Spare Brides by Adele Parks Read Free Book Online

be greeted by my maid,’ she said flatly.
    ‘I sent her away.’
    ‘And how did you explain your presence in my room?’ Ava took off her earrings and put them in a small china pot on her dressing table, then stared at her lover with nonchalance.
    ‘I’m next door. I told her I’d made a wrong turn.’
    ‘I don’t suppose she believed you.’
    ‘She’s a maid, I don’t suppose it matters.’
    It mattered to Ava, but not as much as it ought and not for the expected reasons. Obviously, unmarried women were somehow expected to remain virginal until their wedding night, but Ava thought that was outdated and hadn’t paid any attention. It was simply this business about feeding rumour that bothered her. She didn’t like to be known; it seemed so very similar to being owned.
    ‘Besides, since the duchess has thoughtfully given us adjoining rooms, I imagine she suspects we’re lovers, and if
she
suspects, then everyone else
knows.
She’s famously very slow on the uptake.’
    Ava scowled, not wanting this to be the case. ‘Let’s hope it’s just coincidence then.’ Suddenly she felt a basic and needful desire flood through her body; it overtook her concern about the gossip. She changed her tone. ‘So since you’ve sent my maid away, how am I supposed to undress?’ she asked with a small smile.
    Harrington patted the bed. ‘Come here, I can help you.’
    Afterwards, he asked, ‘Did you like that?’
    ‘Yes. You’re very good.’
    ‘Your best?’
    ‘One of them,’ she conceded. Lord Harrington looked disappointed, but wisely chose to rally. Ava was not a woman who responded to self-pity; in fact she was very likely to be regretfully contemplating the ghastly sameness of all encounters such as these. He jumped out of bed and poked the fire, and then he threw the rubber condom in the grate and poked it again, hoping it would burn. It was not the sort of thing one wanted one’s wife to find, but Ava always insisted on one, seemingly unaware or at least unconcerned that the only other women who did so were French whores. She wouldn’t trust withdrawal; in an amusing perversion of the usual roles of the sexes, she insisted that men were out to trap her.
    Lord Harrington reached for two cigarettes and lit them both, handing one to Ava. She sat up in bed, not bothering to modestly pull the covers up to hide her breasts. She didn’t think about it, but if she had, her actions would have been equally bold, because she secretly enjoyed the frisson of shocking. Clearly the lord liked it too, because he leapt back into bed with the energy of a child on Christmas morning. He swooped down to kiss her breast, and as he gently tugged on her nipple he mumbled, ‘Darling, you are perfect, will you marry me?’
    Ava took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘That’s terribly sweet of you, Charlie, but aren’t you already married?’
    ‘Well, yes, presently, but I’d divorce her. For you, my love, I would divorce her.’
    Ava stubbed out her cigarette and considered. ‘But if you were single, you wouldn’t have any attractions at all,’ she replied with a yawn. ‘Now, darling, do be quiet. I want to get some sleep.’

7
    T HE DOCTOR’S SURGERY was almost identical to the half a dozen or so other doctors’ surgeries Lydia had visited over the past seven years: austere, silent and tinged with the smell of chloroform, a smell that always made her feel anxious and nauseous by turn. The dark mahogany floors, shelves, wall panels and doors in the small waiting room shone with polish and elbow grease, but their shine didn’t please or comfort Lydia in the least; she fought the feeling that she was trapped in a coffin. She couldn’t stay seated for more than five minutes in a row, but leapt up from her chair and strode around the room. She fingered the brass bell on reception, touched the handles on the drawers of the impressive display cabinet housing an eagle that a taxidermist had captured mid pounce and flicked through