Mrs. Leary was one of a handful of staff that had kept the house from falling into disrepair. Yet much as he appreciated her obvious hard work, since the house was both spotlessly clean and run with precision, she wasn’t exactly the chatty type and certainly she didn’t seem at all happy to have an irascible child trailing sand through her carpets. At least she hadn’t yesterday when Philip and Timothy had returned from the beach.
“My lord?” She entered his study and waited with her hands clasped in front of her.
Her salutation reminded Philip of the dark-eyed beauty on the beach.
“And you are not my lord.”
Why did the memory of her defiance cause amusement, even desire, to stir inside him? Maybe more than a year of sleepless nights were addling his brain.
“My lord?”
“Ah, yes.” Her tone was just the right side of patient, but Philip instinctively knew patience was something Mrs. Leary had in short supply.
“Timothy fell on the beach yesterday,” he began. “He hurt his knee.”
Silence.
The lady looked as disinterested in Timothy being hurt as she did in everything else to do with the boy, and Philip couldn’t help a pang of disappointment.
Was the poor child destined to be surrounded by people who didn’t care about him? His own mother, Philip’s staff in Yorkshire whose hands had been full with the care of their mistress, even Philip’s own mother who’d insisted the boy be sent away to school.
Only Philip had ever seemed to put Timothy first.
Philip and the beauty on the beach…
“There was a lady who came to his assistance,” Philip continued, knowing how bizarre this conversation must seem to the disapproving housekeeper.
He may be the master of the house, but he didn’t feel like it under her hard stare.
“She was – unusual,” he hedged thinking that ‘breathtakingly beautiful’ might be a bit over the top. “Introduced herself as Selina, and –“
Mrs. Leary’s sudden gasp caught Philip’s attention, dragging it back from long, chestnut tresses and soulful black eyes.
“Selina Lee,” she bit out, a world of censure in those two little words.
“You know her then?” Philip pressed. He’d been half afraid he’d imagined her. There was something otherworldly about her. Though that wouldn’t have explained Timothy seeing her, too.
“Of her,” Mrs. Leary sniffed. “She’s –“ The older woman hesitated, and Philip found his curiosity growing. “If I may speak freely, my lord?” she surprised him by asking.
Trying not to seem too desperate for the information the housekeeper was withholding, Philip merely inclined his head.
“Her kind – they can’t be trusted.”
“Her kind?” he asked evenly, ignoring the odd desire to jump to the girl’s defence.
“She is wicked, Lord Breton. A gypsy.”
Philip resisted the urge to roll his eyes at such nonsense.
But he allowed Mrs. Leary to rabbit on nonetheless, lest there be a bit of sensible information he would find useful.
“She knows things, my lord.”
“Knows things? How so?” he asked, and even he could hear the slight sneer in his tone.
But she didn’t seem to notice or care.
“There’s talk of witchcraft,” Mrs. Leary whispered, her beady eyes widening. “Telling people’s futures, even –“ Here she gulped, and Philip felt his skin break out in gooseflesh, foolish as that was. “Even communicating with the dead.”
He didn’t know what to say. It was irrational, of course. Small minded gossip and nothing else.
“It’s said that she can see into your very soul, my lord. Know what’s inside your thoughts when you’ve never even uttered a word.”
“That sounds –“
Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Insane.
He wasn’t quite sure what label to give it first.
“And she has potions, too, my lord.”
Mrs. Leary was clearly in her stride now.
“Potions? For what?”
“Oh, well.” Here she hesitated. “I suppose she – helps people some of the time with them. Medicines and things.”
“Ah.”
“But it’s not right, Lord Breton. The things she can do with plants and flowers. And if she can make things that help people, who’s to say she can’t make things to harm folk? In fact, she has harmed folk.”
Philip frowned at the venom dripping from the woman’s lips.
Her words didn’t match the caring, if a little unorthodox, woman that had helped Timothy on the beach yesterday.
“Who has she harmed?” he asked.
“Well, my own boy, for one,” Mrs. Leary sniffed. “She lured him with her wiles, my lord. And when he acted as any man would she – she –“
“She what?”
“He didn’t exactly give all the details, Lord Breton. But my poor lad walked with a limp for days afterwards, and he’s not the only unsuspecting man to