Hadn’t she been living holed up in her house these last two weeks like a devastated woman? She hadn’t accepted a single society invitation or attended a single horse race. She could hardly compel herself to roll out of bed in the morning, in fact.
But love… Love was giving and receiving—allowingoneself to receive it. And the only way one could receive it was to open oneself and risk devastation.
Fear and shame.
Those two emotions had been guiding every step of her life since she could remember, and her one attempt to break free as a debutante had failed.
But hadn’t Dev offered her a different path to tread and possibly share?
Her gaze sharpened into the present and her brother across from her. “Magic.”
His head cocked, and he watched her from the same distance one might observe a bedlamite. “Yeah?”
“Sometimes magic is real.”
“Only because it’s you saying it, Lady Bea, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Oh, you’ll experience it for yourself someday, Blaze. You’ll see.” Her teacup and saucer clattered onto the tabletop as she stood in a sudden swish of muslin skirts. “I must go.”
Blaze clearly felt no such urgency as he settled back into the settee. The blasted man even balanced an ankle on the opposing thigh. “Where are you off to, sister?”
“Mivart’s.”
“He’s not there.”
Her throat constricted. “Has he run off with—” The sentence refused to finish itself.
“He gave up the suite, is all.”
Ah…She could breathe again. “He’s in Primrose Park, then?”
“I reckon he’s nearly made it to Dover by now.”
“Dover?”
“Accompanying a shipment of steam engines to Paris, I’ve heard.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have sources.” He sucked his teeth, nonchalant. “I keep an eye on anything related to my sister.”
A tiny roar of frustration escaped Beatrix. Younger brothers were decidedly annoying. “I must hire a coach.”
“You can use mine,” he said. “It needs testing on the open road.”
A possibility occurred to her… “Did you come here knowing I would be in need of it?”
He snorted, but didn’t deny it.
She wasn’t about to let him off easily. Fair play and all that. “Does anyone know how sweet you are?”
He exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “We’ll keep that sort of language amongst ourselves.”
She’d beaten about the bush long enough… “Do yoursourcesknow if the Countess of Bridgewater is with Dev?”
“Would it stop you if she were?”
And she knew… “No.”
