Emma: The Wild and Wanton Edition Read Online Free Page A

attention had been focused a bit below her mouth.
    He had first noticed the enticing way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. The errant thought that he would like to place his mouth over it had stricken him like a blow. He had moved his eyes away, mortified that he had let his thoughts turn in such a direction, when he had encountered her breasts.
    Atop his horse, Mr. Knightley sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. The vision of her beautiful bosom was still emblazoned across the backs of his eyelids. So full. So tempting. Mr. Knightley’s breath shuddered out of his chest.
    His eyes sprang open with dread. Like a man facing the gallows, Mr. Knightley slowly directed his line of sight to his hips. He cursed at the inarguable evidence of where his thoughts had led him. His arousal pressed against the front of his breeches so fully, Mr. Knightley was obscenely unfit for polite company. He thanked heaven that his body had waited until he had been away from Emma and — he suppressed a shiver of mortification —
Mr. Woodhouse
before betraying him in such a manner.
    Mr. Knightley shifted in the saddle trying to find a comfortable position to accommodate his current predicament, but after several moments, he gave up the endeavor as hopeless.
    He readjusted his thighs’ grip on his mount and clicked his tongue twice while flicking the reins. The stallion immediately broke into a gallop, eager to work off the powerful energy of his impeccable bloodlines. Mr. Knightley leaned into the wind, hoping the elements would slap some sense into his traitorous body.

CHAPTER II
    Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family, which for the last two or three generations had been rising into gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged, and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by entering into the militia of his county, then embodied.
    Captain Weston was a general favourite. His dashing good looks and his crooked smile made him greatly pursued by the ladies; and when the chances of his military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was surprized, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen his good looks and crooked smile, and who were full of pride and importance, which the connexion would offend.
    Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her fortune — though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate — was not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off with due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion — falling in love was a disagreeable fault in the business of matrimony — and did not produce much happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him; but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother’s unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home. She soon cared less for the handsomeness of her husband and his doating nature than the comfort of a posh living style. They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.
    Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills, as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years’ marriage,