Chapter Nineteen
Nicholas Archer had always prided himself on waking with a clear head.This morning, his head was perfectly clear.
It was his thoughts that were a problem.
They arrived one after another as he sat at his desk with a cup of coffee cooling at his elbow, the window cracked just enough to let in the spring air, and the pale light of London slanting across the polished wood.
He told himself he was thinking about Parliament.
He told himself he was thinking about Winston’s demands, his father’s expectations, the reform bill vote…only days away, the ridiculous dance of alliances that governed the entire country.
He told himself a great many things.
And yet the first image that surfaced—uninvited, vivid—was Lady Beatrix Winslow standing in Lord Hillary’s salon with her chin tipped up and her eyes bright with that same dangerous fire she carried like a concealed blade.
Notinthe room.
In the center of it.
Nicholas took a sip of coffee.
It had been a risk.He’d known that the moment he’d guided her forward, the moment he’d stepped into Langford’s sermon with a smile and offered Bea to the room as if she belonged there.
Because she did.
But men like Langford did not care about what was true.They cared about what was permitted.And what was permitted, in their minds, was simple: women listened.Men spoke.Votes were counted by people with the appropriate anatomy.
And yet Bea had spoken regardless.
She’d spoken without hedging, without fluttering her lashes to soften her words, without doing that tiresome female thing where they pretended their opinions were merely decorative.
She had been bold, and sharp, and wholly, spectacularly unmanageable.
It had pleased Nicholas more than it should have.
He set his cup down with unnecessary precision and tried, for the third time, to read the memorandum on his desk.
The words blurred into meaninglessness.
Because whenever he saw ink on paper, his mind supplied a different image.
Bea’s mouth.
And what it might taste like the next time she decided—very nobly, very stubbornly—to act as though kissing him was an insult she was forced to endure.
He leaned back in his chair, letting the leather creak.
It had been a peculiar outing.
He hadn’t expected her to enjoy the salon, for one thing.Bea disliked being managed with the passion of a woman who had spent her whole life being managed.
And yet—there had been a moment, after Langford stalked off, when Bea’s eyes had flashed and her breath had caught, and the satisfaction on her face had been so bright it was…beautiful.
Nicholas had watched her then and thought, quite simply,There.
Thatwas what she was meant for.Not meek smiles in drawing rooms.Not polite obedience at the end of a duke’s leash.But that fearless, furious truth.
He had wanted the room to hear her.He had wanted her to feel what it was like to be taken seriously.And perhaps—if he was being honest—he had wanted to be the man who gave her that.
