Chapter Twelve
For one heartbeat—two—Nicholas waited.
He was prepared for the slap.Half expected it.
Not because she was hysterical—Beatrix Winslow would sooner die than be accused of hysteria—but because she was fire.All flint and spark and blistering wit, and not for the first time, he had just laid a match directly beside the fuse.
But she didn’t slap him.
She didn’t flinch.She didn’t gasp.She didn’t retreat like a maiden whose sensibilities had been offended.
No…she fixed him with a slow, assessing stare.A warrior’s stare.A tactician’s.It sent a curl of heat through his blood.
“If I told my father what you just said,” she replied at last, cool as winter glass, “he’d never speak to you again.”
Nicholas kept every line of his face smooth.“Would he?Or would he decide you were embellishing?”
Her eyes narrowed at that.
She looked him up and down with deliberate irritation, which amused him far more than it should have.
“Is threatening to accuse me of exaggeration your idea of seduction?”she demanded.
“No,” he said calmly.“But I’m not worried.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m entirely certain you won’t tell your father what I said.”
Her chin lifted, proud and defiant.“How can you be so sure?”
Because you’re not repelled, he thought.Because your pulse just leapt.Because you’re fighting your own curiosity harder than you’re fighting me.
He didn’t say that, of course.Instead, he stepped closer.Just enough to test her.Not touching.Not yet.A whisper of distance, barely there, yet unmistakable.
He saw the way her breath hitched.Saw the faint tremor at her throat.Saw the way she didnotretreat.
“Because,” he murmured, “you’re not a telltale.”
She blinked.And then she laughed.
A real laugh.Warm, bright, unguarded.Honest in a way Society would never coax from her.
He let himself enjoy it.Just for a moment.
“No,” she said, recovering with that wicked spark in her eye that he was beginning to crave.“No, I’m not.”
Nicholas allowed himself a small smile.Not triumphant—he didn’t dare that yet, not with her—but appreciative.Admiring.Because God, she was magnificent when she laughed instead of slicing him apart.
“And,” he added, his voice dipping lower, smoother, “because you can handle yourself.”
She sobered, though her eyes still gleamed.“You think I wouldn’t tell my father when a man says something I don’t like?”
“I think,” he replied, “you’re perfectly capable of deciding when it’s worth telling.And when it’s not.”
Truth.Absolute truth.He’d known it for years.He’d watched her—quietly, from the edges of rooms, the backs of ballrooms, the shadowed corners where one could observe without being observed in turn.
And it struck him again with sudden clarity.She had no idea how well he knew her.
