Chapter Twenty-Nine
One hour later, Bea had never been so certain of anything in her life as she was that going to Nicholas’s house alone was a terrible idea.
She was equally certain she was still going, regardless.
The hackney jolted over a rut and nearly threw her against the opposite squab.
She caught herself with a hand to the cracked leather, muttering something that would have made her mother swoon.
She’d chosen a hackney for the anonymity of it.
And she was wearing the cape she normally wore to drop off her latest sketch.
Its dank brown color covered the bright green day dress she wore underneath.
She should have written a letter.
She should have set the entire stack of B. Adroit sketches on fire and then joined a convent.
Instead, she smoothed her skirts, swallowed hard, and watched Nicholas’s town house come into view through the hack’s grimy window. Cool, pale stone, black railings, polished knocker. Respectable. Controlled. Like him.
Like the outer shell of him, she corrected.
Because beneath all that control and polish and political calculation, he was…something else. Something she had felt clearly last night with her body draped over his thighs, skirts hiked, his hands—
Bea pressed her knees together and glared at the window as if it were to blame.
She was not here about last night, she reminded herself. She was here about the truth. Her truth.
The carriage pulled to a halt. The driver hopped down, opened the door, and offered his hand. Bea ignored it and stepped out on her own, every line of her body rigid with resolve. She slipped the hood of the cape over her head. Must be discreet.
Up the steps.
Ring the bell.
Confess.
It should be simple. So why did she feel as if she might cast up her accounts at any moment?
She tugged the bellpull before she could think better of it.
The door opened almost at once, as if someone had been waiting on the other side. Nicholas’s butler, of course—tall, calm, entirely unruffled.
“Good afternoon, miss,” he said with a bow. He obviously didn’t know who she was. Good.
Bea stepped inside swiftly. It was egregious enough to be visiting a bachelor’s house alone. She didn’t want to be visible from the front stoop.
“Is Lord Vanover home?” Her voice came out thinner than she liked. “Please tell him Lady Beatrix— Er, tell him Bea is here to see him.” No need to spread her name about. What if Nicholas’s servants were gossips?
The butler’s face did not hide the confusion he clearly felt over seeing a woman who had initially called herself a lady wearing a simple cloak.
“Very well, er…madam. If you would wait in the cream drawing room, I shall inform him at once.”
The cream drawing room. That sounded safe.
Mostly. She could sit on an upright chair with her spine straight and her hands folded and announce, like a sensible person, that she was the scandalous cartoonist Nicholas had been plagued by for years, ask him to forgive her and not tell her father, and return home before tea.
If only it could be that simple.
She followed the butler down the hall. He opened the door to a pleasant, tasteful room dressed in shades of vanilla before he bowed and withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Bea paced. She removed her brown cloak and tossed it across the back of a chair.
She crossed to the mantel and stared at the clock. She walked to the window and stared at the street. She ran a fingertip along the spine of a book that had been left on a side table—Tacitus, naturally; Nicholas would read political philosophy for pleasure—and told herself she could do this.
If she could sketch her father with a beak and Hargrave with toad eyes, she could tell one man the truth.
The door opened.
She spun.
Nicholas stepped in, closing the door behind him. He was in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat unbuttoned, cravat loosened as if she’d interrupted him working. Dark hair annoyingly perfect. Mouth she’d kissed breathless the night before looking as tempting as ever.
Every thought she’d rehearsed fled her head like frightened birds.
“Bea,” he said quietly. “You came.”
Her name in his voice did something low and dangerous to her.
“Lord Vanover,” she replied, because formality was a shield, and she needed one.
He took a few steps into the room, studying her. “I did wonder when I’d see you again…or if what happened last night would scare you off.”
She stiffened. “Last night happened. That is… It was quite—” She cut herself off before she could say things like good or wonderful or life-altering.
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Memorable?”
“Catastrophic,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes and frowned. “For whom?”
“For me,” she replied. “For my sanity. For my virtue. For—” For my ability to lie to you, she thought, and bit the words back.
He came closer. Not too close yet, but closer than was strictly necessary for civil conversation.
“And for me?” he asked softly.
She swallowed. “You seemed rather pleased with yourself last night.”
“I was,” he admitted. “I still am. But you didn’t come here to argue about my level of satisfaction.” His gaze sharpened. “Why did you come?”
She clenched her jaw. No doubt he was wondering if she was here to make love to him. He’d suggested as much last night. She needed to make it clear that her purpose was entirely different.
“We must talk,” she blurted.
His brows shot up. “Three of the most alarming words in the English language.”
“Yes, well,” she said. “We must.”
He inclined his head. “Very well. Talk.”
He stopped a pace or two away, hands loose at his sides, as if he were making a point of not reaching for her. It should have helped. It did not.
Bea drew a breath, willing her heart to stop thumping. “Nicholas, I haven’t been honest with you.”
His brows lifted. “If this is about B. Adroit, you needn’t—”
“I must tell you.” She briefly closed her eyes. “This is important.”
His expression sobered. “Go on then.”
She opened her mouth. I am B. Adroit, she tried to say.
“I—”
He watched her, waiting.
The words lodged in her throat.
Blast him. Blast his eyes and his patience and the way he stood there, looking at her as if what she said mattered. And a horrifying thought occurred to her. Was she about to break his heart?
Heat crept up her neck. “This is…difficult.”
“Then we can make it easier,” he said gently.
“How?”
“By sitting down,” he suggested. “You look as if you’re about to bolt.”
“I don’t need to sit,” she informed him.
He nodded gravely. “Are you certain? You’re positively vibrating with nerves.”
She swallowed. “Do you wish to hear this or not?” Her voice shook.
“I do,” he said. “Very much. But I also wish you to breathe while you say it.” He gestured to the settee near the hearth. “Please.”
Her spine wanted to remain rigid. Her knees, unfortunately, felt oddly unreliable. After a moment of trying to catch her breath, she relented and crossed to the settee, sitting on the edge as if she might spring up again at any moment.
Nicholas followed and took the other end, leaving a respectable space between them. Too much space, part of her thought. Not nearly enough, another part countered.
She folded her gloved hands tightly in her lap and fixed her gaze on the mantel. “I need you to know that if I don’t say this now, I may never say it.”
“All right,” he said calmly. “Say it now.”
“I’m trying,” she insisted, but she still couldn’t catch her breath.
He said nothing. Just waited.
The silence roared in her ears.
“Nicholas,” she started again, “there are things about me you don’t know. Things that would change how you see me. I am not just Winston’s daughter, or your prospective bride, or—”
He exhaled a soft laugh. “I should hope not.”
“I am serious,” she said.
“So am I,” he replied. “I have never once looked at you and seen ‘just’ anything.”
Her throat tightened. “I am not fishing for compliments. This is—”
“A matter of trust,” he said quietly.
She looked at him then. A lump the size of a goose egg lodged in her throat.
His gaze was steady, dark, and disconcertingly unguarded.
Her heart stumbled. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And you’re afraid I haven’t earned it,” he said.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that if I give it to you, you’ll cut my head off with it.”
“Bea.” His voice gentled.
The way he said her name—soft, not teasing—pulled at something inside her. He shifted, angling his body toward hers, closing a fraction of the distance between them.
“You are shaking,” he observed.
She looked down. He was right. Her hands trembled against the fabric of her gown.
He reached, slowly enough that she could have pulled away, and covered her clenched hands with one of his own.
Warm. Steady. Very real.
Her breath caught.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “you can tell me.”
He meant it. She heard it in his voice. Not as a tactic. Not as a politician. As a man. As a friend.
It should have made it easier.
Instead, it broke something loose in her chest.
“I can’t,” she blurted.
His brows drew together. “You can’t tell me, or you don’t want to?”
“Both,” she said desperately. “If I tell you, I’m afraid you’ll hate me. You’ll tell my father. You’ll never speak to me again.”
His thumb brushed absently over the back of her hand. “Those are very confident predictions for someone who I hope has come to know me better over the past several days.”
She jerked her hand back as if burned, shot to her feet, and stalked toward the fireplace. Her reflection flickered faintly in the glass, hair pinned perfectly, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright.
“I came here to be honest,” she said, pressing a hand to the mantel. “I rehearsed it. I was going to tell you everything. I was.”
“What changed?” he asked behind her.
“You,” she said.
Silence.
Then quietly, “What did I do?”