The Husband Plot Page 12

  “A coffeehouse is the perfect place to speak of such things, actually. Revolutions have been planned in coffeehouses before. Why not foment such a fundamental concept as human liberty in a coffeehouse?”

  “It is fomenting there. That’s why it is so dangerous. People like Everly and Brabourne have men there, watching to see who sides with the abolitionists.”

  “Oh, and so I may have ruined your precious business deal? Good. Now you won’t have to lick the ground where Everly walks. You should be thanking me.”

  “Do you know what happens once the West India lobby decides you’re an abolitionist? They ruin your business. They smear your name. If you’re persistent enough, they kill you, though they’ll call it a sudden fatal condition of the heart.” Adrian slid across the bench and suddenly she could see him in the dark. He didn’t wear his mask of indifference. This Adrian was intense. He was earnest. He was serious. “Lisbeth, I want you to fight for abolition. But you must do it with your eyes open to all the people who will silence you. You must choose when, where, and with whom. You are playing chess, with men who are chess masters. You cannot simply wander into a coffeehouse and pick a fight.”

  The anger that had been propping up Lisbeth, that had been balling her fists and rushing her ears, changed. Could she possibly have heard Adrian correctly? “You want me to fight for abolition.”

  A slow, dangerous smile spread his lips. “You do realize, don’t you, that it’s only one side of my family that is evil. The other half – my mother’s half – were slaves. Stolen from our homeland. Forced into labor. Beaten and tortured and turned into whores. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  Lisbeth had to shut her eyes when he described slavery. She had heard it all before, but she couldn’t think of it with Adrian staring at her. And how could he feel, being raised by the Hathornes – the lovely, kind, funny Hathornes – while knowing the history of his mother? She whispered what she felt, just imagining it. “Confused.”

  His hand found hers in the dark. He still wore his gloves: they were thick, smooth leather against her bare skin. “I am not trying to be a tyrant. I am trying to play chess.”

  Lisbeth’s body had been thrumming with fury. Now, when she opened her eyes and found his, that transfigured into a different emotion. A nameless emotion. A pure, instinctive need.

  She fell onto him, arms around his neck, legs straddling his hips, lips begging his. He pulled her closer with just as much intensity. His hands cupped her bum, a grasp Lisbeth had never thought to yearn for. She raked her fingers through his short, soft hair as his mouth explored hers. She wanted to touch him everywhere. She wanted to untie his cravat. She wanted to stop thinking and only feel the pure, white heat coursing over her.

  His fingers trailed the length of her thighs, then up her waist, resting just beneath her breasts. Without knowing why, Lisbeth knew she wanted him to touch them, to circle her nipples, to worship her breasts like she was the goddess Venus. Still kissing him – oh, she couldn’t separate her lips from his if she wanted to – Lisbeth seized his right hand, removed the glove, and placed it on her breast. “Now the other,” she murmured.

  “I thought I disgusted you,” he whispered, as he found her nipples with his thumbs through the layers of her bodice.

  “If you’re going to be a tyrant, then be one in my bed. Don’t let me up until I have been slaked. Make me kiss you until neither of us can breathe. Let me lose my name while screaming yours.”

  Beneath her, Adrian let out a slight, delighted groan. “Lisbeth,” he said, then claimed her with his mouth again, his lips and tongue just as hungry as hers.

  She was hot and wet and wouldn’t have minded at all if he took her right there in the dirty hansom cab as it trotted through Mayfair.

  But the cab had made more progress than she knew and came to a stop at Upper Norton Street. The driver let out a shout to announce their arrival. Almost before Lisbeth could separate from Adrian, their footman Newman opened the door.

  He had the good training to only blush a scarlet red while stepping aside, pretending not to have seen a thing.

  Lisbeth straightened her dress, stealing a proud glance at Adrian’s swollen lips and stiff trousers. She summoned herself into proper decorum. “Well, Mr. Hathorne, I shall go see about tea.”

  He could only look back at her with a glaze.

  She hoped he followed her upstairs, never mind that they had a ball to dress for. She hoped her skin never cooled from the excitement of his touch. She hoped her thoughts never settled enough to regret this.

  Sixteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Strictly speaking, Adrian had been to three balls before. He had danced the minuets, drunk the orange ices, and even gambled on cards with a cheroot hanging from his lips.

  But those had all been at Maidenheath House. The guests had been a hodgepodge of family, close friends, and gentry from surrounding neighborhoods. His dance partners had been either Mary or his grandmother. Everyone knew him, knew what he looked like, and knew better than to be curious about it.

  He had never been to a London extravaganza. He wasn’t prepared at all when the hired carriage deposited them at the base of Lord Everly’s white stairs.

  Though it was moonlight, the house gleamed, from its marble exterior balustrades to the candlelit windows. And it was bursting with guests. The stairs themselves were clogged with finely dressed ladies and gentlemen waiting to enter, and the broad, brightly-lit windows set on display everyone already inside, laughing and chatting and – in one case – stealing what looked like a kiss.

  Then they got inside. While Lisbeth beamed at everyone around her, nodding and curtseying and acting the perfect lady, Adrian could only gulp. The sounds alone – chatter, booms of laughter, squeals of delight, strains of violin, gasps of dismay – overwhelmed. He couldn’t decide what to look at, either: the walls, covered in gilt frames; the silk and muslin dresses every color of the rainbow; the diamonds and rubies and emeralds glittering in the light; the refreshment tables with ices and punches and stacks of confections on silver platters; or the servants, every one of them Black, every one of them in Lord Everly’s livery with brass collars around their necks.

  He wasn’t sure anyone else noticed them.

  “Ah, Hathorne, you made it after all.”

  Adrian snapped his attention to his host, who stood at the entrance of the ballroom, sneering. Lord Everly somehow seemed even larger surrounded by so many people, his white face powder sticking with sweat to the crevasses in his forehead.

  “We thought perhaps you wouldn’t come,” Everly continued. Beside him, his wife didn’t even try to smile, only settled suspicious brown eyes on Adrian.

  Curtseying, Lisbeth glowed as if they had rolled out an elaborate welcome in her honor. “I am sure that must be my fault, for I thought to send a note but then worried that would be too familiar. Thank you so much for inviting us.”

  Lady Everly only gestured to the dancing, as if to bid them out of her sight.

  Adrian looped Lisbeth’s arm through his to calm his own nerves. That afternoon, his grandfather’s man of business had been awaiting him when he returned from Carroway’s, which meant Adrian had quickly righted his senses and had not had a chance to follow Lisbeth upstairs. Their conversation on the way to the ball had been light and insignificant. Adrian wasn’t sure if Lisbeth had forgiven him for the coffeehouse. He wasn’t sure if she wanted him to try kissing her again.

  But he was definitely glad she was there at his side as all eyes in the ballroom turned to him, the lone brown guest.

  It was not so bad from everyone. His grandmother and Mary were delighted to see them, and Lisbeth introduced Adrian to more of her family and acquaintances. In short order, Lisbeth’s male relatives had asked Lisbeth, Mary, and even Her Grace to dance the gavotte, leaving Adrian with the company of Lord Dawes.

  Lisbeth, Adrian discovered, was a tidy dancer. Short as she was, she took neat steps, moved her arms gracefully thro
ugh the air, and did it all with such joy that one couldn’t help smiling while watching. It helped that her satin skirts caught the light every which way they turned, as did the sapphire necklace that highlighted her strong, wide carriage. She was beautiful to watch. He envied her the ability to flit through the world, laughing and flushed and happy, without a care as to whether it was wrong for her to be so.

  Lisbeth danced two sets before returning to his side, and then it was only to cajole. “Do you not see there are ladies here who do not have partners?” She gestured to the near wall, where a line of debutantes in nearly-matching white dresses tried not to look too bored as they awaited invitations. “Be someone’s hero and ask them to dance.”

  “I haven’t been introduced to any of them,” Adrian objected, “and they cannot possibly want to dance with me. I am married, after all.”

  “An unmarried gentleman will see you as lucky to be dancing with whichever lady you choose, and then he will ask her to dance, and you will set off a chain reaction that results in her happy wedding.”

  Adrian was tempted to ask how that strategy had worked for Lisbeth, but he liked how she pressed against his arm to coax him.

  “Come along, I’ll introduce you to Lady Fairfax, and then she’ll introduce you to her niece. Lady Fairfax hosts the best musicales, so you will be glad to know her in the long term as well as the short.”

  Adrian knew of the lady’s husband, Lord Fairfax, a member of Parliament that the West Indian lobby always leaned on when they felt threatened. Most recently, he had been publishing pro-bondage pamphlets that argued the slaves wouldn’t know how to care for themselves if left free.

  As if the lords of England knew how to put on their own boots.

  Lady Fairfax was a handsome woman with gray streaking through her brown pomaded hair and a diamond-crested lorgnette, which she held up to her eye as Lisbeth approached. “I’m so glad to see you, Lady Fairfax, as I’ve been married since last we met. May I introduce my husband, Mr. Hathorne?”

  “This is Mr. Hathorne?” Lady Fairfax’s eyebrow raised as her gaze stuck to Adrian. He did his best to look friendly, obsequious, and calm, without being so presumptuous as meeting her eye.

  Lisbeth smiled as if it were the most natural response in the world. “Does he not have the Berkwell nose? As soon as I saw him amongst his family, I saw the resemblance.”

  Lady Fairfax only kept staring at him.

  “Mr. Hathorne would love the honor of dancing with Miss Fairfax while I am stolen away by all my friends. Could you introduce us?”

  She stared for a moment longer. Then the lady – a viscountess, if Adrian remembered correctly – turned from him. To Lisbeth, she said, “My dear, I cannot.” And with a swish of her skirts, she stalked away.

  It was not quite the cut direct. No one around them seemed to notice. There were no gasps or murmurs of dismay. But it was clear enough what she meant: Adrian could not be introduced because his skin was dark.

  Adrian was not surprised. He was not even hurt, which he might have expected, for it had always stung before, when these English people with their watery eyes decided he was beneath them. He felt only red-hot anger, and it burned all the worse when he saw the look on Lisbeth’s face.

  “Let’s get some fresh air.” Adrian pulled Lisbeth out the back door, where new gas lights illuminated a small garden. The cold night felt good after the heat of too many bodies sweating together.

  “Perhaps she didn’t hear me correctly,” Lisbeth was saying. “Perhaps she thought I asked her to dance with you, which would certainly be unusual.”

  Adrian dropped his hand from Lisbeth’s, letting her pace the pea-gravel path at her own rhythm. They were alone in the garden, as far as he could tell, the rest of the guests pressing against each other like animals.

  He shook his head. That was his anger speaking. He needn’t insult an entire building full of people simply because one of them insulted him.

  “Perhaps she needed the commode,” Lisbeth said. “I can be quite rude if I suddenly have the urge.”

  Adrian knew the comfort in what Lisbeth was doing. If she could somehow work it out that she had misunderstood, or that she had been in the wrong, then she need not face the truth.

  That the people she considered kind and interesting and worthy were small-minded.

  That there was nothing she could do to make Lady Fairfax look Adrian in the eye.

  That Lisbeth had chosen a husband who could not even go to a ball.

  “Perhaps you should like that annulment after all,” Adrian said, as Lisbeth searched for the next excuse to supply Lady Fairfax.

  To his great satisfaction, Lisbeth looked at him in horror. “What, because one woman was rude to you? I should like to believe I’m of stronger starch than that.”

  The ostrich feather atop her cap swayed at the fervor of her protest. They had marched to the back of the garden now, where a stone wall protected the Everly grounds from the riff-raff of London. Yew trees pared into the shapes of animals stood between them and the ballroom, yet they could still hear the rumble of polite chatter and the breezy rhythm of a waltz.

  Soon, they would have to return for the midnight supper.

  “It’s not just one woman, you know. I’d wager for every ten introductions you begged in there, only one would be granted, and even that one with a certain set of the lips that makes it clear it is only as a favor.”

  Lisbeth lifted her chin even as her eyes flicked behind him to the abandoned party. “Is it better in Kingston?”

  Adrian raised his shoulders. He wanted to make her a promise that it was, but the few months he had spent in Kingston as an adult had shown him white society was even worse there.

  “If you’re going to annul the marriage, let it be for this,” he said instead. “You could have any respectable gentleman. One who could ask a young lady to do a quadrille without embarrassing you.”

  Now Lisbeth settled her gaze on him. In the shadows of a gas lamp, Adrian could only see her irises as dark pools of thought. Her face was milky and white and unreadable; he couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad or indifferent.

  But when she spoke, her voice made it clear: anger. “It would never be for this.”

  Adrian should not have been comforted that she wouldn’t abandon him to face London alone. He should have shaken his head at her, or walked away, or insisted that she do the sensible thing.

  He didn’t do any of that. He didn’t want to do any of that. Lisbeth’s words went straight to his heart, and then from there very quickly to his groin. His wife stood before him, shimmering in a light that combined the moon and gas lamps and distant chandeliers, a short, wide woman in an absurd satin dress that could never be called fashionable, and she refused to leave.

  What could heat a man more quickly?

  Before Adrian quite knew what he was doing, he pulled Lisbeth into his arms. It was an awkward jerk that sent her colliding with his chest, but Adrian didn’t stop. He claimed her lips with his, that sweet taste of Lisbeth that had kept his mind straying all afternoon.

  She kissed him back, almost immediately, her lips soft and her tongue curious. She wrapped her arms around his neck, too. Lifting her hips, Adrian raised her to meet his level – relishing in the little gasp that escaped her – then braced against the garden wall to keep her there. Lisbeth’s fingers roamed around his neck, tracing his jawline, playing at his tie, and Adrian heard himself growl. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t quite vocalizing, was only feeling a heat unlike any he’d ever experienced before.

  He wanted her naked.

  And he wasn’t ashamed to want it.

  “Adrian,” Lisbeth breathed, her words hot and soft and desperate on his ear.

  “I’m here, Lisbeth,” he breathed back, not sure where the words came from. His right hand was sliding up her leg now, as he traced her neck and shoulders with his lips. His fingers trailed the soft cotton of her stockings, then the silk ties of her garters, and finally the soft, ve
lvet skin of her thigh.

  She wasn’t wearing anything else beneath her petticoats.

  “Adrian,” she breathed again, and this time he couldn’t find words for response. He could only slip his fingers farther, feeling everything as slowly as possible: the soft down warming her legs, the slight ridges of her inner skin, and then…

  He gasped a little, his lips rising from their suckling spot at her neck in surprise as his fingers found the wiry hair. The hot, meaty, luscious skin beneath it. And – as he kept going – the wet sluice of her deep inner folds.

  Lisbeth gasped now, too, one arm wrapped tight around his neck and the other braced against the wall. Her legs had curled around his waist, locking against him. Adrian cupped her ass tighter in his left palm as his right fingers relished the ocean of desire he had just discovered.

  If only he knew what to do.

  He started by running his index finger along the length of her folds, discovering a ridge here, a soft wall there. Towards the top, he found a little nub, and she sucked the night air as if it were her last breath. Adrian stayed there, touching it, until she hissed, “Circles.”

  He had never been happier to obey. He circled the nub once, twice, made the circumference wider, made it smaller, all while raising his eyes to watch Lisbeth’s face. For once, she wasn’t smiling. Her slim, powerful brows drew together in concentration, her eyes shut, and her mouth gaping. Her tongue darted out now and then in response to his fingers. Adrian increased the speed of his circles, and she moaned. “Keep going,” she pleaded, as if he thought to stop. “Soon,” she whispered, later, though Adrian had lost track of whether it was seconds or minutes or hours. Her moans were more frequent, her head rolled from one side to another, and when he stole a kiss, darting his tongue to taste her lips, she responded with ferocious, greedy gulps. He lost track of his circles, accidentally slid his finger down the length of her wet crevice, and it plunged deeper, inside of her, and that was when Lisbeth cried out, shuddering in pleasure.