Something About Emmaline by Elizabeth Boyle Read Free Book Online

Then he glanced up and down the street and realized he’d created a regular spectacle of himself.
    Baron Sedgwick brawling on Thornton Street. Wouldn’t that make a pretty story.
    Luckily, Jack never held a grudge for long. Tugging down the tails of his shirt in a halfhearted attempt at decency, he said, “Are you telling me all this was because you thought I hired that chit?”
    Alex nodded.
    Jack broke out laughing. “Suppose you’ve been hunting me all over town?”
    Alex closed his eyes and nodded. “I roused Ambercrombie from Camilla’s bed thinking he was you.”
    Jack snorted. “Hope you gave that old roué heart palpitations. Though if a night in Camilla’s bed isn’t enough to send that fellow into an early grave, I swear he will live to be a hundred—and make a fine cake of it stealing my mistresses.”
    Now Alex laughed.
    Jack took a playful swing and then wound his arm over Alex’s shoulder and guided him toward the curb. They climbed the stairs to Mrs. Gannett’s house, where the hospitable woman provided a pitcher of warm water, basins and clean towels, and the rest of Jack’s clothes. Then the lady had the good sense to leave the gentlemen to set themselves to rights over a bottle of brandy.
    After they’d done the best they could to repair the obvious damage, Jack sat back in a chair and eyed his friend. “Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t hire this Emmaline?”
    “No!” Alex said. “Remember, I’m the one who didn’t want some bothersome female interfering in my life to begin with.”
    “There are worse things than a female in your life,” Jack said, waggling his brows up at the ceiling, where above them Mrs. Gannett’s comfortable boudoir was situated. “Besides, your Emmaline is a pretty thing—and wouldn’t be such a bad sight to wake up to in the morning.” He grinned. “Why not keep her for a bit?”
    Of course Jack would suggest such a thing. The man who never thought of consequences.
    Keep Emmaline? Impossible. Wasn’t it bad enough that the sight of her rising from his bed like a Venus would be forever burnished in his memory? He’d be hard put to ever walk into his bedchamber again and not recall the sight of her.
    Better to get her out of his life before she had the opportunity to etch even more indelible memories upon his sensibilities.
    “Really, Alex, how much damage has she done? So she’s been seen around town—by who? It’s summer, no one of consequence is about.”
    “Try Hubert and Lady Lilith.”
    “The devil you say?” Jack wrung out a cloth in the basin, and held it to his bloody nose. “Certainly that puts a bit of a crimp in things, but mayhap it isn’t all that bad. They can’t have been in town long enough to discover the truth.”
    “Any length of time with this chit mingling with Hubert is nothing less than an unmitigated disaster.”
    Jack pulled the cloth away. “Well, it will stop him from skulking about. Now that he’s seen her for himself, maybe it will end all his infernal inquiries and questions about your wife.”
    There was some sense in that.
    Reaching for another cloth, Jack dipped it in the water and handed it over to Alex. “That eye of yours looks like the very devil. Sorry about that.”
    “No, my apologies for thinking the worse of you,” Alex told him, wincing as he put the cloth to his quickly swelling eye.
    Jack grinned. “I do admit, it does seem like something I would do.”
    “Yes, it did have your air about it.”
    His friend nodded, then went back to dabbing at his nose. “Well, if you didn’t hire her, and I certainly didn’t hire her, who did?”
    Alex glanced over at his friend. “I don’t know. But I mean to find out. Right after I get her out of my life.”
    “Well, one thing is for certain,” Jack declared. “As long as she’s about, no one will pall you dull.”
     
    By the time Sedgwick returned to his London house, the sun had risen and the day shone brightly.
    Though the same couldn’t