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

Gideon was cupping her breast now, rubbing his thumb across the stiff material of her gown. She gritted her teeth, wishing away the fabric, feeling her nipple straining for a more intimate touch. Perhaps his touch would be different. Perhaps his mouth more knowing, less harsh, taking this budding physical arousal her body seemed to understand and nurturing it, not turning it to pain and humiliation and tears.

There has to be something more, her mind promised her, or else women like Mildred wouldn’t be so eager to partake in it, time and time again. Perhaps it wasn’t me but James who was the sad failure.

Jessica felt herself being lifted off the floor and high against Gideon’s chest. She buried her head in his shoulder as his long strides took them across the room. He turned to his left.

“That’s…that’s the stairs to the kitchens,” she managed, and his short, pithy curse brought a tremulous smile to her lips as he turned abruptly and headed, this time, toward her small, spinsterish bedchamber. Now she noticed his breathing had become nearly as ragged as her own, and the first stirrings of fear dragged at her arousal, slowing it to a near stop.

She’d been selfishly thinking of herself, only herself. She’d forgotten the effect of passion on a man.

Hers had been a virginal bed for more than four years, since James’s death, and she’d been glad of the respite, the sanctuary it held for her. How could she be doing this? Willingly doing this? What on earth did she think it could possibly prove? She was unnatural, James had told her so, time and time again. She wasn’t a real woman.

Gideon would know, and he’d either turn away in disgust, or he’d slake himself, anyway, pounding hurtfully inside her until he was done.

Either way, she lost.

“I don’t…I can’t…” she said as he stood her on her feet beside the bed, turned her around and began expertly working open the line of buttons from her neck to her waist, as he had done the previous evening. Only tonight his mouth followed after his hands, his tongue licking at her skin, sending shivers of what had to be pleasure rippling through her.

It was as if he hadn’t heard her. He took hold of her shoulders and turned her back to him. In the light of the small candelabra burning at her bedside, he locked his eyes with hers as he touched his hands to her long, unbound hair, smoothing it back over her shoulders.

She was naked to the waist now, her gown snagging at her hips. He lowered his head, taking her in his mouth, teasing her with his fingers, destroying her now silent warnings of his imminent disappointment, her ultimate disgrace. No matter how hopeful the beginning, when her own body tried to believe this time it might somehow be different, there was always that same bad ending.

Somehow, the coverlet had been stripped back, and she was on the cool sheet. Somehow, her gown was gone, her only undergarment was gone; she was lying there, eyes closed to reality, listening to the whisper of fabric as Gideon rid himself of his evening clothes.

She’d been here before, in this position, brought low by the mere fact of being female.

She had no maidenly shame about her naked body, experienced no wild urge to try to cover herself. James had stripped her of that years ago. She knew what her body was for—a man’s pleasure. The man wanted what the man wanted, and now was as good a time as any to get it over with, so that they could move on. Resistance only brought pain. She’d simply have to pretend, go along. He’d soon learn the truth about her.

She didn’t dare look at him. She’d seen a fully aroused male before and knew what that arousal meant. Jessica believed herself to be a strong woman in most things, even an independent woman—a hard-earned independence. But this had always defeated her; she couldn’t physically best a man, and she couldn’t shoot him. Struggle was useless, embarrassing and often countered with violence. She knew herself to be the weaker vessel. It wasn’t rape if she let him take what he believed he wanted. It was simply easier.

The bed sagged slightly as he joined her, as he leaned over her, as he brought his head close to hers once more. Good. At least it would soon be over.

“You’re even more perfect than I imagined,” he told her as he slowly drew his hand down her body. “No flaw, anywhere. Perfect seduction. Last night was an uncomfortably long night for me. Was it for you?”

Was what uncomfortable for her? She couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the travels of his hand, knowing where he was heading, to the juncture of her thighs.

Would he please just finish it, this inevitable he spoke of, the inevitable she’d stupidly goaded him to. That would tell him more than she could ever hope to say. Then they could put all of this behind them and move on to the subject of her father’s supposed murder, the golden rose he’d worn in his cravat.

His hand slid over her lower belly, and she sighed, opened her silk stocking-clad legs to him. Let him take what he believed he needed. This meant nothing to her. It was only her body. A few more minutes, that’s all. Just, please, quickly.

His kiss surprised her; she hadn’t expected any more coaxing now that he had her where he wanted her. Not that James hadn’t tried this sort of arousal in the beginning, until he’d realized he was only wasting his time, delaying his pleasure. But, Lord, he had tried, each thing he’d attempted worse than the last. The bites, the pinching fingers, the supposedly arousing slaps, believing perhaps pain would turn to pleasure. And it had…for him.

Jessica felt tears burning behind her eyes and forced her mind to stop thinking about James. He was dead, he didn’t control her any longer. She owed him nothing she hadn’t paid back tenfold in the nearly eight long months of their bizarre marriage.

Now another man was touching her, taking what he wanted. What would he do if he knew what she’d been thinking? No, he couldn’t know.

She raised her hips slightly, as she’d been taught.

Gideon’s response was to continue his travels across the landscape of her lower body. His fingertips drew a route from her navel to within a heartbeat of her center, then moved on to skim the inside of her thighs. And still he kissed her, his tongue teasing, tasting, coaxing a response that surprised her; that curl of desire returned, deep inside her.

She moved her hips again, this time without first thinking about the action. Was he avoiding her? Did he have to be pointed in the correct direction?

Hardly. The man kept four mistresses.

Jessica swallowed hard, barely given time to draw in a fresh breath between kisses, barely wanting to waste time in doing so. Because Gideon’s mouth was so provocatively enticing, she actually heard herself moan in loss when he broke the last kiss and began moving his head lower, beginning a new journey that led to her left breast and ended when he took the nipple into his mouth.

She braced herself for the pain, but it didn’t come. He didn’t take, he…worshipped. Yes, that was the word. He tasted, he suckled, he drew the tip of his tongue around her, he coaxed rather than commanded.

She opened her eyes, raised her head as best she could and watched. Her arm seemed to rise, unbidden, so that she could run her fingers through his dark thatch of hair. She felt a closeness, a communion with the man, a feeling unexplainable yet perfectly understood. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.

When he finally slid his fingers between her legs, curiosity overcame her fear, even though she held her breath, until the slow, nearly circular strokes set off a curious sort of pleasure that showed every sign of turning her limbs to water.

Oh, yes. The words came unbidden to her mind and repeated themselves. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes… “Do that,” she moaned, not realizing she’d spoken. “Please…there. Do that…”

She drew up her feet, bending her knees, allowing them to fall open for him, lifting her hips as he seemed to somehow spread her and stroke her at the same time, finding some previous hidden center of her that had to be acknowledged, demanded some sort of satisfaction.

I’m real, she rejoiced inside her head. This is real, this is happening, this is… And then she didn’t think at all. her body simply reacted to Gideon’s touch, flowering, quivering, pulsating, flinging her out over some abyss as pleasure held her aloft, in its thrall.

He filled her then, levering himself up and over her and then plunging into her in one swift movement.

From some distant place, out over the abyss, she saw herself wrap her limbs around him as if fearful he would leave her. She saw herself kissing his heated skin, biting into the straining muscles of his strong neck and shoulders, rocking with him, urging him on, almost grimly determined to give pleasure for pleasure.

Gideon pushed himself up and looked down at her, as if to gauge her response. “Now?” he asked, watching her closely. “Please God, woman, say now.”

“Now,” she responded, not quite certain what she’d just agreed to, because nothing could be better than what she’d already felt. That was impossible.

But it wasn’t. Gideon didn’t just move inside her now. He plunged, he took, he pumped. Ground himself against her and then took up the rhythmic movements again, each time faster, each time deeper, each time giving more, demanding more, and all while watching her, watching her, watching her.

“No,” she said at last, fear finally finding its way back through the haze of passion. A new fear, one she’d never before had to face. This felt too good, she might shatter with it, disappear inside the pleasure. Her heart might burst, her mind explode. Too good. This was too dangerously good. “Oh, God…no.”

“On the contrary. Oh, God…yes,” Gideon said, and then buried himself inside her one last time, their bodies fitting so tightly together they may have merged into one. She felt her own body clench and unclench again and again, even as his did the same, on and on, until at last he collapsed against her, chest to chest, and they both lay still, perhaps he as well as she in order to assess whether or not they’d just died.

A single tear escaped Jessica’s eye and ran down the side of her head, into her ear. It tickled. All right, she was still alive.

Gideon finally stirred, and she moved her hands over his sweat-slick back, reluctant to let him go as he made to leave her.

“Insatiable, are you, madam? I’m devastated to admit I’m of no further use to you for at least an hour,” he said in a joking voice as he turned onto his back, his forearm over his eyes. “I should have taken you up on your offer last night, although it’s possible the anticipation increased the pleasure. Clearly you were born for this, Jessica Linden. And at least I know now how your late husband died. Undoubtedly in bed, and with a smile on his face.”

As more tears threatened, Jessica quickly turned her head and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes with a corner of the sheet. “He wasn’t smiling, no,” she said, and then quickly shut her mouth so she could say no more. She wanted to rest her head on Gideon’s shoulder, to curl her arm about his waist and simply…cuddle. “Could…would you please gather your clothing and give me my privacy? I’ll join you in the sitting room. There’s wine in the decanter.”

“Suddenly I feel this strong urge toward leaving a purse on your bedside table,” Gideon said, his tone having returned to the careless sarcasm he seemed so adept with most times. He left the bed, most probably to gather his clothing from the floor. “Very well. But ten minutes, no more. I’ll help you with those bloody buttons, as it wouldn’t do to return to the gaming floor in another ensemble.”

“And not before you tell me more of what you hinted at earlier. You do remember that, don’t you?”

If he noticed she was speaking to him with her back turned to avoid seeing his nakedness, he didn’t call her on it. “I’ve rethought the matter. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s none of your concern.”

Now Jessica did turn toward him, making certain the coverlet she’d reached for earlier covered her breasts. He’d already donned his breeches, thank the Lord. She didn’t think she could continue this conversation if they both were naked. “None of my concern? You all but guaranteed me my father and stepmother were murdered. I have a right to know why you think that.”

“Why would that be? You hated your father, fled from hearth and home many years ago. That was the way of it, you said.”

“Oh, and that means I shouldn’t care if he and his wife were murdered? Perhaps you think I should be doing a jig? No, don’t answer that! Besides, you wanted to talk to me about the Society, remember? Your father’s Society?”

“My mistresses don’t plague me with talk. I prefer my pleasure without prattle.”

“I’m not one of your mistresses and I’ll speak when I wish,” Jessica countered, at last far enough removed from the revelations of the past half hour that her mind had begun to function once more. “Must I add, Gideon, that you’re not my lover? You said the word inevitable. Perhaps it was. But now we move on.”

He looked at her blandly, as if what she’d said meant nothing. “Just get dressed,” he said, and then—finally—quit the room.

Leaving Jessica to wonder what on earth had happened, why it had happened so easily with this infuriating, totally exasperating man, if it was the man or something else that had changed inside her to make what had happened possible.

And, having happened once, was it possible for it to happen again? Surely not with the insufferable Gideon Redgrave, but he wasn’t the only man in the world. It very well could have been James who had been the aberration. Not that she was now about to go the route of Mildred or her ilk in order to satisfy her curiosity. She simply couldn’t allow what had happened with Gideon to happen with Gideon again. He was an earl and thoroughly unlikable, and she was a widow running a gaming house. He was not for her, and she definitely was not for him.

Although she could, being at heart an honest person, feel some gratitude toward the man.

“Not that he can ever know what he did, or else he’d be more than insufferable. Much better to allow him to continue to think of me as nothing more than one of a probably endless list of casual liaisons. Yes, this all is going to take some concentrated thinking,” she told herself as she held up her gown and frowned at the wrinkles, her hard-won practical nature finally coming to her aid. “And perhaps a pressing iron…”

CHAPTER SIX

THE WINE IN JESSICA’S SITTING room, again tonight, was of good quality, but there was an insufficient quantity of it for his needs. There might not be enough wine in all of London sufficient for his needs, as his need was to drown the disquieting feeling he’d taken some sort of fateful step into an unknown he did not recognize and had little chance of escaping unscathed.

“What in bloody hell just happened in there?” he muttered, directing a fierce glare toward the bedchamber door before downing a full measure of wine and filling his glass once more.

He’d set out to prove a point. He’d set out to taste the wares so blatantly put on offer the previous evening. He’d been out to convince himself that a night spent wakeful, consumed by thoughts of what he would like to do to Jessica Linden, had been an aberration, perhaps caused by some juvenile fit of pique over that ridiculous pistol, possibly brought on by simple curiosity: Could she live up to the intriguing expectations he’d felt as he’d helped her unbutton her gown?

He damn well hadn’t expected what had happened. He felt half defiler of innocence, half possibly king of the world, as she’d been so genuinely passionate, so clearly astounded as he took her over the top with him. She’d seemed eager at first, then resigned, even detached from her surroundings, a whore who would endure, even attempt to feign interest, if only her client would take what he’d paid for, and then let her get back to work.

And then…damn. He’d nearly lost himself in her then, hadn’t he? That never happened. There was always a part of himself he withheld, that part of him he shared with no one, tried to believe didn’t even exist.

She’d seemed so vulnerable. He didn’t want vulnerable, had no use for vulnerable. He wanted expertise, and he paid for it. Paid well for it and then walked away when it suited him to be gone.

She’d made him want to stay in the bed with her, she’d made him want to hold her, feel her heart beat against him, listen to her breathe as she drifted into sleep, her head on his shoulder. By God, he couldn’t get out of that bed quickly enough!

Was that something she practiced? That intoxicating mix of reticence and passion? If so, she’d definitely perfected her technique, because he wanted more. He’d been satisfied, but certainly not satiated; she shouldn’t still be in his mind, but she was.

He should leave. What was she going to do, chase him down Jermyn Street? Confront him again in Portman Square? No, of course she wouldn’t do that. She hadn’t been anywhere near Portman Square last night, yet he’d done nothing but think about her.

He’d simply have to get her out of his system, that’s all. She’d hit him unawares, unprepared, the mistress of whatever game it was she played. She’d been married, she lived her life on the fringes, she’d probably had more lovers than many women had consumed hot dinners. She’d offered her body, clearly not for the first time. Her trick was in somehow making him feel she’d offered more.

A week, two, and he’d wonder what he’d ever seen in her that had attracted him in the first place.

Gideon nodded his head, as if in agreement with himself and his plan, and then settled down on the slightly shabby sofa, glass in hand, to await her exit from the bedchamber. She’d walk in, that chin of hers held high, so like how Trixie faced down the world, and he’d close up her buttons while he recited verses of Paradise Lost inside his head to keep his mind occupied, and then they would discuss his father’s damnable Society.

Not that he’d tell her anything too specific…just enough to keep her interested until he lost interest in her. As for her assertion they weren’t to become lovers? Let her lie to herself if she wished, let her repeat that lie each night as he left her warm and rosy from his lovemaking.

Yes, two weeks. Perhaps a month. No longer. Until he figured her out, until he figured out what had just happened.

Tonight, once he’d shared some small morsel of what he knew, he would escort her downstairs, he’d carefully lose five hundred pounds at the faro table in lieu of actually offering her payment for her services, and he’d return to Portman Square, lock himself in his study and drink until dawn.

It wasn’t much of a strategy, and thank God both Valentine and Max were not in residence, but for the moment, the plan satisfied him.

He could hear her moving about in her bedchamber, and a very long ten minutes later the door opened. She was once again clad in that damn black gown, so at odds with the flowing mane of red hair that put the lie to the prudish ensemble.

Without speaking to him, she turned her back and employed both hands to lift her hair, giving him access to the long row of buttons…and her bare back. What woman shunned at least a chemise, wearing only a pair of those flimsy French drawers tied at her waist? What torment for a man to look at that high-necked gown, those modestly covered arms, knowing what lay beneath! Modesty and vice. No and yes. Prude and wanton. Oh, yes, the mistress of the game she played.

Gideon drew his finger down the length of her spine, and she shifted her shoulders slightly, either in delight or to warn him to stop. He couldn’t know, and he doubted she would tell him unless he could goad her into an answer.

“Perhaps an hour was an insult to myself,” he whispered beside her ear as, instead of putting his hands to the task of closing her buttons, he slid them inside the gaping fabric, to gently cup and squeeze her unbound, uplifted breasts, his thumbs circling her taut nipples. Item three on the list of things he wanted to do to Jessica Linden he’d composed in his head during his nearsleepless night.

For a moment, she seemed ready to melt against him. For a moment.

“Richard was correct in his assessment. You are your father’s son, aren’t you, Gideon? Does nothing save rutting occupy your mind for more than a minute?”

“You—” He withdrew his hands, closing his mouth on the word bitch, and buttoned her gown as impersonally as he’d pull on his own boots. He’d figure her out, there would come a day when he called the shots, when she would be rebuffed, left feeling like a pleading, bleating fool. But clearly, he told himself, not yet.

“Thank you,” she said as she lowered her hands, and her luxurious curls tumbled free past her shoulders. She then immediately sat down and looked up at him, clear-eyed and composed, as if they’d just come upstairs, and nothing had happened between them. “How do you know my father and Clarissa were murdered?”

That she’d traded her body for information was clear now. She’d let him have her so that they could get down to business. A cold woman.

Gideon took up his wineglass once more. He could play the game as coolly as she did, better. He’d had considerable practice. “I don’t know if your stepmother was deliberately killed. She may simply have had the misfortune to be in the coach. But Turner was definitely murdered. Their hired coach supposedly overturned at night, with the full, lit coach lanterns breaking, the oil spilling out and igniting. Trapped inside the coach, your father and his wife were burned to death.”

By now, Jessica had her hand to her mouth, finally shaken out of her reserve. “My God. I always believed he was destined for hellfire. But not while he was still aboveground. Yet, clearly an accident. Why did you question it?”

Gideon set down his wineglass. “I was already aware of other deaths, other members of the Society perishing in accidents. All, like your father, wearing the rose. Orford, last spring, shot by mistake by another hunter in his party—just whom, nobody could say, as they were all drunk, all shooting as fast as their bearers could load for them. Sir George Dunmore drowned six months ago after somehow toppling into the Channel from a friend’s yacht in the middle of the night, the conclusion being that he must have slipped on the rainwet deck and tumbled overboard.”

“Both plausible conclusions,” Jessica said. “But there was another one?”

“Yes, the one that finally aroused my suspicions. A few months later it was Baron Harden’s turn to be careless. He took a tumble down a dark flight of stairs after leaving his mistress. When I heard of your father’s accident just outside London, most especially the part about the coach lamps, I was already past believing all these accidents were a matter of coincidence. I immediately traveled to the estate, to view the bodies for myself before they were interred.”

Jessica’s brown eyes widened. “That’s ghoulish. How could you even look at them?”

He was in no mood to tread softly. “The bodies were in no fit condition to be laid out in the house, thankfully. So the answer to your how is, with a fat bribe to the groom guarding the remains in the stables until the interment, my extremely discreet physician brought along for his expertise, my valet, Gibbons, holding up a lantern for us, handkerchiefs tied around all our faces and wearing riding gloves we immediately consigned to the waste bin.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “I believe I was asking a rhetorical question. But thank you for that explanation. You are a determined man, aren’t you?”

“When I want answers, yes, I go after them. They actually didn’t die in the fire, Jessica. From what my physician could tell, admitting my own limited contact with dead bodies, they’d both sustained pistol shots to their skulls. Fire doesn’t melt bones, most of all, the skull. With a little prodding at the remains, the holes were not that difficult to spot.”