“You’ve earned some happiness in your life, Lady Bea.”
“You can call me Beatrix. Or Bea, I suppose.”
His mouth curved into a slow grin. “Nah, Lady Bea suits you. But what about the other part?”
“What other part?”
“The happiness part.” He had the look of a man curling his adversary around his little finger. “Don’t you think you deserve it?”
“I… I…” The question absolutely flummoxed her. “I’ve never thought about happiness.”
“Well, from where I’m sitting, you’re the only one standing between you and it.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.”
Of a sudden, the meaning of his words struck Beatrix… “Are you referring to my broken engagement?”
“Indeed, as you nobs like to say.”
Beatrix drew herself squarely upright. “I believe you’re laboring under a misapprehension about myself and Dev—Mr. Deverill.”
It felt strangely distancing to call himMr. Deverill.
But she’d managed it—and that was the important thing.
Blaze’s eyebrows lifted, and it occurred to Beatrix that he might be having fun with her. “Oh?” he said, all innocence. “And what misapprehension might that be?”
“We were never truly engaged to marry.”
If only it were that simple.
Blaze’s brow formed a thunderous furrow. “Do I need to challenge the man to a duel?”
Beatrix resisted a sudden bent toward laughter. It might veer too close to the hysterical. “We had an arrangement.”
Blaze didn’t relent. “The question stands.”
He meant it.
That was the thing.
Surprisingly, it warmed her.
It was a threat of the ultimate violence and could in no way be encouraged, but the gesture was…sweet—and perhaps brotherly.
Over the course of their conversation, a feeling had tiptoed into her mind. Now, it made itself known.
She liked Blaze.
Further, she wanted a relationship with him, even when he was being slightly annoying—like now.
He was her brother, and they just might need each other.
“Mr. Deverill and I had an arrangement,” she said, quelling. “That’s the extent of it. It was all mutually beneficial.”
Blaze waggled his eyebrows. “It’s always better when it’s mutually beneficial, eh?”
