The Lady and the Solicitor: Erotic Novella

By Lisa Torquay

A lady on fire!

Eleanor, recently widowed Lady Bradford, married her much older late husband under her parents' pressure. But the deceased Lord Bradford didn’t deliver in the bedchamber. Free from her burdens, Eleanor set out in search of a paramour that would fulfil the desires that she'd only glimpsed during her marriage. She looked around her circle with little success. Until her bland, watered-down solicitor gave signs that a fire burned beneath his impersonal stance. Curious, she decided to peel his insipid surface and his insipid clothes to discover what lay beneath them.

At twenty-eight, Walter Gresham inherited the solicitor's firm from its former owner. He's desired Lady Bradford from the first moment he lay eyes on her. But he has a physical condition that prevents him from consorting with decent ladies. As Eleanor literally corners him, he's about to succumb to his rapacious hunger even at the risk of having her flee from him in horrified scorn.

Published as a bonus erotic novella in The Lady and the Mill Worker

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Torquay
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005251949

Lisa Torquay

Lisa Torquay comes from a multi-cultural family. She graduated in History and earned a Master’s Degree in British Empire. She has worked as an English and History teacher at high schools. She married a Norwegian and moved to Norway, where she has lived for three years. Writing has been her passion since she was thirteen. When she’s not writing, she’s messing up in the kitchen because she loves cooking as much as she’s clumsy. She hopes you enjoy her books and would love to know your opinion about them. Just go to www.lisatorquay.wixsite/main

Book preview

Table of Contents

The Lady and the Solicitor – erotic novella

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

From the Back Cover

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Preview of The Lady and the Bricklayer

Copyright

The Lady and the Solicitor

Copyright 2021 Lisa Torquay

Published by Lisa Torquay

Edition License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Editor

Bob Ross

Cover Art

Jo Singleton

Dedication

To my sister and best friend

From the Back Cover

A lady on fire!

Eleanor, recently widowed Lady Bradford, married her much older late husband under her parents' pressure. But the deceased Lord Bradford didn’t deliver in the bedchamber. Free from her burdens, Eleanor set out in search of a paramour that would fulfil the desires she'd only glimpsed during her marriage. She looked around her circle with little success. Until her bland, watered-down solicitor gave signs that a fire burned beneath his impersonal stance. Curious, she decided to peel his insipid surface and his insipid clothes to discover what lay beneath them.

At twenty-eight, Walter Gresham inherited the solicitor's firm from its former owner. He's desired Lady Bradford from the first moment he lay eyes on her. But he has a physical condition that prevents him from consorting with decent ladies. As Eleanor literally corners him, he's about to succumb to his rapacious hunger even at the risk of having her flee from him in horrified scorn.

Chapter One

Eleanor Weston stood from the chair where she’d been waiting when the secretary politely called her to go into her solicitor’s office. In reality, he’d served her recently deceased husband, the Earl of Bradford, god rest his soul—thankfully. The unbidden thought came divested of its typical guilt. She was past it. Arranged marriage, older nobleman, old blood. Old story. Except she’d become a wealthy widow ready to enjoy the freedom she’d only dreamed about. Second marriage? Absolutely never. Ever!

With this cheerful determination in mind, she gathered her skirts and followed the solemn male secretary into Mr Gresham’s inner sanctum. A nod of thank-you to the employee graced her head as he closed her inside.

The well-appointed office contained a decent carpet, a large window, and a sturdy desk piled with papers and folders. From behind it, Walter Gresham moved to the centre of the room and bowed over her glove with all due respect her rank demanded.

The man was young, not even thirty if his front was anything to go by. He started as an apprentice to old Mr Rutledge, a bachelor without children who left his business to the younger man. As solicitors went, this one was quite average. Bland manners, bland speech, bland clothing. The man could be a fly on the wall if he so wished.

Lady Bradford, he uttered in a cordial voice, as unremarkable as the rest of him.

Mr Gresham, she answered while he pulled a chair to her.

Not that his appearance was unpleasant. Possibly six feet tall, more on the strappy side than broad, chestnut brown hair scrupulously combed over chestnut eyes that shone eternally impersonal, his well-defined jaw didn't show the tiniest shadow of stubble. Eleanor wondered if there might be a less appealing being in the entire world.

Both sat on each side of the desk as a neatly groomed hand plucked a document from an equally neat pile.

Mr Rutledge died weeks before her husband six months ago. Harold hadn’t seen any reason to change solicitors for he’d grown used to the young man now in charge. Neither did she as the Earl passed.

I have the latest reports on the estates’ income, my lady.

Let’s hear it, Mr Gresham, she allowed him to proceed.

She preferred to come weekly for these meetings to keep track of the properties, but also, she travelled monthly to check on them. For some unfathomable reason, the Earl had left her the properties that were not entailed to the earldom, a fact his heir, a distant cousin, had been none too happy about. Harold naturally knew that the spoiled brat would squander his inheritance, something Eleanor wouldn’t dream of doing. She had every intention of increasing it to enjoy its dividends. And if the ton judged the strategy avaricious, so be it. She didn't care. Not anymore.

At twenty, she obeyed her parents, married a man more than twice her age and endured five years with a husband she neither wanted nor loved. As duties went, hers were accomplished, she owed no explanations to anyone. More than that, she owed herself every possible reward for being a meek, biddable debutante who obtained very little in the bargain. And even less in bed.

The selling of the surplus would afford a generous sum. The solicitor was saying.

Diverted from her reveries, Eleanor looked at him, her mind doing the calculations for what he suggested. We’ll do that, she agreed. And invest in the coal mine in Yorkshire, the one I mentioned to you.

A very sensible decision, Lady Bradford.

At this young age, it’d be tragic to be the childless dowager countess. But Eleanor called it funny, especially when life smiled at her in this unexpected way.

I should think so, she answered a tad haughtily. She wasn’t a complete ninny. The townhouse library contained a good number of books about economy, from which she’d been sourcing her knowledge.

Nonetheless, I’d like to talk about another issue, if you allow me, he added.

Walter eyed the straight-spine woman before him as he applied a conscious effort not to look at her lips. Something happened to him every time he lay eyes on the countess since the first time she’d visited with her middle-aged husband. He’d put it down to his own young years, as Mr Rutledge used to say. The seventy-year-old man considered the age of twenty-eight young obviously, but Walter had toiled from the time he turned thirteen, helping his father in the estate where he worked as a steward. After that, he’d gone on to study and practise in London.

Sure, he was a man in his prime and the countess held an allure he didn’t try to decipher, only to tamp down. The fees she paid him obligated him to behave with impeccable professionalism, and he’d do no less. In his time as an apprentice, he learned that a serious and focused demeanour earned the patrons’ trust. From the first, he taught himself to keep his personal opinions guarded and deliver meticulously on what they asked of him. To this, he attributed the success of not losing one single account since his mentor died.

But the countess’ lips were a different matter altogether. Full, red, and sultry, they invoked fantasies that rushed through his veins like a curse. Exactly like the accursed condition that affected him and constituted the reason he could consort with no woman. Least of all, this one. Still, the images that ran through his head in her presence—and absence—stood no taming.

Certainly, she replied before those pieces of temptation pursed slightly.

And then he was helpless not to stare. Both the upper and lower lip were a carnal affront to every hot-blooded man in sight. Even his secretary wasn’t immune. Pursed as they showed now, the need to loosen them with little nips of his teeth materialised vividly in him and produced a revolution comparable to that of France a few decades past. In his blood, gunshots, cannonballs, and riots flourished in a rebellion not even the British fleet would be able to defeat. But he forced himself to with a high cost to his concentration.

Right before his astray eyes, her lips parted, her delicate brows arched quizzically. Clearly, she waited for him to elaborate on that other issue. Amid the fog occupying his mind at that moment, he snapped his gaze to the wide honey one of hers. Difficult not to be lost in those pools of colour that captured the faintest light available, precisely like her hair in a darker shade of it.

Your northern estate might wield more with the right changes, he said, fairly extricating the words from his thickened throat.

How so? Her more than perfect face lit with the possibility of increasing her assets. He admired that in her, she had a sharp mind for investments. In his experience, few noblemen cared for that, with disastrous consequences.

Modernisation of farming techniques. The costs are not so high, but the returns more than compensate for them. Good that he surpassed the gravel that clogged his voice, as it came clear and business-like.

A brisk nod shook the tendrils of honey framing her face. I’ll take it up with the steward when I next visit it, she assured him. Without delay, she stood from her chair, causing him to do the same. I’ll see you next week. Good day. And strode purposefully to the door he rushed to open, disappearing in seconds.

Finally, in possession of his privacy, he slouched on his chair with an audible expel of breath. Lately, it'd been harder to keep his urges under control in her presence. Perhaps, next time he should delegate such appointment to Jeffrey, his secretary.

As the time for luncheon neared, he left the office for the cool air in the street, not in search of food as