His Countess (Victorian Decadence Book 3) Read online

  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)

  Kirkus

  “[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

  The Music of Love

  A Figure of Love

  A Portrait of Love*

  The Language of Love*

  THE OUTCASTS

  Dangerous

  Barbarous

  Scandalous

  THE REBELS OF THE TON

  Notorious*

  Outrageous*

  Infamous*

  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 BondStreet

  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.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  First printing June 2020

  ASIN: B086BZJKRR

  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.

  Photo stock by Period Images

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Chapter One

  London

  Gideon pulled almost all the way out, teasing Marissa’s tight entrance with the thick head of his cock before slamming into her, hilting himself balls deep, glorying in her wet heat.

  Marissa absorbed his savage thrusts while her skilled mouth and tongue worked the beautiful young woman spread out before her.

  Gideon loved this arrangement more than any other when it came to bed sport and he’d rarely encountered such accomplished and responsive whores as Marissa and Delia.

  So why was it that even with so much female beauty arrayed before him, Gideon couldn’t help feeling a trifle . . . bored?

  But it would scarcely be gentlemanly to exhibit such ennui while both ladies were laboring so hard to please him, so he resumed his thrusting.

  “Lovely, very lovely,” he murmured, his eyes riveted on the prone woman’s face as her body stiffened with exquisite tension that ratcheted her slim form tighter and tighter, until she cried out and shuddered, her narrow hips bucking violently.

  Beneath him, Marissa gasped for breath and Gideon smiled as he thought about her jaws and clever tongue and how much both must ache. Well, all part of the ultimate pleasure.

  Delia’s breasts were heavy and full for her delicate ribcage and they trembled fetchingly while she fought to catch her breath.

  Gideon gave her a moment to rest before saying, “Again.”

  Delia squirmed, her relaxed body tensing at his command. “Oh, please. I can’t, Mr. Banks, please, I have nothing left—”

  “Shhh,” he murmured. “You can, Delia. Come for me just one more time, darling.”

  Gideon knew he’d been saying something to that effect all night, but her explosive orgasms were turning out to be the best part of this evening. It was his opinion that the only thing in the world almost as good as climaxing oneself was watching—or giving—another person an orgasm.

  Which reminded him . . .

  “How are you doing, Marissa?” He lowered his body, resting his chest on her slick back and then reached beneath her, thumbing her stiff peek with expert flicks. “Such a good, patient girl,” he whispered. “Do you need release, sweetheart?”

  She whimpered, her sheath tightening around him. “Yes, please, Mr. Banks.”

  Gideon stroked her toward climax while he pumped. He’d been fucking her for close to an hour and hadn’t allowed her to come. The poor thing must have been clinging to the last vestiges of self-control, because she began contracting and shaking before the last word left his mouth.

  “That’s right,” he urged as her cunt contracted hard enough to snap his prick in half.

  Gideon took great pleasure in exercising control over his lover’s bodies—especially when it came to the granting and withholding of sexual satisfaction. On a normal night he might have made Marissa wait longer, perhaps not allowing her to orgasm at all while he and Delia indulged endlessly.

  But he was not feeling like his normal self tonight. Indeed, he’d not felt like himself for quite a while.

  Gideon shrugged the annoying thought away and finessed a second, less intense, climax from Marissa. He then used her body’s juices to massage her back hole, lightly probing her with his thumb. Should he take her anally—would that give him satisfaction? Release?

  His cock experienced a mild twinge of interest at the notion, but not enough to make him bother.

  Besides, it was past time to let the women rest, even though it seemed wrong to finish the night the way things stood. Namely: without him experiencing even a single orgasm. But, lately, orgasms had become increasingly elusive. He could stay hard for hours—all night—but had difficulty reaching his own pleasure. It had started to become …boring.

  “Mr. Banks? Is aught amiss, sir?”

  Gideon realized he’d stopped moving. Delia was staring up at him, her eyes shadowed with concern and something else—exhaustion, he supposed.

  His cock, still inside Marissa, began to soften.

  She twisted her head to look at him. “Sir? Did I do something wrong?”

  Gideon pulled out of her without answering and stepped from the bed, his knees aching and popping. He’d paid for the women in advance—taking them for the entire evening—s
o he didn’t need to engage in the tiresome business of post-coital commerce.

  “I’m done, you may leave,” he said over his shoulder as he strode naked and flaccid toward his bath chamber and shut the door behind him.

  Once he was alone inside the room, he sagged against the door and closed his eyes.

  “Bloody hell.” He was tired and his body felt so very, very heavy. When was the last time he’d slept? Why couldn’t he simply come home after a day of work, eat a meal, and go to sleep in his own bed? By himself?

  Yes, that was what he wanted: to crawl into his bed and sleep for days. Not the bed in the room he’d just left, but the narrow single bed that only Gideon ever used, the one in the small, plain room connected to the other side of this bathing chamber. Even sleeping through one bloody night would be good.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible now.

  It was almost morning and he had a meeting with his business partners in less than three hours.

  Why did he seem to be getting worse with every day that passed? His business partners—Fanshawe, Chatham, and Smith—were men who never caviled to pursue their sexual needs, but even they looked askance at his excesses. Increasingly they treated him as if he were sex-crazed and insane when it came to his excessive whoring, not to mention the number of mistresses he kept mounted—three at the moment.

  Christ.

  He’d not even fucked two of the women for well over a month.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  Gideon groaned at the question—one he couldn’t answer—and then slid down the door until his arse hit the cold marble floor. He hugged his knees to his chest and dropped his heavy head onto his arms and closed his eyes.

  God, he was so bloody, bloody tired.

  ☐ ☐ ☐

  Taunton, England

  “I don’t understand? How can this be?” Alys demanded, even as a part of her brain reminded her that this was the third time she’d said those exact same words.

  “I’m terribly sorry, my lady, I know it’s a shock.”

  Alys could only stare at Beekman, her dead husband’s solicitor. Well, he was the new earl’s solicitor now, she supposed.

  “Are you certain he is the one?” she asked, and then grimaced at her own stupidity. Of course he was certain: after all, the search had gone on for over a year.

  “Yes, my lady, quite certain.” Beekman hesitated and then said, “There is something to be said for Gideon Banks: he is exceedingly wealthy.” Beekman’s cheeks and even the tips of his ears turned a cherry red.

  Alys knew what the older man meant; Alys’s dead husband had left matters at Foxrun—his family’s ancestral estate—in dire condition. It was a miracle that Alys still had a roof over her head after what Sebastian had done to the once majestic country home.

  Although the Taunton Earldom wasn’t the only destitute house in Britain, Alys’s departed husband, the fifth Earl—had done more than most to run through what little rents the much-depleted estate produced.

  “I don’t understand the nature of Mr. Banks’s, er, I mean the new earl’s, family connection—would you mind explaining it to me?” Alys asked, as if she might be able to expose some flaw in what had, undoubtedly, been a thorough and expensive examination of the Taunton lineage.

  “Of course, my lady. The Sixth Earl is the only grandson of your late husband’s grandfather’s youngest brother, Geoffrey Dornan. I’m afraid all connection was severed two generations ago, immediately upon his marriage to a woman in the, er, theatrical field.”

  Alys bit back a groan.

  “The issue of that union was one son, a Mr. Alexander Dornan, who married Judith Banks, the daughter of a rather successful tailor—”

  “Good Lord—a tailor?” The man was no better than a servant!

  Mr. Beekman continued. “The couple had two sons: Lloyd and Gideon. Their mother died when Gideon was six years of age and the boys’ father—never a favorite with Mr. Banks, his father-in-law—disappeared with his two sons. It wasn’t until Gideon was eleven that his grandfather was able to locate him in an orphanage in East London.”

  Alys shook her head “Why would a father rather his sons go to an orphanage than a grandparent?”

  Beekman looked equally perplexed. “It seems Mr. Dornan was a rather, er, spiteful and selfish man. In any case, the elder brother had died by then of some sort of fever. I’m afraid I don’t know the details. It seems young Gideon was a precocious child and his grandfather paid to send him to the Colchester Royal Grammar School, a small but highly respected establishment. A year or so after his grandfather took him in, Gideon took Banks as his surname, which is why he was so hard to find. Gideon took top honors at Colchester and won a place at Wadham College.”

  Alys sat up. Well, this was heartening.

  “He was ejected from Oxford only three months after entering.”

  “For what?” she forced herself to ask.

  He cleared his throat, his eyes on his hands rather than Alys. “For matters of, er, lrshrshy.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit?”

  Beekman’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “That would be lechery, my lady.”

  She briefly closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “I daresay he has grown out of such youthful frolics, my lady. After all, that was when he was two years shy of twenty and he is now eight-and-thirty.”

  “He might be better,” she said, “Or he might be a good deal worse.”

  Mr. Beekman had nothing to say to that.

  “Is he married?”

  “No, my lady.”

  Alys couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad. On the one hand, a wife might be able to hold the man in check. On the other, a wife might be a vulgar mushroom who’d have charge of the house over which Alys was long accustomed to being mistress. Of course that would soon change, no matter what his marital status.

  “I know you’d not planned to go up to London this Season, my lady. But with this new development, you might wish to consider it. I’m meeting with Mr. Banks next week and anticipate I’ll send out the request to the Lord Chancellor not long after. I don’t see there being an issue with proving his provenance and I daresay he’ll have his hands full once he receives his writ for the upcoming session.” He sighed. “That’s all to say that I’m not sure when he will have time to make a trip to Foxrun.”

  Alys considered Beekman’s suggestion without dismissing it out of hand. Although she was out of mourning, she certainly hadn’t intended to go to Town—ever.

  Not only was her jointure barely enough to afford her much entertainment, but the days when she might have enjoyed a London Season were long past. Besides, she knew absolutely no one in London. Her brother, the Marquess of Bolt, was a deeply religious man who only went for his duties in Lords, leaving his wife and ever-increasing brood in the country.

  “It pains me to recommend such a thing,” Beekman began, and then stopped when she met his embarrassed gaze.

  Alys sighed. “Yes, I know what you are trying, very subtly, to say: without the new earl’s kindness, I shall be without a roof over my head.”

  “Er, well, not quite, perhaps. But certainly you could be in an uncomfortable position.”

  That was understating matters. She could go live with her brother and his loathsome wife—which would be the equivalent of entering a nunnery but with maiden aunt duties regarding the children—or she could find some other distant relative and beg for a menial position. She supposed most women in her position would consider re-marrying the only true choice, but after eight years of tolerating Sebastian’s whims and follies, she had no intention of submitting to such humiliation again. At least the first two options did not include giving a man legal power over her person.

  “There is your life estate in the Dower House, of course, but in its current state it is … well ….”

  Again, she knew what he was trying to say. “I understand, Mr. Beekman—the new earl is legally
compelled to allow me to live there, but he has no duty to make the house habitable.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he nodded.

  “So you recommend I go to London to petition the new earl?”

  “I think it cannot hurt, my lady. Also, once he learns of his new position there will be many calls on his—well, on his generosity. It would be better for you to approach him as soon after he learns of his new position as possible.”

  Alys smiled. “Ah, you want me to take him by ambush.”

  Mr. Beekman’s pale face darkened and Alys felt a twinge of shame for teasing him; he was only trying to help her.

  “I take your meaning, sir, and agree. Tell me, when are you planning to inform him of his change in status?”

  “Next week. I was only waiting on one more document, and I found that in the family records here.”

  Yes, that was why he’d come—at least his official reason—to secure whatever was needed to confirm the new earl. Unofficially, he’d come because he’d always been kind to her.

  Alys inhaled deeply, and then let her breath out slowly. So, she would have to go on bended knee to the cit who now controlled the house she’d called her own for almost a decade. Life, it appeared, would continue being an exercise in humiliation.

  “I shall do what I can to make him see the wisdom of repairing the Dower House, my lady. And I shall also emphasize his responsibility to provide a safe haven for his predecessor’s countess. I daresay he will not make any immediate plans to commence repairs on his rural properties, but a word from you might cause him to make the Dower property a priority.”

  Alys smiled again, even though she didn’t feel like it. “Thank you—I am not unaware of your efforts on my behalf.”

  His expression became one of discomfort. “I only wish I could do more.” His jaw worked, as if he might say something, but, instead, he pressed his lips together.

  “Very well,” she said, “I suppose I shall begin packing for London.”

  Chapter Two

  London

  One Week Later

  Gideon knew laughter was not the correct response, but he couldn’t help himself. “An earl?” he repeated. “I’m a fucking earl?”