Views from the Tower Read Online Free PDF

seemed to glare at her and then croaked indignantly.
    Lucinda almost laughed again. The frog looked shocked at its own croak, as if it had never heard itself before. She shook her head as she turned back toward the house. She was on a mission to return to the ballroom undetected, and no amphibious creature was going to slow her down.
    “Lu-Lucinda!”
    Lucinda froze, eyes darting back and forth. There was no one there! Who was calling her name? She took another tentative step toward the house and it came again, this time more clearly.
    “Lucinda!”
    She whirled around. The voice had sounded more familiar that time. The little clearing around the fountain was empty. There was no one here but her and the frog. Lucinda glared at it. She didn’t like the way it was looking at her, as if it somehow knew her.
    “Hello?” she whispered.
    “Lucinda, it’s me!”
    Lucinda stared at the frog in horror. Had she just imagined it, or had the creature moved its mouth? Was the voice coming from the frog? That was entirely impossible. Maybe, she thought pragmatically, I am asleep. I am still in the ballroom and I have just nodded off from sheer boredom. She pinched herself on the upper arm, just to make sure.
    “Ouch!” She rubbed her arm. “There is no possible way a frog is talking to me.” 
    “Yes, I am talking to you!”
    The voice was familiar. Extremely familiar.
    “Marcus?” she whispered in horror.
    “Yes, it’s me.” The frog sounded relieved that she’d recognized him.
    ‘But...you’re a frog!”
    “That fact has recently come to my attention.”
    “Marcus—oh, I suppose I should call you Lord Sutton now—how are you a frog?”
    “You’ve called me Marcus your whole life; no need to stand on formality just because my uncle saw fit to shuffle off this mortal coil and all that.”
    Lucinda should have been shocked at the casual way that Marcus dismissed the old earl’s death but she couldn’t seem to muster up any actual shock. The fact that she was speaking to a frog that happened to be her brother’s best friend made everything else pale in comparison.
    “I suppose it would be odd to stand on ceremony, seeing as I’ve known you since I was in the cradle. And you’re a frog. Which reminds me, you still haven’t explained that.” Lucinda arched an eyebrow at him.
    “I’ve been cursed.” It was rather disconcerting to hear Marcus’s voice coming out of such a squat, slimy creature. He’d always been tall and broad-shouldered, even as a teenager. She’d followed him and her brother around her father’s estate, tagging after them, probably, she realized now, much like a little lost puppy. Marcus had always seemed like a hero of old to her with his waving blond hair and green eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed. When she was nine, she’d been convinced he was the second coming of King Arthur. Anyone less froglike she would be hard pressed to think of.
    “Cursed?” she repeated dubiously.
    “Yes, obviously there is some dark magic at work. She spat a curse at me, I fell into the fountain, and I came out as a frog.” Irritation flooded through Marcus’s voice, though whether it was directed at her or the woman who cursed him, Lucinda wasn’t sure.
    “Up until a few moments ago I would have said there’s no such thing as magic, but yet here you are.”
    “Here I am,” he replied rather grimly.
    “Fascinating.” She stared at him, absentmindedly taping her chin.
    “Lucinda, stop looking at me like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like you want to pin me to paper and examine me under your magnifying glass like you did with all those unfortunate butterflies.”
    “Don’t be silly Marcus, I could never pin a specimen your size to a paper. Not that I would,” she hastened to add when he made a strange, strangled-sounding noise.
    “I find that quite reassuring,” he muttered.
    There was silence for a moment. Lucinda continued staring at him through narrowed eyes. “Well?”