Ann Lethbridge - Regency Society

She stepped with her little slipper-covered feet onto his boots to make it easier to kiss him. ‘What a clever idea.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ He smiled and ran a finger down her cheek. ‘Something Greek, I think. I see you posed as Athena.’

‘Aphrodite,’ she offered, ‘with bare shoulders.’

He ran his fingers lower, touching her throat. ‘And bare there as well. And here.’ His fingers touched her skirt, still raised and crushed between them, and remembered the treasures exposed beneath it. ‘Perhaps an artfully arranged drape,’ he conceded, stroking diagonally across her body until his hand rested on her bare hip.

‘And you could touch me, whenever you liked,’ she encouraged. And her hands slipped lower again.

‘This is madness,’ he said, without much conviction. ‘Stop it this instant.’

‘Why?’ she whispered.

‘Because we are in a salon and not a bedroom. It is not respectful of your brother. It is not proper.’ He tried to think of other reasons. But as she exposed him, stroked him and eased him between her legs, he did nothing to stop her.

‘And I am your wife and not your lover,’ she said, stopping herself. In her voice, he heard the hesitance and resignation that had been there on their first nights together.

She was soft, warm and willing. And he was harder than he’d ever been for her. The contact with her body made every nerve in him tingle with eagerness. The air was full of the scent of lemons, and he was wasting time with propriety. ‘You are both,’ he said. ‘Wife and lover. Let me prove it to you.’ Then he leaned back against the door, shifted his weight, bent his knees, found her body and lost himself.

The next minutes were a blur. His hand behind her knee. Her leg wrapped around his hip. His hand on her breast. Her mouth on his, kissing as though she could suck the life from him. And their bodies meeting, over and over in subtle, silent thrusts so as not to summon the servants or alert his childhood friend to the delightful debauchery taking place in his home. And all the while, the thought echoing in his head was that most men would give two good eyes for the opportunity to have a woman like this, even for a single night.

But the lascivious creature panting out her climax in his ear was his wife. His Emily. Emily. Emily. And he finished in her with a soul-wrenching shudder, and a single rattle of the door that they rested against. As their bodies calmed, he held her, amazed.

Behind them, the door rattled, and bounced against his shoulders as though someone was attempting to open it. ‘What the devil?’

‘David,’ Adrian said, remembering why he had resisted this interlude. ‘A moment, please.’

‘Folbroke?’ There was a moment of suspicious silence. ‘And I suppose my sister is in there with you.’

He smiled, and said, ‘My wife. Yes.’

‘We are working out our differences,’ Emily said, with the smallest sway of her hips before she parted from him and let her skirts fall back into place with a rustle.

‘But must you do it in the salon?’ David muttered from the hall.

His wife was giggling into his lapel and smoothing his clothing back into place as he said, ‘My apologies for the momentary lapse of judgement, Eston. It was …’ he rolled his eyes towards heaven for the benefit of Emily ‘… unavoidable. In a moment, we will be retiring to Emily’s rooms, and will bother you no further.’

‘But perhaps you might join us for dinner,’ Emily offered.

‘Later in the week,’ Adrian added.

‘Several days from now,’ she corrected.

From the other side of the door, there was a disgusted snort and the sound of retreating footsteps. Emily burst into another fit of giggling, then she was reaching for him again.

This time he stopped her, ignoring her pouts and the demands of his own body. ‘Lady Folbroke, your behaviour is disgraceful.’ And then he whispered in her ear, ‘And I was a fool to have run from you.’

‘Yes, you were,’ she agreed. ‘But you are my fool, and you will not get away from me again.’

‘Quite true.’ He grinned. ‘Thanks to you, I think I will be the first in a long line of Folbrokes to die in his bed.’

Proposals in Regency Society

Make-Believe Wife

The Homeless Heiress

Anne Herries

ANNE HERRIESlives in Cambridgeshire, England, where she is fond of watching wildlife and spoils the birds and squirrels that are frequent visitors to her garden. Anne loves to write about the beauty of nature and sometimes puts a little into her books, although they are mostly about love and romance. She writes for her own enjoyment and to give pleasure to her readers. She is a winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association® Romance Prize.

Make-Believe Wife

Anne Herries

‘Damn you, sir. I have had enough of your wild behaviour,’ the Earl of Hartingdon thundered at his grandson. ‘I shall not tolerate the disgrace you have brought upon us.’

‘Forgive me,’ Luke, Viscount Clarendon, said and looked contrite. ‘This should never have come to your ears. Rollinson was a fool and a knave to come prattling to you, sir.’

Tall and almost painfully thin, yet with a commanding presence, the earl’s bushy white eyebrows met in a frown of disapproval.

‘Do you deny that you seduced the man’s wife?’

Luke hesitated. The truth of the matter was that he had no idea whether or not he had seduced Adrina Rollinson. The evening in question was hazy to say the least. He had been three sheets to the wind and, when he’d woken to find himself lying next to the naked and undoubtedly voluptuous beauty, he had hardly been given time to wonder before her husband came storming into the summerhouse to demand satisfaction.

‘I can only tell you that I have no memory of it happening, sir.’

‘What sort of an answer is that, pray?’ the earl demanded. ‘You puzzle me, Luke. You have had every advantage and yet you insist on carrying your wildness to excess. If you cannot recall making love to a woman like Lady Rollinson, you must have been drunk.’

‘Indeed, that I shall own,’ Luke said instantly. ‘I would not call the lady a liar, but I doubt I was capable of making love that night.’

‘I suppose your taste is for whores?’

‘I do not know what you may have been told of me, sir, but I assure you I have done nothing of which I am ashamed.’

‘Indeed? I know that you have bought a house and intend to set up your mistress in Hampstead.’ The earl’s top lip curled in scorn. ‘You are a disgrace to your family. Thank God your parents did not live to see what you have become.’

‘Perhaps had they lived I might have been otherwise.’

‘Are you blaming me? Impudent pup!’ The earl’s eyes darkened with temper. ‘Well, sir, I have done with you. It was in my mind to make you my sole heir, for although the estate is entailed, the patent allows the title to pass through the female line and my fortune is my own to dispose of as I wish. However, I have a cousin who would restore both honour and fortune to the family name.’

‘Horatio Harte, I presume? I wish you joy of him, sir.’ Luke’s temper was barely in check. ‘Good afternoon. I shall not trouble you with my presence again.’

‘I did not give you leave to go.’

‘Yet I believe I shall. You have never liked me, sir. I have done things of which I am not particularly proud, but I am not the rogue you think me.’

‘Come back here!’ The earl’s voice rose petulantly. ‘You will hear me out. I shall give you one more chance, but you must marry a decent girl—one with perfect manners who knows how to behave in good society. I need an heir I can be proud of before I die.’