In Service to the Senses (7 page)

“Everyone’s entitled to a change, aren’t they?”

The steward shrugged and jerked his head over his shoulder to let him on. Edward stepped into the doorway.

“Edward!”

He spun around to the familiar voice. Running up the gangway was the Countess of Atherton. His heart leapt into his mouth.

“Edward! Wait. I’m coming! I’m coming with you.”

She raced up. He took a few stunned steps towards her, his limbs barely functioning in his delirious shock. “Isabella! Bloody hell, Is! What the hell d’ya think yer doin’?”

“Starting again, you fool, just like you said.”

The steward called sternly, “Ma’am, the ship is about to sail. We need to close up. Are you travelling with us?”

“Yes. Wait a moment, please.” She fumbled for some papers and handed them over triumphantly. Edward could not take his eyes off her. She was beaming in reflection of his elation, her face open and warm and giving, more beautiful than he had ever seen her.

“These are for First Class, ma’am. You can’t board here. But the First Class gangway will be closed now. I need to shut this one as it is.”

“Well, then I’ll come on here, of course.”

“You can’t do that, ma’am. This is Third Class.”

“Then I’ll be Third Class. Just let me on, for heaven’s sake! I’ve got my tickets!”

The steward sighed and glanced at the papers. “Very well…my lady. Now, please hurry.”

Gripping her hand tight and laughing with uncontainable joy, Edward pulled her onto the ship and raced up staircases and ladders and across decks until he reached the stern. They stared out over the rail.

“You’re mad, d’you know that? You’re bloody mad!”

“Maybe. But at least I’m with you.”

“What the hell are you doin’? Did you tell the Earl? What did he say?”

“He’s in London for a week. I left him a note.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ll be halfway across the Atlantic by the time he finds out.”

“But…it’s going to be tough, Is. I’m starting from scratch. It’s going to be hard enough for me, let alone you as well.”

“I know. But I’m with you. And you are all I want. And anyway, in the meantime…” She reached into a large bag she was carrying and pulled out a handful of necklaces and bracelets, all encrusted with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. “This may help a little.”

“You little minx. God, I love you.”

Her eyes sparked. “What did you say?”

Edward swallowed hard. “You heard me. I love you.”

She curled her arms around his neck. “Well, how desperately convenient, because it just so happens that I love you too.”

And as the ship moved away from the dock to begin its passage to America, Edward bent his head to Isabella and kissed her.

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

A Lady for Two

Nan Cormargue

Excerpt

Chapter One

At first, Lise thought it must be her husband, inexplicably home early from his intended fortnight in town. She blew a blonde curl off her forehead, straining her eyes to see through the gloom outside. The tall figure coming up the drive looked just like his, although all features and costume were lost in the growing dimness of approaching twilight. But then she saw the faint stutter in the figure’s stride and knew that it couldn’t be Charles.

Damn it
, she thought,
another visitor
. And a rude one at that. The hour for paying social calls was long past.

Balancing her weight on her knees and only one hand, she waved the other behind her until it hit sweating male flesh.

“Finish quickly,” she commanded, pushing her fingers between her legs to help things along. He could never be trusted to think of her pussy when he was pleasuring his cock. “Someone’s coming to visit.”

The steady rhythm that was her favourite trait about her husband’s young valet was soon broken as he struggled to finish. He was like that, easily flustered, which was why they only fucked when Charles was out of the house. However much she tried to lure him with a quick tumble in an empty bedchamber, he always demurred. It was one of the things she liked about him, his stiffness that bordered on rigidity in front of others, and his eager willingness to fuck her from behind in private. She enjoyed looking out of the window at the other servants going about their daily chores while he was screwing her.

She looked at her reflection in the window glass, her smooth forehead creased over her wide green eyes, as she tried to think of who the stranger could be. Unannounced visitors often meant bad news, but with a well-run household and a wealthy husband who was very careful of his own safety, she doubted it would be that today.

Whoever the stranger was, he must be shown true Hessell hospitality. Charles would expect it of her. If the stranger had come from far, she would be expected to feed him.

Supper had already been eaten. She hoped that Cook had left some of the roast chicken instead of gobbling it up herself, as she was wont to do. Charles swore that Cook ate more than the two of them combined.

Lise turned her head away from the window, not wanting whoever it was to find her hanging out of it, staring at him, the valet’s pale face sweating over her arse cheeks. Even if it had been her husband, she would not have done anything different. She had cut it close before. Fortunately, she and Charles did not have the type of marriage where she would be expected to meet him in the front hall upon his arrival. Really, she thought, no one seemed to have that sort of marriage, least of all her friends and neighbours, although the prospect of love within marriage was realised often enough in novels.

Her husband would say she read too many novels. He was a typical out of doors gentleman. He only read serious tomes on horticulture to improve his farms and occasionally a book on history to widen his mind. Aside from that, he eschewed words and indoor pursuits. At supper parties, he bored their guests to yawns with his schemes to replace his innumerable fields of barley with wheat and rye, convinced that this was a cure to the agricultural depression that had hit England since the end of the war.

It was always left to Lise to coax one of their guests to the pianoforte and another to sing, or else to ply the former instrument herself and attempt to drown out her husband’s talk of sowing and threshing.

Lise had been raised to consider it poor manners for a gentleman to speak on how he earned his income. But short of speaking to Charles directly, which after three years of marriage she dared not do, she must bear his boorishness. In spite of the depression, the Hessell family’s income from those fields Charles spoke about too often was the only thing she could not complain about.

Her husband’s valet, Jameson, pushed tight against her buttocks as he buried his not insubstantial cock deep inside her with a grunt. He was wearing a lambskin so Lise did not feel the rush of his warm jism. Certainly, she did not feel any climax beneath her fingers. The stranger’s impending arrival had effectively forestalled any chance of an orgasm.

“Will that be all, madam?” Jameson asked pertly as he wiped himself up then proceeded to rebutton his trousers. He omitted, as he often did, the courtesy title of ‘my lady’ that all such servants typically bestowed upon their employer’s wife.

The Hessells were well born but not enough to merit a title, although Charles’ father had once found evidence that a Sir John Hazell, a forefather of the modern day Hessells, had turned down a title during the Crusades. Lise somewhat doubted this story. If the past Sir John was anything like his modern relatives, he would have grabbed at a title as quick as the blink of an eye.

“Yes, thank you, Jameson,” Lise said ironically, watching as the young man preened himself. Really, he was too pretty with his mop of blond curls and sulky pout. What had Charles been thinking to take him on? But Charles was probably thinking the same thing she was—that the new valet would make her a nice plaything.

She would have to keep an eye on the man. He’d only been with the house for six months and he’d been sleeping with her for half of that time. Unfortunately, he seemed to think he was the only one who knew this.

But right now, she had bigger problems.

With the help of her lady’s maid, she was able to change her dress, arrange her auburn hair and otherwise tidy herself up before a disapproving Kearns, their elderly butler, announced the guest.

Luke Holden. The name meant nothing to her. Holden. Weren’t there Holdens in Suffolk, relatives of old Earl Carton? But why would they be visiting them?

In the drawing room, she found a no longer young man, aged about thirty-two or so. He stood up with noticeable difficulty but kissed her hand in the continental style with fluid movements. His lips were warm.

And his eyes…

His eyes reminded her of someone else’s.

But there was no time to chase that recalcitrant memory as she smiled at her guest.

“Mrs Hessell.” Holden said her name with a faint questioning note. “I had expected to find your…husband, Charles Hessell.”

“Please.” Lise indicated a chair for him. Hearing his upper-class accent, she was immediately put at ease. “How do you know my husband, Mr Holden?”

His sudden smile made her entire body stiffen in involuntary response. It was invigorating, as if the energies of the entire room were commanded by that slight movement of his agile lips and the resulting flash of white teeth.

Suddenly, entertaining a man like this, vibrating with all of the warmth and force that her husband lacked, seemed strangely illicit. And Lise was always thrilled with the forbidden.

“Charles and I go a long ways back,” Holden answered, leaning farther back in his chair. His smile faltered for an instant, so brief that Lise wondered afterwards if she had imagined it. “We grew up together.”

“Oh? Are you from this area?” Certainly, she’d never heard that surname mentioned in the village.

“Actually, I grew up right here,” he said, watching her face closely. “At Hessell House.”

“Indeed?”

It was impossible to keep that doubtful note out of her voice. She knew everything about Charles, from his placid childhood here at Hessell House, where more than two dozen generations of Hessells and Hazells had put down their long roots, to his equally boring years at school and back again. Though perhaps not a particularly distinguished family, the Hessells were certainly fertile. Their line of unbroken descent was longer than many aristocratic families. Charles said so every other day.

The number of times he mentioned his family, it made her wonder why he was so reluctant to continue it.

But there were some questions a gentlewoman did not ask her husband.

Bringing her mind back to her guest, Lise asked, “Are you a relation? A cousin, perhaps?”

‘Grew up here’ might have been an exaggeration. Perhaps the man had spent time at Hessell House during his school holidays as an impoverished relation.

“You may say that,” Holden confirmed. “I am the son of Old Willie’s second wife.”

Lise stiffened. Old Willie, indeed! Charles’ father, William Hessell, had been one of the scions of the village until his death a few years ago.

“Really?” she murmured. “I wonder why I haven’t heard of you.”

This time, Holden’s smile was tigerish. He really was a handsome man, Lise noticed as he relaxed against the hard chair she’d assigned him. His blue eyes sparkled with a depth most of the English lacked, almost a Celtic fire, while his light brown hair shone beautifully in the lamplight. Both taller and leaner than Charles, his disability, if that was what hindered his walking stride, was not noticeable now.

Lise’s gaze dropped to the spot between his legs, highlighted by the new tighter breeches that were currently in fashion. A nice big bulge there.

She had torn her eyes away as Holden spoke, but was convinced that this time he had caught her staring. There was a suspicious twinkle in those haunting blue eyes.

“Old Willie was only interested in the heirs he intended to breed off my mother, not in the little brat she was forced to tow along with her,” Holden explained. “And since my father was something of a scoundrel while he lived, I understand that my mother was eager to fall into line with whatever orders this husband had for her. He was, after all, wealthy and stable and, most importantly, willing to take a risk in marrying a young widow.” Again Holden’s teeth flashed whitely in his tanned face. “Old Willie was always disappointed that his first wife died after producing only Charles. He wanted a stable of heirs, not just one, not particularly bright, example.”

Lise tried to make sense of this speech, distracted as she was by his strange tone. Harshness warred with sentiment in his voice, as she was starting to suspect it did in his temperament as well.

“So you are Charles’ stepbrother?”

That might account for his calling her husband stupid. Complex relations were notoriously difficult, not that Lise, without siblings and raised by wealthy elderly kin, would know very much about the subject.

“He would never own me as such, but yes, technically, that is what I am.”

Lise’s response was forestalled by the entrance of Anna, the parlour maid, carrying an enormous tray of tea and savouries. She gestured the girl to set out the dishes as she poured the fragrant Ceylon tea into delicate china teacups.

She looked up to hand Holden his cup but was arrested by the look in his eyes. If they were haunting before, now they were simply haunted.

“Where did you get that tea set?”

Lise stared at the held back cup, seeing nothing at all unusual in the blue-and-gilt Crown Derby set.

“It belongs to Charles’ family,” she explained, bewildered.

Holden’s jaw muscles worked beneath his bronzed skin. “It belonged to my mother,” he said. “Charles has no right to it.”