Read How to Entice an Earl for Free Online

knew from their time spent together this season so far that he was as stubborn as a mule. And he was constantly jesting and poking fun.
    As the thought flitted through her head she met her own gaze in the mirror. So, this was what it had come to, she thought on a sigh.
    She was siding against fun.
    That was what attraction could do to a person, she thought wryly, tucking a wayward strand of blond hair behind her ear and surveying her low-cut gown in the mirror.
    Deciding that she would have to do, Maddie turned to leave the retiring room.
    Unfortunately the door was blocked.
    Thinking that her brother or Gresham was playing a joke on her she called out, “You have amused me to no end! Now kindly remove yourself so that I may exit the room.”
    But there was no response from the other side of the door. Telling herself not to panic, Maddie considered the situation. If she were to shout, no one in the other part of the house would be able to hear her.
    Taking a few steps back, she threw herself against the door—which hurt, dash it!—and was rewarded with movement. Squeezing herself through the small gap between the door and the jamb, gulping in air, she leaned against the wall, grateful for her freedom.
    Looking about to see what had blocked the door in the first place, she saw a crumpled form pressed against the lower portion of the door.
    “Good Lord,” she gasped, squatting, and then kneeling to grasp the figure, whose features she recognized in the dimness of the corridor as her brother’s friend Tinker.
    “Mr. Tinker,” she said, rolling him with some difficulty to his back. “John! Can you hear me?” She stared down into his face, noting his paleness and lack of consciousness.
    Patting him on the cheek, she tried to rouse him once more, and was rewarded not by a response from her patient, but a trickle of blood burbling out from between his lips. It was then that she noticed the knife protruding from the man’s chest.
    She did what any sensible young lady would do when confronted by a dead man on the floor of a gaming hell.
    Maddie screamed.
    *   *   *
     
    Christian was nearly ready to declare the evening a complete disaster, since Tinker had apparently left and Linton was engrossed in a game of whist, when he heard the scream.
    Maddie’s scream.
    A rumble went through the room. The denizens of Mrs. Bailey’s might be here for a brush with the dark side, but none of them was so jaded as to ignore a scream of terror when they heard one.
    Along with several other gentlemen, Christian hurried into the hallway leading to the retiring rooms. There were gaslights on the walls, but they weren’t nearly as bright as the ones in the main rooms of the house. Still, he was able to make out Maddie, kneeling on the floor next to the crumpled figure of a man.
    He reached her first, and seeing that it was Tinker there on the floor beside her, a knife protruding from his chest, he glanced hastily around at the rest of the observers. One of them might be the operative from the Citizen’s Liberation Society, and right now that unknown person was his prime suspect for the crime here.
    Even so, taking in Maddie’s ashen face, and bloodstained hands, he thought of another possibility. One that sent a chill through him.
    “Madeline,” he said in a soft voice that the others would not be able to hear, “did Tinker press his attentions on you? Were you forced to defend yourself?” He slipped an arm around her shoulders as she sat shivering on the floor.
    But Maddie shook her head. “I didn’t do it, Gresham,” she said, allowing him to lift her up from the floor. “He w-w-was like this when I came out of the … the … retiring room.”
    Something in Christian’s chest unloosed. Thank God.
    The crowd who had come in response to Maddie’s shriek had begun to press around them.
    “Is he dead?” Lord Tretham asked, his normally sharp features flushed with fear.
    “By Jove, I think he is,” George Vinson said