Read Online Lady in the Stray by Maggie MacKeever - Free Book Online

I must insist.”
    “Very well, Yves.” Vashti blushed at her temerity in thus addressing a gentleman she had scarcely met. Yet what choice had she? Did she not humor this queer gentleman, he was apt to turn violent. “What did you wish to speak to me about, Yves?”
    Lord Stirling arose from the window seat, walked to the library table and inspected the volumes piled thereupon, to the extreme displeasure of the multicolored cat. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; Lily’s Euphues and His England; Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Gwana, with a Relation of the Great, Golden City of Manoa (which the spanyards call El Dorado) and the Province of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, and other Countries with Rivers Adjoining, the title of which was considerably longer than the book. He picked up and leafed through Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure. “A veritable treasure trove,” he said aloud in reference to the volume, a collection of wonderful fables and tales.
    Treasure! Vashti was very disappointed to discover that this gentleman of fashion and rank—and undeniable good looks—was motivated by emotion so ignoble as avarice. She had liked him better when she had simply thought he’d shot the cat.
    Cat? Vashti rose from her chair and swept the hissing Calliope up into her arms and out of harm’s way. “Well, you shan’t have any treasure!” she snapped. “This house and all that’s in it is mine!”
    Lord Stirling was briefly disconcerted to find himself confronted by four extremely hostile eyes, two amber-colored and two feline. Then his own blue orbs took on a dangerous glitter. “Yours, is it? No matter what’s at stake? I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me to discover that your sympathies lie with France!”
    Not surprisingly, because she had no knowledge of spies and missing memorandums, Vashti was nonplussed. “I suppose also that you still may be bought off,” Yves continued, misinterpreting her frown. “Name your price!”
    “My—?” Had she just been insulted? Vashti assumed all the dignity of which she was capable, considering she had her arms full of angry cat. “I am sorry to disoblige you, sir, but I haven’t the most distant guess what you are talking about!”
    Almost Lord Stirling believed her, so sincere was her tone—but his vast experience with the opposite sex had led him to conclude that a damsel’s seeming sincerity almost always masked some deviousness. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Yves,” he corrected. “We have already agreed that between us there need be no need for formality.”
    So bewildered was Vashti that she was not certain what she had agreed to at this point. “I think, sir—Yves!—that you may be laboring under a certain confusion of ideas.”
    “And I think that you are an unconscionable little liar, Vashti!” Lord Stirling’s temper, never his greatest asset, was again growing short. Uncertain himself whether he meant to caress or throttle Vashti, he wrestled the snarling cat out of her arms and dropped it to the floor. Hissing, Calliope streaked across the room and joined the Afghan on the hearth. A fine guard dog Mohammed was, thought Vashti as the madman grasped her arms. Here was a stranger fit to murder her, and Mohammed lolled panting to the hearth. Or perhaps the stranger was bent on ravishment instead, so gentle was his touch. More than a little breathless, Vashti waited to find out.
    Happily—or not—her fate was not just then to be sealed. Though Mohammed and Calliope had proven poor chaperones, a third member of Charlot’s menagerie was made of more intrepid stuff. Greensleeves had observed the entire proceedings from within the shadows cast by Wyken de Worde’s Boke of Kervynge. Now, with a mighty croak, he leapt straight at Yves.
    “What the—!” No little bit discomposed to find himself nose to nose with a frog, Lord Stirling released Vashti. “The deuce!”
    Quickly Vashti removed Greensleeves from her