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The shop went silent.

“She’s quite all right,” he said. “I’ll get her up.”

He bent forward, and the room moved with him. A man couldn’t stay upright if the ceiling and the floor changed places. He’d no choice but to fall on his head.

Chapter Nine

Murder was too good for him. Lucy scooped her aunt’s abandoned teacup from the table and knelt on the floor by Weston’s head.

“Get up,” she commanded, flicking the cold droplets of tea in his face. His eyelids twitched, the inky wings of his lashes beating once, twice. “Can you stand?”

This was how he kept his promise. Showed up hours late to their appointment straight from a bar and passed out, taking a mannequin with him. Good thing the white and rose muslin was already well and truly crinkled by design.

She tried to free the mannequin, tugging. His arm pinned the waist. She redirected her efforts, reaching under his coat to grip his biceps. His arm was heavy, the muscle dense and hard. She flopped it across his chest.

“He’ll be an authority on the ceiling, at least.” Aunt Marian, for all her fire, was also a mistress of deadpan. Lucy looked at her sharply. How angry was she? It was impossible to tell.

“I don’t know what to do.” She shrilled a little as she spoke and scowled. She did not whine. But this, this was vexing in the extreme. “I can’t scrape him up with a palette knife,” she muttered. But could she stab him with a palette knife?

“No need.” Weston raised his arm, pointing his finger upward, an aspirational gesture. “I’m all but up.”

He put his palm down to brace himself and shoved hard, on Lucy’s knee. His fingers closed reflexively.

“Idiot.” She kept her voice low and knocked his wrist, glancing back at Aunt Marian. Mercifully, she was bent over the sewing machine. “You’re drunk.”

He propped himself, tossing his hair back from his eyes. The whites were bloodshot. Nonetheless, he raised his brows, as though inclined to disagree.

“Not a word from you.” She sat back on her heels, gnawing at her lower lip. If she had a bucket instead of a measly teacup, she would drench him.

To think she’d drifted to sleep last night with a bubble of elation in her chest, remembering the feel of his lips. She’d been imagining he might put it all to rights, rescue the block from perdition.

What foolishness! Saved by a tall dark knight, like in a fairy tale.

In reality, the knights were selfish, conceited, indifferent slugs. They could not be relied on to do anything but ooze along their own course.

“Tea,” she said, standing. “Hot, black, plenty of it. That’s the first step.”

He felt about for his hat and climbed slowly to his feet, testing them. The results seemed to please him. His balance as he bent to lift and arrange the mannequin certainly gave no cause for alarm.

“The dizziness has passed.” He smiled. At least he had the decency to appear sheepish. He turned to Aunt Marian with a formality the circumstances rendered ridiculous.

“Miss Stirling,” he said, bowing, “please accept my apologies. I don’t know what came over me.”

“When you fell on your head, or when you decided to drink yourself silly in the first place?”

Lucy was glad she was not the object of that stare. Weston touched his forehead gingerly, as though just realizing he’d smacked it on the mannequin’s wooden torso. Lucy could see the knot forming.

“Come along,” she said, avoiding looking in her aunt’s direction. She should never have invited a drunkard to the shop, much less under false pretenses. Architecture student! The Royal Academy itself had probably fallen in Aunt Marian’s estimation.

She led the way to the tiny room behind the shop proper, a crowded, windowless alcove. She tried to see it as he would see it: bowed plaster walls, sooty fireplace, chipped deal table, two spindly chairs, a large armchair with a battered ottoman. Would the heaped blankets on the armchair make him guess that Aunt Marian dozed there at night instead of sleeping in a proper bed? She set the old teacup with the other dirty cups for washing and put the kettle on the hob.

“No tea for me,” he said. She looked over in time to see him shrugging out of his cloak, which he tossed on the back of a chair. The bulk of his shoulders, the column of his throat rising from his jacket—they indicated strength, even violence.

“You’ll drink it,” she said grimly. “And you’ll eat a slice of bread while you’re at it, to mop up some of that liquor.”

“Beer,” he said absently, glancing about. “Stout, in fact. It’s like bread.”

One swift kick and he’d be back on the floor. She considered it.