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

Meg?” Phil lifted her forest green, silk skirt above her ankles as she slipped her feet into the thickly-embroidered slippers resting on the Oriental rug. She crossed to the doorway, her heels clicking as she passed on to the wood floor. A few servants passed through the halls, the footman in the olive-and-white St. Gobain livery, but none resembled her mousy young maid. Phil called her name again, to no avail.
    When she turned, she found Pickle examining the prism she had set on the vanity for a moment. He grasped it in his beak, running his tongue across it.
    “No, Pickle, drop that at once! It wouldn’t make a very good meal.” She dashed across the length of the lavish room, startling her pet into flight. He flew over her head and dove out of her bedchamber and into the corridor.
    Hiking her skirt to her knees, Phil raced after him. “Pickle, give that back. I need it for a very important project.”
    One of the most important projects that she’d ever worked on. Upon her father’s death, she’d discovered that all the designs for his inventions had been contained in his mind. He hadn’t entrusted anything to paper. All she had left of the mind she’d adored so much were the remnants of his past inventions—at least, the ones he hadn’t taken with him that fateful day he’d gone to demonstrate his talent. The handful that remained proved an enigma to her as she puzzled out their construction. With the LEGs, she was on the cusp of success.
    If she could find the second prism, and if Pickle didn’t accidentally break the one he carried.
    Flapping his wings, spanning over three feet from tip to tip, Pickle soared down the hall and smoothly turned through another open door. Phil skidded in after him a second later.
    He’d taken refuge in her secret invention room. The door—an archway with a section of the wall that flipped open upon the press of a hidden switch—had been left open when she’d rushed to retrieve the prisms. Devoid of windows, the secret room was lit entirely by small, glass-paned lanterns to prevent their falling and wreaking havoc on the inventions. Even so, they were placed at intervals well out of reach of the rolled parchments she kept on one side of her work table along the wall. Instead, she placed them on the rare empty shelf in the jumble of machinery, glass, metal, wood, and other materials. Most of the materials were being used for one device or another. The inventions, in various stages of completion, some her own design and some an attempt to replicate one of her father’s, were strewn across the room in a jumble of organized chaos, one that Meg often chided was decipherable only to Phil. In the center of the room, a wide perch with a basin beneath—Meg’s attempt to confine Pickle’s droppings—served as the parrot’s throne.
    However, instead of sitting his rump on that, he flew to the wide work table. Dropping beside the brown paper-wrapped parcel she’d set there, he abandoned the prism in favor of chewing on the twine. She snatched up the prism, turning it over in her hand to verify that it hadn’t chipped. Either Pickle had been unusually delicate in his handling, or the glass was much less fragile than Phil feared.
    With her free hand, she shooed the bird away from the parcel. “Stop that, you. That’s delicate.”
    Cocking his head in indignation, the bird spread his wings and glided to the stand in the middle of the room. As he got there, he told her, “Your feet smell like… pickles .”
    “I certainly hope not.”
    Cackling, the parrot bobbed his head in circles, repeating the word pickles all the while.
    She stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s a lucky thing I’m wearing shoes and no one can smell my feet, you big turkey.”
    “You’re a turkey.”
    She cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not very original now, is it?”
    “You’re original.”
    “Why, thank you. I do try.” Pursing her lips, she turned to the parcel. “You did have a good idea, for