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“You must promise.”
    He regarded her with mock solemnity. “I swear. Besides, I am quite reformed. The only female I find fascinating these days is my little
Bubo
.”
    She couldn’t explain why his words should give her any pleasure, but they did. If he really had reformed . . . She snatched her wayward thoughts from their present course. If he’d reformed that only meant one less possible thing about which to worry.
    “Then we have a deal?”
    “We do.”
    She quite liked Justin Powell at that moment. Very much, in fact. Which surprised her. She normally didn’t care for rakish sorts. But then, he didn’t seem all that rakish. He smiled too often, for one thing, and he didn’t seem to smolder with anger or cynicism or any other dark, subterranean passions that the penny dreadfuls assured her women found irresistible.
    In fact, he seemed arrestingly open. He reminded her more of Verity’s artless, self-assured son, Stanley, than of Lord Byron.
    But, she thought, her mood darkening, maybe he simply didn’t want to waste a perfectly good smolder on her. Maybe he saved his smoldering for sophisticated ladies. Married ladies. Beautiful ladies.
    She found the thought unaccountably disheartening, and was therefore surprised when his hand engulfed hers. Immediately, she became attuned to every aspect of him: the crisp brilliance of his rolled-up starched shirtsleeves in contrast to the tanned skin
of his forearms; the place where his razor had rasped the side of his throat; the noble dimensions of his nose; the firm curve of his lip; the slight cleft in his chin.
    And he was large. Much larger than she. In a more forceful man, such height might even be daunting.
    “Partners, then,” he said. She could not read his expression. His hand tightened, and she felt the tentative stirrings of—
    “Mr. Powell! Sir!” A thin, dapper, middle-aged man in pinstriped trousers and a black cutaway coat burst through the swinging kitchen door. “Someone has smashed—”
    The man pulled up short. Stared. Hissed. “You!” He took a step forward. Evelyn shrank back in her chair. Justin released her hand and turned to face the furious butler.
    “Beverly,” Justin greeted him somberly. “Miss Whyte says you’ve been putting about the rumor that I’m not here. Is this true?”
    Beverly’s skin turned magenta; even his scalp beneath his formidable comb-over looked purple.
“Thz mung yadee hazben mos perthitint.”
    “Are those supposed to be words you’re spitting between your teeth, Beverly, you troublemaker?” Justin asked casually. “Because if they are, I’m afraid you’ll have to go a sight better at pronunciation. I swear I didn’t make out one single clear syllable. Did you, Evie?” He looked at her inquiringly.
    Evie, wide-eyed at the spectacle of Beverly trying to regain his composure, shook her head mutely.
    Justin turned his hand in her direction and smiled triumphantly at the butler. “See, Beverly? It isn’t just me who finds your mumblings incomprehensible. Now, have you or have you not been telling folks that I’m not here?”
    Beverly shut his eyes. Took a deep breath through pinched, narrow nostrils. Released his breath in one long exhalation. Opened his eyes.
    “Yes, sir. I am afraid I have. Sir.”
    “Ah!” Justin said happily, rubbing his palms together and looking at Evelyn. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And why is that, Beverly?”
    Beverly looked determinedly at a point above Evelyn’s head. “Whim, sir,” he clipped out.
    One side of Justin’s mouth twitched irrepressibly before he looked back at Evelyn. “Told you he was a malicious dog, didn’t I?”
    He returned his attention to the butler. “Well, you must stop these pranks, Beverly. It just won’t do, having people turned away from the front door and forced to break in through rear windows. Why, poor Evie here suffered a nasty gash because of your bit of tomfoolery—”
    “It really isn’t all that bad,” Eve cut in