Through the evening, he’d kept half an eye on Beatrix—and now was no different. In truth, he’d expected her to bolt to her rooms after the meal. Sometimes, he could forget she was made of sterner stuff.
They needed to talk.
He would’ve thought they had all the time in the world for a private moment or two.
But the opposite held true.
A spare or idle minute wasn’t to be found anywhere.
And they most definitely needed to talk.
Thesomething morethey’d been indulging in… Well, the proper thing would be to say it needed to stop.
But the problem was he wasn’t sure he possessed the strength to say it.
Echoes of her feel…her touch…yet resonated through him.
He glanced toward the spot beside the mantle where he’d last seen her, and though he found her there, someone had joined her.
Imogen.
Not only that, but the two women were talking.
He couldn’t say he exactly felt good about it.
In fact, a feeling of dread stirred and began crawling through him.
Somehow, he dragged his gaze away and kept to his role of benevolent host, seeing to table arrangements and pausing for small talk. But all the while Beatrix and Imogen remained at the periphery of his vision—his true focal point.
He didn’t like comparing them, for they were as opposite from one another as the north pole from the south.
Yet he found himself doing so.
The physical differences between them were, of course, apparent. Imogen possessed the sort of overblown beauty that flashed and sparkled and commanded attention. While Beatrix’s beauty was quieter, more delicate. It made no demands on one’s attention, but once captured, one wasn’t quick to look away.
She was lovely.
But these were the surfaces of the two women and, while appealing, weren’t as interesting as the essences of who theywerebelow.
He’d known Imogen for so long, he found it difficult to articulate who she was. Simply, he’d always known her—so he knew her.
As for Beatrix, surprisingly, he felt the same way.
As if he knew her down to the marrow of her bones.
For over a decade, he’d been sure no woman compared to Imogen. But as Beatrix stood beside her, a new possibility occurred to him.
Perhaps no one compared toher.
Thiswas what unsettled the ground beneath his feet.
Since he’d been able to want anything, he’d wanted Imogen.
And the truth of it was, he felt close to making her his.
It was in the way she’d been interacting with him—the playful flash of the eye here and there—and speaking to him—Dev—and the fact that her marriage was clearly an unhappy one.
And yet another fact.
