“Really? Hiding under an enemy’s bed is careful?”
“I did not get caught. And I can share information you cannot, Beau. Impressions, observations, conclusions. I can also bring information about what the women know. As opposed to you, I have access to women when we are separated from our menfolk. I can tell you, a lot goes on in salons and retiring rooms.”
“You don’t belong in this investigation, Pip,” he insisted, and suddenly Pip knew they were coming to the crux of the problem.
“I do, and you know it, Beau.”
He was on his feet. “I won’t put you in a position where you might be hurt!”
“It isn’t your decision, my dear.”
Suddenly, he looked frantic. “It damn well is! And I won’t have you mixed up in this. I won’t have you end up like…”
He abruptly cut himself off, his face suddenly red, his knuckles white around his glass.
And Pip knew she could no longer be polite. “Theo? You think that my helping you would be the same as sending me to war?”
Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. This was not a conversation they should be having in front of witnesses. It belonged between them. But she needed Beau to understand that he wasn’t responsible for every wrong in the world. But neither was she. So, she followed him to her feet to see the stark horror in his eyes.
“That wasn’t your choice to make either,” she said very quietly.
He didn’t answer. He just glared at her. Tears crowded the back of Pip’s throat to think of her beloved Beau’s grief, exacerbated by the venom from his aunt and uncle. Discounted by Theo, who had only seen what he was missing.
“He would have gone anyway,” she said, holding onto her glass like her last lifeline to keep her from finally doing what she’d so badly wanted to and holding him. Knowing he would never let her. “You could not have stopped him, Beau. I couldn’t have stopped him. You gave him the best chance you could have.”
He jerked back as if she’d slapped him, his features tortured. “You want to get involved?” he snapped. “Fine.” He downed the rest of his drink and slammed it back down on the cabinet. “You talk to Drake. I’m going for a walk.”
And without another word, he slammed out of the room.
For a long moment Pip could only stand where she was, frozen in place. “Well,” she finally said, knowing her voice was choked with tears as she sank back down into her chair. “That went well.”
Drake set down his glass. “I should follow him.”
Pip considered Drake’s slight frown and shook her head. “No. He needs to walk it off for a bit. There is plenty of estate to stomp across.”
He offered a wry smile. “What if he should run across one of the house party guests? Won’t it look bad on his wedding day to be walking off a tantrum?”
Pip scowled. “You really believe this marriage could look worse? Unless he regales them with the tale of me underneath Perfect Pamela’s bed, I sincerely doubt anyone could think it more ludicrous.” Taking another sip of her brandy, she sighed. “No. Leave him be. He has always been one to walk off a problem.”
“You consider yourself a problem, do you?”
She did her best not to sigh. “I spoke of Theo. We do not speak of Theo. Ever. Even though he desperately needs to.”
“You know him pretty well.”
She used that eyebrow trick again. “I have known him since I was three.”
And loved him since I was twelve, she thought in some despair.
“So,” she said, settling back into the straight-back Sheraton chair as if she could make it more comfortable and giving her glasses another shove. “What is it you would like to know?”
* * *
Beau knew he’d overreacted.But the minute Pip brought up Theo he lost all reason and knew he couldn’t stay there. If he had, he was afraid he would have said something inexcusable. He would have vilified her for something that wasn’t her fault.
He knew damn well Theo would have gone no matter what. He’d known when he finally gave in and bought his brother his colors. He’d known when he saw that sweet, fierce pride in his brother’s eyes the first time he’d donned the scarlet of the Dragoons. He knew with the same awful despair he’d felt sending that brother he had watched over for eleven years into the carnage of war.
He knew it wasn’t her fault. He knew she mourned Theo as much as he did. But she was inextricably entangled in his guilt and regret and rage over Theo’s death. His brother lay somewhere in France, and the girl his brother had loved belonged to Beau.
