Emily and the Dark Angel Read Free

days a week, but with a base in Melton a man could reach all three and so, with luck, follow the hounds six days a week throughout the season.
    Hunter’s paradise.
    The people of the area were renting out every available room and new buildings, like this one, were springing up all over town. Emily shook her head and moved on. She did not entirely approve of all the changes. It was true that hunting mania had brought prosperity, but she remembered nostalgically the sleepy town of her childhood. Now it was scarce safe to walk the streets in the high of the hunting season when the town was packed with wild young bucks ripe for trouble, on or off the field.
    But it was still a pleasant place, especially on such a beautiful October morning, mellow after a soft overnight rain. Many trees still held their leaf, shining in the sunlight, bronze, copper, and gold. Late roses bloomed in a nearby garden and a squirrel scurried by with an acorn in its mouth.
    Emily loved the cycle of the seasons, but these days they seemed to pass so fast. She was twenty-six years old. Firmly on the shelf and virtually past her last prayers. For a long time she had not minded being the quiet daughter, the plain one, the one who would stay home and look after her father. She had certainly not envied her pretty younger sister when Anne had married Sir Hubert Keynes. Sir Hubert was a pompous young fool, and Emily wondered how Anne could tolerate him for two minutes.
    These days, however, she was aware of a restless dissatisfaction, though she was not at all sure what she desired. Certainly not another Sir Hubert. Nor could she contemplate a change in her life so long as her father needed her to run the estate.
    In fact, she told herself sternly, she had better apply her mind to business instead of whimsical fantasies. She opened her record book as she walked on, reviewing the purchases and sales made at the market and checking the list of supplies she had to order before returning home.
    The heels of her mother’s old-fashioned half-boots clipped smartly on the cobbles with each step. At only five foot two, Emily felt she needed every advantage when she went to the cattle market, but the heels on the boots made her footing precarious on the wet cobbles and she kept half an eye on the road before her.
    There were people about, but only servants running errands or making deliveries and country people going to and from market loaded with purchases. As she turned into the more fashionable streets even these became fewer. As she had predicted, what society people were in town were fast in their beds.
    She was pondering whether to buy some of the first crop of Seville oranges, which were expensive as yet but which would make wonderful marmalade, when a shriek made her look up. In one of the new narrow houses, a window had been pushed open and it was from there the shriek had come. A tall man came out of the house and stood looking up. Before Emily could prevent it he took a few steps backwards and collided with her.
    Her reticule and book went flying, and Emily herself was knocked off balance. With the agility of a cat the man twisted and grasped her in strong hands as she teetered. There was an ominous crack from the heel of her boot.
    Stunned, Emily looked up at the most handsome face she had ever seen. Lean. Unfashionably brown. Royal blue eyes shining with hilarity. Crisp glossy dark curls under a fashionably tilted beaver.
    “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, obviously struggling with outright laughter. “I—”
    A china bowl flew past them and shattered on the cobbles. “Be damned to you, Piers Verderan!” The shriek rent the air. “Go to hell, where you belong!”
    Emily gaped up over his shoulder to see a red-faced woman leaning out of the upper window with most of her body hanging out of a loose silk wrap. Tousled Titian curls massed around what had obviously been intended by God to be a pretty face.
    The man began to turn, his hands still on