Vexed
Later that evening, standing uselessly near the refreshment table at yet another of the ton’s ubiquitous balls, Beatrice was forced to acknowledge one deeply aggravating truth.
While Gideon apparently could not force her to cease her activities with only a simple order, he was able to effectively block her efforts in other ways.
Her eyes narrowed across the ballroom.
There he stood at the entrance to the terrace like some broad-shouldered, maddeningly handsome sentry, ordered by the king himself.
Watching.
Not her, of course. Nothing so overt.
Conversing with two other gentlemen, he somehow managed to block every conceivable route toward the shadowed terrace beyond.
Any young lady who drifted too near found herself gently redirected—toward the lemonade, a waiting dance partner, an acquaintance who had suddenly remembered something of pressing importance.
A word here. A bow there.
None of it was new.
That, perhaps, was the most aggravating part.
Beatrice and Lark had spent weeks devising such small interruptions. A dropped handkerchief. A summons from a mother who had never sent one. A reason to pull a woman away before a gentleman could press too close.
Gideon and his friends had simply adapted the methods to suit themselves.
Instead of a handkerchief, someone fumbled a plate of food at precisely the right moment. Instead of reminding a young lady that she’d lost her chaperone, Lord Longstaffe might call across the room that a gentleman’s partners awaited him at cards.
It was not that they were cleverer than Beatrice.
There were simply more of them.
And they were larger.
Most vexing of all, whenever Beatrice did notice a situation requiring interruption, she was the one redirected.
At Lady Wetherby’s musicale, Beatrice had spotted a cluster of gentlemen lingering too long near the gallery staircase with Miss Cresswell.
Before she could reach them, Longstaffe had drawn her into a discussion about a missing fan.
By the time she freed herself, Blackwell had placed Miss Cresswell safely beside Lady Wetherby, and the gentlemen had scattered.
At the Ridleys’ garden party, she had seen Lord Grimstead attempting to steer poor Miss Shipley toward the hedge maze. Gideon had intercepted him before Beatrice could take three steps.
At the Tindales’ card party, she had watched Gideon and Blackwell quietly remove two gentlemen from the premises altogether after a low-voiced exchange she had not been close enough to hear.
She was never close enough anymore.
Gideon had drafted reinforcements, put her own strategies to work, and then made certain she could not employ them herself.
And although Beatrice was the one who had determined to avoid him—not the other way around—Gideon did not seem to mind in the least.
There had been no lessons. No surprise outings to garden parties. No walks in the park.
It was maddening.
Beatrice turned sharply toward the punch bowl.
Really, it was no wonder she was out of sorts.
Before matters with Gideon had turned so thoroughly complicated, Beatrice had gone to bed with little more troubling her than schemes, lists, and the occasional irritation with her brother.
Now she went home furious. Restless.
And sleep, rather than offering a reprieve, was no better. It betrayed her.
It betrayed her with dreams of Gideon. Dreams that were so vivid, she woke overheated and tangled in her sheets.
His hands setting her bodice to rights. His mouth near her throat. His voice, low and strained, saying her name.
As though she were not merely his friend’s little sister.
As though he needed her.
Beatrice snapped her fan open and fluttered it towards her suddenly heated cheeks.
“One might consider it noble, wouldn’t you agree?” Lark asked.
Beatrice gave a short laugh. “Lord Hawkins and his friends?”
“The ballroom has become something of a fortress.”
Beatrice snapped her fan closed. “It doesn’t solve the problem, though.”
Lark glanced toward the terrace, where, with a bow, Lord Hawkins steered one of this spring’s debutantes toward her mother.
“No?”
“No.” Beatrice lowered her voice. “The whole point of the Society is that women cannot spend their lives waiting for some gentleman to do all the protecting. Men are not always there. And when they are, they do not always see. Or believe. Or care.”
Lark’s expression changed. “But Lord Hawkins cares. He is present, and he is looking—he and the friends he’s recruited. They all are.”
Beatrice pressed her lips together. “What Lord Hawkins and the others are doing is gallant. I do not deny it. But it does not solve the larger problem. In fact, it might even make it worse in the long run.”
Lark frowned. “How could it possibly?”
“Perhaps the Vigilance Society is unnecessary after all,” Beatrice continued. “Ladies need only keep their eyes lowered, their hands folded, and their wits safely out of the way. Why learn to protect ourselves when we may wait prettily for a gentleman to decide we require saving?”
“Oh, Beatrice,” Lark said. “Circumstances aren’t that dour.”
“You do not find it vexing?”
“Why would I be vexed?” Lark asked carefully. “Lord Hawkins appears to be doing what we wanted done.”
“It isn’t the same.” Beatrice’s voice went quiet.
Lark didn’t say anything for a moment, and when Beatrice looked to see why, she found that her friend looked unusually hesitant. “Bea, I just—You say that, and it might be true, yes. But… “Are you quite certain you aren’t letting your personal feelings color the matter?”
Beatrice paused, feeling rather blindsided. “I beg your pardon.”
“I’m not saying that you would be wrong to be upset. The Vigilance Society, protecting young ladies, all of it was your idea.” Lark winced. “And now you’ve been set to the side.”
And there it was.
Beatrice would like to deny it, but… she could feel the truth in Lark’s words.
When Beatrice had first complained that Gideon was being overbearing, Lark had been sympathetic. But she had also, rather annoyingly, understood him more easily than Beatrice had wished.
Not agreed with him.
That distinction mattered.
Lark fully supported Beatrice’s present stance. She understood why Gideon’s interference felt less like assistance than usurpation.
But Lark also possessed the irritating habit of seeing too many sides of a thing at once.
“Don’t you feel safer?” Lark asked carefully.
Beatrice shook her head. “The safety they provide—Lord Hawkins and his friends —it is only an illusion.” She closed her fan with a snap. “A dangerous one.”
Lark tilted her head. “Because it teaches women to depend upon it.”
“Yes.” Beatrice looked out across the ballroom, at all the silk-clad young ladies laughing beneath candlelight, most of them entirely unaware of how swiftly a charming smile could become a trap. “When we become too comfortable, we lower our guard.”
“Oh, Beatrice…”
“No lady should ever lower her guard.”
Lark did not look at her, but set her gaze in the same direction as Beatrice’s.
“Not even with the right man?”
Beatrice averted her eyes, staring at her gloves instead.
The answer should have been simple.
“It is easy to mistake gallantry for safety,” she said at last. “Especially when one wishes very badly to believe in it.” She lifted her chin. “But we cannot build our lives around the hope that a gentleman will arrive in time.”
Her gaze found Gideon despite herself.
He caught her staring, of course.
Heat, swift and unwelcome, moved through her before she could look away. Blast him.
“Even when a gentleman’s heart is in the right place,” she continued, “his person is far too often in the wrong one.”
Lark was quiet for a beat too long. But then, “Is he in the wrong place now?”
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “You are not being helpful.”
“I am trying to understand.” Lark’s expression shifted—not into pity, precisely. Beatrice would never have tolerated pity. “Because from where I am standing, he appears to be exactly where you once would have wanted him.”
Beatrice’s mouth parted, then closed again.
That was unfair.
Entirely unfair.
Before the park, before his edict, before the wretched You will cease acting as protector, she might have been grateful. She might even have admired the efficiency with which he prevented vulnerable young women from being lured into trouble.
She might have looked at him and thought him remarkable.
Now she looked at him and felt…
No.
“He has taken over,” she said. “That is not the same as helping.”
“No,” Lark agreed gently. “It is not.”
The simple agreement should have soothed her. It did not.
She missed his hands.
The thought arrived so suddenly she nearly dropped her fan into the punchbowl.
Stop. Just stop, Beatrice.
She could not miss something she never really had.
Certainly not the warmth of his palm on her back. Not the dry murmur of his voice near her ear. Not the way he had looked at her in his drawing room, after she had behaved with humiliating recklessness. She definitely didn’t miss how he’d touched her in the park…
Lark, naturally, noticed the tension building in her.
“Beatrice,” she said softly.
“Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to say that perhaps Lord Hawkins might be forgiven for being in the wrong place now and again, given how hard he tries to be in the right one.” Lark’s voice gentled. “He cares for you, Beatrice.”
Beatrice sighed and looked down at her fan. “The trouble is not whether he cares,” she said. “It’s that he thinks caring gives him the right to command.”
Lark frowned.
Beatrice sighed. Loudly. “It doesn’t matter,” she finally said. “At least we still have the Vigilance Society. I was thinking we ought to schedule another meeting for later this week.”
Lark remained suspiciously quiet, causing Beatrice to turn to see her expression.
Her friend was wincing. “About that…” she began apologetically.
“What?”
Lark glanced toward the other side of the room. “Lady Blackwell caught Calliope and Persephone practicing a few of the maneuvers this morning.”
“Oh, dear. I don’t suppose they convinced her it was the latest new dance?”
“Not at all. And Calliope, of course, told her everything. And now, well, Lady Blackwell is keeping them on an incredibly tight rein.” Lark withdrew a folded slip of paper from her glove. “Persephone barely managed to pass me this.”
Beatrice took the note.
The handwriting was small and careful.
Mother has forbidden Calliope and me from attending any further lessons or meetings. Please accept our apologies. We hope you are able to find other ladies to strengthen the society in our absence.
Most sincerely,
Persephone Rensleight
Beatrice simply stared at the words.
Then she folded the paper again, slowly. “Why would a mother deliberately keep her daughters incapable of defending themselves?”
Lark gave her a sideways look. “Don’t you know, Bea?
” she asked. She then turned to Beatrice, pitching her voice, sarcastically of course, to sound like a breathless debutante.
“Ladies are meant to be delicate. Dainty. Dependent. What sort of man wants a wife who can defend herself? Such a woman might become difficult to manage.”
Beatrice’s mouth flattened.
“If she learns to hold her own physically,” Lark continued in her normal voice again, “she might begin to think she can hold her own in other ways as well. She might insist upon being heard. She might object. She might decide some matters men prefer to manage are, in fact, her own.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Yes,” Lark said. “It is.”
And yet Beatrice knew the truth of it.
Her own mother had done all she could to discourage Beatrice’s archery, or anything that made her less ornamental and more inconvenient.
She’d failed, of course. Dieu merci.
Across the room, Persephone glanced up. She must have felt Beatrice looking, because her eyes found Beatrice’s at once, then her gaze dropped to the folded note in Beatrice’s hand, and her face pinched with regret.
I am sorry, she mouthed.
Beatrice nodded, a small motion. Forgiving, she hoped.
But disappointment came nonetheless.
“She could at least try,” she muttered to herself. Not quietly enough, however.
“Not all ladies are as mule—” Lark stopped abruptly and pressed her fingers to her lips.
Beatrice looked at her.
“As strong-minded as you,” Lark amended.
“Mules,” Beatrice said with dignity, “are highly intelligent animals.”
“They are stubborn animals.”
“The two qualities are not mutually exclusive.”
Lark laughed then, quietly enough not to draw attention, but warmly enough to loosen something in Beatrice’s chest.
And for one brief, dangerous moment, Beatrice nearly smiled.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw one of Gideon’s soldiers escort yet another young lady away from the terrace doors.
The smile died before it could fully form.
You will cease acting as its protector.
The words thrummed through her again, low and taunting.
And just like that, every softened thing inside her went rigid once more.
And the smile died on her lips.