The Countess Trilogy, “The Countess’s Client (No.1),” Alison Richardson

The Countess’s Client (Spice Brief 2009) by Ali­son Richard­son is the first in the Count­ess tril­ogy. For the unfa­mil­iar reader, Spice Briefs are erotic short sto­ries pub­lished by Har­le­quin in “e” only. Dur­ing their half off sale, I bought this tril­ogy based on Janine’s enthu­si­as­tic rec­om­men­da­tion of them. I’m glad that I did.

This is my first time read­ing Ms. Richard­son and it prob­a­bly won’t be my last. She writes well and even for such a short story, I was fully engrossed because the char­ac­ters actu­ally drive this story. And the dri­ving con­flict? Their social sta­tus in society.

Count­ess von Esslin is known around Parish soci­ety for her beauty and her virtue. Her rep­u­ta­tion and sta­tus was con­structed to give her­self the free­dom to enjoy her “erotic pur­suits” with­out caus­ing scan­dal to her­self and oth­ers. As she says at the open­ing of the story, the appear­ance of virtue is a [very] use­ful thing. To quote the Count­ess further,

“To actu­ally be as vir­tu­ous as nar­row con­ven­tion demands is far too high a sac­ri­fice for any woman to make; to appear vir­tu­ous, how­ever, requires only a small mea­sure of inge­nu­ity and a lit­tle luck.

One of the prin­ci­pals that has served her well in her youth include con­trol­ling men and their tongue. She advices that if women are to enjoy their sex­ual free­dom as is their birthright, the men in their life must be “dis­creet and tractable.”

The only thing to keep a man’s mouth shut, accord­ing to the Count­ess is their fear of death. And as the only child of a gen­eral, Count­ess von Esslin indulged her sex­ual needs with will­ing sol­diers of the Pruss­ian army in Berlin. Her rep­u­ta­tion remained untar­nished because “it’s a hang­ing offense to be caught fuck­ing the general’s daughter.”

Now at the age of twenty, the Count­ess admits to hav­ing made one “notable fail­ure.” She decides to share her story to help steer oth­ers from the mis­takes she’s made. The story thus starts with the death of her hus­band who was decades older. Wid­owed, the Count­ess is sent away to Paris to say with her cousin, Robert. It is there that she makes her first “mis­step.” Upon learn­ing that his cousin wasn’t so eas­ily offended by the pros­ti­tutes he brought home, Robert starts tak­ing her to the famous Madame Barthez brothel.

It is at the brothel that the Count­ess meets up with James McKir­nan, a Scot who is the son of a com­mon trades­man. He’s also an unpop­u­lar client. His clothes, his fru­gal­ity and his appallingly bad French makes for much squab­bling between the whores when­ever he vis­its them every Thurs­day night. No one wants him save the Count­ess, who decides on this one occa­sion, that he isn’t so bad look­ing and she can sati­ate her needs by pre­tend­ing to be a whore for the night.

She quickly becomes his favorite and soon she makes another “mis­step” by telling him her real name, which is “Anna.” Inti­macy as well as the dan­ger of being found out slowly builds. The Count­ess aka “Anna” con­tin­ues this ruse and enjoys these trysts because James proves to be a great lover. Her fear of being found out is a risk but she has no plans to ever run into James in pub­lic since they both inhabit dif­fer­ent worlds and dif­fer­ent social cir­cles. Or so she thought.

How­ever, Anna soon learns that James has received a nice com­mis­sion from the King. The threat to her true iden­tity being found out is ele­vated. Flush with cash, James asks that she become his mis­tress, in pub­lic and she refuses. This causes a rift between them and then they both go off in their sep­a­rate ways. But they do meet again. Does James find out her true iden­tity? And what if he does? What will hap­pen? Accord­ing to Anna and her cousin, Robert, no one would believe a Count­ess had been whor­ing her­self to a com­moner.

This is a tightly plot­ted story. The nar­ra­tive is told in first per­son. The voice is that of a young woman who knows about all the rules of polite soci­ety and knows how to tweak them. The end­ing was inter­est­ing and not all that con­vinc­ing but I enjoyed it all the same. Seems Anna and her trades­man have more adven­tures ahead. Good thing I bought the sequels.

Sex scenes were just the right amount and not overly. While not bor­ing, they didn’t stand out either. Chem­istry was nice but not as pal­pa­ble as I would have pre­ferred. Over­all, I liked the story and the char­ac­ters. B+. This was a really quick read which I sus­pect will prob­a­bly be true for the other two sto­ries in the trilogy.

And today is the last day in the TBR Chal­lenge for 2009. I want to thank all the read­ers par­tic­i­pated this year and please, if you’ve read down this far, please visit with the other par­tic­i­pants of the chal­lenge and enjoy!

For Fur­ther Reading

• The Count­ess Tril­ogy (vol.2,3) by Ali­son Richardson
• REVIEW: Deadly Temp­ta­tion by Jus­tine Davis

Tagged as: class divisions, erotic romance, Harlequin ebooks, Paris setting, romance between social class, Spice Briefs