Improper Gentlemen Read Online Free PDF Page B

empty box high above. Garland took up his station beside him, equally polite, equally deadly.
    Charlotte’s hair lifted off the nape of her neck. If she moved an inch away from Talbot, she’d lose his protection and that of his men. God help her.
    “Don’t worry, Miss Moreland. He can only watch, as long as you’re with me,” Talbot said under his breath.
    “Thank you,” Charlotte replied, equally softly.
    Talbot nodded in response to eager greetings from audience members and continued upward, still lightly holding her hand and carrying her carpetbag. They emerged into a much narrower, but equally clean, hallway. One side was painted in vibrant green, while the other offered a series of silk curtains in between gilded columns. Chinese lanterns swayed over narrow Oriental carpets. A man groaned happily from within one curtained box and a woman chuckled inside another.
    Charlotte twitched her skirts away from the fluttering drapes, as if they might speed up the frissons gliding across her skin. Walking with Jeremiah Holbrook had never felt like this.
    On the other hand, her escort took no notice—of either the goings-on in the boxes or the numerous bullet holes in the walls. He growled at a candle that had recently been shot in half and stopped to put the pieces back in the wall sconce.
    “Does that happen often?” she ventured to ask.
    “Nightly. We check on all of them frequently.” He ground his heel hard into an ember until it vanished. “It’s why I only use candles, not kerosene.”
    “You’d have had a fire.” She couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice. If it wasn’t built of brick, such a conflagration would turn this building into a bonfire within a handful of minutes. And afterward the block and the town, unless the citizens turned lucky in the wind and their ability to pump water and deliver it. Even big cities like Chicago and Boston had burned to the ground within the past few years.
    “That doesn’t happen to what I care about, not if I can help it.” He glanced at her, his expression as harsh as when he’d faced Johnson.
    “It has before.”
    “Yes.” His tone slammed the door on any additional questions. Not that she’d have inquired—she’d already gone further than Western manners deemed polite. Angering somebody who wielded guns so easily would be very unwise, no matter how ready he seemed to protect her.
    He twitched open the curtain to the last box at the end and she preceded him inside.
    It was a cozy nook, where the carpets were deep enough to block the floor’s chill. A leather settee, large enough for two big men to sit on with a jewel-toned, velvet quilt tossed across its back, occupied the center. A small charcoal stove offered cheerful warmth from one corner, while a single polished brass spittoon hid in another for the obviously few guests who’d dare chew tobacco.
    One man’s comfort ruled here, not careless ribaldry like the floors below or brazen sensuality like the corridor outside. It hardly looked suitable for somebody who spent hours practicing with those heavy, heavy guns in his hands, either. This was graceful and elegant, like a showpiece created for somebody bred from generations of blue blood.
    Charlotte was more confused—and more attracted—by her protector than ever.
    He set her carpetbag down in the niche beside the proscenium arch above the stage.
    “May I take your mantle?” he offered. “It must still be quite damp from the snow.”
    “Oh yes, of course.” She shrugged it off, into his waiting hands. Faint wisps of steam drifted up from the fine wool to merge into the tobacco smoke from below where the opera singer was bowing to raucous applause.
    He handed it outside, between the curtains.
    “May I take your bonnet, too?”
    She hesitated. It would be scandalous to uncover her head when she was so utterly at his mercy, especially when so many respectable women here wore their bonnets. And yet it was her sole bonnet. If she was to