The Songbird's Seduction by Connie Brockway Read Free Book Online Page A

longest sermon, even cook. Some.
    “Why she can brew up a pot of—” he’d continued.
    “Be still,” Gertrude Litton’s voice had cut across Mikhail’s words like a whiplash. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
    She had turned away without another word.
    The butler had ushered them out, and they had passed beneath the amused and pitying gazes of the assembled servants.
    Though since then Lucy had turned making a spectacle of herself into a career, she did so on her terms, fully in charge of the role, the stage, and her lines. Now memories of that long-ago encounter washed over her, the feeling of public humiliation biting as acid. Her cheeks grew warm.
    “Hey! If Miss Eastlake says thas her pen, then ish her pen.” Charlie Cheddar suddenly reappeared. He’d apparently tucked into a few more drinks in the interim and was now prepared to play knight-errant, which was categorically the
last
thing she wanted. “You better clear out if you know whas good fer you, mister.”
    “Oh, for the love of Mike,” the gorgeous man muttered.
    “Put ’em up,” her blond champion commanded, raising his fists and wobbling slightly where he stood.
    “Would you please tell your young man to put his hands down so we can settle this matter?”
    “He’s not my young man,” Lucy said, desperately wanting to escape the growing snickers of their impromptu audience. “And as far as I am concerned the matter is settled. Good evening.” She wheeled around and started to move away. He took a step after her.
    Riiiippp.
    She stopped dead.
    Laughter, surprised laughter, the kind people take care to quickly stifle but that invariably burbles up again in spite of one’s best intentions, rose all around her. With a horrible sense of foreboding, she twisted at the waist and looked down. The seam up the back of her gown had ripped open, exposing the very sheer petticoat beneath. The hem of her dress was caught under one of his highly polished shoes.
    “Ohhhhh!” A wail of distress escaped her throat. She looked up and met his gaze. “
Do something!
”
    Without a second’s hesitation, he pulled off his tuxedo jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Come on,” he said, taking her elbow in hand and moving her forward.
    “You cad!”
    Before she realized what was happening, Charlie had grabbed hold of the dark-haired man’s shoulder and spun him around. She turned just in time to see the youngster’s fist collide with the gorgeous would-be pirate’s jaw and his eyes go wide.
    He crumbled to her feet.

“Mister! Mister!” A frantic female voice called Professor Ptolemy Archibald Grant from blissful oblivion.
    It had to be
her
. The strange young lady in the dark blue dress. For some unknown reason she’d been staring at him earlier and then, when caught at it, pretended to wave at someone behind him. A short time later he’d spotted her sitting atop the hotel bar leading a pack of semi-inebriants in what he assumed was some music hall ditty. And
then
she’d taken his pen.
    What a peculiar girl.
    He stirred. A sharp pain in his jaw greeted him on the threshold of consciousness and oblivion beckoned him back. Though he didn’t generally consider himself cowardly, he nonetheless decided to accept oblivion’s invitation, it being preferable to what he recalled of the last few minutes before he’d been laid a facer. Or most of the evening before that, for that matter.
    That decision, unfortunately, was denied him as the girl calling his name now added a physical element to her insistence by vigorouslyshaking his shoulder. Lights exploded across the backs of his eyelids. His jaw throbbed.
    “Someone help me with him!”
    That brought him fully alert. He had already made a spectacle of himself. “
No
. I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
    He opened his eyes and squinted at the face floating above him. A long coil of satiny brown hair had come down and was spilling over her shoulder. Other than that, he couldn’t