Parmont?" Uh-oh. Cecelia recognized her guardian's exasperated tone. That he had shouted her entire name reminded her of the way her mother had scolded her as a child...back when her mother had been alive. Although her guardian, Devin Nash, known to all high society as Lord Beauchamp, resembled a mother about as much as a grouchy lion might remind a chick of its mother hen. The steady tread on the stairs rising ominously toward her made Cecelia scramble out of her stained smock. She capped the glue and ink pots with shaking fingers, grabbed the book resting on the side table, and un-bolted the door. She didn't open it any wider than she needed to slip between it and the jamb quickly, and ever so gently she pulled the door shut. Flipping open her book, she moved to the top of the stairs just as Lord Beauchamp's golden head rose into view. Life just wasn't fair, she thought with a forlorn familiarity. Her guardian had a beautiful thatch of wavy golden hair, sky blue eyes and not an unmanly bone in his Greek-statue body.
