Joss nodded. He knew she’d been cheated by a manager several years back. It had not broken her, but it had left the business’s finances battered.
“I would like to hand that over to you as quickly as possible.”
He lifted his glass. “You trust me?”
“With my life.” She was not smiling, and he knew she meant it because he felt the same. “I want you to know that I do trust both Laura and Hugo—with the business, if not each other. You needn’t be here every minute of the day, Joss. I just need a . . . well, a stabilizing influence—somebody both Laura and Hugo will respect.”
Mel’s butler—a man every bit as regal as Beamish—entered. “Dinner is ready, madam.”
Joss escorted her the short distance into her dining room, seating her at the head of the long table and taking the place to her right.
“I’m having only two courses tonight. I want time to talk,” she explained as several servants loaded the table with platters, tureens, and a dozen other items.
Joss gave her a sardonic smile. “Stinting me already?”
She chuckled and poured him a glass of red wine, again abstaining. When the door closed, they served themselves and ate, the first few moments filled with the sounds of two people who enjoyed good food.
After a time, she broke the silence, her eyes sweeping his person. “I approve of your clothing.”
“Thank you, I had an excellent recommendation for a tailor.” It had been Mel who’d sent him to the man who made his coats and pantaloons, another man for his linens, and a cobbler who’d made him a pair of evening shoes, Hessians, and even top boots, although he had no immediate plans to add a horse to Mel’s stable.
“I trust two weeks was long enough to sort out your business at home?”
“Aye, more than enough.”
“What is to be the story?”
“I’ve taken a position with a Mr. Pettigrew, a man of business who keeps a small stable in the city.”
“And is there a Mr. Pettigrew?”
“Probably. Somewhere.”
Mel chuckled. “Your talents are wasted. You should be writing gothic novels.”
Joss merely smiled. “What about you, Mel? Have you decided where you will go?”
Her expression turned pensive. “I was thinking somewhere by the sea. I have never spent any time by the water.” She cut him a wry smile. “And don’t bother to point out how the Thames is water.”
“I won’t. I agree, a place by the water.”
“Have you seen the ocean?”
“It’s hard to believe, but no, I haven’t.”
Mel put her elbow on the table and dropped her chin into her hand, staring at him. “Why have we let so much of our lives pass us by without seeing the ocean?”
“We’ve been busy with the everyday business of staying alive.”
“Is that all life is, Joss? Working to stay alive?”
“For people like us, I guess it is. Not that I think we have it bad,” he hastened to add, his mind drifting to the countless beggars, prostitutes, and urchins who clogged London’s streets and alleys.
“Were you dreading it? Coming back here?”
Was he? Yes—a lot. But he couldn’t say that to Mel without hurting her. “No, I wasn’t dreading it.” He lied with a smile and added, “After all, this is a rather grand opportunity. We both know I purchased a quarter of your business for a lot less—”
“I thought I said that subject was closed, Joss.” It was not a question and he could see she didn’t wish to discuss the inequitable terms which she’d taken merely to have him come on as part of the establishment. “I want to know how being back here is for you?”
Joss sighed. “To be honest I just feel . . .”
“Numb?” she supplied.
He hesitated.
“We need to be completely honest with each other, Joss.”
“Yes, I do feel a bit numb.” But then he’d felt numb ever since he’d realized Lady Selwood had been afraid to allow him around her daughter, as if he were a violent criminal or sexual deviant of some sort.
“It’s not just coming back here that is eating you, is it?”
“No.”
She leaned forward, her brow creased with concern. “What happened, Joss?”
He looked up from his thoughts and shook his head. “Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he said, taking a deep drink of wine.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You look awful, Alicia, just awful.”
Alicia chuckled at her friend’s blunt words, but Connie wasn’t amused.
“I’m not jesting. Have you seen a doctor?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“I beg to differ.”
Connie was pacing Alicia’s boudoir while Alicia lay on her chaise longue, a half-empty glass beside her.
The younger woman sniffed the air. “And you’ve been drinking.”
Alicia didn’t bother to deny it. Why should she? She’d earned her right to drink. Besides, what did it matter? Week after week passed with no clear distinction between the days; a person needed to drink just to bear it.
Connie took a heavy wing chair and dragged it across the floor, not caring that she was scratching the wood and rucking the carpets. She pulled it close to Alicia’s chaise and dropped into it, reaching out and grabbing Alicia’s hand.
“My God, you are as chilled as a corpse.”
I wish I were a corpse.
“Tell me what happened. Please.”
Alicia tugged away her hand and reached for her glass. Liquor was the only thing that made anything bearable. She’d never had a taste for it before—not after she’d watched so many people be brought low by their love of the bottle when she was growing up.
But when she’d gone back to Selwood House a second time—the day after David had taken Lizzy—and learned what David had done, she’d come straight home and poured herself a brimming glass of brandy.
“David says Lizzy needed rest and he’s put her in an asylum.” Alicia tossed back the remains of her glass.
“Good Lord—but why?”
Alicia poured the last of the bottle into her glass.
Connie chewed her lip, clearly at a loss for what to say. “When was this?”
“I don’t know—what day is it?”
Connie groaned and grabbed both her hands. “You can’t go on this way, Alicia. You can’t.”
“That is what I’m hoping,” Alicia admitted, scanning the room for another bottle.
“We can go speak to David, Alicia. Together. If you stop drinking, we could speak to him in a calm, rational manner—”
Alicia was suddenly furious. “Don’t you think I already did that, Connie? Don’t you think I have already tried that? Twice I went to Selwood House and, no, I had not been drinking either time. I asked reasonably, I begged, I groveled.” Her vision blurred red and rippled with rage at being forced to think about her behavior. “He told me he would keep her in a hospital if I insisted on bothering him. He said it was my choice. He said he was beginning to doubt that any contact with me was a wise idea—perhaps I was the reason she’d become worn down and ill. He asked me these questions: Did I want her to eventually come home? Or did I want her to be in some dreadful hospital for the rest of her life?”
Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, which only made her angrier. “Nothing I could do or say changed his mind, nothing,” she muttered.
She couldn’t tell her friend what she had done, and how it had made no difference to him in the end. No, he was enjoying tormenting her far too much.
Thanks to the clever work of Horace’s men of business, she could only get her hands on her quarterly allowance. The rest of it—the bulk of her vast wealth—could not be touched unless she received permission from the trustees. They’d advanced her an enormous sum of money the last time David had demanded it. To get it, she’d needed to lie and tell them it was an investment. She’d not been able to repay the loan; they would not be
so amenable again.
“Alicia, why does he do this?” Connie sat back, her expression one of shock. “Why? What is there between you that he must torment you so? He doesn’t want to take care of Elizabeth—and I know the countess certainly doesn’t. So, why?” She cocked her head, her eyes sharp and piercing. Too piercing.
Alicia pushed to her feet and would have fallen if Connie hadn’t taken her arm.
Connie glanced around. “Where is Maude?”
She pushed away from Connie, staggering toward the cluster of bottles on her dressing table. “She’s gone.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I sent her away.” She snatched up a bottle and began to open it, her fingers fumbling and numb, the bottle as elusive as a Chinese puzzle in her useless hands. “Bloody hell!” She flung the bottle across the room. Instead of the satisfying smash she was hoping for—craving—it hit something with a dull thunk, rolled, and then broke with a small tinkle of glass.
“Lady Selwood?”
It took a moment for Alicia’s eyes to focus, to find the source of the meek voice.
“Ah,” she said when she saw the maid hovering just inside her dressing room. “Annie, come here. Open one of these for me.”
The girl scurried toward her. “Yes, my lady.”
“Alicia, are you—”
Alicia had forgotten her friend was still there. She closed her eyes. “After you open the bottle ring the bell. Lady Constance was just leaving.”
She heard a soft gasp behind her and squeezed her eyes shut against the rustle of fabric as her friend stood. “Don’t bother, Alicia. I can find my own way out.”
Alicia didn’t turn around but listened until the door opened and shut, only then opening her eyes, catching the maid watching her with sharp eyes. She dropped her gaze immediately.
“Here you are, my lady. Shall I pour you a glass?”
“Put the bottle down and leave.”
The girl instantly complied. “Will you be needing—”
“Get out. I won’t want you again tonight.”
A lightning bolt of something sly crossed the girl’s face before she dropped her chin and dipped a curtsy. “Thank you, my lady.”
Alicia waited until she’d gone before locating her glass and filling it. For some reason, she didn’t trust the maid and didn’t want her around when she reached the point of insensibility. Which is when she started to talk—not that she remembered saying anything, but Maude had told her.
Her eyes watered at the thought of her maid. She wished she’d not sent Maude away. Not that she had, really. The truth was that Maude had left her.
“I’ll not sit here and watch you destroy yourself,” she’d said after the first week.
“Fine. Go sit somewhere else.”
The older woman’s jaw had worked as though she were chewing a mouthful of writhing serpents. “This isn’t you, my lady. It isn’t. You are a fighter.” The pleading tone in her voice had momentarily caught Alicia’s attention and Maude came close enough to take her hand, her gray gaze intense. “You put up with all those sticks in New York, you endured that. . . that—” The expression of revulsion on Maude’s face reminded her of everything the other woman knew about David and Edward, and what they’d done to her.
Alicia had snatched away her hand. “Yes, I endured all that. And for what Maude? For what? So Edward could give control of Lizzy’s future to that—” Her mouth had filled with bile and almost choked her. She could not say his name.
“Fight for her, my lady. Fight. Just like you always have.”
Alicia stared into the eyes of the only person left in her life who’d known Allie Benton. “I’m out of fight and out of ideas. Out. I’ve done everything I can. Don’t you understand,” she demanded, her voice hoarse with the need to be understood, for once. Just once. “I have done everything I can short of killing him. Everything.”
Maude’s jaw dropped. “Please…tell me you aren’t—”
Alicia had laughed bitterly. “Good God, what would killing him do? I’d be in jail and she’d be left in someone else’s care. Don’t you see, Maude. There is nothing I can do. All this,” she’d waved her hand around. “And all that money in the bank, and I can do nothing. I am a prisoner as surely as if I were in jail.”
The silence after that had stung—because she’d known, by the older woman’s defeated expression—that she was right.
“Destroying yourself won’t help Miss Lizzy, will it?” she’d tried when Alicia turned away.
“No, but it will help me. Now either shut up or get out.” And to her surprise, Maude had gone.
Alicia couldn’t recall how many days ago that had been.
The girl—Annie—had shown up when she pulled the bell for more bottles and somehow, Alicia couldn’t quite recall how, she’d become her new maid. Not that Alicia needed one. She was wearing the same clothing she’d worn for days.
She took a drink and grimaced as the liquor burned her throat. No matter how much of it she drank, she never liked it any better. In fact, she hated the taste of it. But she hated remembering even more. Remembering not only what had become of Lizzy, but what she’d done to Joss.
∞∞∞
Joss decided he would stay with Sundays as his day off just to keep his routine with his family.
Now he had the entire day, but he usually required the first part of it to sleep. Although he wasn’t actually servicing callers, he still had to spend a good deal of time mixing with the clientele, on both sides of the building.
Resuming his activities had been difficult at first.
“You’ve forgotten all that I taught you,” Mel said to him several days after he’d come back.
“You’re right about that,” Joss had admitted.
Women weren’t like their counterparts on the other side of the building. They jeopardized everything to come to Mel’s and they wanted more than a quick release: they wanted an experience.
Unlike their husbands—some of whom were probably in the building at the very same time—they were not the mistresses of their destiny. As wealthy as they were, their options were sorely limited. They could either conduct affairs with their fellow, bored aristocrats or engage a companion at The White House.
Joss had resigned himself to what he was doing: helping his friend and also accumulating the funds necessary to take care of his sister.
The way his father had declined—rapidly—Belle would need a place to live far sooner than either of them had expected.
While Joss might be able to arrange to borrow money from Melissa to purchase a house for Belle, it would be years before he could stop working at The White House and join her.
The carriage shuddered to a halt and Joss realized he’d arrived. He opened his door and hopped out.
“Thanks, Harry,” he said to the grizzled coachman.
“Aye, see you here tonight, Mr. Gormley.” He touched his hat and drove off.
Joss couldn’t take one of The White House coaches all the way to his door, so he had it drop him off near a coaching inn that was a ten minute walk from his Da’s house.
He enjoyed the walk, even on days like today, when it seemed winter was refusing to release its grip on the city.
He flipped up the collar on his old brown wool coat and shoved his hands into his pockets. The streets were not heavy with foot traffic and he soon fell into a rhythm, his thoughts drifting to where they always went when he wasn’t vigilant: to her.
Joss knew it wasn’t right—that it was disgusting, even—but he’d used his memories of his time with her so often and so hard they were like a favorite, but worn-out, article of clothing.
He was ashamed at how far he’d sunk since that night—when he’d lambasted her about her behavior.
It turned out that she’d been right about him. Once a whore, always a whore—or at least a whoremaster. He already—
“Joss!”
Joss stopped and glanced around. Had som
ebody—
“Joss, wait!”
He recognized the voice and was tempted to break into a run.
Instead, he sighed and turned. “Hello, Annie.”
She grinned up at him, her cheeks like apples, her face framed with a startlingly becoming silk-lined bonnet. “I thought you were ignoring me—I called your name a dozen times and you didn’t stop.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he lied, shamefully recalling all the times he’d ignored her knocking on his door. He glanced around. “Are you by yourself?”
“Yes, I was coming to see you.”
Joss bit back a groan. “Oh?”
“I walked all the way from Lady Selwood’s.”
The name, spoken out loud rather than inside his head, was like a fist around his heart.
“It’s cold today, isn’t it?” She shivered to demonstrate.
Joss looked down at her, torn. After all, didn’t he at least owe her common civility?
Not to mention she can pass along all the little bits of gossip about her.
Joss ignored the ugly little voice and offered his arm. “Why don’t you come along and have a cup of tea. You can meet my sister.”
Her face lit up like it was Christmas morning and she took his arm with a reverence that should have been flattering but just left him feeling like a heel. He slowed his stride to match hers.
“Where are you working now?” she asked after it became apparent that he wasn’t going to start the conversation.
“At a city gent’s place,” he said, purposely vague.
To his relief, she didn’t pry. “Lady Selwood hasn’t engaged anyone else to replace you.”
His body stiffened and he hoped she hadn’t noticed. “Oh? Using Hiram and William for her errands these days?” he asked in a voice that shouldn’t have fooled anyone.
Annie’s bonnet moved back and forth and she chuckled. “Not hardly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she hasn’t left the house in weeks.”
Joss stopped. “Why? Is she ill?”
Her smile slid away and her full lips pinched down at the corners, the look in her eyes mulish. “What do you care?”
He shrugged, aware that he’d been foolish. “She was an easy mistress to work for, I don’t wish her any harm.”
Joss and The Countess (The Seducers Book 2) Page 23