The Footman (The Masqueraders Book 1)

by S. M. LaViolette

  He shoved glasses and the decanter away and she jolted when they crashed to the floor.

  “Stephen?” She started to push up onto her elbows and he looked up from the breast he was teasing.

  “Do you want me to stop?” He bit her nipple to make his point.

  She sucked air through clenched teeth, her eyelids fluttering while her chest arched and a guttural moan tore from her throat.

  Smiling, Stephen pulled the bodice fabric lower, until the perfect mounds were thrust high and proud. He tongued the sensitive skin beneath her breasts, teasing and nipping and sucking while his hands pulled up the yards and yards of diaphanous silk that made up her skirt. She stiffened when he reached her stocking-clad legs and he stroked her from ankle to thigh. Their eyes met and she spread her thighs for him, the wanton action making him groan.

  “My God you’re lovely.” He slid a finger into her tight, wet heat and she whimpered, her slim hips thrusting off the table, taking his questing finger deeper and grinding against his hand.

  Triumph and fierce possession ripped through him as she responded to his touch with eagerness and hunger. He wanted more, he wanted all of her. He shook with the need to taste and explore and fill every part of her willing body.

  Stephen released her nipple and pulled away from her almost painful grip. Her hands slid from his hair, her eyes like slivers of moonlight.

  Stephen smiled down at her sulky face and lifted her slippered feet to the tabletop. Her knees sagged open and he found her peak and circled her with relentless flicks of his thumb, until her body lifted off the table.

  He was unable to resist the honeyed scent of her one second longer. She cried out and bucked beneath him as his mouth settled over the tiny bud that controlled her pleasure. He worked her without mercy, until she was drenched and engorged and ready.

  ∞∞∞

  Elinor thought she might simply go mad.

  She’d lost count of the number of times he’d taken her to the brink of pleasure and ruthlessly shoved her over. Every nerve in her body was raw and sensitive and yet she was still greedy for more.

  His hot wicked mouth disappeared from her sex and she looked up. His lips were slick and red, his green eyes black as he flicked opened his pantaloons.

  He grabbed her hips and pulled her toward the edge of the table, until she could feel his crown pushing against her. His face was taut and beautiful with raw desire.

  “Take me in your hand and guide me inside.”

  She let her legs open even wider and reached between her spread knees for him. She’d no sooner positioned him when he entered her with one long, hard stroke.

  Elinor closed her eyes as he began to move in deep, controlled thrusts.

  He stopped, buried inside her. “Look at me, Elinor.” His eyes burned with the fierce determination of a man who would conquer and possess. His gaze dropped to where they were joined and his eyes narrowed in sensual gratification. A small, tight smile curved his lips as he claimed her with a brutal thrust. Elinor grunted and tilted to take more.

  “That’s right, darling,” he encouraged, rocking into her almost playfully as she raised her hips and offered herself to him. “Take all of me.” He punctuated his words with a savage thrust that took her breath away.

  “You are mine.” He drew out with agonizing slowness and then slammed into her like a battering ram, his glittering eyes fastened to hers. “Say it, Elinor.” He bared his teeth with the force of his thrust. “Say it.” Pleasure gathered at her core and rippled outward to the rest of her body. “Say it,” he demanded, his voice rough with desire.

  “I’m yours, Stephen.” The words were torn from her chest as she detached from her body and began to float away.

  The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was a fierce, exultant grin and green eyes that blazed with an expression that looked oddly like despair.

  ∞∞∞

  Elinor swam up from the liquid depths of sleep slowly. Her body had not felt so well-used and exhausted since she’d ridden to hounds as a girl. But even riding had not exercised all the muscles she was feeling this morning.

  She heated all over at the memory of last night, and what she’d done to get so tired. The shocking episode on the dining table had been the most adventurous part of the evening, but not the most enlightening.

  Stephen had woken her twice more in the night to make love, the last time just before dawn, when he’d slipped between her legs and held her from behind, taking her with exquisite slowness as they lay on their sides. Afterward they’d stayed intimately joined.

  “You are a remarkable woman, Elinor.” He’d kissed the back of her neck, his voice oddly tender in the darkness. “I’ll never forget this time we’ve had together.”

  Tears had rolled down her cheeks at his words and she’d cried silently as he drifted into sleep behind her, his body still inside hers as his breathing became deeper and more regular.

  Her eyes prickled at the memory—and the knowledge that she would leave him today.

  She heard the murmur of voices out in the sitting room and pushed herself up to look at the clock. It was ten already. It was possible Marcus had already left a message downstairs, although not likely. Either way, it was time for her to be up and about.

  She dispensed with Molly’s services and was able to have a quick sponge bath and dress herself in less than a half-hour.

  Once she was as ready as she’d ever be, she opened the door.

  Only to find her father, brother, and the Earl of Trentham seated in the sitting room.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  London

  1817

  “What in the—” her nephew Charles began, his eyes round with surprise.

  Stephen, whose back was to her, turned around and smiled. “Ah, good morning, Elinor. Look who is here.” His green eyes danced, as though the presence of her father, brother, and loathsome nephew in her lover’s hotel room was something she would enjoy. The room seemed to grow and recede and she gripped the doorframe.

  Stephen hastened toward her; his brow wrinkled with concern. “Are you unwell, Elinor?” He hovered over her and she stared into his eyes, which held nothing other than polite solicitude.

  “Why—” She broke off, unable to find the words to complete her question. Instead she squeezed her eyes shut, like a child refusing to see what was in front of her.

  Charles chuckled. When Elinor opened her eyes, she saw he was openly grinning.

  “I say, Worth, I’d heard you’d been sniffing around her skirts but I didn’t believe it.” He laughed again and raked Elinor with a dismissive glance. “Can’t say I understand why you’d want to bed her when you’ve got the Lewis chit panting after you, but,” he shrugged.

  Stephen whipped around. “Lord Trentham.” The words were like a blade on a whetstone. “I’m going to give you exactly five seconds to apologize for your last comment before I kick you down five flights of stairs.”

  Charles flinched, his eyes swiveling from Stephen to Elinor and back. He coughed and gave Elinor a weak, chinless smile.

  “No offense, old girl.”

  “You don’t have the power to offend me, Charles.”

  “What the devil is going on, Worth? Why have you brought—” Her father met Elinor’s eyes and broke off. His narrow face, which had lost most of its color when she entered the room, began to darken. Elinor thought he looked almost as shocked as she felt. Almost.

  Her brother merely sat with his mouth open, his eyes moving from face to face. A distant part of Elinor’s mind observed that Stuart was much altered. His thinning brown hair and the dark pouches of skin beneath his gray eyes were those of a far older man.

  Elinor turned to Stephen, who was now watching her with breathless avidity rather than concern. She realized he’d taken her hand and she yanked it from his grasp before stepping away.

  He straightened to his full height and gave her a slow, knowing smile that sent a sickening bolt of fear directly to he
r heart. In that moment, she knew; this had all been a game, a sick, twisted game, with her as one of the game pieces.

  “Did you bring me here to prove what I already know, Worth? That my daughter is a whore?” Viscount Yarmouth demanded.

  Elinor flinched, suddenly reminded of that night so long ago.

  Stephen’s terrifying smile grew wider and his eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “I will give you the same warning I gave Trentham,” he said silkily. “Guard your tongue, my Lord Yarmouth, or I will remove it from your mouth.” He raised his voice, “Fielding, get in here.”

  The door to the study opened and the big, scarred servant stood in the opening, a slim portfolio in one hand, his face even grimmer than usual.

  Elinor’s brother shot to his feet. “Caplan? George Caplan?” Stuart gasped, his face as pale as his father’s.

  “Ah, you recognize my associate, do you?” Stephen asked, smiling at Stuart in a way that made the other man blench.

  The American took the brown leather portfolio from his servant. “Thank you, Mr. Fielding. You may take a seat.” The big man’s eyes flickered from his employer to Elinor and he hesitated. “Take a seat, Fielding,” Stephen repeated, his clenched jaw the only sign he wasn’t as calm as he looked or sounded.

  For a moment it looked as though Fielding would disobey, but he shrugged and dropped into the chair Stephen had recently vacated.

  “Elinor?” Stephen said, gesturing to one of the chairs around the dining table, the table on which he’d done such intimate things to her only a few hours before.

  “I will stand, thank you,” she said coldly.

  He gave her a slight smile, as though her small rebellion amused him. “As you wish.” He opened the portfolio, extracted two sheets of paper and placed the rest on the table. “Let’s begin with you, Lord Trentham.” He paused and a nasty grin distorted his handsome features. “Tell me, are you still Lord Trentham even though you no longer are Lord of Trentham?”

  Charles was no longer looking either smug or amused. He snatched the papers from Stephen’s hand.

  His eyes flickered down the page like racing hares. He reached the bottom and staggered backward, gripping the chair with his other hand. When he looked up, his eyes were wide with horror. “My God.”

  “Read the second page, Trentham.” Stephen’s eyelids had lowered while his smile grew slowly broader.

  Charles collapsed into his chair before turning to the second page. If Elinor had ever dreamed of revenge against the man who had been nothing but petty, cruel, and vindictive, she would have considered that emotion duly satisfied by the expression on his face. Charles shook his head, as if the motion could dislodge a pernicious thought from his brain.

  Elinor knew the feeling.

  He looked up. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, it’s called speculation, Lord Trentham. It’s when a—”

  “Not that, you bloody upstart cur!” Charles sprang to his feet and crushed the pages in his fist, as though they were Stephen’s head. “This must have cost you tens of thousands of pounds. Why would you beggar yourself just to break me?”

  Stephen chuckled. “It would take a great deal more than that to beggar me, Trentham.”

  Charles’s jaw sagged and he could not stop shaking his head from side to side. “You’re mad—utterly insane. What will your investors say when they learn of this?” He waved the crumpled pages in the air.

  “I didn’t use bank money, Trentham, I used my own. I am answerable to only myself.”

  To Elinor’s surprise Charles lunged at the bigger man. Fielding was on his feet so quickly he was nothing but a blur. He caught Charles and held the far smaller man in an inexorable, but gentle, grasp and turned to his employer. “Are you finished with him?”

  Stephen’s grin threatened to split his face in two. “Quite.”

  “You fucking bastard!” Charles shrieked, struggling futilely in the huge man’s grip. “I’ll see you in court! I’ll take this to the Lords! You’ll be driven from the country!”

  “Come, my lord,” Fielding murmured soothingly as he picked up the squirming earl and carried him toward the door as if he were nothing more than an awkward toddler throwing a temper tantrum. He opened the door and deposited the still raving peer on his feet in the hall.

  “I won’t rest until you rot in jail, you—”

  Fielding closed the door and cut off the rest of what Charles said. Even so, Elinor could still hear his ranting, although she could no longer understand the words.

  Stephen gave Fielding an abrupt nod and the giant sighed heavily and took the seat Charles had just vacated. His black eyes came to rest on Elinor.

  “What have you done, Worth?” her father asked, his voice shaky and weak.

  “Take a look for yourself, Lord Yarmouth.” Stephen plucked another few pages off the table and handed them to the viscount.

  Elinor’s father took his gold pince nez from his breast pocket and began to read. The color drained from his face as he made his way down the page. By the time he reached the bottom he looked positively corpselike. He flipped to the second page, which he merely skimmed, and then gave Stephen a smile so bitter Elinor hardly recognized him.

  “I see. I suppose you now intend to redeem the notes?”

  “That is the nature of a loan, my lord. I shall give you until the end of the month. I am in no great hurry.” Stephen’s expression was so guileless and kind that Elinor’s heart began to fracture in her chest. He’d looked at her that very same way times beyond counting, the last time just last night as they’d talked about her medical ambitions.

  It had all been an act, a mask he wore for this inexplicable performance. Her hand crept to her stomach, which churned with sickness and despair.

  Stuart sprang to his feet and snatched the pages from his father’s shaking hand but then seemed unwilling to read them.

  “What does he mean? What loan?” he demanded, his gaze flickering from Stephen to the viscount and back.

  “It means your father owes me a great deal of money. As do you, I’m afraid to say.”

  “What?”

  Under different circumstances, Elinor might have found her arrogant brother’s stricken expression amusing. Stephen strode to the now hateful portfolio and extracted a collection of notes. He waved them in front of Stuart’s face.

  “Perhaps you recognize these?”

  Stuart seized the stack of chits from his hand and riffled through them, his entire body shaking violently. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, really. I bought those notes—every single one I could find.” Stephen looked down at his large employee. “And of course my associate Mr. Fielding helped you create several of them.”

  Stuart looked from Stephen to the silent man in the chair. He pointed a trembling finger at Fielding. Comprehension dawned, turning his face an ashen gray.

  “You planned all this.” It wasn’t a question. “You were always there, always at the table beside me, encouraging me to keep playing. You . . . you wanted me to lose.”

  “Actually, Mr. Fielding did not care one way or another if you won or lost. I, however, cared a great deal.” Stephen was no longer smiling and Elinor saw, for the first time, the beast he kept hidden and chained far behind his handsome mask.

  Hatred and rage oozed from his eyes like poison from an inflamed, suppurating wound. Elinor was morbidly mesmerized by the fury that festered in his fever-bright eyes. She could not look away. One thought echoed in her mind: Why? Why was he doing this? What had she done—what had they all done—to deserve such malice?

  Lord Yarmouth grabbed the papers from his son’s hand and flicked through them. When he looked up, his smile was still bitter but also triumphant.

  “You’ve wasted your time, Worth. My son has nothing. And you’ve already taken everything I have to give. Everything else is protected from your grasping hands.”

  Stephen laughed and it made Elinor’s skin crawl. “Oh, Lord Yarmouth,
please don’t tell me you think the flimsy entailment will protect you.”

  Her father crumpled in his chair, as though he’d been struck by some invisible hand.

  “Why?” Elinor asked, her voice raw with the pain that threatened to tear her in half. “Why are you doing this?”

  All three men jolted, as if they’d forgotten her very existence. Only Fielding was not surprised. For the first time Elinor saw an expression she could read on his ravaged face. It was pity; pity for her. And it terrified her more than anything else that had happened in the nightmare that was the last thirty minutes.

  Stephen went to the table and took the last pieces of paper.

  Elinor stared at the pages he held toward her and put her hands behind her back, as if she could avoid his poison by not touching them.

  “Take them, Elinor.” He sounded kind, gentle almost. His eyes were no longer filled with hostility but something else—regret?

  Elinor was proud her hand did not shake when she took the pages from his hand. The words swam before her, refusing to organize themselves into any order that made sense. Finally, one sentence pushed its way through the fog. She looked up and saw the face she’d grown to love. Stephen was no longer gloating.

  “This is the deed for the Dower House.”

  He nodded. “It is yours now. Nobody can take it away from you.”

  Elinor’s eyes flickered wildly around the room as her mind sought purchase in the hideously confusing situation. “I don’t understand.” The inadequate words were the best she could do.

  “When I bought Blackfriars, I separated the Dower House and put it in your name. Along with an annual allowance.” He hesitated and—for the briefest of moments—his expression began to shift and become more . . . human. But in the blink of an eye his handsome features hardened and his eyes glinted like glass. “It is a standard arrangement with English gentlemen when they part from their mistresses.”

  His words were like a knife that cut from her throat to her belly, slicing her in half. The words ‘five thousand pounds per annum for life’ leaped off the page. Her head began to throb and the papers fluttered from her hands like large white leaves.