Free Pretty Poison by Lynne Barron

change in her father’s attitude toward her. Perhaps she should have gotten herself addicted to laudanum years ago. It would certainly have saved her a lot of frustration, heartache and humiliation. Not to mention a wasted journey across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a husband.
    “Shall we go into the house?” Charles asked. “According to Lady Margaret there is a bevy of marriageable misses attending this little soirée. Are you of a mind to marry, Lord Carmichael?”
    “The thought has crossed my mind,” Carmichael admitted. “If for no other reason than to halt the parade of debutants my mother flaunts before me every chance she gets.”
    “Stuff and nonsense,” Charles barked. “Why, I’m tickled pink my girl will be returning to Maryland with me come spring. Foolish notion, bringing her over here to catch a husband. Don’t know why I let her talk me into it.”
    Emily rolled her eyes. How typical of Da to rewrite history to fit his changing ideas.
    “None of my fellow countrymen caught your eye, Miss Calvert?” Lord Carmichael asked as they made their way across the stable yard.
    “I’m afraid I made a disastrous showing during my few ventures into London Society,” Emily replied. “Perhaps you read about The Sleeping Wraith in the gossip rags?”
    “I don’t read the rags, and try very hard to ignore my sisters when they read them aloud at the breakfast table,” he answered.
    “Damn gossip mongers!” Charles roared. “I’ve a mind to file suit against the lot of them.”
    Lord Carmichael looked from father to daughter with a frown.
    “Outright liars, that’s what they are,” her father continued. “Why, Emily’s suitors kept me too busy to get a lick of business done. Seems every day one young buck or another was banging down my door to ask for her hand. I remember one day when three of them came to the house at once—”
    “Da, you’re exaggerating.” Emily interrupted her father’s rambling monologue.
    “Never,” he argued.
    “I’d best go in through the back door.” Emily waved a hand at her attire. “Aunt Margaret will have my head if any of her guests see me in breaches.”
    “We’ll see you at dinner, then?” Lord Carmichael asked as he bowed over her hand.
    “Until then, gentlemen,” Emily replied with a wide smile as she disappeared into the house.
    She stole up the servant’s stairs, flung open the door to the upper hallway, and came face to face with Aunt Margaret.
    “What were you thinking?” Margaret hissed as she grabbed her arm and hauled her into her bed chamber.
    “What now?” Emily wrenched her arm from her aunt’s grasp and stood glaring at her.
    “You were seen by my guests,” Margaret said.
    “If you wanted me to go unseen you should have taken me up on my offer to hightail it to London until this ridiculous stud fair is over,” Emily replied.
    “Stud fair,” Margaret whispered in shock. “Hightail? Good God, Emily Ann, you sound like a stable hand.”
    “I am a stable hand.”
    “You are no such thing.”
    “As like as,” Emily countered. “And happy to remain so.”
    “You cannot mean that.” Margaret paced across the room, her lavender dinner gown billowing around her tiny frame. “I know these last few months have been difficult for you, but there is no reason to give up hope.”
    “It was never my hope to marry an Englishman and live the rest of my life on this blighted island.”
    “Your father—” Margaret began as she spun to face her niece.
    “Leave Da out of this, Maggie,” Emily cried, using the moniker she knew her aunt detested. “Da understands. Finally, we are of like mind, and I won’t have you ruining that for me.”
    “He is not thinking clearly,” Margaret replied. “He is still too upset by what happened to you while you were in my care. But he will come to his senses and see that you need a husband.”
    “I need no such thing,” Emily retorted with a flip of her hair. “A husband is the last thing I