As quickly as he made to act upon this surely unwise idea, a hand cut across him and penciled a line through the entry. Dev questioned the young gentleman at his side. “Did someone already win?”
“Injured ankle,” came the mostly indifferent response that explained everything.
Again pricked that needle of guilt.
Injured ankle.
He was the cause of that injury.
Another memory pushed forward and swept that feeling aside like an icy wind.
“You’re not expecting an invitation for tea, are you?”
The scorn in her voice still turned the blood to bile in his veins.
As if the idea of sharing tea with riffraff like him was too incredible to entertain.
Lest he forget his place in the hierarchy.
Right.
“I was going to win that fifty pounds,” came one voice.
“Oh, you think so?” rejoined another.
“I’m sure you’re just her type,” scoffed a third.
Dev turned to find himself surrounded by a herd of young bucks.
“Lady Beatrix has a type?” continued the first with eyebrows lifted for comic effect.
“It would take Attila the Hun, old chap.”
This got a round of laughter.
Likely, Dev should’ve walked away and left the lordlings to their nonsense. Yet…
He teetered on the edge of knowing something more about Lady Beatrix St. Vincent, and he found he wanted that information.
Very much.
“Does Lady Beatrix not enjoy dancing?” he asked.
A simple enough question.
“Oh, that’s putting it mildly.”
“How so?”
“Lady Beatrix is on the shelf.”
“A spinster?” Dev couldn’t say he was surprised. She possessed the air of a woman yet untamed by a man.
That sounded wrong, even in his own mind.
She possessed the air of a woman yet untamed by love—or even lust, for that matter.
“Decidedly so.”
