Something About Emmaline Read Online Free Page A

to Jack to get Emmaline all wrong.
    The Emmaline he’d always envisioned was a slight, modest chit of decent breeding. There was something wildand disconcerting about this woman—nothing boring or staid about her—and she was heading straight for him, obviously to throw herself into his arms and plead for his mercy.
    And really, what harm would there be to hold her just once? To allow her to ply him with kisses and her favors, before he tossed her out in the street?
    She was his wife, in a manner of speaking.
    But if he thought her concern was for him, he was in for a shock. Emmaline sped past him, as heedless as the bullet from her pistol.
    “Do you see what you did?” she said, her finger pointing accusingly at the gaping hole in the wall. “Look at that! Do you have any idea how expensive that paper is?” She heaved a grievous sigh and shook her head woefully. “All my work. ’Tis ruined. Utterly ruined. The entire ambience of this room is lost.” She looked about to fall into a spate of tears.
    Her work ruined? She’d nearly blown his head off and she was worried about the demmed wallpaper?
    He held the candle up and stared at her, wondering if Jack had found her in Bedlam. No, she looked in her right mind, albeit a furious one.
    Just like any wife who’d found her newly redecorated boudoir spoiled. Sedgwick cringed and reminded himself she wasn’t his wife. And this wasn’t her room.
    Then he glanced again at the wallpaper. The brand-new wallpaper, alongside new blue drapes, a new armoire in the corner and the list went on of furnishings and paintings and knickknacks quaintly adorning the room, none of which he’d ever seen before. Over the mantel, where before a dour Holbein of the eleventh baron had hung, there sat a lovelywatercolor of Sedgwick Abbey, a dreamy, wonderful rendition of his beloved home.
    “What have you done to my bedchamber?” he bellowed. He made a point of emphasizing the “my” part to make sure she understood that this was not her room.
    “Isn’t it wonderful?” She patted him on the chest, her palm warm and familiar against his jacket. “I knew you’d love it.” Then she sailed out of reach and went back to the bed, catching up a lacy, frothy confection that she tossed over her nightrail. It did little to cover her, only adding to her soft, feminine wiles. “You don’t mind, do you? It was such a dreary place, I can’t see how we ever got a good night’s rest in it before. Why, it was like a mausoleum.”
    In truth, the removal of the eleventh baron had lightened up the room considerably. He’d never been able to guess how his relations had ever conducted any marital business in the chamber with that dour face keeping a watchful eye over the proceedings.
    No wonder the Sedgwick barons had been so reluctant to marry for so many generations. But he didn’t know if he liked a stranger banishing one of his ancestors to the dustbin.
    “Madame, I want you out of here,” he told her, getting back to the business at hand.
    “So formal, Sedgwick,” she said, gliding around him like a wary cat. “’Tis me, Emmaline, your dear wife.”
    “You and I both know that isn’t your name.”
    “Ah, but it is now,” she said, smiling at him. Her hands glided over her hips. “I think it fits perfectly, don’t you?”
    “You presume too much,” he told her, his hand snaking out and catching her by her wrist before she could sidestep him. He towed her toward the door with every intention of sending her packing.
    Out of the house, out of his life.
    But Emmaline had other ideas. She dug her heels into the carpet.
    The new carpet, he noted.
    “Sedgwick, what will the neighbors think if you toss me out into the streets in the middle of the night?” She shook at his grasp. “I won’t go quietly.”
    “You will if I tie a gag around your mouth.”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” she sputtered. “I’m your wife.”
    He cocked a brow at her. “Consider this the end of our