Dair Devil Read Online Free PDF Page B

her, because the intruder was male, and naked but for a belt around his waist that positioned a modesty cloth between his legs. Watching him chase after the giggling dancers, who were showing no resistance to being caught, the cloth proved no covering at all, and Rory’s face flooded with the heat of outrageous embarrassment
    And then, within the blink of an eye, her acute embarrassment turned to profound shock, and from shock panic sprang, not for herself but for the intruder. When he came running up the room towards the stage and caught the two squealing dancers about the waist and held fast, Rory saw that his hair was powdered gray, his eyes blackened, and his laughing face disguised with thick stripes of white paint. But it was a thin disguise and would fool no one who knew him. Rory knew him better than anyone else. The naked intruder was Harvel; Harvel Edward Talbot, Lord Grasby; her only brother.
     

T HREE
    E  ARLIER, L ORD G RASBY had tiptoed behind Dair, staying close in the darkness as his friend navigated the pathways of the small garden at the back of George Romney’s townhouse. Dair knew his way in darkness. His night vision was considered second to none and had been used to good purpose while leading many late-night scouting parties into enemy territory. George Romney’s garden and house were definitely enemy territory. He knew the painter’s studio was conveniently located on the ground floor at the back of the house, because he had paid a visit to the painter’s house earlier that day to reconnoiter.
    A soldier did not go unprepared into battle. With the promise of half a shilling, one of Romney’s assistants agreed to leave a window ajar in the studio. For the promise of the other half, this same servant would ensure his master was momentarily called away from the studio at the agreed hour. He then offered Lord Fitzstuart a tour of his master’s painting studio, even going so far as to show him the little garden at the back of the house, and the high stone wall with its door that gave access to Red Lyon Lane. That, too, would be unlocked at the specified hour.
    Mr. George Romney’s secretary had then discovered his lordship wandering the studio alone and offered profuse apologies at Mr. Romney’s absence. Perhaps he could be of assistance? Dair said he could. They then discussed his lordship’s desire to commission a portrait as a gift to his mother. This was a half-truth. The Countess of Strathsay had been haranguing him to have his likeness painted since he was decommissioned the previous winter. She wanted him presented as the noble heir to the earldom of Strathsay. She showed no enthusiasm for the full-length portrait unveiled at his recent birthday celebrations. Painted in the regimental regalia of the 17 th Light Dragoons, Farrier holding the reins to his mount, Phoenix, against the backdrop of battle, the portrait was not two minutes on the wall of the ancestral Gallery when the Countess made her opinion known. The portrait was striking, but it would be replaced with a more suitable portrait, possibly a half-length, that better befitted her eldest son’s place in Society as the great-grandson of Charles the Second, heir to the Strathsay earldom. As was his usual practice in response to his mother’s proclamations, he smiled blandly and made no comment, but kept to his mantra: Hell would freeze over before he allowed her, or his sanctimonious noble relatives, to fashion him into a proxy of his contemptible father.
    “Dair! Psst ! Dair?” Grasby hissed in his ear. “Is this it? Is this the window?”
    Dair snapped back to the present and nodded. They were crouched under one of three sash windows, this one with the window pushed up off the sill and the velvet curtains pulled back on the night. He took a peek through the window. Grasby joined him, nose just above the sill, blue eyes very wide.
    Candlelight blazed everywhere. At the far end of the room on a raised platform, with a backdrop