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

alcove and further into the corridor. The heat of his hand left an unfamiliar tingling sensation on her skin, which then traveled all over her arm all the way to the tips of her fingers. What on earth was happening to her?
    They came to the end of that hall and Georgie was certain he would come to a stop, but Monty tugged her around the corner and kept walking. Even though her legs were longer than those of the average lady, she was huffing in her efforts to keep up with him.
    Finally, when he turned yet another corner, Georgie dug her heels into the flooring and forced him to stop. “Where could you possibly think you’re taking me?”
    He faced her with a frown, his blue eyes boring into her. “Away from there, where we’d be overheard by whoever it was you were eavesdropping on. Not that I owe you any sort of explanation. I have to wonder what you thought you were doing, however. It’s impolite to listen in to private conversations, and it is about the furthest thing from what you’d normally do as I can imagine.”
    She pulled her arm free from his grip, and then crossed both arms over her chest. “Oh? About as impolite as it is for a gentleman to trap a lady alone somewhere, I’d wager.” The fact that he knew it was unlike her left her unsettled. He was right. She never did anything improper.
    Well, never before this Season.
    Blast him for knowing her so well.
    Monty frowned, the effort of it forming a crease between his eyebrows. “You’re not trapped, and given the relationship that I have had with your family for nearly two decades—one which is well known amongst the ton —no one would think twice about the two of us being somewhere alone together. I’m practically your brother.”
    Something tugged at the side of his mouth and a jerking twitch tugged his eye at that last statement, but he set himself to rights before Georgie had more than a moment to wonder why such a sentiment would be bothersome to him.
    “ But you’re not my brother.” She put more emphasis than was necessary on the word not , but he needed to understand that the world didn’t see things quite the way he was choosing to see them. Being almost her brother was far from the same as being her brother.
    “ No,” he said on a long exhalation, “I’m not. But your brother isn’t here, so I’m doing what I can to protect you.”
    “ I don’t need your protection.” She didn’t want it, at any rate. His attempts to protect her were making her life miserable. He was always in the way, even when she thought she’d escaped his attention for a moment.
    “ That, my sweet Georgie, is up for debate.”
    She scowled at him with enough force that she could have burned him to ash if she could throw flames through her eyes. Come to think of it, that was a rather delightful prospect. Perhaps someone ought to someday write a treatise on the physics involved in making such a thing happen. She’d send Percy to the bookstore with her pin money to purchase it for her straightaway, should it happen. Now that was a subject she found fascinating. At least she did once it had occurred to her.
    They stood there for a long moment, neither willing to give an inch to the other.
    Finally, Monty dragged a hand through his hair and let out a ragged breath. “I know you think you’re all grown up now and don’t believe you need my assistance—”
    “ Hovering, I might call it, rather than assistance. Or perhaps interference might fit better.”
    He frowned but pressed on, staring resolutely into her eyes with undiluted fervor for his message, whatever that may be. “But you’re only eighteen, and London is full of people who would…”
    But then his gaze slid away, fading off into the distance even as his shoulders slumped forwards.
    “ People who would what?” Georgie finally asked, throwing her hands up into the air in exasperation. The silence that had fallen between them was heavy with tension to the point she could no longer hold it