Joss and The Countess (The Seducers Book 2)

by S. M. LaViolette

  Joss wasn’t naïve, he knew it happened all the time. After all, something similar had happened to his own mother.

  They arrived back just as Lady Selwood’s town carriage rolled to a stop in front of the house. Joss hesitated, wondering if he should see to her, but Carling squeezed his shoulder.

  “Not dressed like that, my lad.”

  Joss blinked. Ah, right; his clothing. He turned, regretfully leaving sher in the hands of the servants who’d accompanied her carriage.

  Once in his quarters, Joss stripped out of his street clothes, broke the ice on the basin of water and hurriedly washed his face, frowning at the heavy smell of smoke in his hair, wishing he had enough water to wash it and then cursing himself for a fool. Even if the countess used him tonight, she’d hardly be sniffing his hair.

  As he changed his clothing Joss thought about the odd, conflicting emotions that stirred in his belly. Part of him always wanted her to use his services—no matter what the errand. The other part knew what he would be doing if she summoned him: taking her to her lover. And, truth be told, that was beginning to rankle.

  He snorted at his reflection as he buttoned his waistcoat. That was a lie. It had rankled almost from the start. It was now gnawing at him, like a rat that could never get enough to eat. His imagination, always active, envisioned the things she did with Byerly.

  The thoughts always started out the same way: her with another man. The two of them were unclothed and writhing, on a bed, the floor, a chair, it didn’t matter; Joss had envisioned her naked on every surface imaginable.

  Somewhere in the process of his imaginings the man in his mind’s eye turned into Joss.

  “You idiot,” he said to the fool in the mirror, turning away from the glass and shrugging into his coat.

  Once he was dressed, he tidied his already neat room.

  Joss’s mother had left when he was fifteen, but the one thing she’d instilled in him was a mania for cleanliness. Well, that and an embarrassing penchant for poetry.

  His mother had been the daughter of a bank clerk and raised to be a lady. Her expectations had been destroyed by her father’s sudden death, after which she’d had to take a position as a governess—a position that had left her pregnant by the master.

  The last part of the story Joss had only learned after she left—when their Nana—his father’s mother—had taken charge of the household.

  His mother had always told her children a different version.

  “Your father was such a gentle man.” She’d always made sure to sound out the words, as if to make sure they understood she wasn’t calling big Clive Gormley a gentleman.

  “I’d grown up with a cook and two maids and even a footman before Papa died.” Her chin had quivered whenever she spoke of their grandfather, whose death had left his wife and daughter penniless.

  And so pretty Laura Smithers had taken a governess job—a godsend, she and her mother had believed, as the gentleman who offered her the position had been a friend of her father’s.

  Laura had also, on occasion, gone to market for her mother on her half-day. That was when Clive Gormley first saw her.

  Joss imagined that his father had never before beheld such a lovely, dainty, well-mannered thing as his mother. Clive had been a good deal older than her: a quiet, shy middle-aged giant who’d taken over the family business early, after his own father had died. He’d supported his spinster sister and his mother for years, and they kept house for him.

  Laura had liked to whisper to her children how jealous her mother and sister-in-law had been, and continued to be, after she married their father and took her place as mistress of his house.

  “They could not understand why my hands were so smooth and white, why my clothes were so fine,” she’d confided, her small hands work-roughened by the time she told Joss this story.

  Looking back on his mother’s behavior from the vantage point of over a decade Joss realized that she’d hardly been more than a girl when she’d become pregnant by the master of the house. Once that happened, her life as a teacher was over.

  Had it not been for Joss’s father—a man kind enough to take a pregnant woman to wife—she would have ended up without a roof over her head.

  But she’d never counted those blessings. Instead, she’d remained dissatisfied with her new station in life until the day she’d left them. Left him.

  Joss would never forget the morning he’d gone down to breakfast to find Nana Gormley rather than his mother.

  Nana—raised on hard work—had been called back to duty thanks to her daughter-in-law’s desertion.

  Joss’s father, who’d already been quiet, hardly spoke at all after his wife left.

  Although nobody ever told him outright, Joss somehow learned that his mother had run off with the man who came twice a year to sharpen and repair blades for his father.

  Joss frowned at the old, yet still painful memories. Why was he thinking about his mother now?

  Probably because he was cleaning his quarters as obsessively as she’d taught him to do.

  Joss shoved his mother into the back of his mind and set about changing his bed linens, even though he annoyed Lady Selwood’s washerwoman by changing the bedding twice as often as any other servant.

  The last thing he did was sweep the wooden, rug-less floor, and then put away the broom and dustpan he’d purchased with his own money.

  Joss checked his watch, a well-made but not ostentatious piece which his father had given him on his sixteenth birthday: it was half-past eleven. If she did not call for him by midnight, she usually would not.

  He looked at the three new books he’d taken from the circulating library he belonged to: Waverley, The Rights of Man, and Heart of the Midlothian Bride. He took Waverley and settled into his chair.

  He’d read for perhaps ten minutes when there was a knock.

  Joss wasn’t surprised to find the countess’s personal maid on the other side of the door.

  “Good evening, Miss Finch.”

  The sour old bird glared up at him, as if it were his fault that their mistress had sent for him to take her on one of her wicked jaunts.

  “She’ll be ready in a half hour.” She turned on her heel and stomped off before he could answer.

  Joss smiled at her retreating back. She was abrupt and rude, but she had an honesty about her that he liked.

  He put on his overcoat and drew on his black gloves. They were made from a leather that was slightly thicker than kid and they fit his hands like a second skin.

  He completed his outfit with a black woolen scarf and high-crowned hat before snuffing his candles and closing the door.

  He located one of the hacks that now hovered about the area after realizing there was often well-paid work to be found at odd hours of the night.

  It was too cold for the man to wait his horses until Lady Selwood deigned to come down—which Joss knew from experience would not be in the promised half-hour—so he told the driver to circle the area, and that he would be paid for his time starting immediately.

  Joss then went into the black and white marble entry hall and waited.

  Lady Selwood arrived only a scant fifteen minutes after the time she’d said.

  “The hackney will be only a moment, my lady.”

  She nodded absently and went to look in the foyer mirror. Joss stepped outside and raised a lantern to summon the hack from the far end of the street.

  “To Lord Byerly’s,” she murmured to Joss as he handed her into the carriage.

  He gave the driver the destination and within moments they were on their way.

  Joss was gazing out the window when she spoke.

  “Tell me what it is like to be a prizefighter?”

  By now, her questions shouldn’t have surprised him, but this one did.

  She gave a low, throaty chuckle that shrieked of tangled bedding and flushed, naked flesh.

  “Your expression is quite telling, Gormley.”

  They passed
a streetlamp and he saw she was looking at him, her expression one he’d not seen before, almost puckish.

  “Humor me, Gormley. Tell me what it was like. Did you enjoy it?”

  That was easy to answer. “No, my lady.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “Because it pays well.” Her eyebrows shot up at his sarcastic tone. “Ah, begging your pardon, my lady.”

  “You needn’t beg my pardon when I ask a foolish question. What do you think about while you are engaged in fighting?”

  As usual, Joss burned to ask her why she was asking about such things. He did not.

  “I don’t think so much as watch, I let my body’s knowledge and skill guide my actions.” Joss wished he could take back the foolish—pompous—words, but they were already out in the world.

  Her eyes widened. “Why, you sound poetical, Gormley.”

  He sounded like a tosser, is what he sounded like. Joss hoped that had been the last question.

  His hopes were not to be granted.

  “You used to work in your father’s butcher shop?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “But then you went to work for your uncle—as a groom?”

  “I started as a hand around the stable.” Just where was this going?

  “Was that your aspiration?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Aspiration? It means—”

  Joss smiled. “I know what it means, your ladyship.”

  “So?”

  He sighed. “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Was it being a butcher?”

  “No, I always knew the shop would go to my eldest brother.” He hesitated and then thought, what the hell? “I’d once thought to become a teacher.”

  There was a long pause, but at least no laughter. “How interesting. And why didn’t you?”

  Thankfully the carriage rolled to a halt; Joss sighed and reached for the door.

  “We shall continue this conversation some other time, Gormley.”

  Joss heard the amusement in her tone.

  He escorted her to the door, which was unlocked, as it always was. Joss was lifting her cloak from her shoulders when a voice spoke from the top of the stairs.

  “Oh, so you’ve deigned to come, have you?”

  Byerly stood a few steps down from the second floor landing, a glass glinting in one hand, wearing a gaudy red banyan and nothing else.

  Lady Selwood removed her hat, her movements unhurried, and handed it to Joss before answering.

  “Shall we discuss this upstairs, Charles?”

  The nobleman, intoxicated based on the way he was swaying, gave a nasty laugh and turned on his heel.

  Joss stood motionless, her hat in one hand, her cloak in the other. The hairs on the back of his neck were prickling, as they’d done from the moment Byerly spoke.

  Lady Selwood smoothed her already perfect hair in the gilt-framed mirror and their eyes met in the glass. “I will not be long. Have another carriage waiting in half an hour.”

  He watched her mount the stairs. Her gown had an hourglass panel of white in the front but was black in the back. The thin silk slid over her curvaceous body like dark water and Joss had to swallow to rid his mouth of excess moisture. He set aside her possessions and immediately went to find a hackney driver.

  When he returned, he went to the foot of the stairs, his body tense and aware, just as it had been since arriving. He’d stood for perhaps five minutes and was considering going back to his chair when he heard the unmistakable sound of a woman crying out.

  Chapter Six

  Alicia had known it was foolish to meet Charles one last time even before he’d drunkenly shouted from the top of the stairs.

  She’d known it when she received his last angry, pleading message, she’d known it after sending a message agreeing to see him, and she’d known it when she’d sent Maude to fetch Gormley.

  She’d told herself that she needed to see Byerly in person in order to put an end to things.

  But that was a barefaced lie.

  The pitiful, pathetic, undeniable truth was that she’d agreed to see Byerly again just so she could spend time with her enigmatic servant.

  Yes, that was the truth, it really was. Admitting it made her want to bang her head on something hard, as if that might shake the mad desire from her thick skull.

  Alicia should have guessed she was lost when she’d enjoyed talking to Gormley on the carriage ride to and from Delemor’s far more than she’d liked her evening of cards.

  Honestly, she didn’t know what it was about the quiet, rather brutish-looking man that she found so appealing.

  But her growing fascination for him had become worrisome.

  Unfortunately, her worry could not compete with her curiosity—which had become overwhelming.

  If there was one thing Alicia was good at—her only skill, really—it was single-mindedly pursuing and then acquiring the things she wanted.

  It was a skill she’d not always employed wisely, and she tried to convince herself to consider exactly what she wanted this time.

  After all, the last time she’d thought she wanted something, she’d ended up married to the Earl of Selwood.

  That sobering thought should have dimmed her growing obsession.

  But it hadn’t.

  Alicia needed to know more about her inscrutable servant. One way to do so, without exposing her humiliating curiosity, was to read what he did.

  So, she’d decided to read one of his favorites: Antony and Cleopatra.

  Alicia had a library stuffed with books that she had paid her steward to choose; it was a room she’d always avoided like the plague.

  She knew it was likely that she had Shakespeare among those thousands of books. But when she imagined herself searching the shelves, painstakingly sounding out and reading every title, frustration and anger boiled inside her.

  So, Alicia ignored her library and went—for the first time in her life—to a bookseller’s.

  The entire time she’d mentally mocked and berated herself: she was going to purchase a book just because one of her servants was reading it.

  She’d been captivated. And not only by a servant, but by a man who was ten years younger than her.

  Closer to eleven, her Aunt Giddy had helpfully pointed out.

  Alicia had taken her volume of Shakespeare home and spent the next few nights reading it rather than accepting Byerly’s increasingly desperate invitations.

  Her behavior had stunned Maude.

  “You? Reading? A book,” she added, just in case Alicia might be too stupid to know what she meant. “You went to a bookseller’s? And you bought a book of Shakespeare’s plays?”

  “Why do you find that so amusing?’

  “Not amusing—strange. Like coming home and finding your cat trying to play the piano.

  Alicia had tried to ignore her after that, but Maude had made sly comments about her new pastime until Alicia had finally snapped at the viper-tongued woman.

  “I’ve had more than enough of your disrespectful attitude, Miss Finch. Perhaps you’d like passage on the next ship back to New York?”

  Maude had merely laughed. “I should take you up on your invitation, my lady. And then where would you be?”

  “I would be reading, rather than arguing with you. Now, leave me be and go laugh somewhere else.”

  Maude had smirked, but she’d left her alone after that. Which was just as well because the first twenty pages were incomprehensible.

  Alicia had become angrier and angrier, until she’d finally thrown the book across the room. After getting out of bed and picking it up, she’d tried another play—something called Troilus and Cressida—thinking it might be easier.

  But no, it was also obscure, at least to a sapskull like her.

  When her head had pounded so severely that she’d believed she would cast up her accounts, she’d put the book aside.

  And then forced herself to pick it up again the next da
y, reading only until her eyes began to ache, and then put it aside.

  She’d done this several times every day. It had been miserable.

  It had taken a great deal of work, but even her wretched reading ability and the archaic language could not obscure the emotions that pulsed from the pages: love, hate, pain, pleasure, and an agonizing jealousy so steeped in frustration and rejection that death was preferable.

  She’d wanted desperately to ask Gormley questions about the play but had stopped only at the last moment from exposing her ignorance to a mere servant.

  As she mounted the stairs that led to Charles’s room, she cursed her own cowardice, promising herself that she’d be braver on the journey home.

  Alicia opened the door to Charles’s chambers, experiencing a near-crushing urge to turn and run down to the big man in the entry hall.

  But her feet wouldn’t obey.

  Some stubborn part of her—maybe all that was left of Allie Benton—refused to let this nagging wreck of a man cow her. He was not her husband—not her lord and master who could do whatever he wanted with her person.

  Once inside the room, she glanced around. Clothing was strewn all over, trays filled with dirty crockery covered every surface, and the smell of his unclean body was nauseating.

  “Have you discharged your man,” she asked, making no effort to hide her revulsion.

  “He left, Alicia, as did the rest of them.”

  She squinted through the gloom at him. Only three candles burned and those were smoky tallow candles one usually found in servants’ quarters.

  “What do you mean, they left?”

  He gave an ugly laugh, replenishing his glass and offering her nothing, not that she wished for a drink.

  He waved the cut crystal so wildly that liquid sprayed over the top, the droplets catching the dim light and scattering into the darkness like black diamonds.

  “Left as in buggered off. All of them, every blasted one.” He took a gulp and giggled in a way that sent chills down her spine. “We are alone but for that brute of yours.”

  Alicia had known he was strapped for money, but not so badly that he could not pay his servants.