“Blimey.”
What in the blazes just happened?
She’d nearly been trampled by a horse…a horse ridden by none other than…Lord Devil.
And…he’d put his hands on her.
Twice.
A groan of no single emotion, but a blustery whirlwind of them escaped her.
Of a sudden, a scent hit her nose.
Was that the smell of…scorch?
“Cumberbatch?” she called out, alarm bells ringing through her. Taking an instinctive step, she yelped from the ensuing streak of pain.
Down the corridor, a head with precisely twelve gray hairs on it popped into view. “That’ll be evening tea.” His voice lacked any sign of apology—as usual. “Did you bring the castor oil for my bunions?”
Blimey.
With all the hullabaloo with Mr. Deverill, the castor oil had completely slipped her mind.
Her hand was already wrapped around the door handle as she called over her shoulder, “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
A decided limp to her step—with Lord Devil gone, she could call it what it was—she hobbled down the front steps and made her slow way down Little Stanhope Street. Cumberbatch would be pettish throughout evening tea if she didn’t bring the castor oil for his bunions—and massage it into them. A chore that would turn the stomach of many a lady, to be sure. But Cumberbatch was well into his dotage and his fingers had long gone knotty with arthritis and, most importantly, he had no one else.
Neither did she, really.
Most mornings over the kitchen table and most evenings across the dining room table, it was the grumpy presence of Cumberbatch who sat opposite her.
Both of them had long been discarded by Lydon.
All facts she’d reconciled herself to.
Anyway, company was company, and the truth was she didn’t think Cumberbatch viewed her as his ideal companion any more than she viewed him as hers.
They were stuck together.
Mr. Deverill’s eyes stole into her mind, hard as granite.
He hadn’t liked her dismissal of him.
Too bad.
She wouldn’t be inviting the man into her home for tea—now or…ever.
A man like Lord Devil would see her living circumstances for what they truly were.
No.
She couldn’t bear that.
And there was his unnerving effect upon her.
She couldn’t endure that for any length of time, either.
Not that it was a concern.
