Free Something About Emmaline by Elizabeth Boyle

confidences.”
    Alex supposed Simmons had a point. Why should Emmaline trust him? He hadn’t done anything to gain her favor.
    Other than taking advantage of her kiss and then storming away like a conceited fool.
    “How might I do that?” he asked, wondering if he really wanted to hear his butler’s answer.
    Simmons’s brows furrowed, a silent protest that said such a matter was well beyond his realm. “Perhaps that is best left to your discretion,” he finally said.
    Discretion and Emmaline were two words at odds, Alex wanted to tell him. Even so, he finished dressing and followed the man out of the room and down the stairs.
    Everywhere he looked, he spied the changes she’d wreaked upon his house. One that barely resembled the home he’d left just a few months ago.
    There wasn’t a wall, corner or floor that didn’t cite evidence of Emmaline’s handiwork. Or at least he assumed it was hers, given that he had the recent bills to prove most of the changes.
    The new drapes (green silk brocade, Leahy & Sons,Drapers, £72), the matching elegant and graceful Grecian styled end tables under the windows on the second landing (Bradley Brothers, Cabinet-Makers, £47 apiece) and a series of watercolors for which he couldn’t cite a bill.
    He came to a stop before one of the paintings and realized it was of the south meadow at Sedgwick Castle. The one where the family liked to picnic in the summers.
    When there had been family enough to do those sort of things, he mused. His mother had always seen to those events, merrily inviting relations and friends for the summer months and holidays…With his parents gone all these years, he’d all but forgotten those languid days. How quiet the abbey had become since his father passed away from a heart ailment and his mother shortly afterward from a fever. What had it been? Ten? No, nearly fifteen years.
    Yet the sight of the verdant fields, the small lake, the grand oak at the far end, it sent a thread of nostalgia through him, and he could almost see his mother sitting by the water, his father fishing nearby.
    “Simmons,” he called after his butler. “Where did these come from?” He’d never seen any of them. And certainly Emmaline couldn’t have commissioned them in such a short time.
    The butler glanced at them and smiled. “The attics. I believe those were painted by your grandmother.”
    Alex took another glance at the compositions. His grandmother? He didn’t know she could paint, let alone capture such magical moments. The distraction the images provided ended abruptly when a bell rang upstairs, jangling with a discordant note.
    “That will be Lady Lilith,” Simmons said. “ Again. My lord, how long will the Denfords be staying this time?”
    “Not much longer,” Alex promised. They continued down the hall going past more new drapes (explaining the additional entries on Mr. Leahy’s bill for yellow brocade and white trim), the carpet beneath his feet (something imported and expensive, if he recalled correctly) and a pair of chairs (more evidence of the Bradley Brothers’ handsome work).
    He shook his head. For such a petite thing, she had gone through his house like a whirlwind—transforming the once dark and drearily formal apartments into…well, as much as he hated to admit it, into a home.
    Assembled at the doorway to the ballroom appeared to be his entire staff, besotted with whatever was taking place inside.
    “Ahem,” Simmons coughed.
    Startled gazes turned in their direction, and then, like deer having heard the huntsman’s horn, they fled back into the deep reaches of the house, bowing and apologizing as they went.
    Alex stepped forward to see what was so enticing, taking a cautious peek into the ballroom. At first he thought he was in the wrong house, for the large room before him certainly bore no resemblance to the one that had been a fixture at the Hanover house since…well, since the square had been built.
    Gone were the dark red drapes,