At Your Service

by Alysha Ellis

  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 be
autifully 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.”

  “I-I’m sorry,” Lise said inadequately, setting down the teapot as if it had burnt her. She struggled for further conversation and couldn’t think of any. What a disturbing man! To think that he had grown up alongside boring, steady Charles.

  “For his sins,” Holden went on, his voice normal as if the interlude about the tea set had never occurred, “Old Willie never got the heir he wanted, the strong, bold son he felt he deserved. And it was not for want of trying. My mother suffered three miscarriages and two stillborn children before she died. Too soon, of course, but what can be expected if you treat a woman like a broodmare?”

  Lise writhed with discomfort. This was really too much! No proper gentlemen spoke of such subjects in mixed company.

  She felt awful, for there was genuine pain in the man’s voice, even if it was at odds with his robust appearance. She could screw her husband’s valet right in front of Charles, all for their shared titillation, but hearing about this man’s painful past hurt and shamed her in some inexplicable way.

  Striving for normalcy, Lise offered a plate of biscuits to her guest. “Where have you been all of these years, Mr Holden? Travelling abroad?”

  One side of his mouth quirked in that predatory smile. “You could say that. I was at Waterloo.”

  “Oh!” Lise’s gaze dropped momentarily to his leg. “I didn’t realise—”

  Holden raised an eyebrow. “That some of us are still finding our way back home?” he finished for her. “Well, as you can see, some of us are slower than others.”

  He tapped his left knee meaningfully.

  “Did your husband enlist?”

  From the way he’d asked the question, Lise knew that he already had the answer.

  “No,” she said stiffly. “Charles was needed here.”

  “And he was wealthy enough to make sure he wasn’t needed in France.”

  Lise felt her cheeks heating. “Take that back! That statement was unconscionably rude.”

  Holden rose to his feet, inclining his brown head. “I apologise, Mrs Hessell. I did not mean to cause offence.”

  He most certainly had, but it would have been churlish to point it out after he’d tendered his apology. Lise merely inclined her chin in acknowledgement.

  “I believe it is time for me to say goodbye,” Holden continued. “Thank you, Mrs Holden, for the tea and the delightful company.”

  Lise rose as well and offered her hand. For some reason, her heart beat faster as he took her hand and lifted it briefly to his mouth. The kiss sent a shiver of excitement straight from her fingertips to the pit of her belly. She could feel her nipples hardening. Fortunately, the layers of material between them and him hid her reaction.

  “Will you be back soon?” she asked. “Charles will be home in five days.”

  She could not keep the wistful note out of her voice. Whatever he was to Charles, Luke Holden was anything but boring.

  But Holden’s response was noncommittal. “Perhaps,” he said, adding, “if I am still in the area.”

  So Lise had to be content with such a tepid response. For now.

  Wait until Charles returned. He would bring Holden back for her.

  Chapter Two

  “But, dearest—”

  Lise had been trying to get a word in between two of her husband’s for the past half hour, to no avail. Her pleas had fallen on shut ears. Her incipient tears had gone unseen. Even her prettiest frock, green with pink posies, and the hour of work that her maid had given to her coiffure, had ceased to provoke a reaction.

  He, who had rejoiced in her beauty as his primary joy in their marriage!

  “No, Lise, there will be no more mention of the subject.”

  She had never seen her husband so grim and set. His jaw was firm and his light blue eyes cold as he regarded her. His warm greeting of an hour ago was gone without a sign that it had ever taken place.

  “Charles, please—”

  His tone matched his looks for the moment. “No, and that is my final word on it. You were wrong to accept that man as a guest in our home, but you were not to know. You know the truth now. Holden is no gentleman, and furthermore, he is no friend of mine or yours.”

  Holden’s handsome face flashed in Lise’s mind. A man like that, with those daring dark blue eyes, would truly be a man to know. But to defy her husband took a more courageous woman than Lise. She knew well where her bread was buttered.

  Sensing her relent, Charles pressed his point. “There will be no further talk of Luke Holden in this house. As of today, he ceases to exist.”

  * * * *

  For a ghost, Holden was remarkably active. Nowadays, whenever she made a trip to the village, Lise spotted him either sauntering down the road as if he owned the very ground under his feet, or else she glimpsed his striking profile in the windows of the public house, where he was staying.

  Her husband was right, of course. Holden was not a gentleman. No man of quality would choose to stay at The Jester alongside farmers and tradespeople.

  “Has he no people of his own?” Lise asked her best friend, Miss Prudence Graves, while they promenaded up and down the high street in search of the perfect skein of yarn, which both of them knew quite well was not to be found in the village but only in the town. Still, it did not stop them from looking. As gentle ladies, there were so few ways of whiling away the days and Prudence, as a spinster of thirty years, did not have the release of sexual dalliance that a married woman would have.

  “He has no one,” Prudence confirmed. Her smile became a trifle malicious at the corners. “Except, of course, for Charles.”

  “Charles!” Lise exclaimed. “But Charles can
not stand him.”

  “Perhaps now,” Prudence agreed, “but that wasn’t always the situation. Once, years ago, the two of them were friends.”

  Lise stopped walking outside the village’s lone tea shop, which served lukewarm tea and indifferent cakes, but she suddenly had a great appetite for both.

  “Let us go in,” she said quickly, spotting her friend’s small cottage in the near distance and not wanting to lose the chance of a good gossip. “I am absolutely famished.”

  “Well,” Prudence hesitated, “I suppose my visit to the rectory can wait for tomorrow.”

  “Indeed it can!” Lise proclaimed, hooking her arm through her friend’s elbow and propelling her with gentle force through the shop’s door.

  The tea shop was empty at that early hour, just after noon. Even the proprietress, a thin, anaemic-looking woman who was completely at odds with the popular conception of a plump and jolly lady shop owner, seemed surprised at their patronage.

  After impatiently ordering and watching the proprietress slip away into the backroom, Lise leaned eagerly across the rickety table.

  “Now, out with it,” she said. “I find it difficult to believe that Charles and Luke were on good terms, much less that they were friends. Charles seems to positively detest the man now.”

  Her friend’s expression was the pleased look of one who had information that another desperately wanted to know.

  “No one knows what exactly happened,” Prudence explained, “only that the hatred Charles and Holden seemed to feel towards one another disappeared by the time Charles came back from school. Perhaps it was the mellowing influence of his education or the death of his father, that stubborn old man, but the two young men were soon fast friends and seen everywhere together.”

  Lise widened her green eyes.

  “Truly?”

  Prudence nodded vigorously. “I saw it myself. The old tension and hatred seemed to be gone. To be completely fair, of course, they really appeared to have been only on your husband’s side. His father turned his mind on his new stepbrother a long time ago.”