The Husband Hunt by Lynsay Sands Read Free Book Online

him. He then released one hand from the frame to wrap his arm around her.
    “Oh, Robert. Thank goodness. I knew you’d come,” she mumbled into his neck and he frowned at the slight slur to her words.
    “Have you been drinking?” he asked, pulling back slightly to try to see her face.
    “Uh-huh.” She nodded apologetically. “Mrs. Morgan made me drink this sort of spiced wine. I mean it tasted like wine but I know it had other stuff in it. She said it would relax me for what was to come. I think it was drugged like the tea. But not with a sleeping powder. With something else. It made me feel all soft and floaty.”
    “Hmmm.” He frowned, his gaze dropping down over the gown she wore. It didn’t hide a damned thing, not the round globes of her breasts or the dusky pink of her nipples, which were presently erect, he noted and scowled. “What the hell are you wearing?”
    “Mrs. Morgan made me wear it. She said my suitor would like me in this. Do you like me in this?” She glanced down at herself. “I like how it feels on my skin. It feels floaty.”
    He couldn’t help noticing that the theme seemed to be floaty, and since she was swaying on her feet and not the least bit self-conscious about standing in front of him damned near naked, he suspected whatever Mrs. Morgan had given her was the culprit.
    “Do you?”
    Robert blinked and forced his gaze from her nipples to her face. “Do I what?”
    “Do you like me in this?” Lisa asked with a frown. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?”
    “I—” Robert found his gaze sliding down over her body again, drifting over and past her breasts, down across the soft swell of her belly to the curves of her hips and the nest of blond curls between them. Too right he thought it was pretty and liked her in it. Far too much, he thought grimly and gave his head a shake. Trying for reason, he said quietly, “Lisa, we have to get out of here.”
    “Oh, yes. I don’t like it here, Robert. Mrs. Morgan made me strip and bathe in front of this man named Gilly, who was very big and scary and I didn’t like it at all, but she wouldn’t make him leave when I asked and said if I didn’t cooperate she’d let him strip and bathe me and I didn’t want him touching me and so I had to pretend that he just wasn’t there and get on with it, but it was terribly embarrassing and I didn’t like it.”
    He’d kill the bastard, Robert thought grimly. Gilly was Mrs. Morgan’s muscle, a massive, moon-faced mute who kept the girls in line and handled troublesome clients. He’d kill the bastard for having looked on Lisa and made her so uncomfortable . . . right after he handled Mrs. Morgan. But not till after he had Lisa safely out of there.
    “Okay,” he murmured, urging her back a bit. “I want you to climb onto my back.”
    “Onto your back?” she asked uncertainly.
    “Yes, you climb onto my back and I shall climb back down the wall.”
    “How are you going to climb down the wall, Robert? You’re not a spider. Perhaps we should make a rope out of the sheets like Bet and I did and—”
    “It’s all right. I climbed up, and I can climb down. Just get on my back, Lisa,” he said turning sideways on the ledge and urging her around to his side.
    She muttered under her breath the whole time, but climbed onto the ledge behind him and then wrapped her arms around his shoulders as instructed.
    “Wrap your legs around my waist,” he ordered.
    Lisa mumbled by his ear, and her legs came around his waist, the feet hooking together against his belly. Robert stared at them blankly, noting that she was barefoot and had the most adorable little toes and a lovely high arch, and—
    “Now what?”
    Giving his head another shake, Robert was now the one to mutter under his breath. Then heaving a sigh, he said, “Just hold on tight.”
    He waited to hear her say that she understood and then began to shift them both out of the window. It was a much trickier maneuver with her clinging to