Praise for Minerva Spencer & S.M. LaViolette’s THE ACADEMY OF LOVE series:
“[A] pitch perfect Regency …. Readers will be hooked.” (THE MUSIC OF LOVE)
★Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
“An offbeat story that offers unexpected twists on a familiar setup.” (A FIGURE OF LOVE)
“[A] consistently entertaining read.” (A FIGURE OF LOVE)
Kirkus
Praise for Minerva Spencer’s THE OUTCASTS:
"Minerva Spencer's writing is sophisticated and wickedly witty. Dangerous is a delight from start to finish with swashbuckling action, scorching love scenes, and a coolly arrogant hero to die for. Spencer is my new auto-buy!"
-NYT Bestselling Author Elizabeth Hoyt
"Fans of Amanda Quick's early historicals will find much to savor."
★Booklist STARRED REVIEW
"Sexy, witty, and fiercely entertaining."
★Kirkus STARRED REVIEW
More books by S.M. LaViolette & Minerva Spencer:
THE ACADEMY OF LOVE SERIES
The Music of Love
A Figure of Love
A Portrait of Love*
THE OUTCASTS SERIES
Dangerous
Barbarous
Scandalous
Notorious*
THE MASQUERADERS
The Footman
The Postilion*
The Bastard*
THE SEDUCERS
Melissa and The Vicar
Joss and The Countess
Hugo and The Maiden*
VICTORIAN DECADENCE
His Harlot
His Valet
His Countess
ANTHOLOGIES:
BACHELORS OF BOND STREET
THE ARRANGEMENT
*upcoming books
CROOKED SIXPENCE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2020 Shantal M. LaViolette
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address above.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
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First printing June 2020
ISBN:B086JCPCS7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
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Printed in the United States of America.
Chapter One
London
Alicia, Countess of Selwood, pulled on her black kid gloves and turned to the naked man on the bed.
Lord Byerly was asleep, the fine Irish linen sheets he favored twisted around his slim body like the pale arms of a lover.
He was an attractive man but barely adequate when it came to bed sport.
He was also becoming a bore.
They’d been seeing one another for only a little over two months and already he’d become cloying, clingy, and apt to put his “mark” on her in public situations.
She picked up her reticule, opened the door, and closed it quietly behind her.
Thankfully Byerly kept his family’s house open in London even though he was a bachelor. Alicia wouldn’t have consented to this liaison if she’d had to meet him in some dreadful lodgings.
But although he stayed in the mansion, he didn’t have the money to properly staff it, which was also good because it meant she had no need to dodge servants and their prying eyes.
The only servant in the foyer when she descended the stairs was hers.
Jocelyn Gormley looked up from something he held in his hands—it would be a book, which he was never without—but swiftly closed and slid into the pocket of his greatcoat. He got to his feet before she reached the bottom of the stairs and left to find a hackney without her having to ask.
Alicia went to the mirror that hung above a dusty console table and inspected her reflection.
Her pale, ash-blond hair was pulled back in a smooth chignon rather than the fussier styles favored by younger women. Her skin was translucent, and free of wrinkles—at least in the dim lighting of the foyer. And her silver silk gown was as fresh-looking as it had been when she’d left her house four hours earlier.
She looked exactly like the Ice Countess, a name applied behind her back and one she found amusing.
Gormley reentered, his massive frame filling even the oversized doorway of Byerly House.
“The hack is here, my lady.” His voice was the low, rough rasp of a man who rarely used it.
Alicia preceded him out the door and into the waiting carriage without speaking. The old, but clean, carriage dipped precariously on its worn springs when Gormley climbed in behind her.
He was a huge man with a history of prize fighting, which was partly why she had hired him. He was also taciturn and self-contained—two other reasons why she chose to employ him as the servant who accompanied her on her most private of errands.
Alicia had not spoken more than a dozen words with the man since employing him a little over two months earlier—right before she’d ended her affair with Sir Henry, the first lover she’d ever taken, and yet another mediocre selection.
Gormley was perfect for her needs. In addition to handling all the messages between herself and her paramour, he was also unflappable, polite, and unusually well-spoken for a man of his class. He also appeared utterly incurious about her and what she did on her late-night jaunts.
According to Alicia’s maid—Maude—Gormley wasn’t only closed-mouthed around her; he was universally discreet.
Maude, Alicia’s spying eyes in the servants hall, assured Alicia that she’d hardly heard the enormous man exchange two words with anyone, and that he never spoke about his mistress.
“I can’t decide if he’s dull-witted or extremely sharp,” Maude admitted.
Maude herself fell into the second category.
Alicia hadn’t told her maid that Gormley appeared to spend his time waiting for her occupied with a book—an activity which would indicate he was not a stupid man.
Not that all smart people read. Alicia considered herself fairly smart but she never read if she could help it.
She looked away from her silent servant and stared out the window at the passing streets, which were peopled by men returning home after a night of debauchery, or perhaps just setting out for one. Young bucks bent on sensual pleasure—just like Alicia, in other words.
She thought back to her evening with Byerly and snorted. Pleasure? Well, in theory.
The viscount—a good decade younger than her own thirty-nine years—was selfish and pedestrian between the sheets. Rather than satisfy her shameful urges—which, admittedly, she’d never confessed to either Byerly or any another human being—their trysts had left her increasingly frustrated.
She straightened the seams on her already straight gloves, wishing she could straighten out her life just as easily.
Edward had died thirteen months ago and yet here she was, still mixing among people who despised her, but who couldn’t entirely reject her because of her wealth.
Allie Benton, or what was left of her, chuckled somewhere in the dark confines of Alicia’s mind. Oh, if only these arrogant aristocrats knew who she really was.
Society hadn’t been any warmer toward her back in New York City—quite the reverse, in fact—but at least she hadn’t felt so foreign there.
Some days—or nights, more often—she missed her country of birth. Other days, she enjoyed being a visitor here, no real need to settle in and learn the customs because she would one day move on.
But she couldn’t leave yet—not until she could take Elizabeth with her, and that wasn’t for another four years.
Alicia sighed. It was a vicious trap: she could not go to New York without Lizzy, and David would never let Alicia take her daughter out of Britain.
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and chewed it, allowing herself something she did not often permit: a moment of despair.
But then she recalled she was not alone.
She turned to look at her servant.
Gormley appeared to be sleeping—or at least resting; he was certainly not paying any attention to her.
Even so, she closed the door on the hopelessness that always threatened to leak out if she was not vigilant.
Besides, it was self-deluding to yearn for New York. There was nothing for her there; nothing but a past she’d been in a hurry to leave behind after Horace died.
Something inside her twisted at the thought of her first husband.
Forty years her senior, the iron magnate had been in his sixties when they’d married. His body had been wrinkled, sagging, and covered with a pelt-like mass of gray hair—but that did not mean Alicia hadn’t welcomed his hands on her. Indeed, she had labored and schemed for the day he would take her to his bed.
Alicia now knew how fortunate she’d been in her choice of matrimonial target. Horace had been one of the wealthiest men in New York and could have done whatever he’d wished with the seventeen-year-old niece of his washerwoman and nobody would have raised an eyebrow.
Instead of using and discarding her—as so many men would have done—he’d done the unthinkable and married her.
She smiled. That had certainly raised enough eyebrows.
Horace had been good to her, and she’d given him everything she had in return.
But really, how much had her body been worth?
After all, she now gave herself to a sneering aristocrat who offered almost nothing in return.
Alicia turned from her black thoughts to the silent man’s profile.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, to wonder what he made of her activities. She was not so much to-the-manner-born that she did not know servants had minds, brains, and curiosity.
Out of all the applicants to her rather peculiar advertisement, Alicia had liked this huge, brutish-looking, and well-spoken man best.
Before coming to Alicia he’d been a groom to Viscount Easton for almost six years. Easton was a high stickler who’d sent along a glowing letter of recommendation for Gormley.
Not that Alicia had taken the viscount’s word alone.
No, she’d hired her own man to investigate her new servant: Nathaniel Shelly, whom she’d used several times in the past for sensitive matters.
Mr. Shelly had followed Gormley for two weeks before Alicia had decided to hire him.
While she knew such caution might seem excessive, it wasn’t. If David learned about her private life, he would make her suffer.
So, whoever she hired must, above all things, be discreet and trustworthy.
Shelly’s report had been short:
“Jocelyn Gormley, twenty-eight, grew up in London. His elderly father owns a prosperous butcher shop, he has two married brothers with children—the eldest operates the butchers now and the other works as a clerk in a counting house. One younger sister who keeps house for the father. Gormley visits them every servant half-day.”
“His mother?”
“She died when Gormley was fifteen. It seems she was a gentleman’s daughter who’d fallen on hard times. Worked as a governess before marrying Gormley. Neighbors remember her as a “lady” who taught not only her own children to read and write, but also several in the neighborhood. Apparently all four of the Gormley children are exceptionally well-spoken.”
Alicia had guessed Gormley had some schooling from the brief interview. He was a man of few words, and those were not spoken in the accent of the streets.
Instead, he sounded like that amorphous group of Britons who put effort into aping their betters but could never quite manage to replicate the diamond-hard, clipped accents of the aristocracy.
“Where did Gormley work before the Viscount’s,” she’d asked.
“Well, he had a rather interesting journey. After his mother died the schooling stopped so he went to work for his father. When his father became ill, his oldest brother took over the butchers and Gormley left.”
“Is that when he went to Easton?”
“No. From what I can tell he pursued his fighting for four years—from eighteen to twenty-two. After that, his uncle—on his father’s side—brought him on as a stable hand at the viscount’s.” Shelly cleared his throat. “Apparently he’s quite sharp. Not that you’d know it to look at him.”
Alicia had chuckled at that. “He does look like a prize fighter.”
“He was still fighting those first few years he worked for the viscount. It seems Lord Easton enjoys wagering on a good mill and gave Gormley unusual freedom to pursue his pastime.”
“Why is he leaving Lord Easton?”
“I spoke to a couple of the stable lads, who say Lord Easton’s fifteen-year-old daughter has been loitering around Gormley lately and, well—”
Alicia took mercy on the blushing man. “I understand. She took a fancy to our Mr. Gormley.”
“Aye, my lady. He could hardly tell his lordship, so he applied for this position.”
His actions indicated wisdom, morals, fear, or perhaps all three.
“Does our paragon of virtue have a lady friend?”
“None that I saw, my lady. Viscount Easton gave Gormley his evenings free, but the man no longer fights and he only left his lodgings twice at night in the two weeks I followed him.” Shelly had grimaced, an unprecedented display of agitation, before adding, “His destination both times was a very exclusive and rather unusual, er, brothel.”
Alicia’s pulse had sped up at that information. “Indeed?”
“It’s so exclusive no amount of bribery could gain me access. Nor could I bribe or purchase reliable information as to what or with whom Gormley spent most of his evening, not departing until the early morning hours.”
Alicia’s interest had been caught by the introduction of such a prurient, taboo subject. “Continue.”
“The brothel is operated by a Mrs. Melissa Griffin, a woman who is known to be exceptionally selective when it comes to her lovers. It is rumored she even declined the great Wellington. It seems unlikely that Gormley could afford such a place, so he was probably visiting somebody who works there—a maid or somebody on the kitchen staff.”
“You mentioned the place was unusual—how?”
The poor man had looked like he’d wanted to melt into the floor. “Er, it caters to, er, well,” he’d scratched his head, his face flaming. “Well, it caters to birching and the like.”
Alicia’s heart, which had already been beating fast, had raced at his information.
She had burned to ask more questions, but had let the matter rest, unwilling to expose her prurient fascination t
o a man who was essentially her employee.
Alicia had entertained herself more than once wondering what Mr. Gormley did at the exclusive brothel.
Just what would a sexual encounter with such a dour hulk of a man be like?
He was the farthest thing from attractive, his features rough-hewn, his nose bent and re-set at least a few times, his heavy-lidded eyes a non-descript muddy shade of green and brown. And his mouth an impassive slash with thin lips that never smiled.
But his body ….
Alicia allowed herself a quick look at his well-clothed form now: he was one of the biggest men she had ever seen.
Even in America, where the people tended to be larger, she couldn’t recall seeing a man so huge. He should have looked laughable in the expensive, well-cut clothing she’d had made for him—like a gorilla dressed in a suit—but instead he looked powerful and menacing.
She remembered him closing his book earlier and shoving it into his pocket. He was a butcher’s son/boxer/groom who liked to read. The man was something of a curiosity.
∞∞∞
Joss surveyed his mistress from beneath heavy lids. She had an odd expression on her beautiful face. He’d seen the look more than once—usually when she came away from one of these trysts.
He felt his face shift into a slight, self-mocking smile. Tryst. Just listen to him, using a fancy word for knocking off a piece, for making the beast with two backs, for fucking.
He’d been around toffs for years, in one form of service or another—but never an American toff.
Since coming to work in her house he’d heard all the rumors about her—and there were wagonloads.
Joss wasn’t sure which ones he believed. Not that it mattered what he believed. She was so far beyond his reach that she might as well be one of those exotic, tropical islands in the Caribbean he’d read about.
Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t think about her. She might own his time, but his thoughts still belonged to him.
Well, that was a bloody lie.
The truth was that all Joss’s thoughts had belonged to the countess since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.
Seeing her for the first-time reminded Joss of when his brother Gordon had accidentally struck him in the head with an entire side of hog.
Joss and The Countess (The Seducers Book 2) Page 1