With a beep of her horn Rina shot off down Founders Way, and turned the corner onto Colonial Avenue headed for her own home on Ansley Court. Emily watched her go, and then walked up the brick pathway to her house. It was a beautiful old home built in the 1860s. Her mother had been raised in this house. It stood next door to an identical structure in which she and her father had been brought up. Both homes had been built by Barnabas Dunham, a descendant of an early settler to Egret Pointe, as wedding gifts for his twin daughters. Mary Anne Dunham Smith and her husband had gone down on the
Emily had inherited both homes upon the deaths of her grandmothers. She rented the Shanski house for income because she couldn't bear to sell it. She had been brought up in that house, as had her father and her grandfather. But she lived in the O'Malley house now. Her maternal grandmother, known as Emily O, had exquisite taste, and the house was furnished to suit her granddaughter. Besides, she held Emily O partly responsible for her becoming a writer. Emily O told marvelous stories, and could have been a writer herself.
And it had been Emily O who had opened up the world for her namesake. The summer Emily Shanski turned seven she went off on her first trip to England with Emily O. The highlights for her had been a pony trek in Wales, and visiting the city of Bath. And every summer after that new wonders were revealed to her. Europe. Turkey. India. Even China. And Emily O had not forgotten her granddaughter was an American. One summer they spent touring the continental United States in a lavishly furnished trailer with a driver so they might both enjoy the trip. There was a June cruise to Alaska, followed by a flight to the Hawaiian Islands, and a visit to Tahiti for several weeks.
She had loved it all, but Emily Shanski had returned to England as often as she could. The land, the people, the history all fascinated her. She spent days exploring Bath, and the sites of Regency London. She loved the museums and bookstores. Despite the lack of her parents Emily Shanski had had a wonderful childhood. She had been loved dearly by her two grandmothers, never missed Katy or Joe, and she knew how lucky she was in her life and in Katya Shanski and Emily O'Malley.
When she had been eight her mother had married Carter Phelps IV. Emily had gone to the wedding with her grandmothers, and Carter had insisted on having pictures taken of them all together. It was only when she was older and wiser that Emily understood that the now Senator Carter Phelps IV wanted no skeletons in his wife's closet when he one day ran for public office. Still and all, Carter was a decent guy, Emily thought, and on the rare occasions she saw her half sister and brother she was always made to feel welcome by the Phelps clan.
And then when she was almost fourteen her father had married, and his bighearted Irish-American wife wanted Emily to come and live with them. Her grandmothers had put a stop to that, and Joe's wife had gone on to have three sons in five years. There wasn't a holiday or family occasion that her stepmother hadn't included her and her grandmothers, or tried to. Emily actually felt far more comfortable with her father's down-to-earth family than with her mother's elegant political one.
Stepping inside her house she heaved a sigh of relief. There was no way she would ever be a city girl, Emily thought. It was good to be home. She had a lot to think about, and a guest room to air out and prepare. Walking into the kitchen she found a note from her housekeeper, Essie:
Chapter 2
'My dear girl, I care not a fig what you think. I look like I look,' Justin Trahern, the Duke of Malincourt, said to his creator, romance novelist Emilie Shann.
'You cannot look like Michael Devlin,' Emily said stubbornly.
'You have imagined me this way,' he told her, and, whirling about, he gazed at himself in the mirror. 'Read what you have written. I am quite handsome, and most satisfied with myself. Your last hero wasn't half the man I am.' He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the silken sleeve of his plum-colored coat.
'Oh, go to the devil!' Emily said irritably. 'If you insist on looking like him then do so. And what was wrong with the Earl of Throttlesby?'
'Much too fair for a man, I fear. And his chin was just a trifle weak, dear girl,' the duke replied. Then, looking directly at her, he said, 'I want my defiant duchess to look like you, dear girl. I do have a weakness for fair women, especially those with a touch of red in their hair, like yours.' He grinned wickedly at her as he leaned casually against the mantel of his library fireplace.
'Oh, be quiet,' Emily said, 'and let me think, Trahern.' She looked closely at him, considering that he appeared far different from her other heroes. He was more masculine, a bit rougher, and definitely more dangerous, if that look in his green eyes was to be believed-and she suspected it was. He looked like a man who had wild sex. She shifted herself in the big wingback chair. Her heroines had never looked anything like Emily Shanski, but somehow the idea of being the defiant duchess to Justin Trahern's duke was extremely tempting. 'I have to write a more sexually explicit book,' she said.
'Huzzah! Huzzah!' he answered her with a chuckle. And then he grew serious. 'How experienced are you, dear girl? I want to delight you, but not shock you. A lady's sensibilities must be taken into consideration, y'know.'
'What does my experience have to do with anything, Trahern?' she demanded to know. She had used the Channel for several years now to create her books so that she might see what she was writing before she wrote it. It allowed her to work more quickly, but until tonight she had always been an invisible and silent observer of her creations. This was the first time she had ever actually interacted with one of them.
'My dear girl, surely you understand that while the Channel may allow you to live your fantasies, it cannot substitute for, um, certain realities in your life,' the duke said.
'Such as?' Emily asked him.
'Your novels of Georgian and Regency England have always been warm family dramas, dear girl. Your heroines have been chaste, your heroes manly, and when they are finally wedded the door has always closed on the nuptial chamber. There have been kisses and caresses, but never have you permitted a hero to put his hand below the waist of one of your maidens. And never before have you begun a book with the hero and heroine a married couple. You have observed marriage enough to write about it, but have you experienced passion or bald-faced lust enough to write about it? I think not.'
'I have quite a few books on the subject, thank you,' Emily replied sharply.
He laughed aloud. 'Not good enough, dear girl,' the duke told her. 'If you have not rolled amid the tangled sheets, sweaty and naked with a man you at least liked, the pictures in one of those books you have will not suffice. What experience will you draw upon to write of such an emotional encounter, dear girl? What knowledge? No, no, your virginity will not do. It simply will not do.'
'I did not say I was a virgin,' Emily snapped, but she was blushing.
'But you are, aren't you?' he responded. 'There is no shame in it, dear girl. Actually it's quite charming.'
Emily sighed. 'But if you make love to me then I will be able to write what they want of me, Trahern,' she told him.
'I can't,' he said quietly. 'Oh, I could go through the motions, dear girl, but you would feel nothing at all, because in reality you would remain exactly as you are. You will have to lose that tiresome virginity of yours in your own reality before we may begin to enjoy each other here within the Channel, I'm afraid,' Trahern told her.
'And how the hell am I supposed to do that?' Emily demanded of him. 'Perhaps I should put an advertisement in the
