The Birthday Present

Book 3 of The Countess Trilogy

Alison Richardson

www.spice-books.co.uk

Like every woman of sense and discernment, I know the dangers of celibacy. No state of life is less conducive to health and happiness, and one only has to look at the wan features of an obedient priest to see the effects of this disastrous practice firsthand. My enlightened readers, then, will no doubt be surprised to learn that on the day of my thirty-fourth birthday, I had not taken a lover in over two years.

One’s tastes grow more refined with age, and this fact is the only explanation I can offer for my lengthy and unnatural abstinence. For some time, I had found no man who was to my liking and, being of the opinion that cheap country wine is no substitute when what one really wants is champagne, I had been unwilling to compromise.

But I should explain further. At this point in my life, I had made my home for several years in Munich, and since my arrival in that city my house had become, if modesty will permit to me to say so, a center of the city’s literary and philosophical life. The intelligent and ambitious men who assembled around me had their uses; the erotic possibilities of my circle, however, left much to be desired. Most of the regular visitors to my salon were either distinguished old men or energetic young artists and scholars. The former held no interest for me for reasons that should be obvious, and the latter, if more appealing in physical form, proved equally unsatisfying when consumed as a regular diet. The new, romantic generation was far too high-strung and sensitive for my tastes—young men bored me, though they clustered around me like gnats and, after a few years in Munich, the thought of spreading my thighs for yet another adoring and submissive young poet was enough to make me cry with frustration.

For over a year, my life in Munich had been further spoiled by the presence of my greatest rival, a clever and arrogant Scotsman by the name of James McKirnan. I was, unfortunately, indirectly responsible for his arrival in Bavaria, for it was my fault that he was not safely settled in England. Many years ago, when I was visiting a cousin in the British Isles, this objectionable man had tried to force me to marry him, and in retribution I had started a rumor about him so vicious that after it had spread he was never again accepted into polite society, either in London or in the countryside. Seeing all avenues of social advancement closed to him, he was forced to come and try his luck again on the Continent. The previous King of Bavaria had met James in Paris and, convinced of his philosophical and technical acumen, had taken the ridiculous step of appointing this lowborn Scotch mechanic as president of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

So now James, my greatest enemy, was well established in the same city as myself, and he took full advantage of his strong position at court. He made a habit, for example, of luring young men away from my salon, which I would not have minded so much had he not always chosen the most attractive and talented as his targets—just the ones, in short, who might have made passable lovers. It was, in short, largely James McKirnan’s fault that I entered my thirty-fourth year in a state of unusual melancholy.

The year was 1799, and the rest of Munich society, as it happened, was touched with melancholy, too, as everyone waited anxiously to see how Maximilian Joseph, the new king of Bavaria, would wear his crown. In fact, my thirty-fourth birthday fell on the day of Maximilian’s first court ball.

I arrived at the palace in a sober mood, expecting little from the evening ahead. Maximilian was a great soldier, but also a man of stern and serious character, and his court was not likely to offer the same diversions as that of his predecessor, Karl Theodor, who had had well-developed tastes for art, actresses and adultery. Given the new king’s character, I could not help but wonder if Bavaria was about to enter a period as pious and dull as the one through which Prussia had suffered under the heavy hand of Friedrich Wilhelm I. The fact that the king, recently widowed, was currently in negotiations for a new queen added a small point of interest to the new court, but so far that had been the only source of gossip surrounding our abstemious new sovereign.

As it turned out, Maximilian’s first official ball proved a night of great importance in my life, a night that finally broke my long spell of abstinence and brought me to a new juncture in my career. I owe this change, and my current happiness, entirely to my beloved cousin Robert, who had, without my knowledge, found an admirable solution to the dull monotony that plagued my life at the time. He chose the occasion of my birthday to unveil his plan.

But before I tell you about Robert’s ingenious birthday present, I should tell you a little more about my mood and situation earlier that night.

The evening did not begin well. As soon as we had assembled in the ballroom and the orchestra began to play, I felt a firm hand on my elbow.

“Come and dance with me, Countess,” said a familiar, unwelcome voice.

Well-mannered men pose this request in question form; James McKirnan had issued it as an order.

James, as I have mentioned, was an enemy of long standing, and over our lengthy acquaintance this man had done a great deal to earn my dislike—to name only one example, he had once tricked me into sucking his cock before an entire Parisian salon. That had been many years ago, and he had gained more subtlety with age. Now he preferred smaller humiliations, such as forcing me to dance with him before everyone at court, knowing, of course, that the differences in our standing—at birth he had been the basest kind of commoner—made such displays abhorrent to me.

Despite the man’s many crimes I could not afford to be rude to him in public, given his sway with the royal family, and he knew this. That was why he was now leading me to the very center of the room with such confidence. Accepting the inevitable, I followed him, though with bad grace.

Many of the women in the room might have considered me fortunate to have James as a partner—he was, after all, a vigorous man in the prime of life, confident and masterful in his bearing, well-formed in every physical detail and also an excellent dancer. His reddish-blond hair was as thick now as it had been when I had first met him as a young man of twenty-five, and his figure as straight and as powerful as it had been then. He was, in fact, much admired by the impressionable young ladies of Munich’s court and, try as I might, I could not honestly find fault with his appearance. He was, without question, an extremely handsome man.

Still, in my eyes he was an abomination.

“Will I ever get anything but frowns from you, Countess?” James had just asked me in his usual light, mocking manner. He was leading me through the first steps of a complicated rondeau.

I told him coldly that if he ever did anything to earn a smile from me, I would certainly not withhold it.

James seemed poised for more of this sort of banter, when, as had happened so many times before, my cousin Robert appeared to rescue me.

“Excuse me, Herr McKirnan,” Robert began politely, and then explained that I was needed in another part of the palace.

James gave my cousin a look of resentful dislike—they were old rivals, too—but otherwise acceded without complaint.

At first I assumed that Robert had only meant to free me from McKirnan, but it turned out that he did, in fact, have someplace else to take me.

“Come,” Robert said, clasping my hand and leading me away from the dance floor. “I know this crowd bores you—I’ve arranged for something upstairs that you’ll find more entertaining. A present for your birthday.”

“What is it?” I asked, intrigued by the sly smile on his face.

“A surprise” was all he would say, and he pulled me through the crowd toward the more private chambers of the palace.

At the top of the stairs I demanded again to know what was waiting for me—I have never been a patient woman—but Robert answered that I would see soon enough and refused to say anything more.

I knew the royal palace well, but Robert took me on a circuitous and aimless route, as if to make it harder for me to retrace my steps. Finally, when we were somewhere deep in the east wing, he stopped in front of a closed door.

“Here we are,” he said.

He paused and gave me another sly smile. “Before you enter, Anna, you must make me a promise.” He pulled a long strip of black satin out from his doublet and held it out to me. “You must put on this blindfold, and you must keep your eyes covered for as long as you are in that room.”

“Why?” I asked, not sure that I would accept these terms. I wanted to see the present that waited for me behind the door and could not imagine any reason why I should not be allowed to do so.

“It is a condition of the gift,” he said simply. “I cannot explain further. If you won’t wear the blindfold, you can’t go inside.” He gave the dark piece of fabric a shake, taunting me to take it.

I snatched the black satin from him and held it in my hands for a moment, running it through my fingers. Then my curiosity overwhelmed me and I fastened the material over my eyes.

“Can you see?” Robert asked, and I shook my head. The blindfold was broad and thick enough to block all light. I felt Robert pull at the back knot, testing it to make sure the material was tight against my eyes.

Next came the slight creak of a door being pushed open. Robert led me forward several paces. I stumbled a little, awkward in my blindness.

“Well?” I demanded eagerly. “What have you gotten for me?”

“The thing you want most in the world,” he answered, speaking those words as if he were saying something dry and witty, then he let go of my hand.

It was hard to imagine that any gift could live up to such a promise.

The door closed softly behind me; my cousin had gone. As Robert’s footsteps retreated through the next chamber, I heard the soft click of another door opening off to my left.

Someone entered the room. I heard the low sound of an indrawn breath and stood expectant in the darkness, unmoving, waiting for some further sign of what was to come.

A warm, large male hand settled onto my shoulder and stroked firmly down my bare arm.

“Good evening,” I said, but the man did not answer me. He just unfastened the first button that held my gown secure and made his way slowly down my back. Then he pushed the gown off my shoulders; the thick brocade fell to the floor with a low rustle.

I have never been prone to nervous excitement, but I was suddenly near fainting. The man pulled hard against the strings of my corset from behind, tugging me close against his chest, and through my underclothes I could feel nothing but warm skin against my back and my buttocks. The unseen stranger behind me was completely naked, and already fully aroused.

I wondered for a brief moment if Robert had hired a male prostitute for my use, but this man did not touch me like someone who made a living being submissive and pleasing. He touched me like a man who was the master of his life, someone bold and without fear. His hard, hungry mouth was now against the skin of my throat, his hands gripped my breasts, crushing them within the satin cage of my corset, and I felt almost too overcome to stand.

The man loosened my corset strings and pulled the stiff garment from my body with a tug that smacked of impatience.

“What is your name?” I murmured.

“Shhh” was the man’s only response, and the brush of his breath against my cheek made me sag against him.

He noticed my weakness; he picked me up and carried me a few steps farther into the room and then set me down upon a soft surface that I knew must be a bed.

With the same impatient tugs he had used with my corset, he pulled what remained of my clothing from my body.

I lay there naked for three deep breaths, waiting for the man to touch me again. For a long moment I felt nothing but the cool air of the room against my skin.

Then the man grabbed my wrists and stretched my arms up over my head, pressing them down into the mattress so that my chest arched up off the bed. His breath tickled against the skin of my shoulder and my breast; he licked my nipple and took it into his mouth to suckle, teasing it with a quick, strong tongue, and he did not stop until I cried out and writhed on the bed, straining to free myself from the constraints of his hands.

And then his strong tongue was plunging into my pussy, and his hands were gripping my trembling thighs instead of my wrists.

Suddenly I had little more life force than a puppet; I lay there, my legs hanging limply off the edge of the bed, as this unseen stranger ate my cunt and, had he been a man for hire, he could hardly have done it better. A skilled mouth that knows how to pleasure a pussy is, I have always thought, an indispensable quality in a lover, and based on this single performance, I would gladly have given this unknown man a place in my bed every night.

After he had my pussy so slick and swollen that it almost screamed out to be fucked, he draped my legs over his thighs and pushed inside me, holding my hips with his powerful hands, guiding my body to take his cock deep and hard. He was quite large, and after my long abstinence my sex felt as tight and narrow as it had at sixteen. I felt no pain, just an intoxicating stretching; he worked my cunt until it was loose and open, and when I came for him, he climaxed, too, with a low, choked cry that was only the second sound I had heard him utter.

I lay still and spent for a long time, but as soon as I could move, I reached to remove my blindfold. Surely now…

“Tu as promis,” the man whispered, and captured my hand.

I was not surprised to hear that he spoke clean elegant French, with only the slightest trace of an accent. I had guessed that the man must be an aristocrat, and any noble German speaks French as well as his native tongue. “But why can’t I take it off?” I demanded.

The man trapped my wrists again in his strong hands, and it was impossible for me to escape.

“Because then you would know who I am,” he answered.

That voice was strangely familiar, and for a confused second I thought I had guessed his identity. But the man who had come into my mind spoke appalling French and was, furthermore, a longtime adversary of my cousin Robert, so I rejected the idea out of hand.

“I want to know who you are,” I insisted.

He was silent for a moment, and I thought at first that he was going to give in to my demand.

“Au revoir, Comtesse,” he said.

“No, please,” I protested as he moved to leave the bed. “Stay. I won’t take off the blindfold. Don’t go.” I reached out blindly into the darkness and my hand fell against a muscular flank. Gripping hold of his body, I brought myself up to kneel on the bed.

“Please stay,” I asked again, and pressed a kiss against the warm plane of skin closest to my mouth—his chest, I could tell with further exploration.

The man remained standing, but came no closer. In a silent plea to keep him near, I pressed kisses against his hard torso, moving tentatively down in my blindness. When my hands found his dick, he was already half-aroused. I cradled his balls in my hands and fondled them with a careful, kitten’s mouth, I sucked on the tip of his cock and licked at the shaft until it was hot and stiff under my tongue.

“Fuck me again,” I begged, still pressing kisses against his groin. The man stood immobile and mute while I caressed him, and I was afraid that he still meant to leave, no matter how hard his cock had become.

“Please fuck me again,” I pleaded.

The man growled at my request, like a hungry animal offered a piece of meat from an unfamiliar hand. He wrapped my hair around his hand and pulled my head backward.

“Tu me veux, Comtesse?” He kissed and bit at my neck with a new, barely contained violence. Both his hands were buried in my hair now, and they were shaking.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I want you. Please, I want more of you.”

He took hold of my hips again with bruising force.

The stranger gave me what I asked for with a raw power that shocked me; I did not understand the violence of his lust, but it satisfied me nonetheless.

This time when we were done the man took me in his arms and lay down close against me on the bed, gentle after his second assault. He teased my lips with soft kisses and caressed my throat and my breasts with the tips of his fingers, and we lay quietly like that, neither of us speaking, for some time.

Despite his silence and my blindness, I knew without question that the man holding me was strong willed and powerful, someone whose name must be known throughout Germany. He appeared in the guise of a servant tonight, coming at my cousin’s bidding, but servant was a role he never played in daylight hours. The only clues that I had to his identity were what I could feel with my hands, and I twisted my body to nestle against him, caressing the backs of his well-formed legs with the soles of my feet. As he kissed my lips, I dug my fingers into his chest; the brush of his hair was rough under my palms and I rubbed my hands against his skin to better feel it—tough masculine hair and firm, erect masculine nipples and always, wherever I slid my hands, the taut ripple of trained muscles, with no hints of a soft life.

“I want to watch you ride my cock, Countess,” he murmured finally in my ear. Grabbing hold of my thighs with both hands, he pulled me across his body so that I was straddling him.

In my blindness I was unsteady in this position at first, unsure of my balance, but he guided his dick to the mouth of my pussy and held me firmly in place while I slid down on top of him. I took this man inside me a third time with more eagerness than I have often felt at a first coupling, and my enthusiasm amused him. I heard him chuckle underneath me sometimes at my petulant, whimpering moans.

I was, I should say, very happy with my birthday present. After two years of nothing but dildos, one is fully able to appreciate the charms of a real man. The warmth is the most telling difference, and the strength of the thrusting, which no hand can simulate. A real cock is not a loose, artificial appendage; it is firmly attached and can be pounded and gripped without fear of dislodgement and, as you fuck it, very hard, the man attached to it will groan and kiss you with great enthusiasm—as this unknown man did now—and the entire ensemble has no equal, at least not in any toy I have ever possessed.

I was so drowsy after this exercise that I barely felt the man leave the bed; as soon as I sensed that he was gone I sat up and called out for him, though I did not know his name. When no answer came, I ripped off my blindfold and saw that I was alone in one of the small palace bedrooms. Moonlight struck the floor through two large windows, and my gown lay in a crumpled heap a few feet from the bed. I hurriedly dressed myself again, as much as that was possible without the aid of maid, and a few moments later Robert appeared at the door to take me through a servants’ entrance to our waiting carriage.

As we drove away, I decided that the only flaw in my present was that I had only been allowed the services of this man for a single evening.

Under the circumstances, one deeply satisfying lay only made me feel the dull barrenness of my regular life more keenly. By the next morning, I had decided that the only solution was to tell Robert to arrange another meeting with this unknown man. Surely, given the undeniable enthusiasm and energy this stranger had shown the night before, he would not object to an encore performance.

To my irritation, for the next two days Robert refused to answer my notes, and when, in exasperation, I drove to his house on the second evening, he was nowhere to be found. His servants were cagey and vague in answering my questions about his whereabouts.

Such behavior was unprecedented. My cousin Robert had been in Munich for many years now—he had thought it wise to leave Paris when the common hordes, after several years of general obstreperousness, had taken up the unseemly habit of chopping off aristocratic heads and hoisting them on spikes—and he and I had always been the closest of companions. I could not understand this sudden absence, just when I was in such dire need of his aid. I grew more and more impatient, and on the third morning I almost lost my temper when he breezed into my library just after breakfast, without even an apology for his unforgivable absence.

I demanded to know where he had been the night before and, rather than answer, he asked me if I was still pleased with my birthday present, now that I had had time to reflect on it.

In no mood to humor him, I said sullenly that it had been a wonderful gift, but hardly the thing I wanted most in the world, as he had promised. At that, he smiled enigmatically and said I shouldn’t be so sure.

“And what, in your opinion, do I want more than anything else in the world?” I demanded.

Robert smiled at me again and said, “An equal.”

I was confused by this strange answer and demanded to know why he looked so pleased with himself.

He said nothing to explain; he only asked me if I wanted to see the man again.

“Can I in fact see him this time?” I asked petulantly.

“Of course not, darling,” Robert answered. “That would spoil the game.”

I had thought of nothing else since the man had left me. If he insisted on having me blindfolded again, I was not going to refuse but, before agreeing, I thought perhaps I could get more information out of my cousin. This mysterious and uncommunicative manner was utterly foreign to Robert, and I was sure that he would relent and give me some clue to my unknown lover’s identity.

I had formed several theories about the man over the past two days. He was obviously a nobleman but also someone who led an active life, and the most likely solution, then, was that he was a soldier. Such hearty physical conditioning was by no means universal among aristocrats, as Robert himself illustrated—years of indulgent living had left my cousin portly and soft in middle age.

“This man—he’s an officer in the royal army, isn’t he?” I asked casually, watching my cousin’s face for that flicker of surprise that would tell me I had guessed correctly.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, you are quite on the wrong track there.”

Disappointed, I tried my second guess. “Does he live in the country?” A nobleman who spent most of his time tending his estates might also have a strong, well-trained body like the one that had shared my bed three nights ago.

“You’ll get nothing else out of me, so you might as well stop trying,” Robert said with a laugh. “His carriage will call for you at nine tomorrow evening.” With that, my cousin bowed his way out of the room.

The next night a large dark carriage appeared punctually before my front door, pulled by a fine matched team of black horses. As I climbed inside, I saw that the carriage was lavishly appointed, the seats covered in thick red velvet. All distinguishing marks had been removed, however. If there had ever been a coat of arms on the door, it was now obscured by solid black paint. As soon as I was settled in my seat, the coachman pulled down thick blinds on both windows, fixing them to the outside of the carriage.

Closed in as I was, I could not tell where I was being driven, but it took a long while, perhaps an hour or more, to reach our destination. The lengthy ride only heightened my excitement and lent credence to my theory that my lover was a nobleman with an outlying country estate. Of course, that hardly narrowed the field at all—there were easily fifty men with country houses within an hour’s hard drive of Munich, many of whom I did not know, and without further hints I would have little luck figuring out where I was being taken.

I heard tree branches whipping against the side of the carriage and guessed that we were now driving through a wooded park. The carriage finally slowed and I stepped out to find myself standing in a small clearing in front of a small closed pavilion. We were in a hidden corner of someone’s pleasure gardens—a path led off to the right, presumably toward the rest of the park, but the tall trees all around me blocked my view, and I could see no other part of the estate.

I expected to be handed a blindfold now, but the coachman opened the door to the small garden house for me without binding my eyes. My pulse rose for four hard beats, and then sank back down in disappointment. I had entered a small antechamber, and the only person waiting in it was a pretty young maidservant.

Every wall in the small room was draped with richly colored Turkish rugs, giving it an aura of both extreme closeness and great opulence. Whoever my lover might be, he was obviously a wealthy man.

At the center of the room stood a ceremonial chair, its arms and legs carved with Egyptian symbols in the manner now so fashionable at court and among the educated classes. Many strands of silver beads had been laid carefully over the back, and across the seat was a thin piece of pale fabric, which fluttered softly in the breeze that came through the room’s open windows.

“Bit-te,” said the maidservant, gesturing with her small hands toward the chair. She pronounced this one German word so awkwardly that I suspected that “bitte” or please was perhaps the only word she knew in my native tongue. She had the dark coloring of the Balkans, and I searched my mind to think of some Austrian nobleman with lands to the East who was currently in residence in Munich. I came up with no one. The maidservant, like the dark carriage, offered me no meaningful clues.

She lifted the diaphanous fabric off of the chair and held it before her; I saw now that it was a skirt, and understood that the assembled things on the chair made up a costume I was to wear. With the maid’s help I slipped out of the evening gown I had so carefully selected for the occasion and stepped instead into the scant clothing my lover had chosen for me. When the maidservant was finished dressing me, she led me by the hand to a large mirror so I could inspect the results. The sheer fabric of the skirt fell to my ankles without hiding the outlines of my body, and even in the dim candlelight my naked skin was clearly visible through the thin material. The heavy silver beads hung in thick sheets around my neck and my waist; otherwise my torso was bare. I looked like an Egyptian queen, just like the images that Napoleon had sent back from the Nile.

“Bit-te.” The maid took my hand again and led me toward the door opposite the one through which I had entered. Again I had a moment of hope that I was about to come face to face with the unknown man I was there to meet, but the room behind the second door was empty. It was appointed in the same luxurious Eastern style as the antechamber, with a low bed covered in pillows, much like the ones I had seen in engravings of an Ottoman sultan’s harem. Against the wall on a small raised platform was another ceremonial chair, a mirror image of the one in the antechamber.

The maid led me toward the chair; with a modest curtsy, she motioned for me to sit. Then she handed me a blindfold. “Bit-te,” she said again, and after another modest bow, I was left alone, blind and reclining on my throne.

I did not have to wait long. Almost as soon as the maid had departed, I heard another door open, and I could hear someone moving in the room. I had just sat forward in anticipation of the man’s approach when his large hands settled against my cheeks.

The man kissed me fully on the mouth, and that was his only greeting. I did not bother to speak, certain that I wouldn’t be answered.

I had wondered how my unknown lover would touch me on this second meeting, and his fingers were soft and affectionate, smoothing over the bare curves of my body with proprietary confidence, much like a new husband might fondle a beloved young wife.

Cupping my breasts in his hands, he rolled my nipples under his fingers, and then took one in his mouth, sucking and licking at my body as if my skin was the finest delicacy he had ever tasted. I tangled my fingers in his hair and clutched his head against my chest.

“Ne me touche pas,” the man commanded in a harsh whisper. Don’t touch me. With a surprised start, I dropped my arms to the chair.

Perhaps he was worried that I would feel too much with my hands—that this time, better prepared, I would catch some clue to his identity from the texture of his hair or the shape of his jaw.

Whatever his reasons, he wanted me to lie still in the chair while he touched me.

My costume, it appeared, was not merely for show—the man was now rolling the small beads of my necklace over my taut, sensitive nipples, catching the silver balls against his tongue. The cold little orbs sent chill bumps skimming over my body as they slid across my skin, and I gave a soft laugh, pleased by this clever conceit.

My lover’s hands had moved down to my thighs; he was stroking and pressing them, slowly sliding up my thin skirt and working my legs apart until they were splayed wide across the seat of the chair. He pulled gently at my knees, and my bottom slipped down in the chair, my pussy tipping up so that he could reach it more easily.

Cupped against his palm, cold against the skin of inner thigh, I felt one of the large silver beads from the belt of my costume. He began tracing around the outlines of pussy with this metal ball; he slid it along my inner folds and pressed circles against the hot, tender opening of my cunt, until finally the teasing circles turned to firm pressure, and he pushed the ball inside me.

I gasped with pleasure and slipped down further in the chair, tilting my hips to make the game easier still. In the beads slid, four in all, one slow sphere at a time, stretching my pussy and pooling inside me, teasing my womb when I rolled my hips. The silk underneath my buttocks was wet now, soaked through from my arousal, and every time I twitched in the chair the beads slipped and pushed against the inner walls of my cunt. Soon, I thought, soon he will carry me to the bed and thrust inside me.

Instead, the man gripped my breasts in both his hands and slipped his dick between them; my body was damp with sweat and his hard cock slid easily back and forth in the warm gap between my tits, rolling under the covering sheet of my silver necklaces.

It won’t be long now, I promised myself, before he fucks me.

When he pulled away again, I arched back in the chair and spread my thighs in anticipation, but the next thing I felt was his cock brushing against my cheek. I opened my mouth at this prompting and let him slide his dick deep inside; he held my arms tightly against my torso and pulled me up onto my knees in the chair so that he could push in more deeply still.

The large beads were still buried deep inside my pussy, and they rolled deliciously as I swayed in rhythm with his thrusts; I almost thought they would bring me to climax. I worked my tongue against his cock, hoping to hear him groan, to have something more than the hot tension in his dick to assure me that he was pleased with me.

He did not groan, but he did finally breathe in sharply and pull out of my mouth, as if afraid to spend too soon.

Now, I told myself as I dropped back into the chair. Now he is going to take me.

The man spread my thighs and draped them over the broad arms of the chair. Very gently, he tugged at the string of beads in my pussy. One by one they slid out, stretching my cunt in pulsing waves that echoed through me like an orgasm.

Soon, I thought again. Now.

Something hard teased against the lips of my pussy, but it was not his cock. The thing was halfway inside before I realized what it was—a smooth, metal dildo, one the man wielded without touching me at all. I felt no press of warm fingers, just the solid, hard intrusion of another toy.

It was punishment, the cold metal inside my aching pussy, when all I wanted was his hard, warm flesh, and my own frustrated moans came back to my ears as if from a distance. He worked the dildo in and out of my cunt, wetting it with my arousal, and then he slid it slowly into my ass.

The fullness of the dildo between my buttocks was some relief, and while he fucked me with it he fondled my breasts with his other hand.

But I wanted his hand on my pussy again, and I arched away from the intruding metal shaft, pushing so that my sex rubbed against his outstretched arm. In response he held me down with one hand and fucked me harder with the dildo; his free hand was like a vice on my thigh and the metal slid in and out of my slick anus in a quick, remorseless rhythm.

Then I felt his breath on my pussy, and the press of his lips against my clitoris, and I came hard and suddenly.

My unknown lover did not abandon me immediately. He stroked my shaking thighs and pressed a kiss against my forehead, but before I had recovered he was gone, and once again I snatched off my blindfold and found myself alone in an empty room.

I would not have thought it possible for a climax to be so strong and also so completely insufficient. I spent the carriage ride home in even greater agitation than I had felt before the meeting, and my dissatisfaction built with every mile that passed between myself and the mysterious garden house.

Without question, the seduction had been flawless. Perhaps it was ungrateful of me to resent someone who had given me so much pleasure, but resent him I did. Why should this stubborn man not let me look him in the face? And why should he tease me so mercilessly, denying me the one thing he must have known I wanted more than anything else—the feel of his hips thrusting between my thighs?

Had it not been by far the best game any man had every played with me, I would not have agreed to see the arrogant devil again, whoever he might be. As things stood, my frustration only fueled my desire, which no doubt was by design, and even in those first moments of indignation, my one thought was that next time he would surely give me what he had denied me tonight.

I was, in short, quite desperate to see him again.

When we had reached my house, the coachman handed me a note as I was climbing down from the carriage.

“Next week at the same time,” it said in thick black ink.

I awoke the morning of our next assignation full of nervous anticipation, and I decided to spend the day in the palace gardens to distract my mind. I had good reason to be at court, in fact, for my second cousin Louisa of Saxony had recently been put forward as a possible bride for the new king, and it was to my advantage to see that she succeeded. It is never a bad thing to have a close relative on the throne.

As it turned out, I had no chance to make my case to the king because I arrived in the palace gardens to find the new sovereign deep in conversation with my rival James McKirnan. When I asked two strolling ladies what the king and Herr McKirnan were discussing with such concentration, they told me that a new English candidate had emerged as the favorite to be the king’s new bride, and James had been commissioned to further her case.

I had hoped to find some pleasant diversion in political intrigue; instead, I was once again forced to contemplate the frustrating man whose presence in Munich had been such a continual trial to me. I sat down to brood on revenge in a sheltered niche, no longer in the mood for company.

Try as I might, I could think of no way to attack James directly, given that his position with the royal family seemed to grow stronger with every passing month. Never one to waste energy on impossibilities, I decided to set revenge aside for another day, when perhaps my mind would be clearer, and I let my thoughts drift back to the man I was to meet that night.

From my secluded niche I had an excellent view of the garden and, watching the strolling people, I began to speculate again on my lover’s identity. There were several fine, tall men walking on the green lawn, and it was an amusing game to imagine that one of them might be the man I had been meeting in secret. Should you ever need an hour’s entertainment on a sunny afternoon, I can recommend this activity unreservedly—I stared at the strolling men, imagining that each of them in turn was the lover I had never seen, that each of them had undressed me and fucked me with great skill and ardor on the night of my birthday. A shifting image of my unknown lover flickered in my head, now with brown hair and then with blond, now with the arrogant smile of a visiting duke, later with the proud bearing of a much admired general. Even the king, I realized with amusement, fit the profile of the mysterious man I had been meeting; he had the same strong, upright bearing and lean frame.

My reverie was interrupted by the least agreeable person possible.

“It is good to see you smiling, Countess,” James McKirnan said, settling himself onto the bench next to me with objectionable familiarity. “That’s been a rare sight since I came to Munich. What’s the source of your good mood?”

I did not answer his question. “You must be tired,” I said, “having wasted so much breath praising the virtues of Englishwomen to the king.”

“The king seemed very interested in the attractions of my native island,” James answered with aggravating confidence, and I could see my cousin Louisa’s fortunes dwindling as I looked into the Scotsman’s arrogant green eyes.

“A British queen is just what we need, don’t you think?” he continued. “To bring a fresh breath of English liberty to this stale old Continental court?”

I told him that it was ridiculous to think that the king would marry a Protestant, and he answered that it was much more ridiculous to think that the king would choose my cousin, coming as she did from a state with as little influence in European affairs as Saxony.

“It would do you good not to get your way for once, Countess,” he added.

I reminded him that it had been his general policy, since arriving in Munich, to ensure that I got my way as rarely as possible, and he answered smoothly that it gave him great pleasure to know that I had noticed his efforts on my behalf.

I stood up from my seat and told him that his insults would not go unanswered, but before I could walk away he grabbed my hand and pressed a rough kiss against the back of it.

“I count on it,” he said with an arrogant smile.

I promised myself that I would not keep him waiting long.

That night I was taken again to the garden house, and when the coachman led me through the front door without blindfolding me, at first I thought nothing of it. When I saw that the room to the inner chamber already stood open, however, I stepped more quickly, hoping that my lover was waiting for me, unmasked.

Rather than being met by darkness, this time when I entered the room my eyes were dazzled by strong light. My arm flew up across my face in instinctual reaction to the sudden glare and, after having a moment to adjust my sight, I realized that I was standing in the beam of a strong gas lamp, one of those ingenious devices used in the opera to light the performers.

Beside the lamp stood a man.

My first feeling was one of disappointment. The man before me was handsome enough, but very young, not more than twenty-five. He greeted me with a nervous, deferential tilt of his head and seemed unsure where to place his hands.

My whole soul revolted at the thought that this could be the answer to the secret—nothing more than a nervous young admirer.

Then my eyes adjusted to the glare and I noticed that there were two men in the room.

The young man was standing in front of an easel, which was bathed in its own light by a standing candelabra, and in the shadows behind the stage light sat another man, sprawled out across the large, thronelike chair on which I had rested before. His head and face were obscured by the darkness and a black, hooded cloak.

My first sight of my lover told me nothing I did not already know—he was a tall, well-built man with a powerful frame. Nonetheless, seeing him with my own eyes, even veiled by darkness and disguise, sent a thrill through me.

In his studied French, he said, “Take off your clothes, Countess. Giovanni has come to do your portrait.”

The Italian painter gave me an awkward smile.

Ignoring him, I fixed my eyes on the man in the chair and began to undress, watching the outlines of his shadowed form as I discarded my clothes, hoping to sense his reaction. He did not move in the chair, but his tension was palpable even from a distance; he sat completely still, watching me, the bottom half of his face shielded by one raised hand.

“Lie down on the bed,” my lover prompted softly, when I had finished taking off my clothes.

I stretched myself out on my side, lying so that I could continue to stare at him through the glare of the lights, and for a long time the room was quiet except for the low, irregular noises of the young artist’s labors.

I had sat for portraits before, and I remained absolutely still, but my body, in the absence of my lover’s touch, wanted the substitute of my own hands. I lay across the bed in a torment, staring at the dark shadow across the room, longing to grip my breasts or to stroke myself between the thighs.

As if he had read my mind, the man said, in a low, hoarse voice, “Open your thighs, Countess.” And I did as he asked.

“Touch yourself,” he commanded.

Knowing the young man was also watching me, I felt a twinge of self-consciousness as I first reached between my legs, but I kept my eyes fixed on my lover’s seated form and began to stroke myself with a steady, slow rhythm.

I moved my fingers carefully, circling around my clitoris, touching myself hard enough to ease my tension but no harder. I did not intend to bring myself to climax; with a burst of rebellious pride I decided I would rather remain unsatisfied than give this unknown man the spectacle of my orgasm when he had done nothing to earn it beyond sitting there, so solidly and temptingly, in a chair across the room.

Finally, the man shifted in his seat. “Tell me how you feel, Countess,” he said.

“I need you desperately,” I whispered in response.

Suddenly, the bright light was extinguished. Without the heat of the lamp, the night air of the room was instantly cool against my flushed skin.

And then the cloaked man was walking toward me, barely visible to my dazzled eyes in the darkness; I heard more than saw him as he approached the bed.

“Watch her closely,” the man commanded the artist. “This is the expression I want.” I realized, as my eyes recovered from the glare of the lamp, that a thin trail of moonlight struck the bed through one single open window so that my face and shoulders were still illuminated.

My lover had placed himself carefully. With his back to the light, he was still only a shadow standing over me. I could make out nothing of the shape of his face beneath his hood, but I was almost certain that he was masked. I could see enough of him now to tell that he was clad from head to toe in dark fabric, and when his hands settled on my knees, they were encased in leather. He meant to give me no clue, no matter how small, to his identity.

I hoped that if he leaned forward to kiss me I might catch some small, telling detail—perhaps enough to tell whether his hair was light or dark, or his chin was long or square.

He did not bend down toward me; he reached out and stroked my pussy with one leather-covered hand, staring at me from the edge of the bed.

I could hear the labored breathing of the young artist just a few feet away, and I stifled the pleading moan that came to my lips. The man took his hand away and unfastened something at his waist, and then the pale shaft of his cock appeared against the black of his clothing.

The stiff column of his phallus was like a smudge of light against the darkness standing over me. He dragged my hips down to the edge of the bed; I gripped his waist with my legs and he worked his cock inside me, gliding in inch by inch as I writhed beneath him on the bed, arching toward him in the desire to have him more quickly.

As if to be sure that the watching artist had plenty of time for his work, the shrouded man fucked me so slowly that I lay there in a trance, gasping in deep breaths as his large dick slid in and out of me with all the patient regularity of machine.

We went on in this way for half an hour at least, and I could dimly see out of the corner of my eyes that the young artist was working feverishly at his canvas. My lover had found the perfect pace for his ends—he was taking me so slowly that I could not build to climax, but his persistent, steady rhythm kept me in a state of nearly unbearable arousal. Finally I felt I would go mad if he made me wait any longer; my moans grew ever more pleading and I twisted fitfully on the bed.

“Leave us,” the man said gruffly to the artist, and I knew, instinctively, that it was because he did not want to allow the young man to see me climax.

Once the artist was gone, my lover began to fuck me more forcefully, and as soon as he drove into me with any speed, crippling waves of warmth, held so long at bay, shot through my pelvis with all the force of an explosion, and I was too overwhelmed to know if my partner had taken his satisfaction along with me.

In the dim room, I managed to grab his hand as he pulled away.

“Stay with me,” I begged.

He clasped his hand in mine for a moment, as if he meant to take my invitation, but then he retreated from the room with a quick, firm step that made it impossible for me, in my dazed condition, to follow him.

I threw myself down across the bed, overcome by a feeling of inconsolable loneliness.

Lest my reader misunderstand my state of mind, I should dismiss out of hand any suspicion that I was falling in love with this stranger. Romantic love is a modern innovation with which I have little patience. It has its role, of course, in the control and manipulation of men, but a woman is a fool if she places herself wholeheartedly under the sway of these sorts of illusions. But putting aside the question of whether or not it would be possible to love a man without a face, I should admit that this stranger had woven such a potent web of mystery and pleasure around himself that I was not, in relation to him, completely the mistress of my feelings. The exercise of the animal passions, I have always believed, must be carefully guided by reason, but in the face of intense stimulation, it is sometimes hard to remain as cool and dispassionate as one would like, and this was the difficult position in which I found myself now.

I was outside the garden house before I began to wonder why this man should want a portrait of me.

The answer my mind formed was an unappealing one. I had once heard a story of a Frenchman in the last century who kept a picture gallery of every woman he had ever bedded and, in falling upon this parallel case, I realized that I was probably not the first woman to have been brought to this mysterious garden house with its elegant and opulent furnishings. I was, most likely, merely one of a crowd, and in a few weeks time my new lover would tire of this particular game and find a new toy to serve his pleasure. The thought that this man might casually discard me, perhaps within a short time, made me sick with jealousy and disappointment.

All of these thoughts fell over me in a moment; I was still standing outside the garden house, waiting for the coachman as he saw to the bridle on one of the horses.

The door to the black carriage, I noticed, had a new long scratch, the work, no doubt, of an errant tree branch in the park through which we had driven.

Something made me step closer to examine this injury to the carriage’s veneer, and my curiosity was rewarded. Through the damaged paint, I could see the variegated colors of some previous ornamentation—the remains, without question, of a family coat of arms that had adorned the side of the coach before it had been drafted for its current use. Along the edges of the flaw in the carriage’s austere and anonymous exterior, the thick paint had buckled away from the wood of the door. With a quick, furtive tug I pulled a pin from my hair and used it pry off another, larger, piece of the paint, conscious that I had finally found the clue I had been seeking to my lover’s identity.

In the moonlight, a fragment of a blue-and-white checkered escutcheon stared back at me, and I blinked at it in surprise.

It was the arms of the Wittelsbachs, Kings of Bavaria.

A week before I would have been pleased to learn that I was being bedded by the king or perhaps by one of his brothers, but after the other unhappy conclusions I had formed, I was not pleased with this new clue, for it only confirmed my suspicion that I was merely a source of short-lived amusement for the man I was meeting. Whatever member of the royal family had chosen me for his attentions, he surely did not mean to ever reveal his true identity, and in a few weeks time I would once again be without a lover, thrown back on the unappealing fare available in Munich’s literary circles.

Faced with this unpleasant reality, I decided that I should at least take some steps to address the other major grievance in my life, the unforgivable arrogance of James McKirnan. At first I could think of no foolproof plan and began to cast around at random, looking for some foothold. In a few days’ time, my efforts bore fruit.

On the slight chance that more information about James’s household might prove useful, I had instructed my most charming and attractive footman to seduce one of the maids in James’s employ, and this loyal young man returned to me with the best possible report.

James, it seems, had been hosting a strange series of gatherings over the past few months. A group of men assembled on his estate once a week, and on the evenings of these meetings the servants were instructed to stay confined to the kitchens. From the back of the house, they could hear that a large number of carriages were assembled on the grounds. They could also hear the greeting calls of the unseen visitors, who hailed each other in some strange tongue. The maid was not sure what language the guests spoke; James’s head manservant, a man with a smattering of learning, claimed that it was Greek.

The meaning of all these strange facts was clear to me at once—James was playing host to a secret fraternity; the Greek greetings, no doubt, were part of their ritual. This news thrilled me, for I knew that now I had all I needed to banish this old enemy from my life once and for all. Since the recent upheaval in France, all the rulers of Germany had developed a horror of secret societies, seeing in every Freemason’s lodge a brigade of future revolutionaries. If James’s secret circle were exposed, it would mean his ruin and public humiliation, and he would have to leave Bavaria in disgrace.

As soon as the informative footman left me, I wrote a letter to the king’s head counselor, telling him what I had learned, cheered to think that at least one of the deficiencies in my life might soon be remedied.

Despite the pleasant prospect of James’s imminent exile, I arrived at the garden house the following week in a despondent mood. I found the foreign maidservant waiting for me in the antechamber, as on my first visit to the house.

At the sight of this girl, I was overcome with jealousy. Though above her in station, I was only a temporary visitor, one of many women she had guided to this room, while this pretty foreigner was a fixture in my lover’s home, and no doubt enjoyed his bed when there was no one else to occupy it.

The thought sickened me so much that I could think of nothing else as she led me through the foyer. I stared with hatred at her back as she opened the door; when she stepped aside to let me pass, I walked passed her with a haughty coldness into the dimly lit space of the main chamber.

In my distraction I noticed nothing of the shadowy room, and when the door closed behind me I stood unseeing for several moments in the darkness. Then my eyes began to adjust to their new surroundings, and I saw that the room was not completely black. One window had been left open, and a weak trail of light fell into one back corner. With this one dim illumination, I could make out the outlines of the furniture, and I walked across the room and sat gingerly on the edge of the low bed, wondering what new game my lover had thought up for that evening.

I jumped with surprise when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I had assumed that the indistinct shape I had seen on the bed was the outline of pillows.

The man chuckled at my skittishness. ‘Did you not know that I was waiting for you here, my love?” he asked. “I can see you clearly.”

I was unsettled by his unexpected garrulousness and by the warm affection in his voice. Surprised and confused by his manner, I could find no ready reply.

The man sensed that something was wrong.

“What’s worrying you tonight, Countess?” he asked.

I voiced the most recent of my fears first. “That girl,” I said. “The maidservant who shows me to this room—does she also share your bed?” Though no one was there to overhear us, we both spoke in low voices.

The man laughed softly at my question. “I make use of her pussy sometimes. She’s a pretty little thing, and willing. Why shouldn’t I? Haven’t you always done the same, when you’ve had a manservant who pleases you?”

I turned my head away, hot tears of anger springing up in my eyes.

“Shh, Countess,” the man coaxed. “Don’t be cross. I have not had another woman since the first time you came to me. Does it please you to know that?”

It did, but it was the touch of his hands as much as his words that soothed me and, gradually placated, I allowed myself to be taken into his arms. With my head against his chest, I could hear his heart pounding with calm, comforting regularity.

“Who are you?” I whispered, hoping that in this new mood he might confide in me.

For some reason, the man laughed again. That too was dampened, like our voices, but it still echoed as a deep, satisfying rumbling that shook his chest. I could feel it under my hands.

“I’m someone who has admired you for a long time,” he said.

“But why won’t you tell me your name?” I demanded.

“You are the finest prize in all of Europe, Countess,” he murmured in response. “It would be an insult to court you in the usual way.”

That was extravagant praise, and I should have found it ridiculous, but the spell of the darkness and his voice was so complete that these words left me breathless.

“You must understand,” he continued, “bedding you is not my only aim. I mean to have you entirely for my own. When I’m sure you belong to me, then I’ll tell you my name.”

I was awed by this offer, knowing what I did about his parentage. With all my ambition, I had never thought to marry into a ruling family. Indeed, after being widowed at a young age, I had never considered taking a second husband. “I never planned to marry again,” I said in a small voice.

“That is no secret,” the man said with another deep, low laugh. “But what is it worth, this freedom of yours? What does it gain you, besides the right to be bored by fatuous, overgrown boys?”

There was merit it what he said, and his cock was stirring against my leg, which made his arguments seem even stronger.

“We would be happy together, you and I,” the man whispered. “Happier than you would ever be with your stable full of admirers.” His mouth met mine with that preternatural assurance he possessed even in the darkness, and those were the last words he spoke to me that night, until he told me goodbye many hours later.

I spent the next few days in keen anticipation. After our last meeting, I was sure that my lover must be one of the king’s brothers rather than the king himself—since I did not have the pedigree to make a queen—and either man would have been a very admirable match. I had seen each of them only briefly, and I could not say that I had a preference between them; indeed, I could not remember much detail about either of them at all, but I felt that the accumulated evidence spoke well for the character and creativity of my admirer, whether he was named Karl Friedrich or Karl August—for these were the names of the two possible candidates. Soon I would be a member of the royal household, and James McKirnan would be leaving Munich in disgrace. I had rarely looked toward the future with greater hope and optimism.

My complacent happiness did not last for long. One evening shortly before I was about to retire, my cousin Robert burst into my bedroom and demanded to know what I had told the Baron von Aretin, the king’s chief minister, about James McKirnan.

Puzzled by his obvious agitation, I explained that I had done nothing objectionable; I had merely informed the baron that James was hosting secret meetings of questionable purpose on his estate once a week.

“Well, you have done your work well,” Robert said, sinking down into a chair. “The gendarmes took James away a few hours ago. No doubt he is now in some miserable cell.”

The news caused a sudden coldness deep in my gut. “Why should I care where they have taken him?” I demanded, fear gripping hold of me nonetheless. I had not expected so harsh a response from the new king. “How many young men has he turned against me in the past few months alone? Why shouldn’t I take revenge when someone wrongs me?”

“Anna, you fool!” Robert cried, and I was shocked by his vehemence. “Don’t you realize that the man loves you? It is jealously that motivates him—that is why he scares away any other man he thinks might please you.”

This outburst was completely incomprehensible to me, and I told my cousin that he was mad. What insight could he possibly have into James’s mind?

“He has been my friend, these past six months,” Robert explained wearily when I posed this question. “We have kept our truce a secret, because it served our purposes better to continue to appear as enemies.”

I stared at my cousin in astonishment. “Your friend?” I repeated stupidly. Then I remembered Robert’s strange secretiveness over the past few weeks, and an alarming possibility entered my mind. “Robert, have I put you in danger, too?”

My cousin, I was horrified to learn, had also been a member of the secret society I had exposed and was now himself in considerable peril. “We called ourselves the Dioscuri,” he explained, “and we had no thoughts of treason, but we swore certain oaths that might be misunderstood. The king’s chief minister is a harsh man.”

Deeply upset, I demanded to know why he had allowed himself to be drawn into such suspicious company.

“Bavaria cannot continue on as it has before,” my cousin answered passionately. “We must give the people their freedoms, and a constitution, or they will rise up against us as they did in France. That was our secret society’s aim—to work to secure the freedoms that are the best guarantors of a lasting peace.”

I was astonished to hear my cousin spouting such strange ideas; he sounded like a revolutionary. I had long suspected that James’s head was full of dangerous notions of liberty, equality and the brotherhood of man, but I never expected to hear these kinds of sentiments from Robert.

“It does not matter what you think of the politics I have taken up,” he told me roughly. “The simple fact is that we are all in great danger—James and I, and many other worthy men.”

“James McKirnan’s safety means nothing to me,” I said. “But to have put you at risk…” This unintended consequence of my scheme was devastating. “How could you meet with that scoundrel?” I demanded, incensed that Robert had not taken me into his confidence earlier and prevented this horrible misstep. “How could you make peace with him behind my back?”

“You met with him, too,” Robert said curtly.

“Not if I could help it,” I snapped. “I never—”

“Anna,” my cousin interrupted angrily, “once upon a time you were a clever girl.”

I stared back at him, confused.

“Who did you think you were meeting these past few weeks?” he said. “What other man would go to such lengths to have you in his bed?”

Understanding, which had been slow in coming, was suddenly upon me. Everything I knew of my lover, every fact I had captured with my fingertips—all of these details came flooding back to me, along with that early, forgotten intuition that I knew the man who was making love to me.

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “It couldn’t have been James. The man I was meeting was one of the king’s brothers.”

“Why should you think that?” Robert asked.

I told him about the escutcheon I had seen on the side of the carriage, and he dismissed this seemingly unequivocal clue with a wave of his hand. The previous king, Karl Theodor, had given James one of his old carriages as a present when appointing him as president of the Academy.

I could not make sense of this revelation—the man who had held me in his power all these weeks now had a face, the familiar face of an enemy, and I could hear his whispering voice as if it were speaking in my ear.

A shiver passed through me, as if some unseen hand had caressed my throat.

“But James speaks very bad French,” I said stubbornly, my mind resisting my cousin’s revelation with every means at its disposal. “And this man spoke quite eloquently.”

“He has had time to learn,” Robert said sharply, “since you knew him all those years ago in Paris. Much has changed about the world, Anna, if you would take the time to notice.”

I was, for the next few moments, like a blank slate, incapable of the simplest thought.

“What will become of him?” I asked finally.

“He’s ruined, but not yet dead,” Robert said. “When they find the records of our society, he’ll be dead.”

“Then we must be sure they don’t find the records,” I said, rising from my chair, suddenly sure of the right course of action. “We must be sure that nothing further is found to incriminate him. Where were they kept, these papers? We’ll go at once and destroy them.”

“I can’t tell you where the papers are hidden,” Robert said. “I wasn’t privy to all his secrets.”

I had no choice, I saw, but to go and ask the man himself how I could save him.

To gain entrance to James’s prison cell, I thought it best to adopt a ruse. I came dressed as a woman of the people, wearing a simple dress borrowed from my cook and, with a great show of touching emotion, told the soft-hearted young guard on duty that I was the unfortunate prisoner’s betrothed. The guard admitted me without hesitation.

Once the guard had unlocked the door, I found James seated on a bare, low cot with his head in both his hands.

He looked up when I entered, but he did not stand.

Now that I saw him again, I marveled that I had not recognized his powerful body the first time I had seen it, lounging across that thronelike chair. James seemed to me, as I stared at him on that hard wooden cot, singular and unmistakable, and I did not know how I could have ever thought, from the first moment he touched me, of any other man.

In order to fool the guard, I had planned to run to James with all the enthusiasm of an ardent mistress and, now that I was faced with him in the flesh, I found that I did not need to counterfeit that emotion.

James, in contrast, was furious, and not at all pleased to see me.

He stood up with clenched fists and shoved me away when I tried to embrace him.

“Why are you here?” he demanded angrily. “To laugh at me in my final defeat?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the young guard craning his neck at the other end of hall, trying to see the reason for this loud outburst.

“James, Robert told me it was you…” I whispered hurriedly, reaching out for him again.

“Were you put on this earth to torment me?” he interrupted, pushing my outstretched hands aside. “Every time I think that I finally have you, you find some new form of treachery to escape. And this time you’ve cost me my life.”

“Lower your voice,” I commanded angrily through gritted teeth. “They’re not true, all those stories about me and Hans,” I added loudly for the guard’s benefit, hoping he might be fooled in taking James’s anger for petty jealousy over some lover’s quarrel.

“What the hell are you talking about?” James demanded furiously, not catching on at all.

“Don’t shout,” I muttered. “I told the guard we were engaged. You must act as if you were pleased to see me. Embrace me,” I ordered under my breath.

He let out an angry laugh, but allowed himself to be pushed down to seating on the cot. I tugged up my skirts and straddled his lap; he made a sharp noise of protest, but I ignored him and wrapped my arms around his neck.

“We must pretend to be lovers,” I whispered, irritated that he had not yet understood the logic of my charade. “Embrace me, so that we can talk without being overheard.”

“Pretend to be lovers? We were lovers, you stupid woman,” was his response.

I reminded him that I was well aware of that fact, and he sat for a moment in silence.

“Why are you here?” he asked finally.

“I’m trying to keep your head off the chopping block,” I whispered back. “Or Robert’s head off the chopping block, as it were. Since you’re a commoner, they’ll probably just hang you.”

James did not seem to appreciate this joke.

Since he was making no effort to help me, I shoved his head against the curve of my neck. It was particularly important that the guard not overhear my next question.

“I need to know if there is anything else that could condemn you - any letters or papers I should destroy.” Gripping hold of his hair with one hand, I pressed him closer, assuming the attitude of a woman accepting a lover’s kisses. “Where did you keep the society’s papers?”

“Why should I tell you that?” James asked suspiciously, his voice muffled, his mouth pressed awkwardly against my throat.

I let out an irritated sigh, disguised as an exhalation of ecstasy, and arched against him so that I could lean in closer to his ear. “I am the safest possible ally now—everyone knows of our rivalry. They’ll never expect me to try and help you.”

“Then explain to me why I should tell you, of all people, about anything that might damn me?” he muttered back. “Your efforts landed me here.”

“And my efforts can get you out,” I assured him.

I thought perhaps our awkward embraces would not be sufficiently convincing to fool the guard, and it seemed prudent make my performance more realistic. I traced the tip of my tongue along the outside of James’s ear.

“You should have told me your name when I asked,” I whispered.

“And what would you have done if I had told you who I was one of those nights when you were lying in my arms?” James demanded, wrenching his head out of my grasp.

“I would have slapped you,” I said honestly, “very hard across the face.”

That frank admission accomplished something my earlier attempts at persuasion had not; they made the prisoner laugh.

James took a deep breath, and when I pressed a kiss against his cheek, he did not pull away. “Why are you really here, Anna?” he asked, no longer sullen.

“To help you,” I answered.

He tightened his hands against my back, a faint smile stealing across his face.

My borrowed dress was of the traditional Bavarian sort, the bodice held in place by a stiff leather vest that laced down the front. James began to untie the strings.

“What better comfort could a condemned man find,” he said, “than to bury his head between a woman’s naked breasts?”

“He could tell that woman,” I reminded him, “about his hidden cache of papers, so that she could destroy them.”

I thought at first he had not heard me, for he was slow in answering, focusing instead on kissing my throat and removing my leather vest.

“We kept protocols of our meetings,” James murmured finally against my shoulder, pulling aside the loosened neck of my dress.

How foolish they were, these men. “Where are they?”

“In a metal box under a board in the Chinese conceit. On the north side of my gardens. That was where the society met each week.” His mouth had trailed down to my breasts, and I leaned forward so that I could hear his low words. “There is a lock; you’ll have to bring the key.” He told me where to find the key, which he kept in his bedroom, and then described which board to pry up to get to the box and how to get to the gazebo unnoticed, all the while with his lips against my cleavage, and I repeated everything back to him, committing it to memory.

“Forget about the papers for now,” he whispered when I had finished. “There’s something else I want from you.”

“Is there more evidence against you?” I asked.

“No,” he whispered back. “It’s nothing like that. Stand up for me.”

When I did as he asked he reached underneath my skirts, pulled off my underclothes and threw them onto the filthy floor of the cell, where they would remain even after I was gone. (No clothing that had touched such a floor would ever be next to my skin again.)

“Do you know what usually happens, Anna, when a woman comes to visit her lover in his prison cell?” he asked in a low whisper, stroking my bare hips and smiling up at me.

I shook my head, never having been in this situation before.

“You told the guard that we were engaged?”

I nodded.

“Then let him hear what you intend to do for me, to comfort me in my hour of need.”

I pursed my lips; James had always been prone to arrogance, and prison had obviously not ruined his spirits.

“You have caused me a great deal of trouble,” he reminded me when I did not comply. “The least you can do is entertain me—come, provide me with a little theater. You arrived disguised as an innocent daughter of the people; you stand now half-undressed before the man you love. Play your part. Tell me what you’re going to do to give your poor, beleaguered fiancé some pleasure before he dies.”

James always took every advantage life offered to him; I had no choice but to play along.

The guard could not see my face, so he did not know that I rolled my eyes as I told James in dulcet and modest tones that I did not want to wait for the blessing of a priest; I meant to give myself to him completely then and now, for fear that we would never be man and wife.

“Charming,” James whispered with another smile. “You are now,” he ordered, pulling me into his lap, “going to let the guard hear how surprised you are to find out how large my cock feels inside your virginal, innocent little cunt.”

“Oh!” My exclamation of surprise was not entirely feigned, for he thrust inside me with a great deal of force and very little preparation.

“Have I hurt you, my angel?” he asked in a voice loud enough to be heard in the hall, mocking me with his eyes.

“Oh, no, my darling,” I answered virtuously. “They told me I would feel pain the first time, but I don’t see why I should, from such a small and narrow thing.”

“Witch,” James muttered with a grin and pinned me against the cold stone wall. I took hold of his shoulders and gasped with an enthusiasm that might easily have been mistaken for virginal excitement.

“Tell me you love me,” James growled in my ear as he fucked me.

“Oh, my love,” I moaned, quite lost in my role. “Oh, James, my darling, I adore you.”

My reader will understand, of course, that I was only playing a part, though the very free gratitude I expressed at the height of my pleasure was entirely sincere.

After that I stayed for a long time in James’s lap, letting him kiss me and stroke his hands over my hair.

“Don’t mention my name to the guard,” I whispered as I finally stood to go. “I gave a false one.”

“Who did you say you were?” he asked, rising to lift me up once again against the wall, whispering the question against my throat.

“A local miller’s daughter named Bertha,” I said.

“A miller’s daughter?” he repeated flatly, straightening to look me in the face.

“Was it not a good lie?”

“I’m the president of the Royal Academy. You’d have me engaged to a miller’s daughter?”

“Secretly engaged,” I corrected him. “And besides, how can I be expected to know what sort of women you lie down with these days?”

That made him smile.

“Thank you for this,” he said with his hand on my cheek, and then he kissed me, I must admit, very sweetly.

At that, no doubt due to general nervous strain, I fell on his neck and sobbed uncontrollably, which was apparently a signal to the guard that it was time for me to leave.

I arrived home to find that my cousin Robert had been taken from his house that very morning.

As soon as darkness had fallen that night, I dressed myself in the garb of a stable boy and rode out to James’s estate. Fortunately, my mission did not prove difficult since the ever-frugal James had ordered his house closed while he was in prison. There were only a few servants in residence, and I avoided them with ease. I entered the park from the east side and made my way straight to the Chinese pavilion. The loose floor board, used to being removed, came up with a small pop, and I removed the box from its hiding place and hid it in a set of nearby bushes. Then I slipped into the house for the key. I found James’s bedroom with only a few wrong turns. The room had been searched and was still in disarray, the sheets half ripped from the bed and several small tables and chairs overturned, but the small carved wooden box with the false bottom was still in its proper place at his writing desk, and after a few moments of quiet fumbling I had an old bronze key in my possession to match the old bronze box in the woods.

Hiding in a stand of evergreens, I ripped the society’s records to shreds and packed them into a loose burlap sack I had brought along with me for this purpose. I weighted the sack down with a few heavy rocks I found nearby on the ground and then threw the bundle into the deep pond that stood nearby—there was no question of me taking the papers home, where they would be as damning to Robert as they were to James here.

My last task was to dispose of the metal box. I had planned to bury it in the woods and had brought a spade to that end but, as I rested for a moment and gazed at its aged bronze hinges, a better plan came into my mind. This further inspiration, I flatter myself, made all the difference in the ultimate fate of James and his circle.

Destroying the papers, I realized, was only half a solution. Even if James were never convicted of treason, he and my cousin would still be dishonored, and this murky affair would cast a pall over the rest of their careers, destroying forever the public eminence they each enjoyed.

To be free only to spend a life of useless obscurity was no fate for either of them; they must also be exonerated of all charges. I cast about for a way to achieve this end, and came at once upon a solution. Among the regular visitors to my salon was a promising young philologist, who was also, as a matter of course, a very promising young forger. He made his living as a clerk in the king’s chancellery and had a remarkable memory for seals and signatures.

Two nights later, a new set of documents were safe in the bronze box, secreted under the board in the Chinese pavilion on James’s estate.

The specific story these forgeries told is unimportant. Suffice to say that they portrayed the society as a group of loyal Bavarian subjects who had bound together to fight a secret threat to the crown. The young philologist I had employed had a grudge against the king’s head minister and, on hearing the reason for his complaint, I agreed that we would make this man the scapegoat of our plan. The Baron von Aretin was cast, then, as the mastermind of a devious plot to hand Bavaria over to the Austrian Habsburgs, a treachery that James and my cousin had supposedly been working to expose.

Once the documents were recovered—I sent the details of their location directly to the king himself—James and my cousin were released without delay; by that evening James appeared on my doorstep.

One might expect that he would arrive in a spirit of proper humility, given all that I had done for him, but it was clear from the moment he entered my salon that his ordeal had not injured his boundless confidence in the slightest. Without even the briefest greeting he fell on top of me; he gripped the neck of my dress in both hands, ripped the bodice and kissed my breasts with rugged enthusiasm, and then he lifted my skirts and tore off my underclothes with the same rough force.

“Once you are the mistress of my house,” he said, yanking away the tattered cotton from my hips, “you’ll wear nothing under your skirts. You’ll always be bare between the thighs, so that I can have you whenever I want you.”

I felt no need to object to that suggestion.

“Tell your maid to pack your things,” he demanded. “You are coming to live with me. Tonight.”

As long as he was fucking me on the divan, I could not tell my maid a thing, and after he had fucked me on the divan, he decided to take me up against the wall and on the piano bench, too, and by the time we were finished my morning gown was in shreds.

I informed James that in the future he needed to show greater care for my clothes; the combination of his strength and his impatience would prove taxing on my wardrobe if we meant to forge a more permanent alliance.

Indeed, on that first night I spent at his estate I thought it a wise precaution to wear nothing but my jewelry, whether we were dining or sitting by the fire in his bedroom, so that no slight delay in removing my clothing would arouse his destructive impulses. It is well-known that men of low birth are creatures of instinct, incapable of the refined self-control found in the upper classes, and I could not expect James to always win the battle against his true nature.

I went with him that first night of his freedom and have remained ever since.

My reader will wonder, perhaps, at this change of heart, after so many years of enmity between us, but on further reflection I decided that my cousin Robert was right—I was best paired with a man whose will was as strong as my own. In attaching myself to James, I assure you that I had not abandoned my former rule and let irresponsible sentiment triumph over the demands of reason. I had simply decided that with the rise of this fellow Napoleon the privileges of birth truly did seem to be waning in Europe. As Robert cogently pointed out, future generations were more likely to remember Charlotte von Stein as the poet Goethe’s mistress than as the Baron von Stein’s wife. Considered in that light, an open alliance with James did not seem the disaster I had always considered it. He was, though not of good birth, a man of no little fame—of notoriety even—and it appeared that in the coming century notoriety was to be no bad thing. Marriage was of course out of the question. I had no wish to lose either my title or my late husband’s land. James, being a practical man with a sound head for finances, was eventually convinced to see reason on this point, and acceded to our arrangement with all the grace possible for a person of his temperament and sex.

If you liked this story, read more of Anna’s adventures with James in books two and three The Countess Trilogy by Alison Richardson, now available from Spice Briefs:

THE COUNTESS’S CLIENT

AN IMPOLITE SEDUCTION

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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Published in Great Britain 2009.
MIRA Books, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1SR

© Alison Richardson 2009

ISBN 978-1-4089-2764-9