Chapter One #3
Was that an arrogant assumption? Probably, but it was still true. And Joss had bloody well earned the right make such a claim.
Unfortunately, if his body’s response to her was bad, his mind entertained even more dangerous impulses: he’d begun to obsess about what lay behind her beautiful face.
Why would he care about what sort of person she was?
Because he was an idiot.
The closest he’d ever come to knowing her would be looking.
In his months with her he’d seen her with two different men. Oh, not seen her, of course, but waited for her to sate her desires and for those lily-white-handed nobs to sate theirs using her body.
The knowledge that she spent her evenings with men who looked like they knew as much about pleasuring a woman as they did about digging a ditch or butchering a hog rankled. But what rankled even more was the knowledge there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop her.
Joss knew he wasn’t the smartest of men, but even a fool would realize the work he’d done for Melissa had given him thoughts and ideas that weren’t suited to a man of his station.
It was natural, he supposed, to begin to think of aristocrats as people—at least the women—when you’d seen them naked, been inside them, and learned they were just a collection of wants and needs like anyone else.
He knew that money couldn’t buy happiness—but it could buy pleasure.
And it had certainly bought Joss often enough in the past.
He shoved away the depressing thought.
As was usual when he was in her company, he’d worked himself up. His cock was as hard as cast iron and his stomach churned with all the desire he was forced to swallow while he waited and imagined.
The gnawing want and envy was wearing on him.
He would be glad to leave her tonight, although such partings usually left him feeling restless and not a little despairing.
Tonight he would go to his snug room in the mews and he’d beat the living fuck out of his bag, until his knuckles bled, until he was too bloody fagged to do anything but pass out. Sometimes that afforded him a certain . . . release.
“What were you reading earlier, Gormley?”
Joss startled; she’d rarely spoken to him directly in the months he’d worked for her—and never anything personal. And now she’d fixed her disconcerting silver-blue gaze on him and expected an answer.
“What book do you have in your pocket?” she repeated.
Joss fished the book from his coat and handed it to her. He watched her face as she flipped it open, staring at it for so long he thought she might have fallen asleep.
“Shakespeare?” She said the word with an inflection of amazement, as if she’d just discovered one of her carriage horses could read. When she looked up at him her eyebrows were arched.
Her surprise was like salt on a raw wound and Joss felt his mouth twist into a smile that held no humor. “I like to look at the pictures, my lady.”
She glanced down at the book in her hands, quickly flicking through the pages and, of course, found no pictures.
Even in the dim light Joss could see the slight flush that spread over her magnificent cheekbones.
He sighed. Here it came, the sacking he’d expected since the first week he’d begun to work for her, when he’d realized he wanted her and that his blazing yearning was making him even surlier than usual.
But she surprised him.
“I didn’t mean to imply I doubted your ability to read Shakespeare.” She closed the book and handed it back to him. “I’ve never read Shakespeare, myself. Is Antony and Cleopatra your favorite?”
“It’s one of them.”
“Why do you like it?”
Mercifully, the carriage came to a shuddering halt and Joss was spared from having to answer.
He flipped down the steps and stood to the side of the door, his breath like steam from a kettle in the frigid night air.
She gave him her hand, always gloved, always two barriers between his skin and hers, and he released her almost before he’d touched her, mounting the eight steps to the house and unlocking the door for her with the key she’d given him.
No servants waited up for her.
“Goodnight, Gormley.” She spoke the words without pausing or looking at him, picking up the candlestick that waited for her on the console table and heading for the marble stairs that led to her chambers.
“Goodnight, my lady.” He murmured the words quietly, too soft for her to hear over the muted clicking of her heeled slippers on the hard stone steps. Only when she’d disappeared did he close and lock the door.
He walked down the narrow alley that led to the mews which serviced this block of houses.
The servant quarters above Lady Selwood’s carriage house were more private than those in the house. Joss had occupied the same type of quarters at Viscount Easton’s and made sure it was part of his employment contract to have a bedchamber and the small room next to it for his personal use.
Joss took the stairs to his room two at a time, stopping abruptly when he found the door to his quarters ajar. When he pushed it open, he saw the unmistakably naked body of a woman lying across his double bed.