Read Something About Emmaline for Free Online

from her examination of her nails. “For the carpets or the drapes?”
    This time, she could spy a vein in the side of his head that looked ready to explode.
    “ No, ” he said. “How much are you being paid to ruin my life?” The words ground out with an impatient air.
    “I hardly think a few alterations and knickknacks are going to ruin your life.”
    “How much are you being paid?” he repeated.
    Well, she’d give him one thing. He was dogged. But as much as he wanted her gone, she had every reason to stay.
    “Nothing,” she said. “A wife does all these things purely to make her house a home for her dear spouse.”
    “But you are not my wife.”
    “There you go again, making a bad situation worse,” she said, rising from the settee and making her way toward him. “Really, Sedgwick, if I’d known you were such a dour man, I would never have married you.”
    “The point is, you didn’t.”
    She smiled. “Prove it.”
    This time she overplayed her hand. You’d think that after so long taking such risks, she’d know when to fold her hand and run. For in an instant, Sedgwick took her in his arms and hauled her close.
    “Would you like me to?” he offered. “Prove it, that is?”
    Up against his chest, Emmaline found herself assailed with memories, memories of what a man with some charm and skill could do to a woman.
    How could this be? Where was the dull, stuffy baron she’d been promised? For this man appeared not only quite capable, but would relish the task at hand.
    No matter how tempting it was to prove her dedication to her employment, she had sworn off such temptations. They only led to ruin, and ruin was what she was trying to avoid.
    Of course, she’d also sworn off gambling, drinking, and all sorts of other vices at one time or another …
    “Oh no, you don’t,” she told him, pushing at his solid chest, trying to twist out of his muscled arms. “If you think you can just assert your…your…”
    “Marital rights,” he said, looking down at her as if he had every right, and then some.
    “Yes, those,” she said, struggling some. “That would hardly help your case that I am not your wife.”
    “Yes, but it might satisfy my curiosity.”
    “I wasn’t paid to—”
    He quirked a brow at her.
    “What I mean to say is that I’m not that kind of woman.”
    “The kind of woman who poses as a man’s wife, runs up enormous bills for clothes and other extravagances, and then refuses to make good her status as his wife?”
    Much to her chagrin, he let her go.
    “You make it sound as if I’m not a lady.”
    “And you are…?”
    “Here to help,” she said as she straightened out her nightrail and patted the ribbons on her robe back into place. If only she could erase the way her body tingled, cried out to return to the pure masculine heaven of his embrace.
    He laughed. “Help? How? By driving me straight into the same cell in Bedlam that you came from?”
    She tipped her chin up in the air. “I am not infirmed.”
    “But that’s the point,” he told her. “Emmaline is. My wife is ill, infirmed, sickly, and more importantly, indisposed.”
    Emmaline sighed and smiled at him. “Ah, but I’ve been cured. Consider it a miracle.”
    He shook a finger at her. “I have no room in my life for miracles or a wife.”
    “I beg to differ.” Her hands went to her hips.
    “You would.” He groaned again. “The point is, I want you gone and this is what you are going to do—”
    “I don’t see what you could possibly offer me that would induce me to leave.” She planted her feet and stared at him.
    “An opportunity to avoid transportation,” he said, a murderous glint glowing in his eyes.
    There were some things Emmaline had learned in her life, and one of them was when one’s quarry was ready to deal. Sedgwick was most definitely in that position, despite his outward confidence.
    He couldn’t just toss her out. Not immediately. He knew it and she knew it.
    That’s why it was