The Husband Plot Read online

  He was shaking his head. “They do not provide annulments on grounds of consummation. We shall have to provide reasons. Your father’s solicitors will handle it, of course, which means they will give the reason that you didn’t realize what I was when you married me. You didn’t realize you were marrying a mulatto. You didn’t want to sully your bloodline with the tar brush.”

  Lisbeth flinched. “That’s not true.”

  “If you want an annulment, that’s what you will have to say. They will leap at the chance to defend a fair English lady from a man such as me.”

  Lisbeth didn’t like what he said, or the way his voice had grown deep and distant. He still wasn’t looking at her, but she could read the anger in his neck and shoulders.

  “It’s not true,” Lisbeth repeated. “I knew…” she couldn’t say the word herself “…about your ancestry. I don’t see how it is any different than being descended from a Frenchman or Spaniard. I should not like to ruin you with an annulment. But sir, I cannot stay married to a man who so abhors both my person and my actions.”

  Adrian frowned at her. “I don’t abhor either your person or your actions.”

  Lisbeth wished his eyes weren’t so intense. She wanted to be able to meet his gaze without getting mesmerized by it. “You object to my friends and my opinions so much so that you forbid me from doing things, and you cannot bring yourself to consummate the marriage. What else am I to conclude?”

  “That I don’t know what I’m doing!” This came out in a shout, almost a plea, and immediately, Adrian covered his face with his hands. “I’ve never been a husband before, you know. It seems I am exceptionably bad at it.”

  Lisbeth had never seen a man come undone like this before. Her first instinct was to run to him, wrap her arms around him, tell him that it didn’t matter after all.

  But it did matter. This was her life, her sense of self-worth. She could not melt in sympathy simply because Adrian was at loose ends.

  His dismay lasted only a few moments. Then he knelt before her, his hands resting on the arm of her chair. “You are unhappy, and it is my fault. I apologize. Sincerely.”

  Lisbeth couldn’t quite breathe with him so close. “Thank you.”

  “Would you give me a week? Let me court you, without the pressure of the bedroom. Let us get to know each other. Let us see if we can make this better. If at the end of the week, you still feel we do not suit, then we will notify your father’s solicitors of an annulment.”

  Lisbeth couldn’t choose between watching his eyes – so green, so beautiful, so intimate – or his mouth – so lush, so soft – as he spoke. She couldn’t choose between feeling hot frustration at being penned in or a sweet balloon of hope.

  “One week,” she said, edging her words with steel. She felt the shame of surrender until Adrian smiled, and then –

  Then she thought perhaps she had made the right choice.

  Eight

  Chapter Eight

  Adrian locked himself in his study for the morning, the better to plan a spontaneous week of wooing. He had never courted a girl, had never even stolen wildflowers from the path for a pretty governess. He didn’t know the first thing about how to win over Lisbeth. But he knew that he must.

  He still couldn’t believe she had suggested an annulment. That she had lain their problems so bare on the table, with less interest than their discussion on novels. That she told him so easily he had failed her.

  In only two days, too.

  Adrian knew he should be upset for all the rational reasons. An annulment would be a disaster for his reputation and therefore for his privilege bill; Robert would no doubt be forced into ownership since Adrian would be the laughingstock of every white man who read the London gossip rags; Adrian would have to wed someone so desperate for money she could look past a failed marriage.

  But all those things barely crossed his mind as he stared into his fireplace. He was too busy reeling from the fact that he had failed. He had been found wanting. And he knew he deserved it. In the course of two days, he had horrified her, stormed at her, and abandoned her. No wonder Lisbeth wanted an escape.

  Besides, Adrian believed Lisbeth that for her, this had nothing to do with his African heritage. After all, her father had met Adrian before marriage was even proposed. It had all been disclosed in the discreet, proper way these things were handled. And when Lisbeth had finally seen him at the altar at St. George’s, she hadn’t grown pale or trembly or anything like that. Adrian had spent his wedding morning anticipating his bride’s reaction, bracing for her to faint in horror. But Lisbeth never took her eyes off him. Even before her father placed her hand in Adrian’s, she smiled – Adrian’s first smile from her. Pretty and happy and hopeful.

  Compare that to the expression she wore at breakfast when she said that he abhorred her. Bleak. Helpless. Desperate.

  Adrian never wanted to be responsible for an expression like that again.

  He shook himself of all morose thoughts. He had spent enough time feeling sorry for himself. Now he had to figure out how to save his marriage.

  Adrian did not know much about courting a woman, but he did know a few small things about Lisbeth. She loved books. She disliked decorating. From the dresses he had observed so far, she didn’t have a particular interest in fashion.

  He decided to begin where most of London did their courting: a ride in Hyde Park followed by ices at Gunter’s. He invited Lisbeth by way of note served on Ford’s silver tray, and she accepted the same way. Adrian could hear her murmuring with her maid in her bedchamber as he dressed for the occasion. He wondered if she was putting the same care into her ensemble as he was.

  Adrian had learned even before he came to England that the outfit made the man. He paid particular attention to what other gentleman wore and even hired Mr. Adkins because the man had previously worked for the leader of the pack, Beau Brummell. For that afternoon, Adrian selected his green waistcoat, pale yellow trousers, and silvery necktie. It was one of his favorite outfits, understated but not without personality.

  He awaited Lisbeth in the sitting room, opposite the hall from the breakfast room, which he could hardly look at. Adrian’s skin hummed with anxiety, so he tried to focus on the small things he could control. He could be polite. He could solicit Lisbeth’s opinions. A gentleman didn’t mention a lady’s coiffure or apparel, but he could compliment her general appearance.

  He would not mention anything about Lady Gresham’s salons, nor would he try telling Lisbeth to do anything.

  She joined him a few minutes after their appointed time. She wore a pretty blue ensemble with a ruffled jacket over top to protect her from the March wind. She came to a pause just inside the door, yards away from him. Usually, Lisbeth carried herself so proudly, Adrian forgot she only came up to his elbow. Now, though, her eyes were guarded, her shoulders pinched. She looked small.

  Because of him.

  Adrian bowed to her, then put on a smile, if only to make the whole afternoon feel less like a funeral march. “Are you ready for a drive?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  The curricle was already pulled up to the house, a groom holding the horses still until Adrian could take the leads. The vehicle was designed for a gentleman to drive himself, the better to show off his companion. Lisbeth arranged herself beside him so that her hands were folded demurely in her lap, her chin pointed away from him.

  “Off we go,” Adrian found himself saying. “This should be good fun. I’ve never been driving in Hyde Park before.”

  Lisbeth turned to him obligingly. “Have you not? How curious.”

  “I haven’t spent much time in London, except for business.” Adrian remembered he was supposed to be asking her questions about herself. “Have you gone driving in Hyde Park often?”

  “Almost every week last Season.”

  “Ah yes, with Lord Gresham, I imagine.” He kept forgetting that she had been promised to someone else before. He wondered if he would ever encounter th
e bounder, and what he would say if he did.

  Lisbeth raised an eyebrow. “Yes, once with Lord Gresham. Another time with the Marquess of Asbury. Twice with a Mr. Lansdell. But mostly with my family.”

  So her Season had been healthy with suitors. Adrian wondered that she had thrown away the chance at a second one by marrying him. A man she’d never met. A man who would abandon her for Kingston in a handful of months.

  The clouds overhead began to spit a cold drizzle. Adrian hadn’t considered the weather when he came up with this plan. Yet another failure. The groom, at least, had pulled up the curricle cover so they were protected from most precipitation.

  “Why have you limited your experience in London?” Lisbeth asked. “If you have been in town for business, then surely you could have gone driving in Hyde Park or secured an invitation to a ball. I remember your cousin Robert from last Season. Why did you not accompany him, knowing you needed to marry?”

  Adrian didn’t think it needed explaining. Robert could go anywhere and do anything; he was the white heir to a duchy. Adrian was only the mixed-race son of a second son. He commanded thousands of pounds, to be sure, but that did not erase who he was.

  Lisbeth seemed to read his thoughts. “Did you never give it a try, to see how people would react? Or did you simply assume the worst of us?”

  “It is important to me to be without reproach,” Adrian said. “It is easier to remain so when no one has met me.”

  “So you would rather hide than discover whether you could make real connections? That’s a shame. Just think: you could have met a woman you truly loved, had you only gone to Almack’s one night. Instead, you are stuck with me.”

  She bit her lower lip after saying this. Adrian watched her work at it, her gaze casting desperately out the side of the carriage. He didn’t know how to respond to such a statement. There were so many insults in it, as much to herself as to him.

  The drizzle was growing steadier, heavier, closer to a proper rain than afternoon spittle. Soon, it was going to start blowing sideways into the curricle, and then Adrian would be guilty of endangering his wife as well as enraging her.

  He turned his attention back to the horses. “You are stuck with me more than I am stuck with you.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes. Hyde Park was empty – everyone else in London had enough sense to stay inside on such a miserable day – and Adrian was growing so chilled beneath his coat that he couldn’t imagine eating an ice. So much for his perfect afternoon of wooing.

  Adrian tried to think what Robert would do, were he ever to have such a disastrous courting session. Likely he would say something charming to win a laugh. Adrian could think of nothing. Except, “You look very beautiful this afternoon.”

  Lisbeth did not laugh at this. She looked at him as if he had declared his allegiance to the French cause.

  “The blue complements your eyes,” Adrian continued. “They are such a dark, deep brown. Like coffee I could drink all day.”

  Lisbeth drew her eyebrows together in a serious, concentrated frown. “Why did you want to marry me?”

  He wished he could take back the poetry. He had been trying to salvage something, not dig them into deeper trouble than ever.

  The truthful answer to her question was that he needed to marry any English woman of good breeding. He didn’t care whom, as long as she would consent to being left behind in England for the foreseeable future. Lisbeth had been the first daughter offered up to him.

  Adrian knew better than to say that.

  He thought instead of what he admired about her. What made him glad to have married her. “You are beautiful, caring, easy to have a conversation with. You are a natural hostess. You ask interesting questions. What man wouldn’t want to marry you?”

  Lisbeth still looked skeptical, until a gust of wind pushed the rain horizontally into the curricle directly onto her right half. In what seemed like a matter of seconds, her side was completely drenched. Adrian spurred the horses forward, towards a canopy of trees that would hopefully protect them from the worst of the rain.

  She was shivering so badly that even her legs shook. Pulling the horses to a stop, Adrian wrapped her against him, rubbing her arms and back to try to warm her. Lisbeth was so small compared to him. She fit against him like a nesting shell. There was something intimate in feeling he could hold her whole being in his two hands.

  Lisbeth looked up at him, teeth chattering, eyes fierce. “If you think I’m beautiful, why haven’t you had me?”

  Adrian’s groin tightened at the same time as his shame. She was in his arms, after all, her lips so close to his. If he were only the kind of man who knew how, he could have her right there.

  He shut his eyes for a moment. He needed to find the right answer to her question. He wished there were any but the truth, but he couldn’t see a way out of it. He had to admit it.

  “I’ve lived my life without reproach. Where most gentlemen would have an education in…marital relations…I don’t.” Adrian peeked open his eyes to see Lisbeth frowning in confusion. “You are the first woman I’ve kissed. I’m not sure I know what comes next.”

  There. He’d said it. He had shared his most humiliating truth with the woman who could most humiliate him.

  Let the consequences fly.

  He still held Lisbeth wrapped against him, so that he could feel her ribs expanding with each breath. For a long moment, she only kept frowning at him. Then she lifted a gloved hand to his cheek. She arched upward until her lips touched his. They were soft and sweet. She kissed with her fingertips as much as her mouth, feathering wet touches across his jaw and down his neck. Adrian had never been both cold and hot at the same time before, had never lost all thought in favor of his nerves.

  He could kiss his wife forever.

  Lisbeth withdrew sooner than he wanted, his hands gripping either side of her waist. She smiled one of her pink grins, cheeky and delicious. “Perhaps next week we’ll figure out what comes next together.”

  Adrian had never needed a single week to go well so badly before.

  Nine

  Chapter Nine

  They were to go to the theater that night.

  Lisbeth’s head spun with how quickly the day had reversed itself. She had been so sure she would be back on the feather mattress in her father’s townhouse that night, yet here she was, arguing with Hannah about what to wear to Covent Garden.

  She didn’t know how to feel about heading to the play that night. She didn’t even know what they were seeing – and Lisbeth always knew what was playing at the theaters. That was how off-kilter she was from just one drive in the park.

  One drive, in which so much happened. Adrian called her beautiful. He held her in his strong, warm arms. He bloomed with embarrassment. Lisbeth hadn’t ever imagined a man wouldn’t know how to have sex. She’d loved how innocent he looked as his skin heated, transforming that mask of indifference into something human.

  Lisbeth wanted to transform him again. She wanted Adrian to never look so buttoned up around her. She wanted him to always be just a moment away from kissing her.

  Which was why she argued back when Hannah insisted she wear one of the silk dresses from her trousseau. Those were designed by a French modiste for some tall slender figure, pretending it was redesigned to flatter Lisbeth, but in truth simply extended with some extra cloth at the shoulders and hacked into a hem at the skirts. Lisbeth wanted to go in one of the creations her Aunt Vivienne had bestowed upon her. Aunt Vivienne’s gowns were never intended for willowy debutantes. Instead of demanding that Lisbeth’s boxy frame hide in billows of extra silk, they proudly displayed her shoulders as her crowning feature.

  They made her feel pretty.

  Hannah wanted Lisbeth to show up in the height of fashion for her first appearance as a married lady at Covent Garden. Lisbeth wanted only to see Adrian’s eyes widen again.

  After all, Adrian had invited her to the theater on the heels of their kiss. The one tha
t she had initiated. The one that had left her thoroughly wet and breathless.

  He had called her beautiful.

  She didn’t want to follow that up looking like a potato in a silk sack.

  In the battle of the dresses, Lisbeth – of course – won. She wore the golden yellow gown made of a shocking velvet and even went so far as to have Hannah powder her shoulders along with her face. Hannah had her little victory too, though, convincing Lisbeth to forego her usual ostrich feather cap in favor of a matching yellow turban coiled over her curled hair.

  All in all, Lisbeth felt daring and exotic in her outfit, quite unlike the dumpy insecurity her clothes usually bestowed upon her.

  Adrian, awaiting her in the sitting room, looked impeccable, as always. His jacket and breeches were perfectly tailored, his formal white stockings displaying deliciously muscled calves. A buttery golden waistcoat added just enough color to give the impression he glowed. Lisbeth felt she had seen him in a fashion plate, only she hadn’t believed a man so perfect could truly exist.

  Then he greeted her with a smile. She hadn’t seen many of those on him. His smiles took over his whole face, transforming it from a somber man to someone young and joyful. One could almost believe he was carefree, seeing a smile like that.

  Lisbeth rejoiced in it but tried not to get swept up in it. She knew it was momentary, that soon enough he would be serious again. She knew he was only trying to save the marriage to prevent a scandal. She redirected their attention by saying something inane. “What luck – we are matching!”

  Adrian looked down at his waistcoat and smiled – again! “Not quite luck. My man consulted with your maid on what color would be appropriate.”

  Lisbeth didn’t know what to say to this. She had never heard of such a thing: a husband and wife coordinating their outfits. She wasn’t sure if it spoke to vanity or affection. Or both. Or neither.