Gone
Two days later, still smarting after what was possibly the most horribly bungled proposal in the entire history of England, Gideon sat in his study with a headache forming behind his eyes.
In front of him, a list of names spread across his desk like an accusation.
The list, which was put together by Lady Longstaffe and a few of her dowager friends at the request of her nephew, was ungainly. So much so that it was practically useless.
Masks.
Damnable things.
A wolf. A fox. A harlequin. A monk. Three devils. Two kings. Half a dozen men whose disguises had been recalled only as “dark.” Several who had arrived late. A few notes as to who had left early. But beyond that—nothing.
Gideon pushed back from the desk and dragged a hand through his hair.
He’d tried returning to Beckman House, but Mr. Drake had proved immovable, insisting Beatrice was out every time Gideon called.
An affront, certainly.
Also damned insulting.
If she would simply agree to see him once, she might help him make sense of this.
Or she might hate him all the more for trying.
If that were even possible.
The words from their argument returned with brutal clarity—her eyes flashing like blue steel as she ordered him to leave.
He had never imagined himself overbearing.
And yet he’d sat there—issuing commands, calling it protection, and wondering why Beatrice had looked ready to set him on fire.
Unfortunately, she’d left him with no other choice.
Tender-hearted, fearless, infuriating Beatrice would walk straight into danger if it meant sparing another woman from it.
Which was why tonight, by God, Gideon would don his bloody evening clothes and attend yet another blasted event for the pleasure of watching her from across a ballroom while she looked through him as though he had become furniture.
No. Not the furniture. More like the enemy.
And nothing was likely to change that.
He could apologize. Properly. Repeatedly. He could tell her she had been right about him being afraid. And yes, he’d been bossy and overbearing as well.
But he could not give her the one thing she wanted most.
Free rein to place herself in danger.
Footsteps sounded from beyond the study door.
Not the measured tread of a servant alone. Another step followed it, uneven and heavier. Followed by a knock.
“Enter,” Gideon called.
Gideon glanced up just as Dash stepped into the room.
And then winced. For half a second, neither of them spoke.
Christ.
Dash looked worse than he had two days ago.
His coat was properly cut but badly worn, as though he had slept in it. His cravat sat crooked at his throat. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. His eyes were bloodshot, hollow, and gone dull with the exhaustion of a man who had burned through all his options.
Burke withdrew without being told, closing the door softly behind him.
“Dash.”
Gideon came around the desk.
His oldest friend gave a humorless half-smile. “Do not look so relieved to see me alive. It is unbecoming.”
“Is this relief? I didn’t notice.”
Dash’s mouth twitched, but the expression collapsed almost at once. His gaze moved over the papers spread across Gideon’s desk. “What is all this?”
“Nothing of immediate concern.”
Dash looked back at him. For all his dishevelment, grief had not made him stupid.
Gideon gathered the nearest sheet and turned it facedown. Dash would be made aware of all of it soon enough.
“Why are you here?”
Dash exhaled, then lowered himself into the chair opposite the desk as though his bones had given up holding him. For the first time, Gideon noticed that beneath the exhaustion and ruin, there was something else.
Sheepishness.
It looked unnatural on Dash.
“You were right,” Dash said.
Gideon was not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.
“About Ambrosia,” Dash continued, staring at some point near the carpet. “Apparently, she has thrown in her lot with our good friend Grimm.”
Ashebourne Covington, the Earl of Grimstead.
Damn it.
“Are you certain?”
Dash gave a short laugh. “No. But certainty has not been especially useful to me of late.”
He rubbed one hand over his face.
As there was nothing useful to say, Gideon kept silent.
Dash’s jaw tightened. “You told me to stop. You told me if she had not forgiven me by now, she likely never would.” His gaze lifted, bleak and raw. “So there. You were right.”
Gideon normally enjoyed being right. Not about this.
“Dash—”
“No.” Dash waved one hand, dismissing comfort before it could be offered. “Do not. I have had enough pity from my sister to last a lifetime.”
At the mention of Beatrice, Gideon’s chest tightened.
“She cares about you.” It was the safest thing to say.
“Yes, well. With that over, she’s taken leave of London. I’ll follow, of course. I must admit, I’d thought she’d taken a shine to it, but seeing her enthusiasm for home I’m just not sure Mayfair Society suits either of us.”
Gideon went still. “She’s left?”
“Edwards took her, along with some of the staff. She left this morning.”
“To Dasborough Park?”
“Home. Yes.”
Beatrice had left London.
Gideon stared at the carpet without seeing it.
Gone.
Relief should have been the whole of it.
At Dasborough Park, she would be away from the handful of gentlemen who resented her here, but perhaps most importantly, that villain from her past. She would be safer there.
That was what he wanted. Was it not?
But beneath the relief came an unexpected stab of loss. No scowls across ballrooms. No flash of blue eyes. No possibility—however remote—that he might find some way to repair what he had broken between them.
She had left.
And if ever there had been a moment to regret his old vow against spirits, this was it.
Across from him, Dash looked about as well as a half-drowned rat, slumped in a chair as though his body were too heavy to support itself.
Gideon knew Dash well enough to recognize the signs.
If left alone, Dash would return to Beckman House, shut himself in his study, and continue drinking himself into the grave he’d been digging.
No.
Gideon had failed enough people already.
He tugged the bell-pull.
Dash looked up with bleary suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Saving you from yourself,” Gideon said. “Badly, no doubt, but one does what one can.”
“I do not require saving.”
“Plainly.”
Burke appeared, and when Gideon ordered the carriage brought round, Dash didn’t argue.
An hour later, Gideon found himself seated at a gaming table in a house he would have normally avoided.
And as he glanced over his cards, he caught a glimpse of Dash, sinking lower and lower into a red velvet chaise between two pretty women who meant nothing to him.
It was an ugly sort of cure, perhaps. Crude.
Desperate. But Gideon hoped—God help him—that if Dash remembered there was a world beyond Mrs. Bloomington, something in him might stir.
Instead, Dash stared through the women as though they were ghosts.
Blast and damn. Gideon understood the feeling.
Gideon lifted his tea and caught the scent of brandy in the steam.
Paused. Then drank anyway.
It burned.
He closed his eyes, savoring the feeling, one he’d not experienced in over a decade.
Beatrice was no longer in London.
She hadn’t thought to tell him goodbye.
From there, the evening declined in predictable fashion. Dash drank too much, muttered in French, and proved immune to every distraction Gideon had hoped might jolt him out of his misery. By the time Longstaffe arrived, Dash could hardly stand, and it took both men to get him into the carriage.
But just before the coach drove away—
For one impossible second, Gideon thought he caught a glimpse of… Sebastian.
An older version. Not clearly. Not truly.
Only the turn of a head near the doorway, a flash of that familiar profile.
Gideon went cold. Then the stranger disappeared.
Of course he must have been mistaken.
Sebastian Hartwell had been dead for years.
Gideon looked toward Dash, half-conscious now and murmuring Mrs. Bloomington’s name as though it were a prayer.
Beatrice gone.
Dash breaking.
Sebastian dead.
And Gideon, drunk with spirits for the first time since that night by the cliffs… pretending he knew how to protect anyone.