“I survived,” he corrected with a sad smile. “There is a difference.”
Her breath hitched.
Edward stared into the fire as though it held all the answers. “I did everything that was expected of me. Signed every paper, attended every meeting, pretended I had all the certainty of a man twice my age. But the truth is…” His voice dropped. “I hid the rest. The fear. The inadequacy. The weight of it all buried under the only thing I knew how to use.”
Beatrice’s fingers tightened around her teacup. “Your charm,” she breathed.
Edward looked up, startled. He looked boyish for a fleeting second. And then, with a bleak smile, he said. “Yes. That.”
Beatrice’s heart twisted. She had seen his charm a thousand times, his easy confidence, the quick banter, the disarming smile that made half of London adore him. But this… this was the scaffolding beneath all of it. Now she saw past it.
He looked down at his hands as though seeing them for the first time.
“I hid them under… what everyone expected of me,” he said. “A rake. A charmer. A man who laughed too loudly and lived too carelessly. If people believed I didn’t take life seriously, then they couldn’t see how close I felt to failing.”
Her heart clenched. She had known men like Edward. Or thought she had. But this…
This was something else entirely. She had misjudged him—no,misunderstoodhim. All those years of assuming his carelessness was deliberate, effortless, when in truth it had been armor.
“Edward—” she began.
He turned to look at her. And she saw it—truly saw the tiredness beneath the charm, the old hurt beneath the arrogance, the boy who had become a duke before he had learned how to be anything else.
Something dawned on her, aching and undeniable.
“You don’t have to bury anything with me,” she whispered.
He stared at her as if the words had knocked the air out of his lungs.
For a moment, neither spoke. The fire popped gently, and a log shifted.
Beatrice felt the warmth of the room settle into her bones, but another warmth sparked between them—something quiet and impossibly new.
She held his gaze. He held hers. And for the first time, the charm disappeared completely, leaving something real in its place.
His voice, when it finally came, was quiet. “Then perhaps it is my turn to ask you something.”
She blinked. “Me?”
“Yes.” He sat back, watching her with a strange, searching calm. “You know nearly everything about my… missteps. My history. My foolishness.” His eyes softened. “Yet I know very little about yours.”
Beatrice’s stomach fluttered. “I… don’t have missteps.”
He arched an eyebrow. “No? Not even one?”
She flushed. “Not the kind you mean.”
“Then tell me this.” He tilted his head slightly. “Why did you become Miss Verity?”
Her breath stuttered. Of all the questions she had expected, of all the hidden fears she had thought he might reveal, she hadn’t imagined he would turn his attention to her secrets.
She looked down at her hands, picking at a loose thread on the hem of her shawl. “That is… difficult to answer.”
“I imagine most truths are,” he murmured.
Beatrice hesitated, feeling a knot tighten in her chest. The truth of Miss Verity wasn’t exactly painful, but it was private. Born from the shadows of rooms where men refused to listen, and long dinners where she had bitten her tongue until it bled so as not to embarrass her family.
She lifted her gaze, choosing her words carefully. “I never meant to be anyone at all,” she said softly. “Least of all a writer.”
