Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bea had not slept.She had tried.She had extinguished her candle, pulled her counterpane up to her chin, closed her eyes, and willed her mind to calm, but her body—traitorous, disloyal, maddening—still hummed with sensation.Her skin remembered the feel of Nicholas’s hands.Her throat remembered the drag of his breath.Her legs…well.Her legs had memories of their own, and all of them were entirely unsuitable for a wallflower with any interest in maintaining her virtue.
And she was not even certain shedidwish to maintain it anymore.
That was the most unsettling part.
Nicholas’s offer was nearly irresistible.And she was seriously considering making that choice.To go to him.To let him make her his.
By the time dawn light crept through her curtains, Bea had abandoned sleep entirely.She wrapped herself in a thick dressing gown, tied the belt too tightly, then paced her sitting room in increasingly agitated lines.
A footman delivered breakfast.She ignored it.
Her mother sent a note urging her to take a morning ride with her.Bea crumpled it.
Her father shouted something down the corridor about her being “ready for callers after luncheon.”Bea pretended not to hear.
She could not think of callers.She could barely think at all.She could only replay the night before, the flush of heat in the dark carriage, her own reckless hands, the hunger in Nicholas’s eyes when she pulled back, breathless, wanting him in a way she had never wanted anything.
And now?
Now she had precisely one option.Tell him.
Tell him she had caricatured him more savagely than any other MP, Whigs and Tories combined.Tell him she had mocked his speeches, lampooned his alliances, turned him into both a preening, corrupt peacock…and a sly fox.
Tell him she wasB.Adroit.
Bea pressed her palms over her face and groaned into them.
There was a soft knock at the door to her sitting room.She could not take a lecture from her parents.Not today.Not now.
She almost shouted, “Go away,” until she recognized the cadence—one rap, two quick taps.
Poppy.
“Oh, thank God,” Bea murmured.“Enter before I combust.”
Poppy flung open the door with all the subtlety she had never once possessed.She wore a morning gown—a buttery yellow muslin with her bright hair hastily pinned and likely to fall at any moment—and she marched across the room and came to stand directly in front of Bea.
“I saw the story in the paper this morning.I came as soon as I could,” Poppy declared, hands on hips.
Bea’s head snapped up.“What story?”
“The one about?—”
Another knock cut her off.
“That will be Georgie,” Poppy said with a definitive nod.
“Yes, it’s Georgie,” came a muffled voice through the door.“May I come in before someone sees me loitering like a woman whose reputation for trouble is entirelyearned?”
“Enter.”Bea sighed.
Georgie slipped inside, cheeks flushed, dark hair rebelliously swirling around her face.Her pink muslin gown was wrinkled from haste, as though she’d barely paused to breathe.She shut the door carefully behind her, crossed the room, and dropped onto Bea’s settee.
“All right,” Georgie said, rubbing her hands together.“Poppy is here, I am here, and you apparently had quite a night last night.Tell us everything.”
Bea blinked at them.“How did you?—?”
