The Count­ess Tril­ogy (2009) by Ali­son Richard­son, pub­lished by Har­le­quin, are “Spice Briefs” that are erotic short sto­ries pub­lished in “e” only. I read the first short (The Countess’s Client) and quickly wrapped up the other two sto­ries in quick suc­ces­sion (An Impo­lite Seduc­tion & The Birth­day Gift). The titles pretty much gives you an idea of what the sto­ries are about and all were enjoy­able reads. So thank you Janine.

Count­ess Anna Van Esslin is a young woman, a widow really, who now and again, indulges her sex­ual desires as she see fit. Because of her high sta­tus in soci­ety, she knows all the rules of dis­cre­tion and knows how to play the game when it comes to keep­ing her free­dom and enjoy­ing her sex­ual exploits sans scandal.

Well, the Count­ess makes a few mis­steps. First, she skirts close to scan­dal when she decides to play the “whore” to a Scot­tish philoso­pher and sci­en­tist, James McKir­nan in The Countess’s Client. Need­less to say, her low­born admirer dared expected more than his sta­tus allowed when he asked her to be his mis­tress and then his wife. Of course she turns him down (the nerve!) at every turn but James isn’t giv­ing up at all. He’s very con­fi­dent and a strong rival. The two are well matched.

I was often amused at what James had up his sleeve in order to win Anna’s favor. He annoys her at every turn with his under­hand­ed­ness. He wants to marry her but she con­tin­ues to refuse him and thus he becomes her adver­sar­ial suitor. Anna views mar­riage to a com­moner as some kind of night­mare sit­u­a­tion that doesn’t even bear think­ing about. So James has a bat­tle on his hands when it comes to mak­ing the Count­ess over­look his social sta­tus despite the fact that he seems to please her in the bedroom.

In “An Impo­lite Seduc­tion,” has both James and Anna schem­ing and trump­ing each other. All I can say is that in this entry, Anna gets the bet­ter of James in this go round. She ends up him hav­ing him exiled but they meet in again in the only place that he can call home: Munich.

The con­clu­sion of the tril­ogy, The Birth­day Present, caps a some­what HEA of sorts to the chase that began in Paris some eleven years ago and ends in Munich. I liked the end­ing although it is uncon­ven­tional. The premise for “The Birth­day Present” has the Count­ess gifted with a secret lover for her “birth­day present” after two years of celibacy and she doesn’t know who it is.

Surely it can’t be James, can it? There’s sev­eral good rea­sons why it’s not James. First, James speaks appallingly bad French and her secret lover speaks elo­quently. And sec­ond, her cousin Robert, who gave her her birth­day present despises James as much as much she does so… who is he? Who is this man who makes her body sing and makes her yearn for his touch?

The last story was more roman­tic with an added bit of dan­ger. Once again, the Count­ess makes a mis­step that endan­gers the man she loves (ok she hates to admit it but she does love him). I just knew there had to be some type of major event to make her come to her senses. Any­way. Highly rec­om­mend this tril­ogy and thanks again to Janine and Wendy (who also enjoyed this series as well). B+.