“We will find her, Alicia. There has to be—”
“I have a man looking for her.” She gave him a sheepish look. “The same man who looked into your background.”
Joss didn’t care about that. “Has he found anything?”
“Nothing yet, but he is busily narrowing down the list and has employed two other gentlemen to assist him. He is doing everything he can.”
Joss could think of one thing that her investigator probably hadn’t tried: beating Selwood until he became more cooperative.
“Joss?” The word came from the vicinity of his right nipple, where she was resting her head.
“Mmm hmm?”
“That promise you made me earlier?”
He had a sinking feeling. “Yes?”
“It’s that you won’t do anything foolish about David—don’t, er, well, damage him. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy that,” she added hastily. “But he makes a powerful enemy. Besides, Mr. Shelly has things in hand. I’m sure he’ll find her soon.”
“Hmm.”
“So, you’ll promise, then?”
Joss felt bad about lying, but not terribly bad. “I promise.”
She relaxed against him. “That’s good. Because I—I care for you a great deal. A great deal.”
He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “And I you.”
“The truth is, I don’t want to live without you—it is too miserable, I won’t do it.”
He held her tight, willing her not to say what he thought she was about to say; willing her not to offer him another arrangement like the one she’d offered before. He was too afraid he would take it.
So he shifted her until his mouth could reach hers, and plunged into her deeply. She made a slight sound and then opened for him, her hands sliding around his neck, her tongue taking up his challenge.
When they were both breathless, he pulled away and she again collapsed against him.
“Joss?”
“Hmmm?”
“I want to talk about this—about us.”
“Alicia—”
“Don’t say my name that way—as if you already know what I’m going to say—and are going to tell me no.”
He held her out so that he could see her face. “Do you think you’ll be able to slip away and come here unnoticed to see me? If he knew about what happened in my quarters then he will certainly find out about this.”
“That is not what I want at all.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand?”
“I want to be with you—and not just at night.”
Joss stared, not wanting to hope.
Her pale, beautiful face flushed and she looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “Are you going to make me say it?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I am—because I have no idea what you mean.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them. “Joss, will you marry me?”
∞∞∞
The second time they made love, Joss made sure she found satisfaction. Several times, in fact.
Afterward, they were lying together, their bodies cooling in the night air. Joss had twisted a long strand of hair around his finger and was admiring the sheen.
“Joss?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“You did not answer my question?”
“Oh? What question was that?”
She punched his shoulder.
“Ow!”
Joss released the strand and it unwound from his finger like a living thing. He encircled her delicate wrist with his thumb and forefinger.
“You would be an abusive spouse, it seems.” He kissed her knuckles, which were still clenched in a fist, and looked up at her while tracing the seam between her fingers with the pointed tip of his tongue.
She shivered. “Are you trying to drive me mad?”
He kissed her again and released her. “I think you are already mad, Alicia. Have you given any thought to what marriage to me would mean? Are you sure this is not a thought born of the moment—of passion?”
“I think it has been in my mind for a very long time, buried beneath my fear for Lizzy. You don’t understand how little I value society. My only friend in London is Lady Constance and she will remain true no matter who I marry or what I do.” She placed her hand flat over his heart, her eyes distant and thoughtful. “Besides, when I take Lizzy from David, I shall not be able to return—even if I wanted to.” She turned her dark blue gaze on him. “Will you want to be a fugitive—with us? What of your family? Your sister?”
“You are not thinking straight, darling. I am the son of a butcher and you are—”
“The daughter of a whore.”
Joss’s eyes widened. “What—?”
“Yes, I am a fraud—everything you think you know about me is a lie.”
He could only stare.
She shook her head, even though he’d said nothing.
“Oh, it isn’t all a lie, of course. I was married to Selwood and to Horace Dandridge before him. But what you think you know about me—that I am from Selwood’s class? That is a lie. I am from a place that is—”
She sighed and shook her head. “I was born poor. Dirt poor. Alicia isn’t even my name. My aunt called me Allie—short for Alice.”
Joss tried to tilt her chin up toward him, wanting to see her.
But she stopped him. “No, I want to tell you this but I don’t want to see your face. I can’t.”
Joss frowned but nodded. “Go on.”
“We were so very poor. Aunt Giddy took in washing and mending, she worked all the time just to keep us fed with a roof over our heads. She would bring me along when she went to pick up mending. I was too young to be left at home and we had nobody else. I loved my aunt—dearly. But she was always tired, short-tempered, and old before her time. Life at home was miserable and tense. But the places we went?”
She stopped and twisted her head as if to look at him, but instead she stared over his shoulder, into her past. “They were magical. Vast palaces filled with beautiful things. I knew that was what I wanted, Joss. Above all else, I wanted to live surrounded by beauty, comfort, and plenty. I never wanted to fear being thrown out of our meager rooms because we couldn’t scratch up the rent. Or to hear my stomach grumble as my body consumed itself because I was so hungry.”
Her expression was expectant, as if she wanted him to agree with her. What could he say? He’d never yearned for either creature comforts or luxuries the way she had—but neither had he lived with such grinding poverty. His family had experienced hardship, but nothing like what she was describing. Even so, he nodded.
She rested her chin on the back of her hand and continued. “One of those palaces—the biggest, the grandest—belonged to a man who had no family. Horace Dandridge had been married once before when he was quite a young man. But his wife and daughter had died and he’d never remarried. He was old—older than my aunt—my grandmother’s age, if I’d had one. I was only sixteen the first time I saw him, but I already knew he would be the one. I would marry him, and he would save me.”
Joss tried not to show the revulsion he felt; who was he to judge her? He who had fucked his way through half the ton for money.
“It was not hard to make him notice me,” she said, back in the past, her voice almost dreamy.
Joss could only imagine. As a woman nearing forty, she was magnificent; as a girl she would have been just as beautiful, but he imagined her youthful innocence would have been irresistible to some men.
Joss himself preferred a woman with experience, not a girl who would be little more than a child.
“I went with my aunt to pick up the mending—I was carrying it home for her by then, taking on my share of the burden. When she was drinking a cup of coffee with the housekeeper, I took the first step to getting what I wanted. I knew he was home because the housekeeper had mentioned he’d been ill. Both she and my aunt had discussed how sad it was for such a man to be alone.”
She paused
, but Joss kept up his rhythmic stroking of her back, the tension in her body as tight as a bow.
“I knew which part of the house was the sole purview of the master because I’d planned my move for months. I found my way into the family wing of the giant mansion and Horace was behind the seventh door I opened.”
She twisted in his arms, until she was looking up at him, smiling, but there was no humor in it. “He was propped up in the grandest bed I had ever seen. Massive pillars and a canopy that was made from the finest brocade. The bed took a step ladder to mount. There he was, his glasses on his nose, his gray hair askew, the bed piled high with ledgers and papers. I wore the best dress I had,” she cut him a brief smile. “I only had three, and that was two more than Aunt Giddy could afford. She’d made them from castoffs. Sometimes she would remove a row of lace or a ribbon, and the owner of the gown would never even notice.” Her grin was like that of a young girl who had just filched a sweet.
“The dress I wore was pink with a row of stolen lace at the neck and sleeves.” She looked away, her profile every bit as perfect as the rest of her. “Horace looked up and smiled. I will never forget his smile. He was not a handsome man and the years of struggle and hard work were evident in his lined face. But he had the irresistible grin of a rogue. His teeth were crooked, the lids of his astonishing blue eyes drooped with age, and he had a scar at the corner of his mouth that made him look like he was perpetually snarling.
“‘I must have died and gone to heaven,’ he said.
“I’d prepared myself for any variety of responses, but not for that. I had no reply and could only gape. He took pity on me.
“‘Why else would an angel choose to visit such an old lobscouse as me?’”
“What is a lobscouse?” Joss asked.
“That is exactly what I asked him. It seems lobscouse was some horrid dish from where he’d grown up—in Liverpool.”
“Ah.”
“Later I learned he’d left England when he was little more than a boy, but he still had an accent that was not from New York.”
Joss pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and kissed her cheek. “Like yours.”
“Oh, no. I sound nothing like the people in my neighborhood. Even before I came to England, I’d begun to affect the accent of the New York elites.” Her mouth twisted. “Lord, if you think English aristocrats are clannish high sticklers.”
“I can see why he believed you to be an angel.”
Her expression became sober. “I was sitting on a chair beside his bed, chatting with him, when the housekeeper found me. Oh, I knew I would be in trouble. Perhaps even Aunt Giddy would lose her work.”
She glanced up at Joss. “But Horace began to protect me that very day. ‘I’ll not have the girl punished,’ he told his housekeeper and my aunt. Even so, I got a dreadful scolding from Aunt Giddy. But then, a few weeks later, we both found ourselves being moved into that great mansion.”
Joss tried to hide his disgust, but she could see through him.
“No, he did not make me his mistress. He would not take me to his bed for another seventeen months, until I was almost eighteen, after he’d made me his wife. He was sixty-seven.”
A mix of envy and revulsion churned inside him as he thought of a younger Alicia giving her body—her maidenhood—to a man old enough to be her grandfather.
“He was good to me—very good to me—and I grew to love him for himself, not only his money.” The words were almost defiant. “He gave me whatever I wanted and crushed anyone who showed me disrespect.” Her lips curved into a wicked smile. “The matrons of New York society loathed me. But their husbands—who held the ultimate whip-hands—ensured these women invited me to their functions, allowed me into their clubs, and acknowledged me. But not once did any of them offer to become my friend. It was, quite literally, just Horace and me.”
“What about your aunt?”
Her expression softened. “Ah, Aunt Giddy. Well, she was shocked, ashamed, and proud of me in equal measures until the day she died. She wore herself out taking care of me and once Horace took the burden of providing for us from her shoulders she simply faded away. She died the second year of my marriage. She was thirty-eight.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “She died when she was younger than I am now.”
She stared into Joss’s eyes. “I have lived too many years trying to be somebody else—life is fleeting and I don’t want to live a lie any longer.” She brushed aside a second tear. “I want you. And I want you in my life.”
His heart felt like it might explode. She wanted him—big, ugly Joss Gormley. Before he could come up with anything to say, she spoke.
“I’ve been thinking about how David found out about us—I think I know who told him.”
“Who?”
“There was a maid—Annie.”
The joy in his chest froze. “What about her?”
“Feehan discharged her recently for going through my desk—although she denied it.”
“Yes, but how—”
“I saw her one night,” she interrupted, her eyes narrowing. “When I came to you. At the time, I thought she must have been visiting somebody else. But it was you, wasn’t it, Joss?”
She ran her fingernails down his chest when he didn’t answer immediately.
He sucked in a breath when a nail grazed his nipple. “Yes, she came to my room often. I turned her away—all except one time.”
Her glare should have singed off his eyebrows.
“Believe me, I have regretted it a thousand times since.”
She continued to glare.
“What can I do about it now? It is over and done with.”
Her lips had thinned until they were harsh lines. Joss was tempted to tease her about jealousy but did not think she would appreciate it just now.
“When did this happen?”
“Before the two of us were ever together,” he assured her.
Her expression remained guarded.
“There hasn’t been anyone else since you.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“What? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“But—but you work here.”
He frowned. “Didn’t Melissa tell you what my job is?”
“She told me you’d come back to your old job.”
Joss muttered something exceedingly vulgar beneath his breath.
“Jocelyn Gormley! Who taught you to say such things in the presence of a lady?”
“I beg your pardon, my lady.” He picked up her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.
“I’m sure you can beg more prettily than that.”
Her words surprised a snort of laughter from him, but he was not finished with the subject of his meddling friend just yet.
“I am merely a part owner and manager while Melissa is away. I no longer take clients, love—only you.”
She heaved a huge sigh and rubbed her body against his in a most pleasing fashion. “I am so relieved, Joss. You have no idea what was going through my head.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” he said. “It would serve Melissa right if I packed my bags and went down to whatever little village she has sequestered herself in and—”
Alicia’s hand slid down his chest, beneath his robe, and over the thin skin of his tight abdomen. “Shhh, you’re blustering.”
Joss’s hips jerked at her touch. “I don’t think that’s what it’s called, sweetheart.”
She gave a wicked chuckle. “Besides, if you get in a carriage and go hunt her down you will need to leave me here alone.” She stroked his cock from root to tip.
Joss made a gurgling sound and barely forced out the words, “Good point.”
She dragged her thumb across his glans. “Yes, isn’t it?”
No rational conversation was had for quite some time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Joss was entering the receipts from two days, rather than one, since he’d not done the work he was supposed to do last night.
>
He was also thinking of everything he and Alicia had said: the plans that had been spoken of, but not yet formalized, the problems that faced both of them.
It was. . . daunting.
But it was also thrilling. She loved him. Alicia loved him.
“Why do you have that stupid look on your face? Or is that just the way your face is?”
Hugo’s grating voice jarred Joss out of his very pleasant reverie and he put down his quill before he gave in to temptation and stabbed the other man with it.
“Don’t you ever knock?”
Hugo smirked—which was the way his face looked most of the time. “There’s an old bird out front to see you.”
Joss sighed.
Hugo’s eyes went wide. “What? Why are you giving me that, God, Hugo! You are too horrid to be borne look?”
“Because you are too horrid to be bloody borne, Hugo. Did you get a name?” he asked before the other man could respond.
“No. She didn’t want to give one, did she?”
Joss stood, removing the ink cuff from his left arm. Something suddenly occurred to him. “What the devil are you doing answering the door?” That was the last thing this business could bear: Hugo as its goodwill ambassador.
“Herman is down with a cold and Gerald ran off to do something for, hmm …” He took his chin between his forefinger and thumb and gazed theatrically ceilingward. “Now who would have sent Gerald off at this time of day?”
Joss snatched his coat from the hook and grunted as Hugo helped him struggle into it. “Yes, yes. I am the one who sent Gerald off.”
Hugo adjusted the collar of Joss’s coat, plucking a piece of fuzz from one shoulder, and then scrutinized Joss’s cravat, his hands lifting.
“Touch it and I’ll break your fingers.”
Rather than look insulted, Hugo’s eyes widened theatrically. “Oooh, careful with that treacly talk, big lad. You know how much I love the rough trade, Jocelyn.” He turned on his heel, chuckling as he sauntered away, swinging his arse from side to side. “Shall I show her into the receiving room?”
“Yes, Hugo, that seems a better idea than showing her into the kitchen or broom closet.”
Joss and The Countess (The Seducers Book 2) Page 29