Fletcher caught it and nodded quickly.“Of course, my lord.”His mouth twitched.“I’ve no wish to cross the Duke of Winston.Or you, for that matter.”
“See that you don’t,” Nicholas said.
Fletcher bowed.“Good day to you, Lord Vanover.”
When the door closed behind the Runner, Nicholas remained seated for a long, motionless moment, the folded vellum a small, damning weight in his hand.
Bea.
A hundred images layered themselves in his mind: her in his bed a short while ago, golden hair spread over his pillow, eyes dark and trusting; her at Lord Chelmsford’s table, chin lifted, eyes blazing as she refused to be cowed by Hargrave; her in countless ballrooms, cool and aloof, refusing to dance with him.
Her ink, slicing through speeches, exposing hypocrisies, turning his allies and friends into grotesque caricatures, along with himself.
He had known, somewhere deep down where instinct lived, that she was formidable.
He had not realized how fully she was loaded and aimed at the world he inhabited.
He set the vellum down on the desk and smoothed a palm over it once.
Then he stood.
There would be time to think later.To interrogate his own reaction…to the lie, to the truth, to the fact that he had just taken to bed the very mind that had mercilessly dissected his public self.
Right now, there was only one thing that mattered.
She was upstairs.In his bed.Waiting.
And she would know he knew the truth.
He left the study without looking back.He took the stairs two at a time.
His body hummed with a fury he didn’t quite know where to direct.At her for lying.At himself for not seeing it sooner.At the world for constructing a system in which the only way a woman like Bea could wield a pen like that was from behind a mask.
He remembered her voice in the drawing room:I wanted you to know me.And later:I feel safe with you.
He reached the landing and turned down the corridor, heart pounding harder with every step.He didn’t know precisely what he would say when he saw her, whether the first words out of his mouth would be,Why didn’t you tell me?orHow in God’s name did you think you could keep this from me?or—fool that he was—How long have you been this brilliant?
He only knew he had to see her face.
He reached his bedchamber door.His hand closed on the handle, twisted.The door swung inward.
The bed was empty.
The sheets—still rumpled, still bearing the imprint of their time together—were cooling.The indentation where her body had lain was flattening slowly, inexorably, as if she had never been there at all.
Nicholas stood on the threshold, staring.
His gaze tracked around the room—the chair by the window, empty; the hearth, quiet; no flash of blond hair tucked in a corner; no telltale swirl of skirts.
“Bea?”he called, even though he knew there would be no answer.
He took a few steps into the room, as if she might materialize if he got closer.
On the floor by the bed lay a small ribbon, bright green, torn from her hair at some point.He bent and picked it up, fingers closing around the scrap of silk.
Gone.
She had dressed herself—somehow, quietly—and slipped out while he was downstairs talking to the man who had just sold him her secret.
