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

Jessica had gone rather pale. “Shot. Not an accident at all. At least they didn’t burn, thank God.”

“No, the fire was meant to obscure the wounds. The coachman, alas, was long gone, so I couldn’t question him.”

“Had he shot them? Perhaps set the coach on fire to cover what he was about. A robbery, I would suppose?”

Gideon shook his head, amazed at her sangfroid. She was shocked, but she showed no signs of subsiding into a swoon; her mind was ticking along in a rational fashion. “Anything’s possible. Am I being too suspicious, Jessica?”

“No,” she said quietly. “My father was always tight with his purse, so the fact he’d hired a coach rather than bring his own cattle and servants to London isn’t surprising. Lord only knows who he hired. Their deaths could have been a result of a robbery, but when combined with the other supposed accidents? All of the men members of your father’s Society?”

“They wore the rose. To me, that links them. Four accidents stretches coincidence a step too far.”

“I only wonder why he and his wife were traveling to London at that time of year. No one can count on the roads being anything but snow-filled or quagmires. Did your sleuthing extend to finding an answer to that question?”

“No, but you’re right, I should have thought of that. I was in London to settle some financial affairs for my former ward, turning them over to her bridegroom’s man of business, or else I wouldn’t have been in town myself.”

“Lucky for you, I suppose, and your theories.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Damn, why didn’t I think to ask myself that question?”

“How lowering to discover one isn’t omnipotent, Gideon,” she said sweetly, so that he glared at her. She shrugged. “I was only thinking it would be interesting to know their reason for the journey. A fanciful mind might even consider the notion they were on their way to a meeting of the Society you’re so certain was dissolved two decades ago.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d alluded to that possibility. He might as well tell her the rest.

“We’ve had some curious happenings at Redgrave Manor in the past year. Glimpses of lit lanterns moving through the estate at night, strange holes appearing inside the greenhouse which, when investigated, seem very much to have been caused by the cave-in of some sort of tunnel being dug beneath it. Oh, yes, and my father’s crypt was broken into. His remains have gone missing.”

“What?”

Well, at last! He had begun to wonder if the woman was completely unflappable.

“Yes, that was very much my reaction, as well. However, in the interests of full and honest disclosure, save for the rare sightings of curious lights at night this past month or more—possibly poachers—I can’t for certain say when the tunnel was dug, but only when that portion of it collapsed. As for the theft of my father’s body, that was only discovered when lightning struck a nearby tree and it fell, a large branch breaking one of the stained glass windows. We none of us enter the mausoleum unless it’s to shelve another Redgrave—we’ve got enough of them in there that we stack them up like bolts of cloth in a Bond Street shop, you see, and then wall them in. The stone used to wall up Barry was on the floor of the crypt, broken in two, the body gone. But again, the theft could have occurred any time in the past twenty years.”

Jessica was quiet for some time, her hands twisting in her lap, before she looked at Gideon again. “Do…do you think perhaps they took him—your father, that is—almost immediately? To, um, to perform their own ceremony? Oh, Lord, that’s disgusting.”

“And only one of several possibilities,” Gideon said, just voicing his thoughts of the past few months aloud easing his mind somewhat. “To whit—propping him up on some throne to overlook their activities? To grind up his bones into powder, mix that in with sheep’s blood or some such ridiculousness, and drink the man? To slice him up, as they did the saints of yore, with each member then blessed to carry a knucklebone as a memento, a holy relic? Don’t answer yet—I’ve had time to consider more than that. There’s one more. Did his followers, as my father was the acknowledged leader, believe the supposed treasure was interred with his bones, and come looking for it?”

Jessica held up her hand to stop him. “Not that last one, surely. A treasure? Why would your family do that? And why would anyone take the body with them, whether there was some sort of treasure to be found there or not?”

“I agree. It was only one of many possibilities, and a rather feeble one at that. However, I do believe, after years of not believing it, there may be some sort of treasure. Some precious gem perhaps, made a part of a larger golden rose, the symbol of the Society? Or something they prayed to—mayhap an enormous diamond stuck into the fat belly of a pagan idol?”

Jessica tucked her legs up on the couch, as if prepared to stay there all night, until she’d somehow solved the problem that so confounded him. “But wouldn’t every member of the Society know the location of that sort of thing? They all gathered for their—I hate saying ceremonies. The word is too respectable for what they did.”

“Drunken orgies?” Gideon offered. “Debaucheries? Deflowerings of whores paid handsomely to pretend they were intact innocents being offered up for some carefully orchestrated sacrifice? The open passing around of wives in some hope of alleviating the boredom of marital fidelity? Christ! Their own wives. Were they willing or unwilling, do you think?”

She shot him a dark glance that made him want to know more of what had happened to have her run off with James Linden. “I’m not convinced the members cared. All done in praise of the devil.”

“Devil worship. Imitators of Sir Francis Dashwood and his ilk, but without any cursory bow to a pretense of an interest in the intellectual. we’re back to that. I’d rather think them drunks and idiots. Otherwise I’d have to believe my father—my father!—discovered a way to make them all able to believe they were better than they were, acting in some higher purpose. Still, it’s possible. I don’t know how he’d have accomplished it, how any one person manages to twist minds to do his every bidding, no matter how vile, but he could have managed it.”

“Until his wife shot him in the back when he was about to duel down her lover,” Jessica said quietly. “I’m sorry. Was…the man one of the Society?”

“I can’t say anything for certain. I was only nine years old at the time. I thought he was my new tutor, a Frenchman who’d fled France immediately after the fall of the Bastille. He’d only been at the Manor for a few weeks before both he and my mother were gone.”

“Again, I’m sorry, Gideon. Not that your father was shot, I can’t honestly say that, but that you lost your mother. I’m certain she didn’t want to leave you. She must have felt she had no choice.”

“I wonder if she would have made that choice if she could have known she and her lover would be swept up in the Terror two years later and sent to the guillotine. As someone reminded me just today, in the end the bill must always be paid.”

For a moment, he could see his mother in his mind’s eye. Beautiful, loving, but sad. Her eyes had always been so sad. There had been times he could coax a smile from her, but those times had been seldom. He treasured those few good memories. Strangely, he remembered his father only through the painting of him as a young man that hung in the portrait gallery.

Damn, but this woman was getting to him. He never thought about the boy he’d been twenty years ago. He’d never spoken of any of this. Not with his siblings, not with his grandmother. He’d shut it all down, all he’d felt at the time, all he’d so carefully avoided since he’d been awakened to the news of what had happened just before dawn that long-ago morning. Max and Val had been too young, and Katherine only an infant. He’d been the only one to really understand what dead meant, what gone meant.

Jessica got to her feet. “So what bill has come due for the members of the Society?”

Gideon snapped himself back to attention.

“I can think of one theory. It’s not as if any of them could be proud of what they’ve done, and want it out in the world. The sins of relatively young men, trotted out for an airing twenty years later, could be more than embarrassing. Add even the whisper of devil worship to the mix, and the secret becomes dangerous. Your father sat in Parliament, remember. Someone may be blackmailing the others, or simply killing them off to silence them. I can’t even be sure how many of them there are. There could be some who no longer wear the rose.”

“Thirteen,” Jessica said quietly. “The devil’s dozen. At any time, there must be thirteen. James told me that much. One dies, two die, they must be replaced, or there can be no ceremonies. I promise you, they were still active five years ago. There could have been several new members since your father’s time. The usual method was to draw from the blood relatives of the members. And, of course, a member’s eldest son inherited his father’s position by right.”

Gideon looked at her curiously. One day they’d have to speak more of this James Linden. “No one has ever approached me.”

“You were a child when your father…died. As an adult, I doubt anyone would have dared. You’re a rather formidable man, Gideon.”

He looked at her in sudden realization. “Adam.”

“Yes, very good. Adam. Because the Society must still exist, I’m certain of that now more than ever. I’ll grant you, I was appalled at what I saw this morning, but not so much so that I’m not relieved he’s…he’s…well, we both know what he is.”

“A bacon-brained halfling who couldn’t locate his own backside with both hands?”

Jessica smiled. “Thank you. Adam is, after all, my brother. I didn’t want to say it myself.”

“You’re welcome. Still, until and unless you’re proven wrong, I suppose I’m now doomed to keeping him close, explaining that particular part of his inheritance, and then watching over him?”

“Yes. I was going to tell you tonight, if I thought I could convince you to listen to reason. Because you’re right, I can’t protect him from the Society if they’re desperate enough to go after him. But you can. My initial reaction was they wouldn’t want him. But if they’ve run out of suitable candidates, they might make an exception.”

“You say I can protect him, and I can. From the ones I know of, yes, but we can’t know them all,” Gideon said, the futility of what he was attempting to do all but smacking him in the face like a cold, wet cloth. He’d been curious, intrigued, and now he was beholden, damn it, the reluctant guardian of one Adam Collier, spotty-faced giggling twit who’d probably think dressing up in a mask and hooded cloak, playing at devil worship, to be the height of good fun.

But it was left to Jessica to really shock him.

“We might, soon. You’ve been seen sporting that horrible golden rose, remember? When I first saw it, I thought you were a member, something that should have occurred to me before I ever contacted you, I suppose. Still, I almost immediately realized you’re not. I believe you on that head.”

“I’d hoped wearing it would—I don’t really know what I’d hoped. I’ll not wear it again. And, again, I apologize.”

“Yes, I know. As I apologize for the pistol. But who is to say, now that my father’s dead, and considering Adam’s clear unsuitability once anyone with two reasonably good eyes sees him, that rose might gain you an invitation to be the new thirteenth member. The eldest child of the founder, Gideon? You’d be a splendid catch.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY’D GONE BACK DOWNSTAIRS separately, Jessica suggesting it would be better that way. He could simply slip into the gaming room, hopefully crowded at this hour, and she would come down a few minutes later, going directly to the ground-floor supper room to mingle with the patrons stuffing their faces at her expense and hopefully guide them back to the tables.

After all, she still had her business to attend to, and Gideon had kept her from it long enough.

He’d agreed, and left her once they’d decided on an hour to meet the next day. He suggested she come to Portman Square. She’d politely declined, and they’d settled on his coming for her at noon, in his curricle, for a ride to Richmond Park.

“You’re amenable to being seen in public with me?” she’d asked, thinking of his consequence.

“Your half brother is my ward. I see nothing unusual in the two of us becoming acquainted. You’re a widow who earns her living with her uncle, hosting intellectual evenings, correct?”

“And the bloody blazes with anyone who knows better and who’d dare whisper otherwise?”

“I’m not known for concerning myself overmuch with whispers. We’ll make one brief call before getting on our way, if you don’t mind.”

“You have someone you wish me to meet?” She was genuinely surprised at that.

His smile had curled her toes. “Someone I wish to shock would be more accurate. Although I doubt that’s possible. Until tomorrow, Jessica.”

And that had been that. He’d bowed in her direction, and taken his leave. Just as if they’d never been intimate. Just as if their conversation following that intimacy had centered on the state of the weather, or the fripperies of the latest fashions.

He was the most confounding man.

She had remained on the gaming floor until three, when the last of their patrons had finally toddled off, four young gentlemen slightly lighter in their pockets but vowing they’d had the best of good times and would return for a chance to recoup their losses. One of them had very pointedly winked at Mildred, who’d shot a quick, worried glance toward Jessica.

“Nothing more than a friendly round of slap and tickle behind the supper room,” the girl had promised before heading for the kitchens, as her duties included helping Doreen and Seth clear away the remains of the food and dirtied dishes.

Jessica hadn’t found it in her heart to remonstrate with the girl. Not now, considering she herself had gone far beyond a friendly round of slap and tickle. And at last understood its appeal, she’d reminded herself, avoiding Richard’s curious look.

They quietly had gone about the business of gathering up cards and chips and covering the tables with cloths, Jessica still avoiding Richard’s pointed glances until he’d at last directly asked her if perhaps it wasn’t time to close up shop and move their enterprise to Bath, or even Tunbridge Wells.

“I’m fine, Richard,” she’d assured him. “We’re fine. Coming to London was your idea, remember? We’ll soon be able to afford our inn. It would take another two or even three years to earn enough money anywhere but here.”

“He could destroy you with a snap of his fingers.” Richard had come around the faro table to cock his head and look into her eyes. “He may have already done so. You’ve got a new look about you, Jess, and I don’t like it. Soft around the edges. You can’t afford to think like a woman. I always felt that was your best defense—you don’t think like a woman. James beat that softness out of you long ago. Your brother or no, this is not the time to discover you still have a heart.”

“My heart is not involved, Richard,” she’d told him. “What Gid—what the earl and I have between us is strictly business. He wants the Society destroyed, and so do I. For Adam’s sake, for my sake. That’s all it is.”

“And now you’re lying to me. Me, who knows the truth. Two days, undoing the trust of more than four years together.” He’d sighed, shaken his gray head. “We’re all we’ve got, Jess, you and me. At the end of the day, when he’s done with you, that’s all we’ll still have. So you guard that heart you say isn’t at risk, and I’ll be here to pick up the pieces, as always.”

Jessica had kissed him on the cheek, given him a fierce hug, and they’d gone back to work. As it was, she’d have only a few hours’ sleep before Gideon returned to Jermyn Street. Then she’d crawled into her unmade bed to realize Gideon had left his scent behind, and even those few hours of oblivion had mostly alluded her. she didn’t fall asleep until nearly dawn and woke shortly after ten, her eyes going immediately wide and shocked as she threw back the tangled covers, grabbed at James’s banyan to cover her bare body and went in search of Mildred and the tub they kept in the kitchens.

“Doreen!” she called out as she ran barefoot down the stairs. “I need a tub, now. And fresh clothing. And something to eat. Doreen—oh, my God!”

She clasped the wrapper more tightly around her at breast and thigh as Seth looked up from the table, a piece of thickly slathered toast clamped between his jaws, his eyes gone round as saucers.

“Out!” she commanded, not daring to let go of the wrapper in order to point him toward the door.

Seth scraped back the chair and stood up, the toast still held in his teeth. He was looking at her bare feet, for pity’s sake, as if he’d never before in his life seen a woman’s toes. Strawberry jam slid off the slice of toast and plopped onto the floor, unnoticed.

“Come along, Seth,” Richard said calmly, appearing from behind Jessica and walking over to take the boy’s arm. “We’ll leave your corruption to another time.” He stopped in front of Jessica and pushed the boy ahead of him, through the doorway. “I consider it a blessing of our understanding that you do not cavil at prancing about this place in all manner of undress, but now we have the boy to consider.”

“I know, I know. I didn’t think. I overslept, and Gid—and the earl will be here at noon.”

“Gideon. I can resign myself to hearing you call your lover by his name.”

“He’s not my—Oh, hang it, Richard. It’s not as if I’m some vestal virgin, now, is it?”

“And he’s a very pretty man. I don’t fault you your attraction, even as it surprises me. But wounds heal, so that’s probably a good thing. It’s the avoidance of new wounds that worries me. Seth and I are just back from the stalls at Covent Garden,” he went on, just as if he hadn’t all but delivered a stern warning, at least stern for Richard. “Capons were too dear, so we settled on fish chowder for this evening’s suppers.”

“I loathe fish chowder,” she said, smiling. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you?”

“With my usual subtlety, yes. Wear the yellow. It suits you. But put up your hair. It will drive him mad. He shouldn’t be the only one to have slipped half her wits, should he?”

And then Richard was gone, and Doreen was pouring a mere two inches of heated water into the small tin tub.

Jessica was just putting the final pin in her slightly damp hair when Doreen knocked on the bedchamber door to tell her his lordship had sent in his tiger. His name was Thomas—the cutest little scrap, really, and all dressed in the finest livery—to beg Mrs. Linden didn’t keep the earl’s bays standing above five minutes, because that’s what he said, and he said it quite nicely, and called her ma’am and everything, all so very prettylike.

“I’m ready,” Jessica responded quickly to cut Doreen off, grabbing up her bonnet and shawl. “How do I look?”

“Like spring itself, Mrs. Linden,” the maid of all work and front door sentry exclaimed, clapping her hands. “You ain’t worn the yellow since last summer, now have you, and it’s a shame the sun shines so little here, though thank the saints it’s fine today, because the fog is yellow itself at times and dirties everything. Why, it took me hours to brush it all away last time you wore it. Now when was that? Oh, yes, last summer.”

“Thank you,” Jessica told her, chagrined that she’d so forgotten herself as to think Doreen could give a simple answer to a simple question. Still, if there were ever a person who could stall a constable on the ground floor whilst Jessica and Richard and their patrons hastily stowed the cards and markers and pulled out the tomes of poetry, it was Doreen.

The maid’s prattle followed Jessica all the way down to the street and outside, where Doreen pointed to the young tiger and said, “See? Cutest little imp. Now you hold on tight once his lordship puts you to riding back there, young man,” she called out, wagging a finger at him.

Jessica avoided Gideon’s amused expression as the tiger helped her up onto the seat. He was, as usual, looking fine as nine pence as he lightly held the ribbons while his bays signaled their willingness to spring, his curly brimmed beaver at a jaunty angle on his head, his cravat a miracle of snow-white cloth. And no golden rose stuck in the center of it.

“And again, thank you, Doreen. I understand it’s to be the dreaded fish chowder tonight. You must have a considerable amount of chopping to do?”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Linden. First the onions. They always make me cry, so I get them out of the way directly at the start. Then there’s the pork fat, and that needs must be sliced thin, and all of the potatoes and the parsley and such. Mr. Borders brought us back some fine bunches of carrots, and I was thinking about putting in some of them while I was about it, seeing as how fish chowder takes most anything, doesn’t it, and mayhap some—”

Jessica waved to Doreen as Gideon released the brake the moment the tiger was up behind them and then turned her face forward to hide her smile. “Doreen quite delights in detail,” she said as they moved into the light noon traffic at the corner.

“The correct term is excruciating detail. I had a tutor rather like that. Max and I put a frog in his bed. Seven frogs, actually, and all at once. People always expect an even number. Although we think it was the fifth that had him hastily penning his resignation. Still, if you ever wish a comprehensive accounting of the major agricultural products of India, feel free to apply to me. You look exasperatingly pretty today, Mrs. Linden. Were the pins truly necessary?”

Jessica touched a hand to her bare nape, her bent elbow nicely concealing her triumphant smile. “Richard thought so. Exasperating was exactly what he’d hoped for.”

“Your uncle doesn’t care for me?”

“More correctly, he cares for me. He believes you may be out to destroy me.”

Gideon didn’t react by so much as a flicker of an eyelid. “Really? Has he given any indication as to how I’m to go about this destruction?”

“He believes you’ve already begun. But I assured him I know what I’m doing.”

“Good for you. And you’re convinced of that?”

She turned to look at his profile, which could have been chiseled out of the finest marble by a master sculptor. Except that she knew his lips were warm and soft, not cold and hard like stone. A lie seemed in order. “Utterly.”

“So you didn’t dream of me last night?”

Jessica folded her hands in her lap. “No.” As she’d barely slept at all and then it had been the deep sleep of exhaustion, that answer was mostly truthful.

He turned to look at her, his dark eyes alive with mischief. “Now there’s a pity. I dreamed of you. Would you care to hear about my dream?”

“Again, no.”

“Again, a pity. It all but had me flying to Jermyn Street at dawn, to knock down your door.”

“I thought we’d agreed. That doesn’t happen again.”

He turned to face forward once more. “You pronounced, Jessica. I agreed to nothing. If we’re to work together, we may as well continue to enjoy each other.”

She very nearly opened her mouth to say she hadn’t enjoyed him at all, but even she knew she couldn’t tell that particular clunker with any hope of being believed. “I won’t be your mistress. I’ll keep the five hundred pounds you all but tossed away at the faro table because half of it is by rights Richard’s, but don’t insult me like that again. You’re banned from the cards at Jermyn Street. Besides, four women should be more than enough for any man.”

He laughed. “Four? At one and the same time? Madam, I enjoy my pleasures, but that much pleasure would have me a bent and crippled man by now.”