Deceiving The Duke (Scandals and Spies Book 2) Read Online Free

her clothing, seeming to brand the shape of him into her flesh. Her breath caught. A strange ache blossomed in her gut.
    “What do you have there?” His voice was pitched low, intimate. It was the kind of voice that convinced women to strip themselves bare.
    Pretend you aren’t a woman. Usually, she had no difficulty keeping up the pretense. Society meetings were a time to discuss science, when it was her mind that mattered, not her body.
    Her heart stuttered as his gaze dipped from her eyes to her bosom. Did it show? She glanced down, but the paper-wrapped parcel covered her. On a normal night, she might eagerly show it to him, but tonight she clutched it closer. It wasn’t complete.
    “I’m not at liberty to show it to you. Perhaps at next month’s meeting.”
    His eyebrows swooped down over his eyes like birds of prey, hailing the same predatory mood. “I insist, Mr…?”
    Her heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t give him her name!
    The stampede of boots on the stairs interrupted the tense moment. The duke retracted his hand immediately, fisting it at his side. Glimpses of the other members came into view.
    Phil darted into their midst. She elbowed the lead man aside as she slid into position in front of him. As she escaped down the staircase, the rest of the grumbling line shielding her from her pursuer, she glanced up toward the second floor. His piercing eyes snapping with irritation, the Duke of Tenwick stared after her, mute and motionless. Unable to help herself, she waggled her fingers at him in a little wave a moment before she stepped out of sight.
    She didn’t know why the duke had singled her out, nor why he was so avid to peek into her parcel, but at the very least, he could pursue her no more. Her life would return to normal, and she would never have to see him again.

3
    P hil’s heart hammered so fiercely, it was a wonder it didn’t carve its way out of her chest. Frantically, she turned the pockets of her men’s jacket inside out. Her waistcoat earned the same treatment. A single prism bit into her bare palm; she couldn’t find the mate.
    Canting her head, she hollered, “Meg!”
    Where was her maid? Maybe Phil was searching the wrong jacket. If Meg had washed it in the two days since the Society meeting, she might have put the other prism somewhere else. After calling her maid’s name again, Phil searched the drawers of her vanity, thinking that it might have been misplaced in there.
    “Phil?”
    The call was thin and weak; Phil barely heard it.
    “I’m in the bedchamber,” she yelled back. “Come here a moment!”
    The noise that followed sounded uncannily closer to bird wings than it did to the slap of slippers on the wood floor. The sound ceased as abruptly as it began. Phil turned toward the open doorway, but no one appeared. She exhaled sharply with irritation. “Me—”
    She scarcely began her maid’s name before a sing-song voice pierced the air. It did not at all resemble that of her maid.
    “You’re…in…a… pickle! ” The words dragged through the air, stretched to their limit until, at the last, the parrot thrust his head through the top frame of the door, where he must have perched on the other side. The bird’s beak was parted in his version of a grin.
    Phil shook her head, unable to keep from smiling. “Indeed I am, Pickle. Which is why I called for Meg and not you. You’re no help at all in a crisis.”
    Taking no offense, the bird spread his scarlet wings and soared into the room. For a moment, as he crossed the velvet drapes shielding the bed, he camouflaged so well that the indigo and emerald feathers in his wingtips and tail seemed to move independently. Stirring the air with his vigorous wingbeats, he settled onto the broad perch next to the vanity, installed for his use. Phil had others like it in every room in the manor. The window, facing west, poured in a vibrant orange light that made Pickle look as though he was aflame.
    “Have you seen