A beat of silence.
Then one of the younger MPs—Lord Ashby, Bea thought—let out a short laugh.“Well said.”
Another voice chimed in, “Hear, hear.”
Langford’s lips compressed into a tight line.“This is absurd.”
“No,” Bea said softly, and when she spoke, she realized she was no longer shaking.“This is debate.And despite my status as a female, I do indeed have opinions.”
Langford looked as though he might explode.Instead, he snapped a stiff bow and stalked away.
The room exhaled.
Bea stared after him, adrenaline blazing in her veins, half expecting someone to scold her for speaking too loudly.For stepping out of line.For daring.
No one did.
Nicholas turned toward her, and for the first time since she’d known him, his expression in a room filled with Tories wasn’t teasing.It wasn’t smug.
It was…quietly approving.
“You’re perfectly right,” he said.
Bea’s throat tightened in a ridiculous, unexpected way.
Because she had spoken before—in private, in secret, in ink.
But she had never spoken aloud like this, in a room that mattered.
And she had never expected Nicholas, of all people, to agree with her.
Bea drew a breath, forcing herself to recover.“I wasn’t prepared.”
“I know.My apologies.I wanted them to hear you.”
Bea’s heart gave an absurd little lurch.
She frowned at him, searching his face for the trick.The strategy.The angle.
There wasn’t one.
Not that she could see.
Nicholas had just used his influence—his name, his place in that room—to give her the one thing she had never been handed by a man like him.
A platform.
Bea swallowed.“Why?”
Nicholas didn’t answer right away.His gaze drifted over the room—over the men who were now speaking a bit more carefully, the women who were suddenly watching her with additional interest.
Then he looked back at Bea.
“Because I’m tired,” he said quietly, “of watching the cleverest person in the room be treated like furniture.”
Bea’s breath caught.She stared at him, abruptly disarmed.Not because he was handsome.Not because he had kissed her.
But because he had seen her.
