Chapter Eleven
“You are anutter cad,” Bonham accused Gideon the next morning when he walked into his home on Duchess Square, which reeked of paint fumes. Not that Gideon minded the pungent scent, for it meant the painters were diligently turning this house into Berry’s vision of his sanctuary. “Why did you not tell her that you already knew how to dance?”
Gideon rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Because I’ve only ever danced with Miss Feswick, and that cannot count at all. Why should I not practice with someone I might actually partner at a ball?”
“You could have told her you’d taken lessons.”
“It did not seem relevant at the time.”
Bonham shook his head and laughed. “You hound. You want her melting in your arms.”
“So what if I do? And you are not to tell her.”
“Me? Tell her?” Bonham laughed again. “I want in on this action, too. It will take less than ten minutes before Gwendolyn and Suzanna scurry over to watch you learn how to dance. I’m going to be there, looking my pathetic best and wishing someone would teach me, too.”
“So, you are going to pretend you have never taken lessons, either?”
Bonham winked at him. “You catch on quick for a dumb orphan. Do you think Suzanna will mind teaching me?”
Gideon arched an eyebrow and grinned. “Have you gone soft for Suzanna?”
To his surprise, his usually irreverent, smart-mouthed friend turned serious. “What are we doing, Gideon? I mean, what good does it do us to fall in love with ladies who are so far above our station, we are more likely to catch a star in the heavens than ever catch them?”
“I know.”
“These ladies are not the sort one claims for a quick tumble on a warm summer night. They are for marriage. Do you think you could be faithful forever?”
“With Berry?” Gideon groaned. “Yes, because she makes it so easy to love her and want to be with her. But how could it ever work between us? I would gain everything, and she would lose everything married to an oaf like me. Her friends. Her social standing. Her respectability. All of her hard work for the orphanage would crumble as her donors abandoned her one by one.”
“I suppose it would be much the same for Suzanna,” Bonham said. “I would not like to see her cast out of her social circle because of me. But it is nice to dream that all might work out, isn’t it?”
“So long as we remember it is just a dream.”
Bonham nodded. “These ladies on Duchess Square are gems, aren’t they? Notourgems, however. Even if Berry and Suzanna felt about us the way we are coming to feel about them, how long before they realize their mistake and grow to resent us?”
“Enough of this maudlin conversation, Bonham. It is just a dance lesson. Let’s not make anything more of it.” Gideon had strolled in with good cheer and now felt quite upended, but he shook out of it because there were more important things to think about than love or marriage. “We can still enjoy thesemoments, so long as we remember to walk away afterward. If we view this dance instruction as nothing, then so will they.”
Bonham slapped him on the back. “Right. We can do this. How can two virgins possibly best us?”
But this was the danger, Gideon knew. Berry’s innocence. Same for Suzanna with regard to Bonham.
It was so obvious neither of them had ever had a romantic encounter with a man.
And he and Bonham were two idiot males exhibiting every possessive, arrogant, primal behavior known to man. They may act like gentlemen on the outside, but inwardly they were caged apes desperate to break free.
And mate with their chosen female.
All Berry had to do was smile and the caged ape inside of him went wild.
Mine.
I want her.
I want to create little wild apes with her.
Well, wanting her and having her were not the same thing.
“Oh, hell.”
