The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement by Maya Rodale Page A

mad?”
    “Smile, darling, they’re watching,” he murmured.
    “Your Grace, we both know this betrothal announcement is . . . a joke. It’s not real,” she told him. That much had to be said. She owed him that.
    “I’m not an idiot, Emma,” Blake said frankly, though he smiled as if he were in the midst of a proposal, because he remained on bended knee. “I know that someone with a warped sense of humor or twisted idea of vengeance thought it’d be an amusing prank to announce an engagement between two people who have never met. I don’t know what kind of unhinged person would do such a thing.”
    Emma declined to offer further intelligence on the matter. In fact, she vowed to take the truth of the letter’s authors to her grave, just as she vowed to seek revenge upon the horrible person who had actually sent it.
    “But now I am proposing in truth. I beg you to say yes,” he said so solemnly, she almost considered it. She narrowed her eyes, finding this proposal highly suspicious. She’d wager that when the duke awoke this morning, he didn’t even know she was alive. And yet here he was, on bended knee insanely proposing that they marry. He could not be serious.
    Perhaps he was insane.
    Or perhaps the duke had an ulterior motive. While she did not want to be unwed at Lady Penelope’s ball, she also didn’t want to throw her life away on a whim to suit an addled aristocrat.
    She wanted Benedict. The man she loved. The man who actually and truly knew her.
    Benedict! Where was he? Why was he not here? Probably because he thought her engaged to a man who towered above him in rank. He probably thought she lied and deceived him, too. Which is why she had to end this farce and explain to Benedict the truth. They could then elope and live simply in the country or in that townhouse on Brook Street.
    That was the happily-ever-after of which she dreamed. She would not be the plain and forgotten wife of an infamous scoundrel, notorious rogue and dashing duke.
    “Thank you, Your Grace. But I cannot accept.”
    She, a lowly, impoverished wallflower on her fourth season had just done the unthinkable: refused a wealthy duke. She must have gone mad.
    In spite of her rejection, Ashbrooke just smiled. Then he stood, towering over her, and he gently lowered his mouth to hers and brushed his lips across her own. It was only an instant, but she felt sparks.
    She felt the snap and sizzle of a fire flickering to life.
    And she became aware that she’d never felt that with Benedict.
    A lot could happen in an instant.
    “What are you about?” she asked, dazed. He gently pushed a lock of hair away from her cheek. It was the affectionate caress of a lover.
    “A kiss to celebrate our betrothal. For making me the happiest man in the world when you said yes.”
    “I did no such thing,” she declared. Good God, the man was daft. All beauty and no brains.
    “According to that dozen of gossips in there,” he said, inclining his head and never once taking his eyes off her face, “you just did.”
    “They couldn’t hear me—” she said as the truth dawned. He wasn’t daft at all. He was devious and she had just fallen neatly into his trap.
    “But they could see,” he murmured, devastatingly.
    They could see that he had proposed on one knee—again, presumably. They could see that he had kissed her. They would never, ever, ever, ever, ever consider that Emma would refuse him.
    Emma touched her fingers to her lips. They burned. Still burned. One fleeting kiss in the garden, and she was betrayed. Ruined. Like Judas and Jesus. One fleeting kiss and the duke of Ashbrooke had robbed her of her hopes, her dreams.
    They were as good as married now. There would be no more Benedict, no little townhouse. She’d be the lonely duchess, married to a man far more attractive than she, and always the subject of cruel whispers. What does he see in her? She could just imagine the gossip columns: To the surprise of no one, the duke of