Nicholas’s brows lifted.“A bucket?”
“For the nonsense,” she said.“It’s spilling everywhere.”
Nicholas’s mouth twitched.“I’m afraid a bucket wouldn’t be nearly big enough.You’d need the whole Thames.”
Bea bit back the laugh that threatened to escape her.Curse him.Curse him for being…this.Clever, and witty, and…supportive.
Langford’s voice rose again.“The reform bill is a fever.Once you give them a vote, they will demand everything.They will demand land.They will demand titles.They will demand?—”
“They will demand to be treated as citizens,” Bea said, too softly to be heard by anyone but Nicholas.
She hadn’t meant to speak aloud.
Nicholas glanced at her.“Do you truly believe that?”
Bea lifted her chin.“I believe men who work twelve hours a day and still cannot feed their children are not the ones threatening the stability of the country.”
Nicholas’s gaze held hers, intent.“And who is?”
Bea’s breath caught at the question—not because it was difficult, but because no man ever asked her such things as if the answer mattered.
“Men like him,” she said, nodding toward Langford.“Men who speak of people as if they are a nuisance rather than the nation itself.”
Nicholas was quiet for a moment.
Then he did something Bea did not expect.
He guided her forward.
Not by pulling—Nicholas never pulled.He simply placed his hand at the small of her back, light, steady, and moved as if the room would part for them.
And it did.
The men turned.The women looked up.Conversations shifted, the way the sea shifts when something large swims beneath it.
Nicholas Archer, Marquess of Vanover, was taking the Duke of Winston’s daughter directly toward the center of the salon.
Bea’s pulse skittered.“Nicholas?—”
“If you intend to stab someone, do it where witnesses can appreciate it,” he murmured, giving her a wink.
She huffed a laugh.“I will not stab anyone.”
His voice dropped.“A pity.I daresay it would enliven Hillary’s afternoon.”
Bea shot him a look, but she couldn’t quite summon genuine indignation because her nerves were too alive.Because the room was watching.Because she had never beeninvitedinto the middle of such a space.
Nicholas stopped a polite distance from Langford and waited until a pause opened in the man’s monologue—then stepped neatly into it.
“Sir Edwin,” Nicholas said, smooth as silk, “you make it sound as though the English people are a pack of hounds waiting to be loosed.”
Langford’s eyes narrowed, recognition dawning.“Vanover.”
Nicholas dipped his head, all manners.“If you’ll forgive me, I should like to test your argument.”
“Oh?”Langford’s gaze flicked to Bea and dismissed her instantly, as though she were a decorative vase.“And how do you propose to do that?”
Nicholas turned slightly—enough to include Bea.Enough to make it impossible to pretend she was not there.
