The Devilish Montague Read Online Free PDF Page A

alcohol. Should she intervene?
    “Codswallop!” the bird screeched.
    “Did anyone bring their weapons?” Montague asked ominously.
    Jocelyn shuddered at the image of the soldier using Percy as a target.
    “I’ve my weapons with me. Prime Mantons, they are,” one of the more drunken chaps cried happily. “Surely you won’t shoot the creature in here?”
    Jocelyn buried her head in her hands and wondered if there was any beast on earth more stupid than a man full of brandy. She waited for Mr. Montague to tell them all to jump off a cliff. She had a feeling they would do anything he suggested.
    Instead, Mr. Montague drawled a bored, “Why not? Whatever it takes to stop the bird from insulting ladies.”
    “Montague, you idiot, you cannot shoot a bird,” Ogilvie shouted in protest.
    “Did you just insult me?” Mr. Montague asked in a dark tone.
    “A card game,” Atherton interjected. “He who wins the set decides the bird’s fate.”
    Mr. Ogilvie protested, but he’d lost control of his guests. Various gentlemen rushed off to find their cards and their pistols. Disappointed that Mr. Montague did not assert his leadership skills, Jocelyn decided she did not care if a bunch of drunken sots killed one another, but she could not allow them to kill Richard’s bird.
    Just as she thought they’d all gone away, and she was free to take Percy and run, Mr. Montague’s shadow fell over her chair. “Are you lost, Miss Carrington? Shall I send your maid to find you?”
    Now he deigned to notice her, when he was foxed and she was preoccupied with birdnapping. She threw her book aside. “I am not lost. Nor am I the idiot fighting over a bird.” She emphasized the insult Mr. Ogilvie had used. That was unlike her, but the knowledge that Mr. Montague couldn’t call her out for the offense gave her childish pleasure.
    Without looking back, she stalked from the room, cursing interfering men. She would have to hide elsewhere until she had a chance to retrieve poor Percy. Her bags were packed. Lady Belden meant to leave at the break of day so they’d be home in time for an evening engagement. She could sleep while they traveled. She need only wait until they left the bird—
    At a cry from Percy, she swung around to see Ogilvie carrying the parrot with him as the men strolled from the room in search of cards, weapons, and presumably more sensible heads.
    Well, drat. That complicated matters.
    Refusing to give up on Richard’s parrot, she settled into a window seat and drifted off to sleep while waiting for the men to return with the bird. At some point, she heard the drunken louts arguing over the card contest and some significance of the code of duello, but they still had Percy.
    She woke up again when Mr. Ogilvie roared someone was a bloody cheater, and he’d shoot the cheat before he’d let the bird be shot. Glancing outside, she couldn’t see dawn, but she did see raindrops on the glass.
    Percy screeched a protest as someone carried him out the front door into the cold drizzle. They would kill the bird in this weather, of a certainty! Finding her bonnet and cloak in the closet beneath the stairs, Jocelyn slipped out after them, determined to put an end to their bird depredations.
     
    Standing in a field outside a duke’s mansion, in a drenching predawn downpour, surrounded by a crowd of equally drunken young men, Blake Montague decided that getting shot by an overbearing imbecile over a rude parrot and a card game possessed potent symbolism, if only he could fathom what it might be.
    He had attempted to divert the sots with cards, but Bernie Ogilvie’s second insult had only added fuel to the flames, and Blake’s honor came into question. Over a bird. That had to be the effect of too much brandy on both their parts. He could not think why else a duke’s nephew would intentionally insult someone so far below him on the social scale.
    Damn Jocelyn Carrington and her flirtatious eyes and bold insults. He should not