical threat…
more as a bit of exaggeration. But he couldn’t blame her if she was worried he would do something to harm her friend.
“I only intend to speak with him,” he assured her.
“To ask him to stop. There won’t be pistols at dawn or anything brutish. ”
She gave him a tentative smile, but her mouth remained tight.
The four of them—Bea, her parents, and Nicholas—settled into Winslow’s carriage.
They were all going to the same dinner party tonight.
The duchess fussed with her gloves, while the duke gazed out the window with the air of a man surveying his personal dominion.
Bea sat next to Nicholas with her hands folded neatly, fingers giving the tiniest betraying twitch every few seconds.
Why wouldn’t she look at him?
Before he could puzzle it out, the carriage rolled to a stop in front of Chelmsford’s grand town house, all blazing lamplight and an unavoidable swarm of Tories at their most self-satisfied. Voices drifted out—braying laughter, pompous pontificating, half-baked policy pronouncements.
Nicholas helped Bea down from the coach.
“For the record, my father has threatened me with bodily harm if I say anything untoward this evening,” she whispered.
“Where is the fun in that?” Nicholas answered lightly.
A flicker—so quick he might have imagined it—passed through her eyes. Guilt. Yes. But something deeper. Something that had absolutely nothing to do with tonight’s dinner.
He almost reached for her hand. He wanted to squeeze it. To assure her he would be at her side this evening…whatever may occur.
Instead, he offered his arm. She accepted with the lightest possible touch, barely there, the kind of contact that implied obligation, nothing more.
But he knew better. This wasn’t a distance born of dislike. It was distance born of something she was desperately trying not to say, and she still wouldn’t meet his eyes. Nicholas narrowed his eyes at her. How close was she with B. Adroit?
Inside, the foyer was a crush of velvet coats, glittering jewels, and political egos. Footmen darted between callers, and the air buzzed with talk of trade bills, royal health, and Manchester unrest.
Bea murmured under her breath, “I should have feigned illness.”
Nicholas smiled faintly. “If you care to feign a swoon, I’ll gladly catch you.”
She shot him a look, weary in a way she never allowed herself to be. Whatever she was carrying tonight—whether related to B. Adroit or not—it was…different. Which only made Nicholas more determined to stay at her side.
Lord Chelmsford himself waddled forward to greet them, ruddy-faced and beaming. After greeting her parents, he turned toward Bea.
“Lady Beatrix! So delighted you are here,” he declared, grasping her hand to kiss it with too much enthusiasm. “And with Lord Vanover, no less. I’d heard you two were courting.”
Nicholas watched Bea stiffen almost imperceptibly. But before she could even answer Chelmsford’s loaded greeting, the man barreled on cheerfully with, “It’s such a pleasure to have you here.”
Bea smiled sweetly. He could tell it took effort. “Of course, my lord. It’s a pleasure to be here.”
The guests drifted toward the dining room, and Nicholas maneuvered himself and Bea to the center of the long table, safely away from her mother but, regrettably, directly across from her father.
Winston’s stare clearly warned his daughter: Behave.
Bea’s lifted chin promised: We’ll see.
Nicholas took his seat beside her.
The first course passed uneventfully. Watercress soup. Harmless remarks. Compliments on gowns. Talk of horse breeding. Wine poured. Laughter trickled.
Then came the inevitable.
Lord Hargrave.
Of course it was Hargrave.
The same pompous blowhard Bea had verbally slaughtered in Father’s salon days ago was now seated across from them, sweating into his cravat as he demolished his pheasant.
“The trouble with reformers,” Hargrave announced loudly, “is that they believe every common cobbler deserves a vote. Next, they’ll want to put shopkeepers in Parliament and allow women to—” He barked a laugh. “Well. No need to indulge in absurdities, despite what B. Adroit did to Langford.”
Several men chuckled obediently.
Bea’s fingers tightened around her wineglass. Nicholas sensed the storm gathering next to him like a rising tide.
“What, precisely,” Bea asked, voice soft enough to be lethal, “is absurd?”
Hargrave blinked. “Come now, Lady Beatrix. Women have no interest in politics.”
“I have an interest,” she said.
“Ah,” Hargrave replied, patronizing, “but a proper interest? Or the sort that leads to unnecessary opinions? Like what happened between you and Langford at Hillary House?”
Nicholas stopped breathing. Hell.
Winston shot his daughter a warning look. She ignored it.
“Is there an unnecessary kind of opinion, Lord Hargrave?” she asked. “I hadn’t realized men were filtering them for us.”
There was a ripple of murmurs as the tension thickened.
Hargrave sniffed. “Opinions require logic. And logic—”
“Is not exclusive to men,” Bea cut in.
More murmurs. Winston stiffened. Bea’s mother went pale.
Hargrave sputtered, “Lady Beatrix, you mistake my meaning.”
“No,” Bea said simply. “I believe I’ve understood it perfectly.”
Her father snapped, sharp as the crack of a whip, “Beatrix. That is enough.”
The table fell silent.
Bea lifted her chin, but Nicholas saw past the fire to the flicker beneath it. The tiny wound inflicted when a parent scolds an adult as if she were a child. The sting she tried to hide. The same sting Nicholas knew all too well.
Winston turned toward Hargrave. “You must excuse her, my lord. She has been indulged far too long in—”
“She does not need excusing.” Nicholas heard his own voice before he consciously decided to speak.
Every head swiveled toward him—even Bea’s.
Winston looked thunderstruck. “Vanover?”
Nicholas set down his wine with deliberate calm. “Lady Beatrix understood Lord Hargrave perfectly. She merely chose to disagree. She is entirely capable of forming her own opinions without any man’s permission.”
A stunned silence reverberated down the length of the table.
Hargrave gaped.
Winston’s face deepened to a violent shade of plum.
But Bea… Bea looked at Nicholas as though he had just done something impossible. Something she hadn’t dared to hope for. Something that reached inside her and lit the dark corners.
And Nicholas felt it, felt her attention strike him like a bolt.
For years, he had practiced diplomacy with these men, listening, nodding, placating, pretending neutrality so he could persuade them later. He’d thought it strategy—patience, positioning, playing the long game.
But sitting beside Bea, watching her sit in a room full of men who wanted her silent, he suddenly saw it for what it was…what it always had been. Indecision.
He had been patient when he should have been principled.
And now—because of her, because of her courage, because her refusal to shrink was the most extraordinary thing he’d ever witnessed—he realized he did stand for something.
He stood for her.
And God help him…he was falling for her.
Deeply. Irretrievably. Probably stupidly. Given that she still wouldn’t even admit they were courting.
Winston tried again, sounding strangled. “This is hardly—”
Nicholas cut in smoothly, eyes never leaving Bea. “Her place,” he said gently, “is wherever she chooses it to be.”
Gasps traveled the table.
Bea’s lips parted. The faintest flush painted her throat.
And Nicholas knew—without question—that he would face down an entire party of Tories, an entire Parliament, an entire country, if necessary, if it meant defending her again.
“If we might return to the original point,” he said, turning back to Hargrave with effortless composure, “the matter of broader voting rights is hardly destabilizing. The lower classes already support the weight of England’s labor.
Granting them fractional representation would strengthen the nation, not weaken it. ”
A murmur rose. Some agreement, but mostly disapproval.
Winston stared at Nicholas as if attempting to determine whether to strike him dead or have him arrested.
Bea, however, simply watched him with wonder.
Nicholas’s pulse thundered. He’d never felt more certain of himself, or more alive.
The rest of the dinner blurred. Debate, muttering, the scrape of cutlery. Hargrave sulked. Winston seethed. The duchess fanned herself as though she might swoon at any moment.
But Nicholas barely noticed any of it.
Because each time Bea glanced at him—just small, secret glances—the air between them tightened, pulled, hummed with something he had no business wanting but could no longer deny.
When the ladies rose to withdraw, Bea’s fingers brushed Nicholas’s sleeve.
Light. Accidental.
Devastating.
Heat rushed through him.
Oh yes. He was falling for her.
And there was absolutely nothing diplomatic about it.