The Regency Redgraves: What an Earl Wants / What a Lady Needs / What a Gentleman Desires / What a Hero Dares

She noticed his breathing had become rather shallow. “Oh, yes, I’d wager twice that. Who is really the stronger, that’s the wager, who can better resist temptation. I’ll put my blunt on myself, naturally.”

“Naturally. With one caveat, if you don’t mind.”

“And what would that be?”

“That you stop moving your hips against me.”

She looked at him in feigned surprise. “Was I doing that? And that…upsets you? I’m so sorry. We’ll neither of us move, all right? I’ll call the count, shall I? One…”

She lowered her eyelids so that she could watch him through her lashes.

“Two…”

She drew in a breath that raised her breasts slightly, released her breath on a sigh.

“Three…Is it warm in here, Gideon? Your skin feels slightly slick against my breasts. But it’s nice.”

She watched his throat move as he swallowed.

“Four…I could do this all afternoon, you know, as I’m quite comfortable. Are you comfortable, Gideon? Five…And it was your idea. It’s difficult to believe you could possibly lose, being so much larger and stronger than—”

Thank goodness, Jessica thought as Gideon ground his mouth against hers. I never would have made it past six… .

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“AND YOU’RE POSITIVE you and Trixie are correct? All because of my father’s journal?”

Gideon finished fastening the diamond circlet around Jessica’s throat before turning her about so that she could look into his eyes when he answered her, see that he was sincere.

She looked beautiful tonight, a certain glow about her, the sort that signaled to the knowing that she had spent the afternoon in bed. And not alone.

“As certain as we can be, yes. With the last of the original members from my father’s time now dead, and with Trixie admitting she doesn’t recognize the other code names, I believe it’s safe to assume that…well, that you’re safe. You, Trixie, Adam.”

“Because the Society is no longer seeking out the eldest son to take his deceased father’s place, and that’s why Trixie doesn’t recognize all those other code names.”

“Yes, and because those who knew James Linden are those same now-deceased members. No one will look at you and wonder what you might know, what he may have told you. And, lastly, there’s no one remaining aboveground who would realize Trixie knows anything at all. Thank God.”

Jessica stepped away from him, to check her reflection in the pier glass. She looked beautiful in ivory lace, just as he’d known she would, and he was well satisfied with the demi-train he’d added to its design. “Whoever ordered my father to…to hand me over? Are you certain that person wouldn’t look at me now and, well, and wonder? Because we did decide the Society has a new leader, didn’t we? A strong leader? He could have been the one who ordered—”

“Here again I defer to Trixie. There are two things the members of the Society lend no credence to—women and hirelings. As far as the Society is concerned, you managed to convince Linden to run off with you. Or do you really think you would have made it even halfway to Dover if there was any concern either of you could prove a danger to them?”

“I never really thought about that.” Jessica walked over to her dressing table to pick up her reticule. “There were storms in the Channel. We had to wait in Dover for three days before we could set sail. James was terrified. He wouldn’t leave the rooms he’d hired at the inn once he’d finally managed to sell the jewelry. But I suppose we would have been easy enough to find.”

“And that answers the question, doesn’t it? Nobody came, because nobody felt the need. You’re safe, Trixie’s safe, Adam is not going to be issued an invitation to join the Society.”

“And the rose? You haven’t worn it again, but certainly it was noticed.”

“By whom? the Marquis of Mellis was in Bath, and the other members from my father’s time were already dead. There are thirteen members, correct? Yet nobody else ever wore the rose. Jessica, there’s nothing tying any of us to anything that’s going on within that damn Society. Nothing. If we want, it’s over. We can walk away.”

“If we want,” Jessica repeated as he held out his arm to her, to escort her downstairs. “Not even the search for your father’s body?”

She had him there. “That still bothers me, yes. But with Mellis gone, there’s no one else left to question. The tunnel beneath the greenhouse collapsed thanks to an unusually wet spring and the ravages of age, and the lights in the woods were most probably cast by lanterns carried by poachers. Not everything is a mystery. Not when taken separately.”

“Six men have been murdered,” she reminded him as they approached the drawing room. “Including my father.”

“You want to avenge him?”

She sighed. “I should say yes, shouldn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t. Somebody carried off my father’s body, and I see that only as a personal insult to the Redgrave name, a name already carrying enough dirt on it. Trixie could have ordered him buried in a bog for all I ever cared about the man. I don’t relish telling her that her son’s body was taken, no. She deserves the right to one day rest beside her only child for eternity.” He stopped her as they were about to enter the drawing room. “I like this, Jessica.”

She looked at him in confusion. “Pardon me?”

“Being honest. Open. Being able to talk with you this way. I don’t know why you make it so easy, but you do. I’ve never been honest with anyone about what it means to be a Redgrave, what it means to be the eldest son of a man so depraved and twisted his own wife shot him in the back, the eldest son of a mother so desperate to be free of her husband that she’d desert her own children. You sometimes don’t realize the weight of the things you carry through life with you, until you put them down. I’m feeling considerably…lighter.”

She bowed her head for a moment, and when she raised it again he could see tears standing in her eyes. “I feel much the same. Lighter. Cleaner, if that makes any sense at all. But I still need to tell you—”

“Tell me we can neither of us walk away from what we suspect,” he ended for her. “I know. There’s a reason those six men were killed. We have two of the names of current members, thanks to Trixie. We know the code names for four more, thanks to your father’s journal. Yes, the journal is out of date. And, lastly, no, we don’t have the rest of the names. But we’ve enough to go on with. We know the Society still exists.”

“With a purpose larger than what Trixie called naughty little boys playing at games. I agree with you on that head.”

“And how do I take any of this to the Crown? For one, I have no real proof, and secondly, I might be reporting what I believe to one of the new thirteen or one of their blackmailed guests. No, it’s us, or it’s nobody. I said we could walk away, but I can’t turn my back on this, Jessica. Not knowing it was my family who one way or another laid the foundation for it all.”

“I didn’t think you were applying to me for permission, either way. But I would like to think you still want my help. That was the plan in the beginning, wasn’t it, because we thought it would help us protect Adam?”

He leaned in and kissed her. “It was a part of the plan, certainly. But not above and beyond my overwhelming need to have you in my bed and easing my conscience by telling myself my offer of marriage provided a way to compensate for what happened to you.”

“I don’t know if you need to be that honest, Gideon. Not that I’m not…flattered.”

He smiled. “Not that I’m not grateful. But to get back to our now slightly altered plan? I’m counting on your discerning eye and your powers of observation as we learn more about our friends Lord Charles and Mr. Urban, yes. I want you to read them, assess them, as you would players at the card table. And more than that, I believe I want you to cultivate their wives. If there’s a weakness in the Society, I think it would have to be the wives.”

“Because they’re weaker?”

“No, I think we settled that earlier.”

“Yes, and you still owe me five pounds. But I know what you mean. There can’t be many women who would be happy with the sort of arrangement Trixie spoke of, being passed about to the other men in the Society. It’s sickening, to think such a thing is happening in this day and age. I don’t know how I’d broach the subject, but I think I will be able to tell if these two women are unhappy.”

“All right, play the game any way you like. Just promise me you won’t try to bluff anyone.”

She rolled her eyes. “Really, you and Richard—”

They both turned toward the stairs and the sound of the knocker being banged on with considerable enthusiasm, followed closely by a cheery voice exclaiming, “Thorny, you old dog, if you’re going to scowl every time I bring a little rainwater inside with me, I may go into a sad decline. M’brothers here? One or both? I like being prepared before I face Gideon’s scowl or Max’s—Well, what does Max do, anyway, other than find new ways to grow his hair? Damme, it’s wet out there tonight! What did you say? Speak up, man. No! Say that again. Where is he? Is he upstairs? That dog!”

“Valentine,” Gideon said, breaking into a grin. “Prepare yourself, Jessica, you’re about to be bowled down by my youngest brother.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE SOUND OF RIDING boots hitting the marble stairs was closely followed by the appearance of Lord Valentine Redgrave’s smiling face and tall, lithe body.

“Gideon!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide as he approached, but then lowering them again as he espied Jessica. He tipped his head to one side and grinned. “This is the bride? Thorny told me just now, but I didn’t believe him. My lady,” he said, sweeping Jessica an elegant bow. “Whatever lies did my brother tell you to get you to agree to join your life to such a sorry specimen?”

Jessica laughed, as she really had no choice in the thing, and held out her hand to be bowed over. Except Lord Valentine Redgrave clearly was having none of that, because he grabbed her up in his arms and soundly kissed both her cheeks. “My God, you’re gorgeous. Are you sure you want Gideon? I’m clearly the better choice.”

“Put her down, you fool,” Gideon said, laughing. “Jessica, may I present my youngest brother, Lord Valentine Redgrave, connoisseur of all things frivolous, carefree bon vivant, generous by nature, soft of heart and yet somehow still managing to be an all-round menace to society. Val, my lady wife, Jessica—and no, you can’t kiss her again.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lord Valentine,” Jessica said, dropping into a curtsy.

“Please, call me Val,” Valentine said, “and I’ll call you Jess? Jessica? Sister? Gideon, you’ve given me a new sister. Do you have any suggestions as to what we should do with the old one? She will persist in hanging about, won’t she? Or have the both of you found romance in my short absence? I won’t ask about Max, as there’s nobody who’d want him.”

Gideon motioned for Jessica and Valentine to precede him into the drawing room, at which point Cleo and Brutus made a dead set at Valentine, tongues lolling, tails wagging. He went to his knees and allowed them to lick his face.

His incredibly handsome face. Jessica could see hints of both Lady Katherine and Gideon in Lord Valentine, but there was something else there besides the attractively mussed dark hair, faintly bronzed skin and magnificent bone sculpture. She decided it was Valentine’s eyes. They were light amber in color, quite startling in fact, ringed with long dark lashes beneath sweeping black brows…and they were full of life and mischief. And kindness.

How strange to look at such a well set-up gentleman and think first and foremost: this is a kind man.

“Kate’s at Redgrave Manor after a brief visit here in town, and Max is still off North somewhere, aiding Trixie in one of her stunts, so the two—no, the three of them, remain heartfree. Unless you’ve somehow been struck by one of Cupid’s arrows, only two things have changed since you left. I’ve married, and these two miscreants have finally learned to perform their only party trick outdoors, rather than on the carpet in my study.”

“Wonderful! Thank you for keeping them, Gideon.”

Jessica looked to Gideon. She hadn’t known Cleo and Brutus weren’t his dogs.

“I didn’t have much choice, did I? You simply left them here and rode off.”

“Yes, but Freddie said he couldn’t afford them, not now his father’s taken that bad turn. What else was I to do?”

“Nothing, I suppose. But now that you’re back, I think it’s time they adjourned to the country. Clearly these are animals who belong out-of-doors, or at least at Redgrave Manor, where we’ve got the dog gates to keep them from running through the entire house as if there may be a rabbit behind every door.”

“Only if Kate remembers to latch the gates,” Valentine said, getting to his feet again. “My leg still aches when the weather turns damp.”

Gideon sat down next to Jessica and explained that last statement. A few months earlier, Kate had left open the gate at the bottom of the staircase, allowing three of the family dogs free to race upstairs to see Valentine, only to knock him head over teacup down the stairs to the first landing, his brother suffering a broken leg in the fall.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jessica said, looking at Valentine.

Gideon laid his arm behind her on the back of the couch. “Don’t be. My brother was simply being rewarded by the fates for stepping in and doing a good deed, or what he thought was a good deed. It wasn’t, and the leg was probably a suitable punishment. Not that you learn, do you, Val? You missed my nuptials thanks to your latest act of charity, escorting Freddie home to his recently impoverished father. Kate was here.”

“Kate was here. Yes, you said that,” Valentine repeated, pulling a face. “But not Max? Are you planning to ring a peal over his head, as well, when he returns?”

“I’m not ringing a peal over yours, brother. I’m merely pointing out, as does our sister when she’s anywhere close, that one day you’re going to do one favor too many and end up missing more than a wedding. Kate worries about you.”

“But you don’t,” Valentine said, sipping from the glass of wine he’d poured for himself. He was resting nearly on the bottom of his spine as he slouched in the facing couch, his booted legs crossed at the ankle and propped on the low table between them. Jessica had seen the same pose from Gideon and from Kate, and now had no doubt when she met Max she would know him first by his extraordinary ability to relax.

“I don’t stay up nights, pacing the floor, no,” Gideon admitted. “Now that you’ve returned the coach, when do you head to Redgrave Manor?”

“When do I deliver Cleo and Brutus to Redgrave Manor, you mean. Why? And don’t say it’s because you want me to stay in town for the remainder of the Season because you know I won’t do that, much as I love you. One Redgrave gone to the Marriage Mart a season is enough, no insult intended, Jessica.”

“None taken,” Jessica said, still fascinated by this youngest Redgrave. “You’d rather be in the country?”

“I’d rather be in Paris, but since Bonaparte grows more frisky by the moment, I’m stuck in London, a sorry substitute I’m sad to say. I’ve already visited two of my clubs this afternoon and found them thin of company and fairly flat, thanks to a boxing mill taking place this week in some faraway village in the back of beyond, so there’s really nothing keeping me here. I’d like to leave in the morning, actually,” he said, looking to Gideon. “And yes, I’ll take the reformed piddlers with me.”

“More than the dogs, Val. I was hoping you or Max would be back in town soon. As it’s you, consider my request to be in the nature of performing a good deed.”

“And if it had been Max?” Valentine asked.

Gideon shrugged. “I suppose I would have attempted to convince him he was about to go on some adventure. In any event, since you’re the one who arrived first, I’d like you to take Jessica’s brother with you as, well. You remember my ward, don’t you?”

Valentine pushed his boots against the edge of the table as he sat up straight. “The twit? He’s Jessica’s brother? Really? Well, now, that explains how you two met. And you want me to haul him off to—No, that won’t work, Kate will lock him in the cellars. After she murders him.”

“No, she won’t. She’s met him and thinks he’s highly entertaining.”

Valentine grinned at his brother. “Oh, she does not. Not unless she’s fallen on her head. Or he has, perhaps knocking his brain into something less resembling a block of cheese.”

Jessica bit her lip to keep from laughing.

Gideon helped her to her feet as Thorndyke announced he’d ordered another setting at table, and dinner was now served. “Adam’s not here this evening, as I’ve given him permission to attend the theater with his keeper. It’s my fondest hope he can restrain himself from throwing oranges into the pit from our family box, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does, as he informed me that’s what all the fashionable young idiots do. I need you to take him under your wing, Val. Make a man of him. You can do that, surely.”

“I’ve seen him, remember, and if he manages to clunk anyone on the head with an orange I’ll be mightily surprised, and that’s with the pit directly below our box, for God’s sake. Make a man of him? I’d first have to strip him to the buff and start over—Again, Jessica, no insult intended.”

“Again, none taken. Adam is very young and silly,” she answered as they entered the dining room. “Would that mean Cleo and Brutus would be riding inside the coach with them? All the way to Redgrave Manor?” she asked Gideon, carefully keeping her expression neutral.

Her husband smiled, and Jessica learned something new: husbands and wives could speak volumes without actually saying a word. Wasn’t that nice. For instance, right now Gideon’s smile was saying, “Yes, I’m as amused by that prospect as you are.”

“Jessica and I are promised to something this evening, Val,” he said as he helped Jessica into her chair, “so we’ll be leaving you directly after dinner. There’s things you need to know before you head off tomorrow, however, so I’m afraid we’ll be having a fairly unusual mealtime conversation.” He seated himself at the head of the table. “I’ll begin with Trixie.”

“Trixie?” Valentine placed his serviette on his lap. “And you announce her name in nearly the same breath as you say unusual? That raises a question. Am I going to be amused or terrified?”

THEY DIDN’T LEAVE Portman Square until nearly eleven. Gideon purposely left their departure late, so that he and Jessica wouldn’t become part of the masses herded onto a curving flight of stairs and forced to stand there for an hour or more, slowly inching their way, step by step, up to the receiving line outside the ballroom.

The Earl of Saltwood much preferred to make an entrance, especially with his bride on his arm.

The hours in between sitting down to dinner and their departure had been busy ones, but now Valentine had been brought abreast of what was going on, what Gideon suspected, what Trixie had confirmed. Val had agreed Kate was probably even now ripping Redgrave Manor apart, from attics to cellars to chicken coops, hot on the hunt for the journals their father had found more than two decades previously and added to every year since then, until his murder.

The journals and the bible, although Gideon and Trixie now both believed the bible, at the very least, had been turned over to the new leader and was still in use. After all, hadn’t Burke, Barry Redgrave’s loyal valet, disappeared the day after the small, private funeral? Burke, his wife and their daughter.

Val also agreed having Kate find so much as a single journal could prove disastrous, unless he and even Max were there to physically wrest the thing from her hands before she so much as opened it.

Or, to quote him exactly, and Gideon knew he wouldn’t soon forget his brother’s words, “You put a job in front of Kate, she does it. If she finds something, she won’t simply hand it over, you know. No, she’ll demand complete inclusion in whatever the hell it is we may end up having to do—which would be your fault, Gideon. And if she thinks she’s been put to hunting mares’ nests just so you have her out of the way, well, then, brother mine, it will be more than your fault, it will be your head. Either way, I don’t know that you thought this plan of yours through very well, did you?”

Which he hadn’t. Gideon knew that. Having his youngest brother point that fact out to him, however, brought home to Gideon how little he had been thinking these past weeks, perhaps even months. He should have brought his brothers in on his suspicions long ago. Why hadn’t he?

But he knew the answer to that question. He was the oldest brother. He was the head of the Redgrave family. The burdens belonged on his shoulders. He hadn’t wanted his brothers involved, hadn’t wanted Max or Val and definitely not Kate to learn how much of a monster their father had been, how much of a victim their mother had been. And Trixie? Well, there was no stopping them from learning about Trixie, as the woman lived her life quite openly, didn’t she?

There was one other thing. He could have been wrong. The deaths he’d begun to notice could all have been accidents and coincidental. Just as the cave-in of a tunnel beneath the greenhouse could have been a natural event, the lanterns in the forest carried by poachers.

Of course, finding out their father’s body had been taken might have been a good time to bring at least his brothers into his confidence.

Still, he could have been wrong about the rest, at least until the night he’d dragged his physician to that stable and they’d found the hole in Turner Collier’s skull.

He should have brought them in then. Except then he’d met Jessica. Val may have heard most of what Gideon had learned, what Trixie had confirmed, but Gideon had told him only that Jessica was Adam’s half sister, estranged from the family after making an unfortunate marriage. He’d seen no reason to go into more detail than that. The past was the past, Jessica’s past her own. It was the uncertain future that had to concern them all now.

He’d had so many very good reasons to not do what he had all along known he should.

He was so used to being a man who kept his secrets to himself, the worst of his family’s sordid past carefully hidden behind closed doors. It was Jessica who’d changed that, with her openness and honesty, even when the facts proved painful.

And the burden of his family shame, shared now with Jessica, was lighter just as he’d told her. Speaking with Val had made it lighter still.

No, it wasn’t the past Gideon carried with him now, it was the future that lay heavily on his shoulders, and the responsibility to correct whatever may have been set on a dangerous course so many years ago.

“I like your brother,” Jessica said as she and Gideon settled against the velvet squabs of the Redgrave town coach for a ride of merely blocks. “He’s serious when he has to be, and quick enough to understand what to say and what not to say. He didn’t ask a single question that would have made me uncomfortable, although I’m sure his head was buzzing with them. Do you really think he’ll leave?”

“Yes, I do. It was putting him in charge of Kate that turned the corner for us. The thought she might actually discover the journals was all the incentive he needed. Plus, he understands now why I want Adam away from London. We’re certain he’s safe from the Society, but I’d rather be more than certain. You know, you didn’t tell me how you convinced Kate to leave.”

“Oh, that was easy enough. I told her you wanted her to stay in London, fearful that she’d try hunting out the journals if she went back to Redgrave Manor.”