Bexley-Smythe Quintet 01 - Flight of Fancy Read Online Free PDF Page A

highly amused at her antics.
    Not to mention curious. And while it might be true that curiosity killed the cat, Cedric was not presently a cat, nor had he ever been, if memory served.
    What could he do but attempt to assuage his curiosity?
    So when Georgie sneaked behind a potted fern, cast her eyes about briefly, and then dashed down an abandoned corridor, Cedric had no choice, really, but to follow her.
    Once he’d made his way through the throng of people near the refreshment table and out into the corridor, however, she had disappeared from sight.
    Damn and blast, where had she gotten off to? Perhaps she was stealthier than he’d initially thought.
    Taking great care to keep his boots from echoing along the marbled floor, he hurriedly searched every inch of the corridor, listening at doorways for any sign he might find of Georgie’s whereabouts.
    At one closed door to the right, he heard the unmistakable sounds of an illicit tryst. She’d damned well better not be behind that door.
    No, Georgie might be a bit naïve, but she wasn’t an imbecile. She wouldn’t allow herself to be ruined in that way. Cedric shook his head to clear the image from his mind and moved on.
    A few feet down the way on the opposite side of the corridor, he pressed his ear up against the door. The deep rumble of gentlemen’s laughter came his way, so he moved on.
    After passing several more doorways with similar results, finally, Cedric caught sight of a scrap of white fabric peeking out into the corridor from an alcove.
    “ Caught you,” he mumbled to himself, not loud enough for the sound to reach Georgie’s ears. Moving on little more than the tips of his toes, he gradually moved closer to her, inch by inch, step by step…until he could reach out and grab her.
    Yet startling her might not be his best course of action. If he were to grab her, she might very well scream—and he didn’t know what she was eavesdropping on or why, though he could hear the slightest hint of masculine voices coming from within the chamber.
    No, instead of pulling her away from the alcove bodily, Cedric made certain he was close enough she would hear him and then cleared his throat quietly.
    Slowly, Georgie spun on her slippers and faced him, her rich, brown eyes as wide as he’d ever seen them in her shock.
     
    How in God’s name had Monty found her? Georgie had been supremely diligent in making certain no one had seen her as she’d followed Lord Northwood and Lord Sackville into the corridor. She’d overheard them speaking about Lord Haworth in the ballroom, so what choice did she have but to sneak after them and glean what little information she could from their conversation?
    Not that she’d learned anything about Haworth. After the gentlemen’s one brief mention of meeting him at their club earlier in the day, they’d moved on to the incredibly exciting discussions of crop rotation (a subject which had, quite literally, bored Georgie to tears ever since she’d read Observations on a Tour Through Almost the Whole of England by Mr. Dibdin, when she was all of ten years old) and politics (which could at times be interesting, if two opposing viewpoints were in play—but Lords Northwood and Sackville were in perfect agreement on every political matter, thereby nullifying any sense of interest).
    In fact, she was just about to give up on discerning where she might find Lord Haworth from these two gentlemen when Monty pounced on her from behind.
    She opened her mouth to tell him just what she thought of him sneaking up behind her, but he silenced her by placing his forefinger over her lips and whispering, “Hush.”
    The brief contact set her head to reeling and sent a trail of shivers coursing down her spine, leaving her fully unnerved. How was it possible for him to so thoroughly disarm her, with just the simplest touch? Georgie blinked in dismay.
    He gestured towards the door, shook his head, and took hold of her elbow, pulling her away from the