In the Arms of the Heiress (A LADIES UNLACED NOVEL) by Maggie Robinson

cheese.
    Louisa could hear Aunt Grace’s disparaging tones now.
“One doesn’t get too familiar with the servants.”
It had been a miracle that Kathleen wasn’t sacked when she and Louisa grew close in their isolation. But Kathleen was always punctilious in front of Grace, appearing meek and properly cowed. Once Louisa’s bedroom door was shut, it was altogether another thing.
    Louisa wondered where Kathleen was now. She’d declined to sleep in Louisa’s dressing room, saying it would cause talk if she were to be a human shield between her mistress and Maximillian Norwich. Maybe Kathleen was rendezvousing with Robertson in his room above the garage. He’d been hired not long before Louisa had bolted, but he had apparently been here long enough to impress unimpressable Kathleen. The man hadn’t said so much as boo when he’d picked them up at the station today, but he was only keeping to his place in the Rosemont pecking order.
    It was clear Grace was still queen.
    No doubt her aunt was sleeping soundly, pleased at the mischief she’d made at dinner, confident she could bribe Louisa’s new husband to sue for divorce. On what grounds, she wondered. Insanity? Louisa
did
feel unbalanced now that she was home again. She supposed a criminal conversation charge could be trumped up if the price was right—some poor fellow might be persuaded to lie and say he’d slept with her and made her an adulteress. It was almost funny—if Charles Cooper really was her husband, he might be eager to get out of his marriage now that he’d met his in-laws.
    Louisa sighed. This worry was getting her nowhere. Whatever Grace was up to, she’d be foiled—Charles seemed unbribable, unless he really
was
a good actor. Mrs. Evensong had picked well. Louisa had confidence in his honor and honesty—he didn’t have to tell her what Grace had said, but he had. It would have been easy for him to betray her—he didn’t owe her anything, really. Didn’t even know her.
    She touched her lips. He had not kissed her as a stranger.
    She extinguished the lights and climbed back into bed, her thoughts jumbled. Louisa had been kissed before. And more. She’d not been as much of an idiot lately as she’d been with Sir Richard—she liked to think she’d learned her lesson, and a hard lesson it had been. But there had been a few times over the past year when she considered giving herself away again, this time with no expectation of marriage. She would
never
get married.
    Louisa shut her eyes, pulled up her nightgown, and touched herself. Who needed a man when she had fingers? She eased into her mattress, circling damp flesh, willing herself to relax.
    Relaxation, like sleep, was difficult. Was it because Charles Cooper was just yards away? There were three doors between them. But had she locked her dressing room door to the bath chamber?
    He was not the sort of man to enter a bedroom without an invitation—she would stake her life on it. So why was she so nervous? Was she afraid he’d discover her in her shameful attempt to reach bliss?
    No. It was not shameful—she did not care what any book or anyone said to try to frighten her with to control and diminish her. She was human. She had needs, and it was ever so much easier to do for herself than place herself at any man’s mercy. Men didn’t care for anyone’s satisfaction but their own. Charles Cooper was probably just like that, brutish in the bedroom. Taking. Staking.
    But what if he watched her at a safe distance, his blue eye smoky with desire? Louisa pictured him at the doorway, his dressing gown unbelted, his chest bronze in the firelight. He would direct her from afar, his voice thick with arousal. Tell her where her hand must go next, instruct her to remove the nightgown that suddenly felt so hot and scratchy. She would listen carefully and obey, as white as the linen sheet she lay upon, wet with her own dew. A small cry escaped and she plunged into herself, frantic to keep flying,