The Husband Plot by Katherine Grant

Author:Katherine Grant [Grant, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical romance, regency romance, beta hero, virgin hero, bluestocking
Publisher: Katie Flanagan
Published: 2021-03-19T15:47:34+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The household was quiet when they returned to Upper Norton Street. Ford and Mrs. Siswell had retired for the night, leaving only a few candles burning in the foyer as well as the lamps in the upper corridors. Lisbeth nearly trembled with wickedness, though there was nothing unusual about a husband and wife returning from a ball to a slumbering house. Adrian had held her the whole carriage ride, one arm around her shoulders and the other reaching into her lap to clasp her gloved hand. Now he led her up the two sets of stairs to their bedrooms, pausing on the silk carpet outside the doors.

“Perhaps you would like to sleep,” he murmured, his voice low enough that no servant could hear, even were they awake.

“Perhaps I would not,” she murmured back.

She saw rather than heard how his breath caught in his throat, his eyes flaring, his lips parting. How long had she waited for this, to have a man weak for her? Lisbeth touched his hand, a promise. “Hannah is waiting to help me undress. May I knock on your door in a quarter hour?”

He nodded, then cleared his throat. “I am at your service.”

Lisbeth smiled to herself as she sashayed into her room. He had certainly been at her service in the garden. She had not known fingers alone could be so powerful. Adrian’s had not done anything so different from what Lisbeth had done to herself these past years in the dark of night, yet somehow his touch had set fire to what had only ever been an ember; her limbs still floated from the white-hot pleasure that he unleashed.

Hannah paled when she saw the state of Lisbeth’s outfit: crumpled skirts, rain-stained satin, the wilted ostrich feather.

“I behaved wildly, I’m afraid,” Lisbeth said by way of explanation, and something in her demeanor must have said more, because Hannah smiled a slow, wicked grin.

“Which nightdress would you like to wear, then?”

Lisbeth’s trousseau – originally purchased for her marriage to an earl – included a number of French nightdresses designed to entice a husband. Her mother had recommended the one she wore on her ill-fated wedding night: white lace that revealed a shocking amount of skin.

Tonight, Lisbeth decided, she would wear what made her feel beautiful. The French modiste had argued that yellow silk made Lisbeth’s skin look sickly, but in the candlelight, Lisbeth rather thought it set her brown eyes aglow. The lace pattern was suggestive more than it was revealing, streaming down beneath her breasts, narrowing near her navel, and then falling in soft pools from her thighs to the floor. Hannah brushed out her hair, letting it loose to reach down past her shoulder blades, then dabbed eau d’ange behind Lisbeth’s ears before declaring her ready for the evening.

“Have a good night, Mistress,” Hannah said with a smirk, and Lisbeth could only giggle.

How could she be embarrassed to have a husband who yearned for her?

Assuming, of course, that in the past fifteen minutes he had not changed his mind.

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