“I knew it wouldn’t harm me.”
The certainty with which she spoke something so wholly unreasonable had him gently asking, “Bea, did you hit your head?”
“Of course not,” she said with a light laugh. “Don’t you see the weather has been bringing us together from the beginning?”
He supposed her reasoning held a sort of logic.
Uncertainty flickered within her eyes. “Was I wrong to come?”
In an instant, she appeared so vulnerable and small, her composure suddenly shaky. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and, in fact, took a step to do precisely that when she held up a hand. “I think it’s best if we keep our distance for the moment.”
She did have a point. They tended to let instinct, rather than intellect, guide them when they were close. Still, it was with great difficulty that he crossed his arms over his chest and propped a shoulder against the cramped stretch of cabin wall.
“Our arrangement,” she began. “It really was a bit of foolishness, wasn’t it?”
Dev’s brow creased. He wasn’t sure he liked the direction she was taking this conversation. Still, honesty would be the only way through. “Poorly motivated on my end,” he admitted.
Imogen had been the poor motivator, to say the least. That knowledge shone in Beatrix’s eyes.
“But,” he continued, because he had to, “I don’t regret it.”
“Oh, neither do I.” She had yet more to say. “But how could I when it was the best thing that ever happened to me?”
Again, he had to suppress the urge to close the distance between them. The words Beatrix was speaking, they weren’t simply honest words.
They were brave words.
And he needed to let her brave them.
“You, Dev,” she continued. “Youwere the best thing that ever happened to me.” She set pencil and journal aside, placing them carefully on a table, every movement deliberate as she came to her feet, her hands clutched before her. “In my life, good things never justhappenedto me. Any good, I made happen. Then you came charging into my life.”
“I am still very sorry about running you down with my horse.”
A smile teetered about her mouth. “I’m not. The twisted ankle was worth it.”
Dev groaned. He truly was going to have to spend a lifetime proving to this woman that one didn’t have to suffer the bad for the good to happen.
But one step at a time.
They had to get through this conversation first.
“Then I kept finding excuses to be near you—sneaking into your hotel suite…agreeing to play the role of your fiancée. I told myself it was about the money, but really it was something else.”
“It was?”
“Well, it was somewhat about the money, but it was also what I sensed in you. Contrary to the Lord Devil society christened you, you are good, Dev. I’d never had anygoodin my life, not beyond my friendship with Artemis. And I couldn’t keep away from you. So, I told myself every lie, even when the truth stared me in the face.Especiallywhen the truth stared me in the face.”
“What truth is that, Bea?”
“You said to me that perhaps what we’ve always wanted isn’t what we want now.”
“Yes?”
“But I couldn’t hear what it was you were actually saying.”
He waited, his heart a solid lump in his throat.
“You don’t love the Countess of Bridgewater.”
