Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahil 02] Read Online Free

at the stage. The woman was now hanging upside down on a trapeze, her knees locked over the bar. Her short skirts revealed most of her backside. Her breasts seemed about to be falling out of her very small boned top. The lions were seated now placidly in a row, and three of the four men had formed a human pyramid behind them, the fourth man maintaining the lions. Clearly the uppermost man was going to be plucked up by the woman acrobat.
    “Oh, Fran, I am sure he had a valid reason. These things happen,” Connie began, not taking her eyes off of the show.
    “You are prejudiced,” Francesca grumbled.
    “But so are you!” Connie exclaimed. The crowd cried out.
    Francesca’s eyes widened. The uppermost man of the human pyramid had caught not the woman’s hands but the bar she hung from, and he threw his own legs over it, so he also hung down as they swung wildly over the crowd. But the man and woman had their legs locked together, and they were back to back and head to head.
    “Oh, my,” Connie managed, her cheeks as pink as her dress.
    Francesca stared, stunned. And suddenly the trapeze artists both reversed positions, and they were sitting on top of the trapeze—on top of each other’s laps.
    Someone whistled. A man shouted. Others applauded.
    They pumped the swing—and their bodies—harder.
    It was almost as if they were lovers on top of that trapeze. Francesca managed, “You don’t think … They wouldn’t dare … White wouldn’t let them!”
    “I think this is not decent,” Connie breathed, yet she did not look away. In fact, she seemed mesmerized.
    “Very indecent,” someone drawled behind them.
    Francesca stiffened in surprise and she and her sister turned almost as one. Calder Hart smiled at Francesca, and then he looked at Connie, his regard becoming speculative.
    “You’re Bragg’s brother. We met the other day,” Francesca managed, wanting to see what the trapeze artists were doing but almost afraid to peek. Connie had turned her wide-eyed attention back to the performers.
    “Half brother,” he said, with a nod. “Miss Cahill, I presume?”
    Francesca nodded, extending her hand, when the crowd shouted. As he took it, she jerked around to see the two trapeze artists standing on the trapeze, facing each other now, swinging energetically back and forth.
    Hart released her hand.
    Francesca turned to face him, but he was staring at Connie, who still could not take her eyes away from the show.
    Calder Hart laughed and shook his head, returning his gaze to Francesca. “You should be home, Miss Cahill. Home and in bed, where proper young ladies like you belong. And maybe you should take your sister—I presume she is your sister—with you.”
    “I am in shock,” Francesca admitted.
    “In shock—or titillated?” he asked, glancing sidelong at Connie again.
    “I beg your pardon.” Francesca finally stiffened. But she
was
titillated. How could she not be? She was thinking about Bragg. Was he as mesmerized as everyone else by the spectacle on the trapeze? Or was he annoyed or angry or even bored?
    “Is
this your sister?”
    Francesca nodded. “I am sorry. Connie, Mr. Hart. My sister, Lady Montrose.” Francesca pinched her arm.
    Connie gasped and faced Calder Hart abruptly, clearly breathless and quite distracted. She gave him her hand while he looked her up and down, slowly and frankly. Francesca was simply stunned, but Connie didn’t even notice. “I beg your pardon. I have never seen such a thing. I am speechless,” Connie confessed rapidly.
    He was wry. “That is obvious.” He bowed over her hand. “Might I assume that any efforts on my part to extol your beauty would now be a sheer waste of my breath and time?”
    Connie glanced briefly at him. “I beg your pardon?” She hadn’t heard a word he’d said.
    “I thought so,” he said with some mockery. He touched his chest as if he had been wounded.
    “He is Bragg’s half brother,” Francesca offered.
    “And a good friend of