Pretty Poison Read Online Free Page B

own consequence. This Mr. Avery is a gentleman and likely as starched and stiff as Pearl’s meringue. You don’t go showing off your wit to the man, Em. You got to hide your light under a bushel.”
    Her father paused and looked into her eyes.
    “I know you don’t want to hear it, but this might well be your last chance to marry, to have children of your own. I know you, girlie. I know you want a family. If you scare this Avery fellow off with your wild ways, you won’t have another chance. I don’t say it often, but you know I love you, Em. You know you are the light of my life. T’would break my heart if you don’t find happiness in this life.”
    “Oh, Da,” Emily whispered as his words penetrated the fog that swirled around her.
    “You behave yourself, you keep your sassy mouth shut, and you’ll find yourself married to the gent by end of summer. Else, you’ll be an old maid living with me for all your days, nursing me when I’m an old man. This is it, Emily mine, your last chance.”
    Emily swallowed, blinked as tears rushed to her eyes, as sorrow and pending loneliness stabbed her. “Yes, Da, I will. I’ll be so sweet, so good, an angel.”
    Her father pulled her into his arms for a hard embrace and Emily buried her face against his massive chest, smelled the bay rum he wore, and vowed to herself that she would be good, she would make Nicholas Avery love her.
    Emily had fallen asleep in her father’s embrace when the carriage lurched to a stop before a tall, imposing mansion of white stone with immense marble pillars holding aloft a domed portico above a set of massive double doors.
    Before her feet touched the ground the doors were thrown open and an elderly man with ramrod straight posture stepped out to meet them.
    “Mr. Calvert, Miss Calvert,” he greeted with a bow, his white hair so stiff with pomade not a single lock shifted. He was dressed in black trousers and coat with a stiff cravat tied simply at his throat. His weathered face was without expression, his pale eyes trained on a spot beyond Da’s shoulder. “I am Caruthers, her ladyship’s butler. Welcome to London.”
    Emily barely heard him as she looked up and down the street in confusion. This was where she was to live? In this stone and marble wasteland with no greenery but for a miniscule park in the center of the square? The streets were empty of people but for a boy who ambled along lighting the tall lamps lining the walkway at precise intervals. A carriage rode by, but beyond that one show of life, the entire square was deserted.
    With a sinking heart, Emily reached into her pocket for the pretty blue bottle and the escape it provided. While her father issued orders to Caruthers and the footmen who’d hurried from the house to unload their trunks, Emily sipped daintily before stowing her precious elixir away again.
    “Come along and meet your aunt,” Da ordered, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm to lead her up three shallow marble steps and into the house that would never be a home, into a life she’d never wanted.
    Lady Margaret, the widowed Baroness Morris came down the winding stairs to greet the pair of weary travelers but Emily was too muddle headed to offer more than a wobbly curtsey and a vacant smile to the elegant woman who was her father’s half-sister.
    With little interest, Emily took in the lavender gown the lady wore, the silver slippers peeking out beneath her ribbon-trimmed hemline, the long white gloves encasing her arms from fingers to elbows. Her red-blonde hair was piled atop her head with two ostrich feathers waving jauntily just over her right eye.
    “Emily’s tuckered out from the journey,” Da told his sister. “She’d like to lie down for a bit before dinner.”
    “But of course,” Lady Margaret replied graciously, her green eyes intent upon her niece’s pale face. “I’ll show you to your room, my dear.”
    Emily followed the woman silently up the grand staircase, carefully lifting