“Nah?”
“Nah,” he said, definite. “You see, your Lord Devil’s eyes weren’t lighting up when that countess chit entered a room.”
The breath froze in Beatrix’s chest.
“Now, whenyouentered a room…” He let the sentence hang in the air for dramatic effect. “That was different.”
“It was?”
“When you entered a room, Lady Bea, there was no one but you.”
She shook her head, firm. “It was all for show.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“You can’t see it, can you?”
“See what?” she asked, suspicious. This feeling—heart racing…lungs struggling for breath—it was as if panic were chasing her.
Concern shone within Blaze’s eyes. “You can’t see when someone loves you.”
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
“My youth wasn’t a perfect one.” He’d angled forward and made his voice low and soothing.Sympathetic.That was her brother in this moment. “In fact, I was a right handful—still am. But I always knew one thing for certain. My grandad and my ma love me without conditions. But you, Lady Bea, who loved you more than they loved themselves? Who showed you that love?”
A single name wanted to push itself to the front of her mind.
Impossible.
Dev loved another.
“The man is madly in love with you.”
Instinctively, she opened her mouth to refute every word.
Then she closed it, as several facts flooded in at once. First, Blaze hadn’t needed to speak those words. Second, it was plain he believed them. And third, as an outside observer, he saw everything from a different angle. He didn’t have her past clouding his view.
If she were to view her relationship with Dev from that angle of sight, what would she see?
A single, surprising word sprang into her mind.
Magic.
She’d conveniently convinced herself it didn’t exist. That Dev and the spell he wove were fantasy—and all fantasies must end. The money…the servants…the pantry filled with food…the dresses… She’d been able to dismiss them as part of the superficialities of their arrangement and remain protectedinside her cocoon of emotional safety, the barren landscape that it was.
Yet, their arrangement was over, and here those material things remained—and now she understood why. They had never been about the image they presented to the world. They demonstrated Dev’s caring…his sweetness…his…
Love.
With those things, he’d given love in the only way she’d been able to receive it—through the terms and boundaries of their arrangement.
For here was the entire, unassailable truth—she’d been too afraid to trust in Dev’s magic.
She’d known its loss would devastate her.
And she’d been correct.
