Something About Emmaline Read Online Free PDF Page B

stamina.
    Steady, Emmaline, she told herself. Remember, you are a proper lady now. A fortnight is all you need. A fortnight and you’ll have the stake of your life.
    Yet her gaze strayed once again to his chiseled features, the pair of firm lips pursed in a hard line—ones that promised breathless, staggering kisses. Now, that was a way to pass the time. It wasn’t hard to imagine what two weeks spent in this man’s bed would be like…
    The silence in the foyer had grown terribly uncomfortable, and thankfully he broke it.
    “We are going to settle this right now.” Sedgwick caught her by the arm and started dragging her back upstairs.
    She pressed her lips together. Tightly. Gads, she could only imagine what wayward suggestion would come out of her mouth next—unnerved and borne by his sure touch.
    Up the stairs he pulled her. Now, that was a fine sight better than out into the street as he’d promised earlier.
    However, while she was here to impersonate Emmaline Denford, that didn’t mean she should expand her reign as the lady of the house to the man of the house.
    It would complicate matters. Utterly. Completely. She continued to convince herself of that fact as he towed her up the stairs.
    Not that she wasn’t going willingly, but she didn’t want to seem too eager.
    “Well, that just makes this a fine mess,” he was sputtering, as they got to the bedchamber and he shut the door behind her. “Inviting yourself to breakfast.”
    “I do live here,” she countered, stopping before the bed. Truly, she hadn’t chosen that spot on purpose. Not completely.
    Whatever was wrong with her? He was just a man, and an arrogantly noble one at that. She abhorred those types. Absolutely.
    Yet why did his eyes have to be so green…his shoulders so broad and imposing? He quite stole her breath with all his magnificent brooding and posturing.
    That is quite enough, Emmaline, she told herself. You have a task to attend to. Tipping her nose in the air, she said, “If I didn’t arrive downstairs in the morning, don’t you think your cousins would find that odd?”
    “The point is that you shouldn’t be here!” His glance went from her to the bed behind her and then back to her again. His jaw worked back and forth, and then he caught her by the hand and hauled her through the bedroom into the private sitting room beyond.
    “And why shouldn’t I be at breakfast?” she asked. “I am your wife.”
    Through clenched teeth he sputtered, “The point is, you are not.”
    “Not invited to breakfast?” she asked coyly, settling herself onto a settee. She hadn’t spent a lifetime avoiding being evicted without learning how to change the subject. Besides, the key to any deception was believing utterly in your guise. And she wasn’t about to drop this one—not when it afforded her the chance to leave her life of guile and deceit behind forever. “Someone has to act as hostess, and who better than your own dear wife?”
    “You are not my wife.”
    She leaned back and tapped her chin with her finger. “Ah, now that is a problem, isn’t it? If I’m not Lady Sedgwick, then where is she?”
    He glowered at her. It actually made him more handsome, that fierce mien of his. “My wife is none of your business,” he told her, pacing about the room, his hands folded behind his back.
    “I think she is.”
    “Fine, have your breakfast,” he offered, “but then you are going to leave.”
    “Tomorrow?” She shook her head. “I fear that won’t work. The draper is coming with the fabrics for the ballroom.”
    Sedgwick closed his eyes. “Madame, there will be no more drapers, no more bills, no more of this dalliance. Your time as Emmaline Denford is over.”
    “I hardly think you should cancel the draper’s work. He sent a note around that he found the most perfect Chinese brocades to match the new carpets.”
    He crossed his arms over his chest and let his sharp green gaze bore into her. “How much?”
    She glanced up