The Husband Plot

  Katherine Grant

  Countess Chronicles #3 - Draft

  Copyright © 2020 by Katherine Grant

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  Contents

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  14. Chapter Fourteen

  15. Chapter Fifteen

  16. Chapter Sixteen

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Chapter Eighteen

  19. Chapter Nineteen

  20. Chapter Twenty

  21. Chapter Twenty-One

  22. Chapter Twenty-Two

  23. Chapter Twenty-Three

  24. Chapter Twenty-Four

  25. Chapter Twenty-Five

  26. Chapter Twenty-Six

  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight

  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

  30. Chapter Thirty

  31. Chapter Thirty One

  32. Chapter Thirty Two

  33. Chapter Thirty Three

  34. Five Years Later

  One

  Chapter One

  March 1811

  On the morning of her second wedding, Miss Lisbeth Dawes knew several universal facts to be true: the world was unfair to women, weddings did not always result in marriage, and she was likely making a mistake.

  She comforted herself knowing that at least it wasn’t the same mistake she had made three months prior in January. Then, she had woken to her wedding dawn knowing she didn’t love her fiancé and that she would be bored to tears before their honeymoon even started. To marry Lord Gresham, she knew deep down in her bones, would be the greatest mistake of her lifetime. She’d snuck out at morning light in her drab old day dress to settle her thoughts. To talk herself into the marriage. To remind herself that a married woman was a much freer woman.

  She’d ended up talking her fiancé out of marrying her.

  Oh, it wasn’t as bad as all that. Lord Gresham’s heart belonged to another, a woman whom they’d all discovered just before the masquerade was a widow free to marry. He would be an idiot not to marry beautiful Annabelle. And Lisbeth would be an idiot to wed a man who was head over heels in love with someone else.

  Lisbeth absolutely without a doubt was not hurt that no secret man harbored similar feelings for her.

  This wedding morning, Lisbeth wasn’t quite as cleareyed on how she felt. Her bones still jangled, but she wasn’t sure whether it was with terror or anticipation. After all, she was making a different mistake this time.

  She was marrying a man she had never met.

  It was an unusual arrangement, to be sure, and one whose circumstances were quite by accident. Lisbeth hadn’t set out to marry a man sight unseen. She simply didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. After the failure of her New Year’s wedding, Lisbeth told her father, Lord James Dawes, the Marquess of Ipswich, that she was afraid she would talk herself out of marrying any man in her acquaintance. Lord Dawes took this to mean she must meet new men, and when he heard the Duke of Berkwell’s grandson needed a wife, he started a correspondence.

  It was all very businesslike. Mr. Adrian Hathorne, son of the duke’s second son, stood to inherit a substantial West Indian sugar plantation, if he married an Englishwoman of good breeding. Once they were married, he would return to Kingston to take over the plantation, leaving Lisbeth in London – almost as if she were a spinster, except with all the privileges of a married woman.

  It was the perfect arrangement for Lisbeth’s plans. For she planned to live a full, grand life, and one could really only do that if one had married. She would set up her own household, where she could eat supper in the library and crowd the walls with French paintings. She would become a patroness of the arts, with a retinue of playwrights, poets, sculptors, portraitists, composers, and musicians who gathered at her invitation and filled her rooms with interesting conversation. She would have wild, passionate affairs. And she would funnel her pin money – stolen from slave labor – into abolitionist organizations.

  After all, her husband would never know. He would be in the West Indies.

  It was a grand plan, as long as Lisbeth could go through with it. At the moment, however, with her maid Hannah changing necklaces for the third time and her mother fussing about the dressing room, Lisbeth only felt sure she was making a mistake all over again.

  “At least we’ve gotten you into your wedding dress this time,” her mother, Lady Cecilia Dawes, said as she smoothed the fabric around Lisbeth’s shoulders. “You look lovely, Lisbeth.”

  It was a bit of a mother’s fib. Lisbeth could see plainly in the mirror that “lovely” was a stretch. The gown was lovely, to be sure, a white muslin with silver thread embroidery, but its long, column design only accentuated how short Lisbeth was, how broad her shoulders, how scant her bosom. Her brown hair was the only feature that Lisbeth felt lived up to expectations, curled nicely around her face and decorated with a dyed ostrich plume soaring high to the ceiling.

  She hoped Mr. Adrian Hathorne wasn’t too disappointed when he finally lay his eyes on her.

  Although she didn’t think a gentleman who agreed to a bride sight unseen should have the right to disappointment as to how she looked or behaved. Lisbeth certainly wasn’t expecting Mr. Hathorne to set her heart racing. From what she knew about him – the twenty-four-year-old West Indian grandson of the Duke of Berkwell who desperately needed a wife to claim his inheritance – Lisbeth imagined a groom with a dark face, an oversized paunch, and perhaps bad breath.

  She wondered what he expected her to be.

  Her mother dismissed Hannah and turned Lisbeth from the mirror, two strong hands gripping Lisbeth’s shoulders.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do? It’s not too late to cry off. I wouldn’t blame you. We could take a tour of the Lake District and come back next year to try the Season again.”

  Lisbeth smiled into her mother’s question. Lady Cecilia had known such a different life than Lisbeth. Tall, lithe, witty, charming, there wasn’t a person in the world who didn’t love Lady Cecilia. She’d had her pick of suitors. She’d gotten to fall in love.

  A year ago, Lisbeth had dreamed of falling in love. One season of courting rituals in London’s ballrooms had cured her of that; she wasn’t sure there was a single man of peerage that was worthy of her conversation. If there was, he wasn’t interested in her.

  No, Lisbeth had had enough of the plotting and dreaming and talking and thinking about marriage. She would get it over with, claim her status as Married Lady, and get on with her plans.

  “I’m sure,” she reassured her mother. “I’m grateful to you and Papa for arranging this so neatly.”

  Her parents had encouraged the match but not the means. They would have preferred to have Mr. Hathorne court Lisbeth throughout the Season, or at least stay at their house for a week or two to establish a connection. But Lisbeth had insisted: if she met the man, she might not marry him.

  This way, she would be a ma
rried lady after all when she returned to the dreary Almack’s ballroom. Better, as a married lady, she could choose to avoid Almack’s for the rest of her life.

  Lady Cecilia was still unconvinced. She hooked her arm through Lisbeth’s anyway. “Then let’s make sure we aren’t late to the church.”

  The ride to St. George’s at Hanover Square was not long. Perhaps twenty minutes at most, if one counted waiting in the sitting room for the carriage to pull around from the mews, the fuss as the housekeeper pressed good-wish kisses to Lisbeth’s cheeks, and the delay at the intersection of New Bond Street. It shouldn’t have been enough time for Lisbeth’s stomach to turn to acid.

  But it was.

  By the time the carriage pulled to a stop, Lisbeth was quite sure she would be sick. Her skin was clammy, her ears hot. Her stomach cramped.

  This had to be absolutely the worst idea she’d ever had. More foolish than her scheme to house a brood of puppies in her bedchamber as a twelve-year-old. More damning than her stolen kiss from a stranger at Vauxhall Gardens last summer. More damaging than talking Lord Gresham out of the wedding.

  She was marrying a complete and total stranger.

  “Lisbeth?” Her mother peered up at her from the church steps. The footman still stood at attention, hand out to help the bride down from the carriage. “Do you want to go home?”

  Oh, she did. She wanted to flee to their house in the country and lock herself in her rooms and never come out. No, that wasn’t quite right. She wanted to return to their townhouse on Frampton Square and live a brilliant life in London, full of parties and sparkling conversation and healthy debate on topics that mattered, without the specter of spinsterhood shadowing her every move. She wanted to crave somebody’s company and have them yearn for her in return. She wanted to feel things more deeply than she ought and think more thoroughly than she should and die with more friends than could fit in a church.

  “Lisbeth?” This from her father now, his usually calm face pinched in concern.

  Her parents were nothing but concern for her these days. Ever since Lord Gresham had rushed off to Gretna Green with the Duchess of Surrey. And if she fled now, they would be nothing but concern for the rest of her life.

  The rest of her long, quiet spinster life.

  “I’m fine. Only savoring the moment.” Summoning a smile, she stepped from the carriage, taking first the footman’s hand and then her father’s arm. Only one more man to go before she was free.

  Her father waited with her in the church’s nave while Lady Cecilia slipped forward to the pews. Lisbeth distracted herself from panic by reviewing who she would soon see. It was a fashionably small ceremony, with only close family on either side in attendance. Her grandparents were in town for the occasion, as were her two elder brothers and her Aunt Vivienne, which was a treat. From the groom’s side, Lisbeth expected his grandparents the Duke and Duchess of Berkwell, his sister, and perhaps a cousin or two.

  And then of course there was the groom.

  The church organ groaned. Lisbeth’s father placed a palm over her hand. “Are you sure, my dear?”

  She nodded. She couldn’t quite smile, but she tried to be witty, at least. “Let’s find out what my husband looks like, then.”

  The sanctuary doors opened.

  The room was dim enough that at first, all Lisbeth saw were outlines. The silhouettes of their guests in the pews. The stone pulpit. The priest in his glittering, billowing robes.

  Then her eyes adjusted, and she got her first real look at him.

  Mr. Hathorne.

  The most handsome man Lisbeth had ever seen in her life.

  He stood proudly at the altar, shoulders squared, arms tucked patiently behind his back. He was slim and fit, the body of a man who enjoyed regular exercise. His broad face, squared by a firm jaw and thick black eyebrows, watched her approach with a blank kindness.

  But what really did it for Lisbeth – what sucked the air from her gut and made her miss the next step – were his eyes. The most brilliant green glittered at her, so unexpected from his swarthy West Indian complexion. They arrested her. They mesmerized her.

  They electrified her.

  Those eyes were on her now, taking in her full bridal glory as she and her father reached the altar. Lisbeth’s cheeks heated, knowing what he saw. A dumpy little woman compared to his sleek physique. Pale cheeks that refused to bloom beside his glowing brown skin. Dull chicory eyes to meet his unforgettable gaze.

  The priest asked who gave away the bride, and Lord Dawes hesitated, squeezing Lisbeth’s hand one last time. This was her final chance. She could walk away.

  She probably should. She had no business marrying a man with bewitching eyes. No doubt he was praying that she would come to her senses just now and beg off.

  Lisbeth peeked at Mr. Hathorne. He hadn’t moved, his eyes steady on her, except that his lips had twitched a little. The corners were pulling upwards.

  Almost into a smile.

  She squeezed her father’s hand in affirmation.

  There was no going back now.

  Two

  Chapter Two

  At least it was all over. The wedding, the breakfast, the well-wishes from his family, the reserved congratulations from hers, the toasts, the smiles, the small talk – it was all behind him now. Adrian had successfully married Miss Lisbeth Dawes, sight unseen.

  Now the only tribulation left was the wedding night.

  He glanced down to Miss Dawes – Mrs. Hathorne, he corrected himself – as the footman handed her into the carriage. How strange it was to suddenly have a wife. A beautiful, compact, glimmering wife. She was the epitome of an English lady, down to the ostrich plume nodding above her head.

  Adrian didn’t know what she expected from him as a husband. He hoped he could live up to it. He knew theirs would be a distant marriage – geographically and emotionally – but he hoped in the few months they had together, he could earn her respect, so that once he left for Inglewilde Plantation she would speak kindly of him.

  They turned as one before the carriage door shut, raising their hands in a final wave to the wedding guests. His wife’s family had spilled onto the front steps, while his party crushed into the grand threshold of Lord Dawes’s townhouse. His grandfather and grandmother – the Duke and Duchess of Berkwell – looked somberly on, while his sister Mary managed a pale smile. Behind Mary, his cousin Robert laughed at something Lord Brabourne said – the only guest not related to the Hathornes that his family had invited.

  It was the picture of a farce. Two families, pretending to congratulate each other on a match well made, when in reality everyone wondered in whispers why any grandson of a duke and daughter of a marquess would need stoop to a sight-unseen marriage.

  Or perhaps they were whispering about what a shame it was that Miss Dawes had not managed to marry a man with a title. Or how tragic it was such a pretty English rose was married to an African.

  The footman closed the carriage door, and Adrian turned away. Back to the new Mrs. Hathorne, perched perfectly on the bench opposite.

  He had never expected to marry. To be sure, his father had shipped him and Mary to England for a proper raising, but Adrian had always understood himself to be destined for inheriting Hathorne Shipping and Inglewilde Plantation. He hadn’t imagined that included marriage, especially not to the daughter of a proper English lord. He had nearly fainted when he read his father’s letter in January: the doctors said his father had only six months to live, and his father wanted Adrian married before he died.

  That letter still sat heavy in his breast pocket. Without it as a physical talisman, Adrian wasn’t sure he would have made it to the church this morning.

  He looked to his bride as their carriage rumbled over Mayfair cobblestones, transporting them from the safety of her father’s opulent townhouse to his less-fashionable quarters at No. 73, Upper Norton Street. Adrian hadn’t known what to expect from the London lady who would marry him without introduction. He kne
w she had been jilted at the altar earlier that year, but he’d assumed there must be some other reason she would agree to so drastic a measure. He’d imagined someone too powerfully shy to brave the ton’s ballrooms, but Miss Dawes had chatted easily with everyone at the wedding breakfast. Neither had she said anything vulgar, inappropriate, or stupid – all reasons a family might shield their daughter from good society.

  By every measure he had seen so far, Lisbeth was a beautiful, charming, intelligent lady. The perfect English wife for the perfect English son.

  She met his gaze with a pretty smile. She did that often – smile. Already, Adrian had witnessed a palette of variations: the close-lipped, the surprised cry of delight, the sympathetic upturn accompanied by a nod, the laughing grin. This one was a little nervous, the sparkle not quite reaching her eyes.

  Adrian didn’t blame her. He was nervous, too.

  “I’m afraid my house is not as fine as Lord Dawes’s,” Adrian said by way of conversation. “You will, of course, have carte blanche to fix it up to your desires.”

  “I’m sure it’s lovely. I don’t have strong opinions on houses, you see, as long as they have a large library and a healthy helping of sunshine.”

  “In the case of books, my collection doesn’t come close to Lord Dawes.” Her father’s library was famous in London, for it sat where the ballroom should have been and housed over three hundred titles. Adrian wondered how many of them Lisbeth had read. “We shall have to aspire to rival his.”

  It was the first marital “we” either of them had uttered. Lisbeth smiled again, but Adrian only felt vaguely nauseous.

  After all, there wasn’t going to be very much “we” in their marriage. Now that he was married to an English lady – connected at last both by birth and by marriage to aristocracy – his father would add it to the petition to the Jamaican assembly as evidence why they should grant him privileges to be sole heir to the sugar plantation. Which meant Adrian could finally return to the West Indies. And Lisbeth would stay behind.