Page 21 of The Big Bad Duke

Small. Curved. Sharp.

“And what are you doing with this?”

She tried to wrench her hand away, but he held fast. “I thought… I heard a noise.” Her voice quivered slightly. “I got scared.” She didn’t sound scared. Perhaps defiant.

“So you came into my room with a dagger?” Gideon eyed the weapon held tightly between them.

“Yes.” She jerked her hand again, attempting to free herself in vain. “I didn’t know if you were in trouble.”

He raised a skeptical brow. “So you barged into my room with a dagger that you conveniently had in your possession?”

“I am a Pasha’s wife,” she replied, her chin lifting slightly. “I have to be careful.”

“And a dagger helps you accomplish that?”

“What would you propose?” she asked coolly.

“A hairpin would be less conspicuous.”

“I am a woman alone in a foreign land,” she replied, “without a father or a husband to protect me. I prefer to be conspicuous.”

Gideon tilted his head in thought. Something about the way she phrased that felt off. As far as he knew, her husband was ill, yes, but still in London. He was still capable of offering protection, if not physically, then at the very least in name.

Perhaps he was reading too much into it.

But he understood her concern for safety, especially after the bizarre circumstances of the night. It might not have been the first attack she’d endured. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find that was the case. She was a diplomat’s wife, after all—of the Ottoman Empire, a country that England could not call its friend.

“Well,” he said, glancing at the sword cane by his bedside, “you don’t need a dagger under my roof. You’re under my protection here.”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she looked at him with a curious expression in her eyes.

“You had a nightmare,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

What an abrupt change in subject.

Gideon dropped his hand but didn’t release her wrist. With his free hand, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Yes.”

The admission felt like a weakness. He hadn’t spoken of his nightmares to anyone, yet here he was, confessing to a woman he barely knew in the sanctuary of his own bedchamber—the place where his demons and ghosts came to visit him nightly.

“What was it about?”

The fire flared in his mind—Sarah’s face vanishing in the smoke, the children’s cries fading into silence.

His throat constricted, the familiar weight of guilt pressing down on his chest like a stone. He could still smell the acrid smoke and feel the searing heat that had driven him back when he should have pushed forward. When he should have saved them.

He didn’t speak.

Time stretched between them, the clock on the mantel ticking away. Each second served as a reminder of time passed, of time wasted.

“I used to have nightmares when I was younger,” she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You don’t anymore?”

She swallowed, her gaze dropping to their still-joined hands. Her brows drew together for a fleeting second, then her expression smoothed, and she smiled. “No. I suppose my real life is enough of a nightmare.”

She meant it as a jest, but he didn’t perceive it as one—not with that flicker of something raw beneath her words. She was still shrouded in mystery. He didn’t know her at all, but something within him longed to uncover all her secrets.

Odd, that.