The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online Page B

the lips, full and generous—though some more generous than others. Mary had never responded like that.
    "Well, well, well," said Martin Frobisher, rolling the word over his tongue like a fine port. "Well, well, well."
    Once he found a syllable he liked, he stuck with it till the bitter end. At least, Geoff was feeling bitter, not to mention decidedly unwell.
    He had just been kissing his future sister-in-law. With considerable relish. That undoubtedly counted as incest under an obscure ecclesiastical law dating to the early years of the Reformation, complete with a punishment involving a sack, a beehive, and a large pot of honey.
    In his preoccupation with incest, Geoff realized he had completely missed a crucial step. What was Mary's little sister doing in his carriage in the first place? He felt rather as though someone had just whacked him over the head with a very thick plank. Nothing made sense and the world was still spinning.
    "If it isn't little Letty Alsworthy," continued Frobisher, looking like the cat who had gotten the canary that had fallen into the cream pot.
    Letty Alsworthy very rapidly snatched her hood up over her head. "No, it isn't," she trilled from the depths, in a palpably false fluting soprano. "Can't you see it's Mary, you silly, silly man?"
    Percy might be dim, but even he wasn't that dim. He crossed his arms over his chest, peered into the carriage, and said, "No, you're not."
    "How can you be so sure? It's dark."
    For a moment, Percy wavered, swayed by the obvious truth of that last statement. He shook his head. "You're still Letty. Can't fool me there. They don't look a'tall alike, do they, Pinchingdale?"
    "No," said Geoff grimly, "they don't."
    One would have thought he might have noticed that before he swept her into his arms. But it had all happened so quickly . One moment he was at the door, the next his arms were around her, and after that, he didn't remember much at all.
    At least, he was trying very hard not to remember. If he could, he would scrape his mind clear with sand, obliterate from his memory the way the swell of her chest had felt pressed against his, the curve of her waist beneath his arm, the arch of her neck as his hand had stroked upward into her hair. None of that, he told himself firmly, had ever happened. It wasn't allowed to have happened.
    Unfortunately, there were witnesses willing to attest that it had.
    "Well, well, well." Geoff could learn to hate that word. Despite being somewhat wobbly on his feet, Frobisher still managed to direct a creditable smirk at Geoff before stumbling into Percy. "Caught by the oldest trick in the book."
    "I say, Frobbers, that can't be right." Slinging an arm around his friend, Percy blinked sagely. "What about that trick played by those Greek chappies—something about a horse " Percy subsided into academic reflection.
    "Or, in this case," snickered Frobisher, "a carriage."
    "No," protested Percy, shaking his head obstinately. "It was quite definitely a horse. Unless it was a rabbit. Maybe that was it. A rabbit."
    "Neatly snared, too. Bagged yourself quite a catch, old girl," lauded Martin, in a triumph of mixed metaphors. "Well played."
    Framed in the door of the carriage, Letty violently shook her head. Planting both hands on either side of the door frame, she leaned earnestly out. "It's not what you think. It isn't!"
    "I know what I'm thinking," muttered Martin, nudging Percy. "Eh, Perce?"
    His gaze was directed well below the lines of propriety. Underneath her cloak, Letty wore nothing but a linen night rail. With its high neck and long sleeves, it might at one point have been perfectly respectable, but frequent washings had reduced it to a whisper. Through the thin fabric, the carriage lamp illuminated the curves of breast and hip in a way far more erotic than mere nudity.
    Flushing, Letty snatched the edges of her cloak back together, but not before the image was indelibly imprinted on the eyes of all three gentlemen. Percy,