Bea blinked slowly.“I dislike fools.”
“So do I.”His voice dropped a fraction.“But this fool was skewered in print before the city finished its breakfast.Seems…fast, doesn’t it?”
Bea’s heart hammered once—hard enough to hurt.She kept her expression serenely blank.“Not particularly.London moves quickly.”
Nicholas’s gaze slid to her mouth, then back to her eyes.“It does,” he agreed.“Especially when someone helps it along.”
Bea held his gaze, refusing to blink first.“Are you accusing me of something, my lord?”
Nicholas’s smile returned—lazy, wicked, and entirely unhelpful.“Oh, I don’t know yet.But you have a terrible habit, my lady.”He leaned in just enough that she could smell him—clean, warm, dangerous—his voice turning velvet-smooth.“…of looking guilty when you’re delighted.”
Bea’s breath caught.
She recovered quickly, narrowing her eyes.“You are imagining things.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
She turned back to the window with a snap, heart racing, conveying as much loftiness as she could manage, but Bea’s stomach did an unhelpful little flip.
She kept her eyes on the window, on the passing blur of London, as if she could stare her way out of trouble.But she could feel him beside her—watching, waiting—like a man who had all the time in the world.
And Bea, for the first time, realized something with a jolt of cold clarity.
If Nicholas truly began to suspect she was connected to B.Adroit… He would not let it go.He would come closer.He would keep coming.Until either she slipped?—
Or she decided to stop running.
