Chapter Thirty-Five
Bea had never realized how loud her own heartbeat was. It filled her ears as she stood alone in her bedchamber, hands braced on the edge of her writing desk, staring down at a blank sheet of paper.
Her fingers shook. Hours had passed since Nicholas had left her rooms. He had closed the door with agonizing gentleness, as if he feared she might break even further if he let it slam.
She could still hear the faint click of the latch.
She had cried until her throat burned, and her head ached. Quiet tears, furious tears, exhausted tears. But eventually the storm had given out, leaving behind only a hollow, aching quiet.
She had hurt him. Deeply.
Worse, she had believed he would betray her.
That knowledge curled inside her like a stain she couldn’t scrub away…ugly and shameful.
She had expected Nicholas to be like every other man of her station, self-interested, calculating, prepared to sacrifice anything and anyone in the name of advancement.
She had assumed he was a perfect expression of the political world she despised.
But he wasn’t.
He never had been.
And she had smugly refused to believe—to see—anything different. She’d been blinded by her own assumptions.
She sat down in her chair slowly, bracing herself as though her knees might give out.
She opened the box where she kept her drawings, hidden from others’ prying eyes.
Her gaze drifted to the scattered pamphlets and sketches—old plates she’d carved months ago, earlier drafts, discarded drawings.
Her hands brushed over them lightly, almost tenderly.
Every one of them had been a blow. To a cause. To a man. To him.
Whenever she had sketched Nicholas as a bumbling aristocrat, she’d told herself she was doing her duty. She was skewering a system, a party, a position.
But she’d also been skewering him.
Now she remembered, with startling clarity, the look on his face in her sitting room tonight. It hadn’t been anger. Nor outrage.
It had been hurt.
Real, honest hurt.
Not only because she’d lied. But because she’d believed—truly believed—that he might turn on her.
She pressed her hands to her eyes. “You fool,” she whispered to herself. “You utter, absolute fool.”
Slowly, painfully, the truth formed inside her like dawn breaking over the horizon. She had always prided herself on seeing the world clearly. Seeing hypocrisy, arrogance, cruelty, and cutting it down with a single stroke of her quill.
But when it came to Nicholas…
She had been blind.
Blind to his compassion. Blind to his restraint. Blind to his decency. Blind to the way he looked at her—really looked at her—as if she were something rare and extraordinary.
She had been so busy protecting her heart from men who wouldn’t value her that she had locked it against the one man who would.
A sob rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
No more tears.
What was needed now—what Nicholas had always been brave enough to show and she had always hidden behind ink—was courage.
Real courage.
The kind that required putting her heart on paper.
Bea sat up straight. She reached for her pencil. Her hand hovered over an empty page. For the first time in her career as B. Adroit, she wasn’t drawing from anger. Or indignation. Or scorn. She was drawing from love.
It terrified her.
But it steadied her too.
She lowered the pencil. Slowly, strokes formed on the page, light at first, then firmer, then fierce.
Nicholas Archer.
Not the buffoonish caricature she’d drawn dozens of times. Not the elegantly dressed puppet she’d portrayed him as. Not the man bending under the weight of party politics.
But the man he had shown himself to be. The man she knew he was.
Jaw set with purpose. Eyes bright with conviction. Spine straight.
Not Hargrave’s co-hort. Not Winston’s pawn. Not VanDeVere’s shadow.
Just Nicholas.
A man standing alone on the floor of the House, papers in hand, not flinching despite the jeers around him. A man speaking his mind with clarity and fire. A man finally breaking free of every chain that had held him.
A man brave enough to love her, even when she had made that impossible.
Tears fell onto the vellum, but she wiped them away quickly before they could smear the drawing.
By the time she added the final lines—a subtle shading of light behind him, a symbolic burst of illumination—her heart was too big for her chest.
This wasn’t satire. It was a tribute. The vulnerability of it nearly sent her to her knees. But the truth if it made her proud. She didn’t stop. She added her signature. B. Adroit. For the first time, the pseudonym didn’t feel like a mask.
It felt like a promise.
The clock on her mantel chimed midnight. Bea startled, looking toward the window. The house was silent. Even the servants had long since retired.
She stared down at the drawing, hands trembling again, but for a different reason now.
This sketch was dangerous. Not because it mocked the powerful, but because it revealed her heart.
If Nicholas saw it, he would know.
Perhaps not immediately. Perhaps not consciously. But some part of him would understand that she believed in him.
Not in his party. Not in his family. Not in his ambitions.
In him.
And that was the one truth she had never dared to give him.
Until now.
She moved quickly, gathering her things with a clarity she had not felt in years. She snatched up the drawing and placed it solidly between the pages of a pamphlet.
She changed into the brown cloak, pulled up the hood, and slipped out of her room.
The corridor was dark and still.
Good.
She crept down the servants’ staircase, heart pounding wildly.
She had done this dozens of times before, but tonight it felt more important than ever.
The back door gave a quiet groan as she eased it open.
The cool night air slapped her cheeks, but she wrapped the cloak tighter around herself and stepped into the darkness.
Normally, she did this at dawn. The streets were quiet at this hour, but not empty. A carriage or two rumbled far off. A watchman’s distant call echoed through the square.
Bea kept to the shadows, moving quickly and determinedly toward Gutter Lane.
Toward the printshop.
Toward the place where she had created half her destruction, and where she would now attempt her redemption.
Her boots struck the cobblestones softly, rhythmically.
Fear gripped her. But beneath it—beneath the terror, beneath the guilt, beneath everything was resolve.
She had hurt him. She had doubted him. She had wounded him in a way she could not undo.
But she had one thing left. One weapon she understood better than anyone. Her art. Her truth. Her heart. Tonight, she would put all three into his hands.
After jumping from the hackney near the corner, she reached the printshop, breathless, a thin sheen of sweat cooling on her neck despite the chill. It was dark, of course, but the slot was always left open for deliveries.
Her hands shook as she eased it open and slipped her drawing inside.
The air around the shop smelled of ink, metal, and stale heat from the press. Familiar, comforting, and terrifying all at once.
“Please let him see this.” Her voice cracked. “Please let him understand.”
She hesitated one last second, then turned and fled into the night.
When she reached her house again, Bea’s heart was racing. She paused on the steps and looked back. For the first time since her courtship with Nicholas had begun, she knew she’d done the right thing.
She had fought for him. For herself. For both of them. For the truth.
Whatever happened tomorrow—
It would be a beginning.
Or an end.
But not silence.
And Beatrix Winslow, the same young woman who had once hidden behind ink and anonymity, finally understood—
If she wanted something, truly wanted it, she had to be brave enough to put her heart on the line. Even if it shattered.