In the Barrister's Bed. Tina Gabrielle

her chair to look up at Bella. “I am the daughter of a longtime barrister.”

      “I thought you were the daughter of an aristocrat.”

      “It wasn’t until years later that my father inherited my uncle’s earldom. For most of my life, my father was a revered Master of the Bench—otherwise known as a Bencher—at Lincoln’s Inn. I spent my youth roaming around the Inn and my father’s chambers, listening to him lecture his pupils on the topics of contracts, torts, and criminal law. Father has since retired from Lincoln’s Inn, but he never lost his love of teaching and still lectures at Oxford. James and the others call me ‘Lady Evelyn’ in honor of my father.”

      “Your father mentored others to become barristers?”

      “Oh, yes. My husband and James Devlin were just two of his many pupils.”

      “Is that how you met Mr. Harding?”

      “I was a skinny twelve-year-old girl when Jack Harding became my father’s pupil, but I adored him the first time I set eyes on him. He’s always been a charmer.”

      An image of Jack Harding rose in Bella’s mind: tall and lean with green eyes and an easy grin. She could imagine Evelyn’s fascination with the handsome barrister.

      “It wasn’t until a decade later that I encountered Jack again, only I believed I was in love with another, a scholar and my father’s Fellow at the University, who was under suspicion for murdering the Drury Lane actress Bess Whitfield.”

      Stunned, Bella could only stare. News of the notorious Bess Whitfield’s murder had reached even the residents of Plymouth far from the London theater district.