Читать книгу The Regency Redgraves: What an Earl Wants / What a Lady Needs / What a Gentleman Desires / What a Hero Dares - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 14

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.”

“Richard’s never wrong.”

“Richard should withdraw his nose from my business before he loses it. Who are these women?”

“I’m not going to continue this discussion,” Jessica said, belatedly remembering the young tiger hanging on to the back of the curricle. “Pas devant l’enfant.”

“Not in front of the child? Ah, you refer to Thomas. He’s been in my employ for two years, and rendered impervious to shock long before, and if not then, long since.” Without turning around, he raised his voice to ask, “Haven’t you, Thomas?”

“Sir?”

“See, he isn’t even listening, are you, Thomas?”

“Singing inside my head, my lord, like always. Would you like me to sing outside it for his lordship?”

“Perhaps another time. Go back to your inside singing.”

Jessica shot a quick look behind her, to see the tiger had closed his eyes and was tipping his head from side to side as his lips moved, clearly singing “inside his head.”

“He’s really singing inside his head?”

“Yes, and much preferable to having him sing outside it, which he’s only allowed to do around the horses, that unaccountably seem to enjoy the sound of Thomas’s joyful noise. I think they’re reminded of the goat we keep in the stables at Redgrave Manor to bear them company. Both bray with great enthusiasm.”

Don’t make me like you, Jessica warned him mentally…and perhaps herself. “The first is kept in Mount Street, the second is a Covent Garden warbler and the others are society ladies. The widow Orford and—oh.”

“The widow and the niece of two of our murdered society members, yes, cultivated—but not in the literal sense—for any information they might have. But to be fair, the usually infallible Richard couldn’t know that. As to Curzon Street and warbling, he is, sadly, behind the times. The warbler sings elsewhere, with my full approval and a fairly impressive strand of pearls around her slim neck. Do you like pearls?”

“More than I like you,” Jessica grumbled half under her breath, but not because Mount Street had not been denied. Really. She didn’t care. Not a whit! “I was merely making a point, Gideon. I don’t care if you cultivate half of London. I just have no plans to have my name added to that lengthy list.”

“‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, gang aft agley…’” Gideon quoted, directing his cattle to the flagway.

“‘And leave us nought but grief an’ pain for promis’d joy,’” Jessica ended, probably giving away more of her fears about this man than she should have allowed.

“And a pretty piece of jewelry,” Gideon quipped, setting the brake and tying the ribbons around it as Thomas leaped down and ran to the horse’s heads. “But we’ll argue this later, most likely in bed.” Then, as she opened her mouth to protest, he winked and lightly jumped down from the seat, to come around the back of the curricle and offer her his hand.

She ignored it, preferring to look up at the facade of the imposing stone structure in front of her. “Where are we?”

“Cavendish Square. Old, respected, the town residences of some of the most stuffy and high in the instep members of the ton. And my grandmother, whose presence for some casts a blight on the entire neighborhood.”

Jessica looked at the mansion again. “Your grandmother? I thought you meant you would be stopping at some shop for a moment. Why in heaven’s name would you bring me to see your grandmother?” She was nearly squeaking, she was that shocked. And that confused. Even one of the scandalous Redgraves didn’t bring his mistress…lover…whatever the devil he thought she was…to visit his grandmother. But he had!

“You’re forgetting she was there during the heyday of my father’s secret society. She was there the morning my father was shot. I’ve already told her about my suspicions as to the rash of accidental deaths, and about what’s been happening at Redgrave Manor. I neglected to tell her about you, but now that I understand our possible predicament with Adam, I thought we should all three of us put our heads together.”

“To come up with what? Other than possibly the most embarrassing quarter hour of my life?” She clasped her hands together, avoiding his outstretched hand. “I’m not going in there. Only a fool would go in there.”

“Your parents were respected members of the ton. You speak French. You can quote Robert Burns. I haven’t had the pleasure of sharing a meal with you, but I’m tolerably certain you don’t line up your peas on a knife blade and then attempt to slide them down your gullet—although your brother thinks that quite the height of hilarity.”

“I run an illegal gaming establishment,” Jessica whispered hoarsely.

“A minor impediment, not that Trixie would give a damn. I can name at least five titled ladies who discreetly encourage gaming in their Mayfair residences, three of whom who hold faro banks.”

This information came as a shock to Jessica. “Then why did you turn up your nose—not that such a thing is physically possible, not with that beak of yours—when you realized you’d walked into my gaming room?”

“References to my nose to one side, I leaped to a mistaken conclusion. Mildred, you understand.”

“Oh,” Jessica said in a small voice, but then rallied. “But I’m still not going in there.”

“Yes, you are,” Gideon corrected her just before he reached up, put his hands on her waist and bodily lifted her down to the flagway as if she weighed no more than a feather. “I’d say my grandmother is harmless, but that would be a lie, so be on your toes. We need information, Jessica, and Trixie’s the fastest way to it. She is, however, also a firm believer in quid pro quo, so she’ll demand information in exchange.”

“Have you ever stopped to wonder what it is you’d do if you had whatever information it is you think we need?”

“You mean other than returning my father’s remains to Redgrave Manor? I may not revere the man’s memory, but I’ll be damned if I’ll simply shrug my shoulders and ignore what I now know. Other than that, no, not really. Although it might be charitable of me to find a way to put a stop to these accidents, don’t you think?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “I doubt any of them deserve saving. Except Adam. He will grow up someday, won’t he?”

“I’d hoped to send him off to school and forget about him until he reached his majority. But I suppose I could take him in hand, if we are to assume the Society might soon show an interest in him. Would I be rewarded? I can think of several ways you could accomplish that.”

“I’ll have Doreen make you a large bowl of fish chowder,” Jessica said as the front door of the mansion opened and a worried-looking older man in butler’s black stuck his head into the breach.

“Excuse me, my lord, but her ladyship says you and the young miss are to come or go, but don’t just stand out here with your fingers in your mouth or else people will wonder if your brain cracked. Sir.”

“She said all that, did she, Soames? In just that way?” Gideon asked, extending his arm to Jessica, who saw no recourse now but to take it. His grandmother had been looking down at them from one of the windows? How embarrassing!

“She may have said a few more words I chose to either alter or discard rather than repeat them in front of the young miss, my lord, but I believe you can imagine them.”

“Yes,” Gideon said, handing over his hat and gloves to a liveried footman while Soames relieved Jessica of her shawl. “I believe I can. We’ll find our own way upstairs.”

“She’s a tartar?” Jessica whispered the question as they mounted the wide, curving staircase, covertly examining the life-size marble statues set in niches along the wall. They were all male and curiously devoid of fig leaves.

“Hard and strict and abrasive? Hardly. She’s sweetness itself, and her conversation is delightful. It’s only when you go to move that you realize you’ve been sliced into ribbons. Give as good as you get, Jessica. She likes that.”

“It would appear she likes others things, as well. Those statues are all naked,” she mumbled as they gained the landing and another wide foyer. “Everything is so opulent, so beautiful, it took me a moment to believe I was seeing what I saw.”

“Trixie has a curious notion of humor and never ordered them removed after my grandfather died. Imagine the ton, cooling their heels for a good half hour as they stand cheek by jowl on the stairs, waiting to be announced for one of Trixie’s famous balls. The ladies never know where to look. The gentlemen vary in their reaction. Red ears. Quiet sniggers. Open admiration for some, which is rather disconcerting. It has been whispered that there’s also an extensive collection of interesting paintings, etchings, even playing cards and a fascinatingly explicit set of china. If it exists, we grandchildren have not been allowed to inspect the collection, although I imagine we will be forced to do so at some point when Trixie dies, which she is not planning to do.”

He didn’t sound ashamed but only amused. “I’ve heard you Redgraves referred to as scandalous. I thought the reference referred only to the circumstances around your father’s death. And whispers of his Society, of course. I had no idea—”

“No idea the taint goes beyond my father? It’s said we Redgraves descend from a long line of satyrs. Trixie is our grandfather’s third wife, the two others having died, the first in childbed, the second murdered by her lover. Trixie was barely sixteen when she was brought to the marriage bed by a man thirty years her senior. Truthfully, I think she was even younger than that. I once researched the subject and found the legal age for females to marry during that time was twelve.”

“I doubt she’d want anyone to think she’s four years older than assumed,” Jessica said, inwardly cringing at the thought of a twelve-year-old bride. “Although perhaps not.”

“It was another time, and definitely not a better one. In any case, my father merely resurrected what had been created by my grandfather years earlier. As I already told you, there were many such clubs back then. Most were tame imitations of Dashwood’s, but not all. Some were worse, both here and in Ireland, other places. If we want to know the truth about the Society and its secrets, we need to talk to Trixie, and with the gloves off. Hers, and yours.”

“We were never going to Richmond, were we?” Jessica asked, looking toward the closed double doors to what had to be the drawing room. A pair of small yellow pug dogs stood outside them with their heads turned hopefully toward Soames, who had followed up the stairs and now scooped up the dogs and carried them away.

“Not today, no. I know this will be embarrassing for you, and I apologize, Jessica, truly. But if you’re at all worried the Society is still active, and they’ll come after your brother at some point, we need to do this.”

“You forgot to remind me that my father was murdered,” Jessica said archly. “Or reiterate your own reasons.”

“I’m Adam’s guardian.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, let’s not go through that again, please. Let’s simply get this over with so that I don’t have to look at you anymore.”

“Not even tonight in Portman Square? Adam is eager to meet his sister at the dinner table.”

“You just made that up.”

His grin made her want to slap him. “True. But he’ll be there, if I have to tie him to the chair. I don’t always play fair, but I’m most always effective when I want something. Now come on,” he said, holding out his arm. “We stand out here any longer, Trixie will be forced to abandon her pose of lady-at-leisure and come hunting us.”

And it was a lady-at-leisure Jessica saw when they entered the blue-and-white drawing room, a large chamber filled with sunlight and enormous vases and bowls stuffed with fresh flowers.

The Dowager Countess of Saltwood reclined on an intricately carved white-and-gilt one-armed lounge, her dainty feet encased in silver slippers tucked up beside her, her slim body draped in a high-waisted lace-edged burgundy silk gown cut for a much younger woman, colored for a dowdy matron. The effect was startlingly effective.

Her hair, a wondrous curled mass of white-gold ringlets woven through with several narrow silver ribbons, teased at her forehead, caressed her slim neck, touched on her right shoulder. She was painted, definitely, but with a subtle hand, so that the color in her cheeks and on her smiling mouth seemed natural.

If this was Beatrix Redgrave at—at Jessica’s quick calculations—nearly seventy years of age, the Trixie of her youth must have been the most stunningly beautiful woman ever born.

Jessica immediately felt too tall, incredibly plain and decidedly gauche, as she imagined every woman ever in the same room with the dowager countess had felt from the time Trixie had reached her fifth birthday.

“Gideon, my pet!” the woman exclaimed now, her voice like the soft tinkling of delicate silver bells. She raised one small, heavily be-ringed hand for his kiss. “What dastardly thing have I done that merits me two visits from my eldest grandson in as many days? You must tell me, so that I can repeat the transgression again and again, as I see you far too seldom.”

She looked past Gideon to smile at Jessica, who immediately curtsied. “And who is this gorgeous creature? She puts me in mind of dearest Juliette Rècamier, whom I so enjoyed when we met in Coppet while I was visiting Madame de Staël. Coppet is in Switzerland, pet,” she said as an aside to Gideon. “Such a beauty that one is, if poor as a church mouse, dear thing, and married at fifteen to her own father, if rumor is to be believed. And then there’s that unfortunate business about her inability to enjoy—Ah, but that’s again, only rumor. Suffice it to say the woman has been painted time and time again as a virginal figure.”

If the dowager countess was hoping to put Jessica to the blush, she had badly misjudged her by appearance: in point of fact, the butter-yellow gown with its modest neckline and her total lack of jewelry, such as a “fairly impressive strand of pearls.”

Gideon quickly stepped in and made the introductions, so that Jessica found herself curtsying yet again before being invited to sit. Soames entered the room then, trailed by two maids who quickly arranged a magnificent tea tray on a low table in front of Jessica, who was then asked to pour.

A test, possibly? To see if this Jessica Linden woman who had shown up here unannounced with her grandson had any notion of how to properly serve tea? What a wicked woman!

“I would be delighted,” Jessica said, inching forward on her chair. “Your ladyship will, I’m convinced, forgo sugar. In favor of cream.”

“Teased one naughty puss to the other,” her ladyship said, nodding her head in acknowledgement of the hit while delivering one of her own. “All right, Gideon, we’ve no simpering miss here. Who is she?”

“Jessica’s the half sister of my new ward, Adam Collier. You remember him. You met last week in Bond Street.”

“The cork-brained popinjay?” Trixie looked at Jessica again. “Clearly his mother was the imbecile in that union, although I never put much store by Turner Collier’s ability to think much beyond his—No, don’t frown so, Gideon, I’ll be good.”

Jessica bit back a smile. The dowager countess was so petite, so beautiful, the very picture of a sweet and gracious lady. When she spoke as she did now, it was rather like the surprise one felt when a child uttered a naughty word. You really weren’t sure at first you’d heard correctly. A line from an old nursery rhyme flitted through Jessica’s head: And when she was good she was very, very good…and when she was bad…

Trixie’s expression took on the attitude of interested listener. “Now explain why this cheeky child is here. I’m not such a slow-top that I don’t realize it has something to do with what we discussed yesterday.”

It didn’t take long for Gideon to relate Jessica’s concerns that the Society might approach Adam to take his father’s place in the devil’s dozen, but the dowager countess quickly pooh-poohed any notion the Society was still active.

“I won’t say it ended with Barry’s death, not immediately, but it couldn’t have gone on for more than another year before straggling to a halt, or I would have known.”

“Your grandson is of the opinion you know everything, your ladyship, up to snuff on all suits, as it were,” Jessica said as she offered the woman a small plate of iced cakes. Gideon had warned she’d have to give in order to get, and she would do so now. “As I was promised as the guest of honor at one of their ceremonies five years ago, I can only conclude he’s incorrect, and you don’t know everything.” She raised her chin a fraction. “Or you’re lying.”

Trixie’s kohl-darkened eyes assessed Jessica again and then slid to her grandson. “Linden, you said?”

“Yes, James Linden. Jessica’s late husband.”

The dowager countess swung her feet to the floor and sat up, again skewering Jessica with a look. “Byblow of a baron who shall remain nameless, invested with all the myriad vices of his father and the cunning of his blowsy strumpet of a mother—perished of the clap, I believe, the pair of them, and the baron’s innocent wife, as well, poor thing. Jamie Linden. Now there’s a name I’d hoped never to hear again. Dead now? Wonderful. If you were smart, you buried him upside down, so he couldn’t dig himself out, but only closer to hell.”

“Actually, ma’am, we left him in the bed where he died, only careful to first empty his pockets,” Jessica said, feeling more vindicated for what she’d done then she’d ever had until this moment. “I have no idea what the innkeeper did with the body.”

“We? You said ‘we’? No, don’t answer that yet, we’ll get to it. Gideon, clear away this insipid tea and pour us all some wine. Begin at the beginning, Jessica, if you please.”

“I’d rather not if you don’t mind, ma’am.”

“I do mind, most especially that you insist upon calling me ma’am, as if I’ve one foot hovering over an open grave. Perhaps it would help if you called me Trixie, as I believe we’re going to be discussing things that could only be hindered by formality. Lord knows it would help me. Ma’am?” She gave a delicate shudder of her slim shoulders.

Jessica bowed her head, concentrating on her hands, folded in her lap. “Thank you…Trixie. But I’d still rather not.”

Gideon pressed a wineglass into her hands. “She’ll have it from you one way or another, you know. Trixie? Who was Jamie Linden, other than some anonymous baron’s bastard?”

“When I knew him? Thank you, pet.” She took the wineglass and quickly downed half its contents. “No, the foul taste is still in my mouth, just from saying his name. Who was Jamie Linden? I suppose that would depend on the day of the week. Card shark, schemer, purveyor of pipe dreams too numerous to enumerate and always with airs above his station. When riding high, he was accepted on the fringes of society, as he always knew the location of the best cockfights, the jockey who could be bribed to lace his mount with pepper to get a good run—there was this one time he managed to have a live river eel shoved up a stallion’s rump just before the race. Ran like the wind, pet, that horse did, and if it hadn’t managed to expel the thing before the bets were settled, your father would have pocketed a tidy purse.”

Jessica felt herself blushing. She had been the man’s wife. How could she look at Gideon again and not see condemnation or, worse, pity in his eyes?

“So Linden was one of my father’s contemporaries?”

Jessica could feel Gideon’s gaze on her, imagine him adding figures in his head.

“Yes, but not a friend. Jamie Linden was your father’s man of all work, Gideon,” Trixie said. “He would make arrangements, ease his way whenever necessary. Provide the entertainment for their gatherings, as it were. If the ceremonies did go on, I would imagine he continued to offer his services as procurer.”

Jessica took a swallow of wine, as her mouth had gone quite dry.

“You would imagine, Trixie?” Gideon asked, his voice low and hard. “You’re still telling us you didn’t know? I think Jessica’s right. Either you’ve lost your touch, knowing everything there is to know, or you’re lying.”

“And you’re impertinent,” the dowager duchess told him sharply. “All right. I may have…heard things. Five years, you said, dear? I suppose that could be true. As I remember it, old Walter stuck his spoon in the wall five years ago, so they would have needed to hunt up a replacement. Explaining the investiture ceremony Jessica spoke of, you understand. Oh, don’t glare, Gideon, I didn’t make up the rules!”

“What else do you expect me to do?” he asked angrily, and Jessica bowed her head, attempted to make herself invisible if possible.

“I agree. It was all…terrible. And yes, I’ll admit I suspected it was still going on five years ago, in its own haphazard way, not nearly as efficient as when Barry was in charge. He had a true talent for leadership, your father, much of it sadly wasted on feeding his myriad vices as he eventually caught himself up in his own trap. Not all of them continued to wear that damnable rose your father concocted, so you wouldn’t know their names. If they still meet, they’re much more covert now, more of the members from a generation not as familiar to me.”

“But perhaps with the requisite number still replenished with eldest offspring, as Jessica suggests? And yet I was never approached.”

Jessica raised her head to look at Trixie when she didn’t immediately answer Gideon’s question.

“They knew better than to dare come anywhere near you,” she said at last, for a fleeting moment looking every day of her years. “I would have destroyed them.”

“And Adam?” Jessica asked, her heart pounding.

Trixie retook her reclined position. “Yes, please, back to the twit. He’d be the perfect candidate, actually. Devoted to his own pleasures, not too sharp in his wits, although clearly with a high opinion of himself even if everyone else refuses to see his brilliance. Easily coddled into most any stupidity, led by his most intimate appendage, as it were, introduced to the delights of the flesh as his birthright, told he was better than anyone, privileged, untouchable. Heady stuff, especially for a twit. He’d do as a lesser member—everyone can find a good use for a biddable idiot.”

Gideon sat down beside Jessica; she resisted the urge to reach out, take his hand. What his grandmother was saying couldn’t be easy for him to hear; it certainly wasn’t easy for her. “Lesser member? There are—were—degrees of membership, even inside the devil’s dozen?”

“Everything has tiers, pet. And leaders. There were their other interests to consider—our way of government being uppermost. Barry was very much impressed by the French and their third state, the tiers état, and I’m sure, had he lived, would have applauded them for having the good sense to eventually separate their monarchs’ heads from their shoulders.”

“There was a dislike for kings?” Gideon asked, sounding somewhat surprised. Jessica decided he had a flair for playacting, and that Trixie was only now getting to the part of her tale that interested him most.

“Hatred would be a better term. Disgust, for another. Hanoverian upstarts, beginning with the first George, who brought his odiferous sauerkraut and guttural language to the Crown, followed by his forgettable son. And then Farmer George, our current mad king, who lost us the American colonies. Barry didn’t live to see the posturing buffoon who is destined to be the fourth George come into his full flower of idiocy, but I can imagine his displeasure with the man. And for all government save the one he and his acolytes would have erected in its place. Remember, pet, your father died in 1789. The Bastille had just fallen. Passions were running quite high throughout England, both in support of the French and in fear of the same thing happening here. But that’s enough of that, and I’m sure it all died with Barry.”

“They were planning their own revolution?”

“You’ll badger me until you get it all, won’t you? You’re a lot like me in that regard. Very well. But then we will never speak of this again. I mean that, Gideon, never again. Even two decades in the past, what your father planned could come back to destroy the Redgraves. Sedition? Regicide? No, we don’t speak of it.”

She held out her wineglass to be refilled, waiting until Gideon had replenished it and handed it to her before speaking again. “Your father and his cohorts were not the only ones to dream such dreams. Again, remember the times. Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Pretty words for the masses, opportunities for the ambitious. There were many hot-blooded young men who looked to France and saw what they believed were great opportunities if repeated here in England. your father planned a lot of things. He was young, yes, but as with Caesar’s Cassius, he was ambitious. He took what your grandfather began in the pursuit of pleasure, and saw the possibilities for so much more.”

“But there were only the thirteen,” Jessica pointed out, immediately wishing she hadn’t spoken. The dowager duchess was clearly unhappy with this conversation.

“Yes, thirteen. But providing carefully selected invited guests—there were so many guests, safe they believed, in their masks and cloaks—with free and unbridled access to their every vice, their every twisted appetite? Gathering those of weak moral fiber and yet with entry into every corner of society, every door in government from the House of Commons to the King’s Privy Council, corrupting them, thereby owning them? Think about that. Stupidly, unwittingly, they gave Barry power over them all. It was a brilliant if distasteful strategy, I suppose, as far it went. If I told you some of the names, which I will not, you would be appalled. Sadly, these two decades later, some of them still occupy positions of power.”

She took another sip of wine. “Barry saw in the French unrest what Napoleon Bonaparte must have recognized several years later, knowing someone eventually had to rise from the ashes and take the reins. Although the victories that would bring your father and his handpicked minions into power would not be on the battlefield, but covert—and more than faintly disgusting. I never wanted you to know any of this, Gideon. But he was quite mad, your father. Brilliant, but quite mad. Could he have succeeded? I sincerely doubt that, his appetite for opium would have brought him down, eventually. But it became increasingly clear even to me, his own mother, that he must soon be stopped, one way or another. We would have been ruined if he failed, ruined if he succeeded. I both mourned and rejoiced the day he died, almost welcoming the scandal that followed, as we had been saved from the most damning scandal of them all.”

Jessica turned away as the dowager blinked back tears before taking refuge in her wineglass once more.

The room was silent for a time, a long, uncomfortable time, before Gideon spoke. “How many other members from my father’s time are still alive?”

“One,” she said quietly. “With Turner gone now, too, just the one.”

“Yes, but you’re forgetting those who took their places,” Jessica said, her mind racing. “The eldest offspring. Why couldn’t one of them be our killer, to protect his father’s memory, or to protect his own reputation if word were ever to get out? And what about those guests Trixie spoke of—one or more of them might also feel vulnerable. Your father’s Society was plotting the overthrow of the monarchy, Gideon, for pity’s sake. The Society was still active five years ago in some ways, I promise you that, although I can’t say it functioned as it once had. It may still go on today, in one form or another. But to be a member today would make it logical for anyone to believe there are still plots against the government, and all while Bonaparte threatens to invade us. That’s reason enough for a dozen murders.”

“Now you’re simply speculating, my dears, and rather wildly at that. Without Barry, their leader was gone,” Trixie reminded them. “The ceremonies, the masks, the orgies, the opium eating, I’m sure they went on. It was that side of things that most attracted many of the members, as Barry well knew. So, yes, I know they went on. But I was assured by Ranald Orford himself, the rest of it quickly shriveled to nothingness. Barry made them believe they were capable of anything. Without him, they had to convince themselves, and that wasn’t possible. If they still meet, it’s only to be naughty little boys, nothing more.”

“Naughty?” Jessica was instantly incensed. “My father was going to turn me over to be used in some horrible ceremony.”

Trixie shrugged yet again. “He may have been attempting to impress someone with his loyalty. It has been done before.”

She turned her attention back to Gideon. “That would be unsettling, however. It would mean there’s a clear new leader, perhaps even as strong as Barry. You force me to do some investigating. Go away now, Gideon. Thank God you’ve left off wearing that damnable golden rose. You can’t allow anyone to speculate that you’ve stumbled onto them. Your best strategy is to do nothing else until you hear from me.”

“I don’t know that I want you involved, Trixie,” Gideon said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to Jessica. “If we’re anywhere close to correct with our speculations, you might be putting yourself in danger.”

“Danger? You forget, I have weapons of my own, so don’t worry your head about me. As to the boy? If you truly believe the ceremonies continue, in any way or form, I’d suggest locking him up somewhere. When the world goes mad, you can’t take too many precautions.”