Read Online Frovtunes’ Kiss by Lisa Manuel - Free Book Online Page A

entrance also silenced Miss Foster, thank heavens for that at least. An instant later Graham Foster, his brother, houseguest, and several footmen went silent, their fierceness fading to puzzlement as they took in the scene.
    Frederick Foster was the first roused from bewilderment. “Letty, for pity’s sake.” His words were slurred and breathless. “Are you hurt?”
    â€œI caught
her
ransacking the place.” Miss Letitia jabbed a forefinger in Moira’s direction. “She’s a
thief.”
    â€œBlazing hell.” Graham Foster tugged his neck cloth and scowled. With a backward wave, he dismissed the footmen. “Letty, we thought someone had a knife to your throat.”
    â€œLook what she’s
done.”
Miss Foster swept her arm in an arc that encompassed the disheveled room. “We must have her arrested at
once.”
    â€œFor untidiness?”
    â€œFor thievery!”
    â€œGood grief, there’s nothing in this room to steal,” Graham said. “I doubt she’s loaded her apron with books and writing paper.”
    Letitia Foster hoisted her chin. “Then what on earth
is
she doing?”
    Oh, dear. All gazes turned to Moira, huddled and shaking in the window recess. In that instant she understood the discomfiture of the fox held pinioned to a tree by barking, salivating hounds. She swore then and there she’d never join a hunt again, not even for the exercise.
    Ah, but they were waiting for an answer.
    â€œYes, well, I…you see, I was in the process of…” She glanced at each expectant face in turn: Miss Letitia, Mr. Frederick, the houseguest, and, finally, Graham Foster. Her mouth ran dry. It was the way he peered back at her. Since entering the room he’d barely spared her a glance, focusing his annoyance on his sister. Now his scrutiny caressed her up and down and deepened with the inescapable dawning of recognition.
    â€œMoira Hughes.” His mouth curved with the familiar impudence, raising the hairs on her nape. “Moira, Moira. What a delightful surprise.” He lengthened the syllables of her name, pronouncing each with evident pleasure as though savoring a spoonful of honey. “Or are you Mary Houser today?”
    â€œThe former, my lord,” she returned as flames leapt to the tips of her ears.
    â€œYou
know
this creature?” His sister flashed an incredulous look that turned speculative in the next instant. “Moira Hughes? Isn’t that our…”
    Miss Foster’s question died on lips gone suddenly and alarmingly chalky. Her hand clawed at her throat as her mouth widened in terror.
    Moira clapped her hands over her ears as Letitia Foster let loose a fresh round of screams that far outdid her earlier ones. The room once more dissolved into a confusion of voices and movement. The younger Mr. Foster scrambled away while their houseguest raised his voice in an explanation no one could hear.
    To her own indescribable horror, Moira discovered the source of the uproar. It was…good heavens…the most hideous thing she’d ever seen in all her life. A spider, but bigger, thicker, uglier than any she’d ever imagined, a monstrosity from deepest, darkest nightmare, with fearsome clawlike pincers and furry brown legs that bent and stretched with a leisurely grace that made it all the more grotesque.
    The leaded casements dug into her spine as she tried to shrink from that dreadful, hairy, revolting creature creeping along Graham Foster’s coat sleeve.
    And yet…
.he
regarded it as calmly as you please. He even—ugh, Moira looked away, then couldn’t help peeking—allowed the monster to crawl into his palm.
    â€œLetty, do stop that infernal shrieking,” he said with a weary roll of his eyes. “Isis is merely an African sun spider. She’s quite harmless, completely tame, and certainly nothing to warrant permanently deafening the lot of