Feeling Safe
Beatrice remained in Gideon’s arms rather longer than she ought.
And when voices drifted from along the basement corridor, without a word, Gideon drew her deeper into the shadows.
Miss Barlow was giggling at something the colonel had said, entirely unaware that she and her suitor were not alone. Whatever had passed between them, she seemed unharmed. Flustered, perhaps. A little pleased with herself.
Grace au ciel. If Miss Barlow had been hurt while Beatrice had been preoccupied with her own fear… But she hadn’t been.
Only after the couple passed and disappeared up the stairs did Beatrice remember to breathe.
For several seconds, she remained exactly where she was, held against Gideon, listening to the frantic beat of her own heart.
Then, above them, the theater shifted.
Voices faded. Doors closed. The music rose, and the opera resumed overhead as though nothing at all had happened below.
Heat crept up her neck—part embarrassment, part something… else.
She felt altered.
Lighter, somehow.
“Lark will be worried,” Beatrice said at last.
It was a practical thing to say. Practical and… safe.
Far easier than addressing… everything else.
She drew back then—just enough to look up at him properly.
“Oh.” She gasped. “Oh no.”
There was blood at his jaw. Three dark lines where her nails had cut him. And his eye—
“Oh, Gideon…” Her mouth turned dry. Because… how did one apologize for such a thing? She’d thought… And then she’d reacted. But…
The notion of not reacting to such a threat seemed… impossible.
Beatrice swallowed hard. “You really ought not to have snuck up on me like that.”
Gideon’s mouth twitched faintly. “Oh, I’ve learned that.” There was a trace of humor in his voice, but his eyes remained serious. “And you,” he added, “ought not to wander into dark and questionable passages alone.”
Her eyes narrowed at once. “You were not here.”
He glanced about them, one brow lifting slightly as he gestured—quite pointedly—to his own very obvious presence.
“Was I not?”
She huffed a breath, unwilling to concede the point. “I did look for you.”
But that was unimportant now.
Now that her senses had returned properly, she could see him.
The scratches along his jaw. The mark already darkening beneath one eye. The careful way he held himself, one shoulder slightly braced, his posture still protective of the place where she had driven her knee with such regrettable accuracy only moments before.
“Gideon, I—” She raised a hand to her mouth.
“It’s nothing.”
“You are… really hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“That is not a comfort.”
His mouth softened. “No. I suppose it is not.”
She reached for him, then stopped, uncertain where she might touch without causing more pain. His jaw. His eye. His ribs, perhaps. His—
She went hotter still.
“But I am the one who hurt you.”
“You came back to yourself,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”
He reached for her hands then, cutting off whatever apology she might have tried to offer next.
“Beatrice.”
Her name, spoken like that, stilled her far more effectively than any argument.
Gideon lifted one hand to her face and, with a touch so gentle it nearly undid her, brushed his thumb along her cheek.
When he drew it back, there was the faintest trace of dampness upon it.
A tear.
She hadn’t even realized—
“Oh,” she whispered again.
Gideon said nothing of it. He merely reached up and tucked a loosened strand of her hair back into place.
“There,” he said quietly. “We must not give Miss Montague cause for alarm.” A faint hint of amusement touched his tone. “I suspect she manages quite enough of that already.”
“Because of Lady Theodosia?”
“Because she has you for a friend.”
Beatrice rolled her lips together—because she could not argue with that. Even before her return to London, before Lady Hannah’s death, Lark had complained that Beatrice spent too much time alone in the forest.
And she knew she needed to return to Lady Barrington’s box. Before Lark became properly worried.
But she had so many questions for him.
He had said she needn’t bear this alone. But what, precisely, did that mean?
Would he help her? Would he teach her more? Not the polished version he and Lord Longstaffe had taught in her brother’s ballroom, but the sort of defense that might have mattered in a place like this. Or…
Would Gideon decide, now that he knew more, helping meant stopping her?
That possibility was certainly a sour one.
But beneath all of it was the question she had been trying not to touch all day.
What was happening between the two of them?
What was this pull. This ache.
Gideon didn’t give her time to voice a single one of those questions.
Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her. Carefully. Softly.
When he drew back, his voice was low.
“We can talk tomorrow morning. In the park.” His gaze held hers, steady and certain. “Seven o’clock. Serpentine Bridge.”
Beatrice nodded, but still didn’t move.
“But if you wait much longer,” he added, a faint trace of dry humor entering his voice, “Miss Montague is likely to send out the cavalry on your behalf.”
It was a possibility. “Seven,” she said. And then, turning, she gathered her skirts and began to climb, far more quickly than she had descended.
The music grew clearer with every step, the darkness thinning as she neared the corridor above. When she stepped into the theater corridor, it was empty.
But she did not feel the least bit afraid.
Because she knew, with perfect certainty, that Gideon was near.
Watching. Seeing things everyone else seemed to miss.
It allowed her to breathe in a way she could hardly remember, as she slipped quietly back into the theater box.
With a murmured apology to Lark, Beatrice took her seat.
And though the performance concluded to thunderous applause, Beatrice understood no more of it than she had before.
Her thoughts, it seemed, were entirely occupied by the one man in the world who made her feel safe.
And that…was terrifying in an altogether different way.