One Whisper Away by Emma Wildes Read Free Book Online

to burst through the door, let me introduce you to your aunt Lillian.”
    Adela sketched a credible curtsy, her pink lace-trimmed dress showing suspicious smudges that told him she’d been out in the gardens again. “Pleased, ma’am.”
    To her credit, Lily, who had not yet done so in his presence, smiled. “I am also pleased to meet you, Adela.”
    “Papa calls me Addie.” His daughter then whirled around, the formalities apparently dismissed, and said with all the earnest enthusiasm of a five-year-old, “In the stables there are puppies .”
    “What a miracle,” he said dryly. “I take it you have already selected one.”
    She nodded, her dark eyes pleading. “Please. Oh . . . please .”
    What was one more complication in his already disordered life? And he’d certainly uprooted her and brought her to this foreign place. Jonathan said, “I have no objection, but it is not going to sleep in your room, so you must ask Cook if it can spend time in her kitchen. If she agrees, I—”
    He stopped, for a small whirlwind exited the room at the same speed she’d entered it.
    Then a remarkable thing happened. Lillian actually laughed.

Chapter 4
    “I t has been brought to my attention that perhaps I owe you an apology for my outré behavior.”
    Drat. No, double drat.
    It was him .
    Cecily pasted on her most gracious smile and plotted how to escape as soon as possible before turning around. That voice. She’d know it anywhere. The vowels were too rounded, the consonants not hollowed but somehow richer, and she caught a whiff of his cologne, which was also unfamiliar but intriguingly masculine.
    Earl Savage.
    She turned, looked up into velvet dark eyes, conscious of the crowded salon, the musicians on the dais tuning their instruments. The room was large, but it suddenly seemed very small, as if he was much, much too close, when in truth he was an appropriate distance away, standing by the chair next to hers.
    Dissembling about the current furor wasn’t a viable option. She wasn’t very good at it anyway, and for moral reasons was opposed to lying, but she also found that even if you were able to convincingly submit a falsehood and have it accepted, more than half the time you were tripped up later, so what the point of it?
    She opted for saying coolly, “There’s no need for an apology, my lord.”
    “I’m told there is.” He didn’t precisely grin, but his mouth twitched suspiciously and he definitely did not look repentant as, to her chagrin, he chose the vacant seat next to her and sank into it in a graceful athletic movement, stretching out his long legs.
    To her right, Eleanor gave what could only be interpreted as a gasp of dismay. Joining them without an invitation was hardly what a polite gentleman would do, but it appeared that didn’t concern him.
    Instead of apologetic, he looked quite . . . deliciously male. His dark coat was perfectly cut, and the contrast of his snowy cravat with his bronze skin dramatic. He would no doubt be that color all over, Cecily imagined involuntarily. Every inch of him, and . . .
    That supremely unladylike thought came from nowhere. Never had she imagined any of the gentlemen of her acquaintance without their clothing. That she’d done so now was mortifying.
    His regard was almost unsettlingly direct. “You haven’t repeated what I said to you, which I suppose is just as well, but it has caused a great deal of speculation. I’ve heard there is actual wagering over what it might have been. Are all you aristocrats that bored and shallow?”
    The insult stung, especially since he’d caused the problem in the first place. Though, if she admitted it, she secretly agreed with him. People were starving in the streets and wealthy young men were tossing money away on a single whispered sentence in a society ballroom. The frivolous waste bothered her more than the gossip.
    “Lord Augustine, I hate to state the obvious, but you are a member of the class you just