Chapter Twenty
The note from May came in the morning, tucked inside a note from Liam, asking Preston to come over as soon as possible. Beatrice had cancelled yet another outing with she and Evie—the third one since the Bristow ball. It was confirmation something was off. The cancelled outings weren’t the only sign. The usually independent Beatrice had become considerably more attached to him of late, never leaving his side at evening events and refusing to leave the Worth town house without him.
In and of themselves, these behaviours were nothing terribly troubling if this was a normal engagement. An affianced man was expected to dance attendance on his betrothed. But normal was not a term he’d use for his engagement with Beatrice, which meant there was some sorting to do. He chose to walk to Liam’s, wanting the crisp morning air and the exercise to channel his thoughts.
Bea’s behaviour was the opposite of what he’d expected at this point, particularly after her reaction to the special licence. As the supposed engagement ball neared, he’d anticipated a withdrawal from her, a protest of sorts that he must keep his word and break the engagement. But just the opposite had happened. Beatrice had drawn closer to him, a clear indicator that there was something more at play. The question was what? What motivated this closeness? Perhaps a growing emotional tie or something else?
Not that he minded more of Beatrice’s company. He enjoyed the walks in the park with her, pushing Matthew in the pram, a task Beatrice insisted on performing even though there were maids aplenty willing to do it. He enjoyed the evenings of dancing and escorting her to musicales and academic lectures, although they posed enormous temptation. Enjoyed was far too tame of a word to apply. He coveted these moments even as they left him torn between Greece and Beatrice. These moments were a glimpse of what life would be like for them together.
Did she see it too? Did it tempt her as much as him? Could that be the reason she wanted to keep him close? They’d not discussed or repeated their night at the White Horse. The practicalities of doing so were far too complicated under his parents’ roof and he refused to lower himself to Alton’s level with furtive meetings and hasty couplings in ballroom alcoves, even if that choice left him aching at the end of the night.
The wanting worried him. What happened when he had to move on without Beatrice? Without Matthew? He’d have his answer too soon. Mid-June loomed on the calendar—Alton’s deadline with the madam. Sometimes Preston thought the waiting was killing him as much as the wanting. The wanting wasn’t eager for this to be over. Alton’s presence kept Beatrice beside him. But the waiting was eager for resolution. When would Alton act?
His sources had caught wind of Alton’s presence, although the rogue was keeping a low profile. He’d moved out of his rooms at the Albany and was at a cheap inn. To Preston’s knowledge, Alton had made no contact with the Penrose family or with Bea. But the man had to act soon, he hadn’t the funds or the time to wait much longer...
At Liam’s town house, he was shown into the breakfast room. Liam had already assembled a plate and was dining alone without May, a sure sign it was to be breakfast as usual. That meant good food and bad news. ‘Well?’ Preston began without preamble, taking only toast and coffee to start.
‘I have something to show you.’ Liam was all seriousness. He reached beside his chair and put a box on the table, removing the lid.
Preston froze. Bea’s tiara. The one she lost at the Bristow ball. ‘Where did you find it?’ Liam’s grimness suggested this wasn’t a simple case of the Bristow’s gardeners having found it and sent it over.
‘My man on the street heard rumour that Alton was in town and had paid part of his bill at Madam Rose’s.’
‘Part?’ Preston lifted an eyebrow. ‘This tiara is worth quite a bit. What sort of bill does he have at House of Flowers?’
‘A big one. One big enough to need a dowry to clear along with his other debts.’ Liam passed the tiara to him. Preston inspected the head piece, sensing more bad news was forthcoming. ‘What else did you learn?’
‘He told the madam the tiara was from his fiancée, Beatrice Penrose.’
Bad news indeed. Preston winced. He didn’t want Beatrice’s named bandied about in a brothel no matter how prestigious. It was another indication of the sort of man Alton was—a man who had no sense of respect for a decent woman’s honour.
Liam gave him a conspiratorial grin. ‘I might have spiked Alton’s guns just a bit. I told Madam Rose Beatrice Penrose was engaged to you and that it would be announced in two nights.’ His grin widened. ‘You should have seen her! She went red and screamed for her two henchmen. Alton won’t be able to pass off any more items there.’ He paused and chuckled. ‘Although I don’t know why she was so mad. She’s making good money on the tiara. She got Alton’s payment and I paid her double to redeem it.’
Preston ran a thumb over a rounded edge of the tiara, feeling the smoothness of the tiny diamonds in their settings as he contemplated the news. ‘You’ve flushed him out, then.’ He’d been wishing for action on the way over, but now that it was imminent, there was a certain tension, too, not just over what was to come, but how things had got to this point. ‘How do you suppose he got hold of the tiara to start with?’ Beatrice had said nothing to him and apparently there’d been something to say. His mind kept going back to one singular idea: why hadn’t she told him?
‘There’s really only three options, isn’t there?’ Liam knitted his brow. ‘He stole it from Worth House, which seems preposterous, or it was given to him voluntarily by Beatrice or...’ he paused before saying the last ‘...he took it from her by force.’
The last made the most sense although it was accompanied by an acute twinge of betrayal. ‘At the Bristow ball, when I went to get champagne,’ Preston said grimly. That evening had marked the onset of Bea’s reticence to be in public without him. The bastard had taken it from her, had accosted her. Preston remembered the awful clenching of his stomach when he couldn’t find her. But May had found her. May had come back and said everything was fine. Bea was just fixing her hair.
A little flare of anger surged. It took all of his control not to send for May and call his blasted sister to account for her damnable loyalty to Beatrice. He’d bet his grandfather’s ring his sister had known all along. ‘Why didn’t Beatrice tell me?’
Liam gave him a meaningful look over the rim of his coffee cup. ‘For the same reason May took a bullet for me. Beatrice wants to protect you.’
‘But I am supposed to be protecting her,’ Preston argued. What protection did he need? He’d faced far worse men than Alton.
‘Can’t you guess, you poor sod?’ Liam chuckled. ‘She’s in love with you, even if she won’t admit it to herself.’ That mitigated his anger, but not his disappointment. He might understand her reasons, but he didn’t accept them...
* * *
‘You should have told me.’
Beatrice eyed the box he’d placed on the low table between them with a healthy amount of scepticism. Whatever was bothering Preston today had something to do with what was in the box.
‘Go on, open it,’ Preston urged. They were alone together in the sitting room at the back of Worth House, a room she’d informally taken over where she could do her correspondence and play with Matthew. She lifted the lid, keeping her expression carefully neutral when she saw the tiara nestled inside. So, he knew. That’s what had him bristling. Beatrice waited for Preston to speak.
He was out of his chair again, pacing. He seemed too big for the walls of the room today, the warrior within on display instead of the gentleman. ‘Liam picked it up at a brothel. Alton used it to pay part of his debts. Alton told the madam he was marrying you.’ He pushed a hand through his hair, a clear sign he was upset. ‘Did you give it to him, Bea, or did he take it?’ Ah. He was more upset about how Alton had come by the tiara.
She rose, too
, no longer able to sit, her own emotions getting the better of her. She understood the difference. Giving implied some assent on her part. Taking indicated an act of force. Neither option created an answer that would appease him. ‘I didn’t exactly “give” it to him.’ She still had trouble recalling those events in the dark without shaking. Preston would want details and that would hardly help quell the fury smouldering in his eyes. Details were not in his best interest.
She had to negotiate this cautiously, always aware Preston had a special licence in his pocket. ‘If I tell you, you have to give me your word you won’t hare off and do something foolish.’ Her hand went unconsciously to his grandfather’s ring beneath her bodice. She pulled it out on its chain and held it up between them. ‘Swear it, on your grandfather’s ring.’
He stepped towards her, near enough to close his hand around the ring, his words reluctant and intimate, his voice low, just for her. ‘I swear not to do anything foolish, but that does not mean I will do nothing. How can I protect you, Bea, if I don’t know what’s happening?’
To his credit, he did listen quietly, the only tell-tale signs of his angst being the clench of his fists as she spoke and the hand that covered his mouth when she finished. For a long while after, he said nothing. She let him think. Let him feel. ‘You were right to make me swear you a promise,’ he said at last. ‘I would like to do violence to him for what he did to you. When I think of you alone with him in the dark, forced to make unpalatable decisions, it makes me want blood.’
She gave him a wry smile. ‘Perhaps you understand why I couldn’t tell you. I don’t want blood on my account, especially not yours, Preston. You’ve done enough.’
‘Not nearly enough if he’s threatening you at balls.’ Preston’s features were hard. ‘He will come soon. By exposing the lie of his engagement to Madam Rose, we’ve flushed him out. He’ll have to make his move and he can’t wait longer than the engagement ball.’
Two days, then. Beatrice swallowed hard, understanding what Preston had left unspoken. When Alton came again it wouldn’t be for tiaras or jewels. That pathway had been effectively closed to him in the move to the end game. But she knew more than Preston. ‘He’s not coming for me alone. He threatens you, too. If it was just me, I would perhaps have fought harder to keep the tiara.’ Other realisations came to her, too. Liam and Dimitri would be at risk because they would defend her, ride after her if she was taken.
The guilt swamped her yet again as she thought of her friends in jeopardy. ‘This is all my fault.’ She met Preston’s gaze, suddenly cognisant of her mistake. In her attempts to protect Preston from regret, she’d perhaps put him in greater danger.
Preston took her hands, his grip firm, his touch her rock with its strength. ‘I can still put you beyond his reach, Bea. Say the word, I will marry you now, tomorrow, the day after.’
Bea shook her head. ‘Don’t you see? There’s no good answer for me—none that I can live with. If I marry you, I put you in far greater jeopardy. Alton will seek to have you permanently eliminated.’ Marriage firmly put Preston as an obstacle between Alton and her. ‘You will not die for me, Preston Worth.’
To say the words seemed dramatic in the extreme, but that was what it had come down to, wasn’t it? She’d become a pawn in a desperate man’s game.
Bea drew a deep breath. There was no time like the present to talk about endings instead of beginnings. ‘So, this might be over in two days or it might be over in two weeks. Perhaps we should be talking about how we want to end it.’ Maybe if they created an ending, maybe if they knew how it would end, it would keep them, her particularly, from thinking about alternative endings where she got to keep the fantasy.
‘Endings?’ Preston raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you that eager to get rid of me?’ He tried to tease, but she heard the edge to his voice.
‘How do we want to end the engagement?’
‘Well, we don’t want to end it too soon,’ Preston began, and she rounded on him fiercely.
‘You promised me this was all for show.’
‘We want the show to be successful. If we cry off immediately, Alton will smell a rat.’
Bea pulled her trump card. ‘You can’t wait too long. You have Greece to prepare for.’
Preston gave her a sharp look. ‘What do you know about Greece? Did my father say anything to you about it?’
‘No,’ Bea put in quickly, unwilling to be a further source of tension between the Worth males. ‘I saw the letter the day I arrived.’ The day he’d come back with the special licence.
‘Nothing’s decided.’ Preston’s jaw was tight.
‘What is there to decide?’ Beatrice’s sense of alarm was on alert. ‘You are perfect for it and it’s something you want. You said as much in the carriage ride from Scotland.’ The idea that there was room for indecision was significant.
Preston faced her, eyes dark, voice low with import. ‘It is something I want. But maybe there’s something I want more.’
‘As long as that something isn’t me.’ She could be bold, too. He wasn’t the only one in the room who could say audacious things.
‘Why not?’ Leave it to Preston to ask the hard question instead of dropping the conversation like a normal gentleman. Then again, if he’d been a normal gentleman, this topic would never have come up.
‘Do I need to itemise what you already know? I am entirely unsuitable for you. In every way.’
‘Not in bed.’ Preston moved close to her, his hands at her arms, his voice a seductive caress. ‘Not in ways that count, I think. You know me, Bea, like no one else except May and Liam. I would not trade that for worldly honour.’
He kissed her then, long and slow, sending trills of temptation through her body, every synapse of her remembering the feel of him, the possibility of them. He tipped her chin up to meet his gaze. ‘I want you in my bed again, Beatrice, but the next time is up to you. It’s your decision.’
She swallowed and nodded. Her decision. She would come to him when this was settled. When she didn’t put him at risk. When it didn’t have to mean anything other than passion shared. After all, Preston might be risking a future with his thoughts, but she was risking her heart.
* * *
Alton had made his decision. He would have to risk it—making a public appearance in order to confront Preston Worth and to make his claims about Beatrice Penrose. Recent events had left him no choice. Madam Rose, furious over the lie about the tiara, had sent her men after him. He had a few bruises to prove it and he was lucky it wasn’t worse. Worth’s partner in proverbial crime, Liam Casek, had exposed the truth behind the tiara to the brothel owner and just like that, everything had come to a head.
He couldn’t continue bleeding Beatrice for a few expensive baubles to keep himself afloat. He had to produce a bride by June. So did Preston Worth. Alton did wonder how much of the supposed engagement was a bluff. Worth had done an admirable job squiring her about town and putting on a besotted show, but he’d have thought Worth would want a better sort of bride, especially knowing the truth as Worth certainly did. Worth might be a family friend to the Penroses, but he was also an ambitious man. Ambitious men had needs soiled brides couldn’t always fulfil.
In Alton’s estimation, it was bluff against bluff. His against Worth’s and all of London to act as witnesses. Casek’s celebration ball was turning out to be quite the event: celebration, charity ball and a potential engagement all rolled into one. A high-stakes evening for all involved. Himself included. Alton sat down at the rough table in his rented room to pen one last note, one last warning, to be delivered when it would be too late to do anything about it.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was too late to back out now, was the only thought going through Bea’s head when she came down for luncheon. Worth House had become a whirlwind. One would have thought a real engagement wa
s about to take place. There was activity everywhere and Mrs Worth and May were in the centre of it all.
May caught sight of her and called out from atop a ladder where she was fixing a swathe of royal-blue fabric. ‘Oh, good, you’re here! Evie wants to do a final fitting on your dress for the day after tomorrow.’ She began to climb down.
‘Evie’s here?’ Beatrice dodged to the right, barely avoiding a young man carrying a heavy urn full of flowers.
May laughed. ‘We’re all here. Liam and I decided six streets were too far to keep driving back and forth with everything that needs doing. If you’re looking for Matthew, he’s with Preston in the ballroom.’
Whatever were they doing in there? Bea wove her way through the workers in partial panic. A bustling ballroom was no place for a baby. But the scene inside made her rethink that conclusion. Preston sat in the middle of the floor, shoes off, feet bare, shirtsleeves rolled up, no jacket in sight, with Matthew on an old quilt, spilling rose petals over the baby’s head while Matthew laughed, his fat little hands reaching out randomly to grab the soft petals as they fell.
‘Oh! Here they come again! It’s raining.’ Preston cupped the petals in his hands and let them fall over Matthew’s head. Over and over until Beatrice couldn’t tell who was laughing harder, he or Matthew.
The sight did funny things to her stomach, to her throat, to her eyes. If any man was ready to be a father, it was Preston. But was he truly ready to be her husband? A man who would be brought down by his wife’s shame? A man who would devote his life to raising another’s child? Preston spied her in the doorway and fixed her with that wide, genuine smile of his, and she felt a carefully guarded tear slip. She wanted to hold on to this moment, hold on to him, against all logic that said she shouldn’t. She didn’t deserve him.
Preston waved to her. ‘Do you need him? I thought Evie wanted to do your dress.’ He seemed reluctant to give Matthew up. ‘I can keep him. We have to go check the kitchens.’ He stood, scooping Matthew up. ‘We might find something to chew on, maybe a cold carrot for those teeth. He has three of them, you know.’ He sounded amazed.
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