A light knock on the door brought Ashwood. “Miss Sands is waiting for you when you’re ready, and I’ll be here if you need me.” An uncomfortable pause ensued. “D’Angelo, about Miss Sands.”
Dante grabbed his shirt and dragged it over his head. “She’s a good friend, kind and selfless, and I would not hurt her for the world.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Ashwood laughed as if recalling something she’d said earlier. “Miss Sands is excellent company, amusing, witty, not afraid to voice her opinion.”
“She’s exceptional in every regard.” Dante remembered her sitting on the floor in her silly trousers, swigging brandy as she tried to pull him out of his dark mood. “And she deserves better than this.”
“This?”
Dante shrugged. He meant she deserved better than working for a living, better than having to risk her life in the pursuit of justice. Better than him.
“She shouldn’t have to live in fear.”
“No.” Ashwood watched Dante quickly knot his cravat. “Like you, I pray it won’t be long before someone notices her worth. I know her options are limited, but I’m not sure I agree with the idea of female enquiry agents. At least not when they’re working alone in dangerous parts of town.”
The thought of Beatrice out scouring the rookeries at night, questioning unscrupulous villains, made Dante feel sick to the pit of his stomach.
“You should speak to Daventry,” he said, for someone had to. “Suggest he thinks carefully about the cases he gives his female agents.” And yet Beatrice would argue that chasing criminals was a respectable way for a woman without means to earn money. And considering Dante was her current case, he had no gripe with Daventry. “I should go and give my statement.”
The thought left him cold to his bones.
When Dante made to leave, Ashwood caught his arm. “We will find the person responsible. You might not think it now, but you will go on to live a happy and meaningful life.”
Dante appreciated the sentiment, even though it was a stretch too far for his imagination. “Perhaps I might take up poetry when this is all over,” he teased, for his friend had published a book of erotic verse. “Write a humorous poem about a man who shunned love.”
But Ashwood didn’t laugh. “It sounds like a tragedy to me.”
* * *
Ashwood’s words rebounded in Dante’s head as he crept across the landing, careful there were no witnesses to his late-night rendezvous. He let himself into Beatrice’s room and found her sitting in a chair by the hearth, gazing at her notebook and tapping the tip of a pencil to her lips.
She looked up, her blue eyes twinkling like sapphires against the firelight, her hair hanging loose like locks of spun gold. Her brown, high-necked dress posed a stark contradiction. Plain. Dull. Yet her inner beauty shone as if she were draped in diamonds.
He almost chuckled upon noting the two glasses of brandy positioned on the small table next to her chair. He’d need a damn sight more—a quart at least—to tell the tale buried beneath a weight of guilt and pain.
“Dante,” she uttered in a tone that said she welcomed his company. “Please, come and sit by the fire. It’s so cold tonight I cannot get warm.”
He could solve her problem in seconds. They could forget about the case for a few hours, do something to calm this damnable attraction.
“Perhap
s it’s not the weather affecting you.” He came to sit in the chair opposite hers, stretched his legs and crossed his ankles. “Perhaps it’s the chill of fear, the distress you hid so well while extracting information from your uncle.”
She’d gone to her chamber to wash before dinner. But Dante had taken one look at her hands beneath the light in the private parlour and knew she’d spent an age scrubbing them raw.
“How is it possible?” She shook her head. “I lived with him all these years, and not once did he make me feel uncomfortable. Yes, he was always aloof, disinterested, but it’s as if he woke up one morning a different man.”
“You said things changed when your aunt died.”
“Drastically so.”
“Having heard your uncle speak tonight, it’s evident he thrives on power. After your aunt’s death, he needed someone to control.” Dante wished he’d thumped the devil. “You should have let me chase after him, warn him never to darken your door again, give him a reason to stay away.”
She exhaled deeply, the sound like a form of cleansing. “By hurting him, you would have hurt yourself, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“You placed my welfare above your own?”
A bubble of emotion rose to his throat. It had no name he could place, not respect, not admiration, though he could think of no woman he respected or admired more.