Chapter 11

When they finally took their positions, Leopold pulled her slightly closer than was strictly proper. It wasn't an intimate gesture; it was a barricade. It insulated them from the hundreds of glaring eyes pressing in on them."You are stiff, Miss Hastings," Leopold noted as he swept her into the first turn. His movements were precise, powerful, and utterly effortless. He didn't dance; he navigated the floor like a captain steering a warship through a narrow channel."I am terrified, Your Grace," Beatrice replied honestly, keeping her voice low. "There are women in this room currently calculating how to poison my tea. I can feel them staring at the back of my neck."Leopold let out a short, rough laugh. It sounded rusty, as if he didn't use it often. "Let them stare. They are vultures; they only pick at things that are already dead or dying. You, Miss Hastings, are very much alive.""I was perfectly content being dead to society," she countered, matching his steps. "Invisibility is a highly underrated survival tactic.""Invisibility is a coward's tactic," he corrected smoothly. "And you are not a coward. A coward does not humiliate a shipping heiress in public to protect an old woman."Beatrice glanced away, looking over his broad shoulder. "I didn't know she was a duchess. If I had known—""—if you had known what?" he prompted, turning them smoothly past a cluster of shocked dowagers. "Would you have walked away? Let Miss Finch continue her tirade?""No," Beatrice admitted, her jaw tightening. "But I wouldn't have given her a half-sovereign out of pity, either. That was incredibly patronizing of me.""My mother," Leopold said, his tone shifting into something warm and distinctly proud, "has an estate that generates forty thousand a year. She owns a collection of rubies that Catherine the Great once tried to buy. And yet that piece of lace you bought her is currently sitting on her vanity table next to her hairbrushes. She hasn't stopped talking about it for three days."Beatrice looked back up at him. "Why was she wearing that dreadful coat?""Because she finds London ridiculous," he answered simply. "She dresses down to see who will treat her with basic human dignity when she strips away the title and the wealth. It is a cynical game. She usually goes an entire season without finding a single person who passes the test." He paused, his dark eyes locking onto hers again. "Until Tuesday."They moved across the floor in silence for a moment. The physical reality of the man was overwhelming: he didn't smell of cheap cologne like the other men; he smelled of clean linen, saddle leather, and the crisp, cold air of the north."You do not like the ton either," Beatrice observed, stating a fact rather than asking a question."I loathe it," Leopold replied without hesitation. "It is a marketplace where human beings are weighed, priced, and traded for land and influence. It is degrading to everyone involved.""Yet here you are," Beatrice pointed out, a touch of her natural cynicism bleeding through, "hosting the biggest market of the year."

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