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 19

“SON OF A BITCH. Bloody damn son of a bitch…”

Jessica shot a look to Trixie, who was pointedly inspecting the perfectly buffed nails on her left hand, and approached the bed. She didn’t want to look, but Gideon was looking, so she supposed she should be a supporting prop for her husband to lean on, or some such thing.

After all, it was bad enough Kate had plunked herself down in the facing chair halfway through her grandmother’s explanation, laughing so hard she’d been forced to clutch her arms about her waist as she rocked back and forth in the chair, fighting a bout of hiccups. Shy and missish were not words one could ever think to use to describe Lady Katherine Redgrave.

They’d been talking, the marquis and Trixie, nattering of this and that over the late supper Soames had set out, the remains of which were still in evidence. Speaking of this and that, she’d said again, adding as she looked pointedly to Gideon, “And perhaps a few other things.”

She’d thought to tease, flattering the man by kicking off one small slipper and running her silk-clad toes up and down his leg and…well, there was travel involved, and that would be all she’d say. That distraction had done wonders at loosening the man’s tongue.

There came a moment, however, only a moment, when she may have asked too pointed a question, or perhaps given too much away by dint of one of her comments. In any event, the marquis made to leave, which of course he could not do, not in his current mood, one that bordered on suspicion, of all silly things. It was only practical that she…distract him.

The distraction had ended happily, albeit, for the marquis, also permanently.

“He’s really dead?” Jessica asked, looking down at the sheet-covered mound that had until recently been the Marquis of Mellis.

“Oh, yes, he’s dead,” Gideon grumbled. “There’s probably a lot to be said for dogs and fires and snifters of brandy. At least after seventy. Although, as exits go, I suppose it wouldn’t be all that terrible.”

“Excuse me?”

He looked at her and then blinked. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid my mind was wandering. It’s not every day I see a naked nobleman in my grandmother’s bed, alive or dead. In fact, I try not to think about Trixie’s bed in any way or form.”

“I should certainly hope so.” Jessica leaned her head against his upper arm. “He’s rather large, isn’t he? What are we going to do with him?”

Kate, apparently at last recovered from her fit of giggles, was beside them now, also looking down at the mounded sheet. “He can’t stay here. At least not precisely here.” She reached for the edge of the sheet. “Come on, you two, we’ll have to get him dressed.”

Gideon’s hand shot out, his fingers clamping around his sister’s wrist. “There are times, Katherine, when I could cheerfully throttle you. Downstairs. Now. All three of you. And send Soames in here.”

Jessica led the grinning Kate away, and, along with the dowager duchess, they descended to the drawing room where, as they’d been informed by Soames, tea and cakes awaited them.

Jessica was too concerned for Gideon to sit down, but once Trixie had taken up her usual half-reclining position on the one-armed couch, Kate dropped to the floor beside her, to ask, “What happened, Trixie? I mean, what really happened? What first did you do when you realized he’d cocked up his toes?”

Jessica was a matron now, a wife. She should be scolding her sister-in-law for her questions, and searching out some spirits of hartshorn for the dowager countess, as Trixie should by rights be having a fit of the vapors. Since neither action appeared to be required, or indeed looked for, she decided to take up one of the facing chairs and simply listen.

“Naughty puss,” Trixie said, patting Kate’s cheek. “I should be terrified that you’re so like me, were I not so flattered. Now, as to your last question? I didn’t notice. Not at first. I was much too occupied with wondering if drinking those horrid Bath waters truly has some sort of medicinal or restorative effect. I mean, the man was—well, not the man he used to be, surely, but certainly no sluggard.”

Jessica looked down at her toes. There was nowhere else to look, not really.

“He always roared like some great bear when he was—I really shouldn’t be saying this, not to you two innocent girls. I must be more overset than I imagined.”

“Gideon and Jessica married tonight, Trixie,” Kate supplied helpfully. “From the way they were looking at each other when they went up to bed at ten o’clock, I don’t think Jessica’s innocence should be a worry to you.”

The dowager countess smiled in Jessica’s direction. “No grass growing under my grandson’s feet, is there? I should have realized he wouldn’t wait so much as another day. I’ll expect a grandchild within the year.” Then she turned her attention back to Kate. “However, if you tell me you’re no innocent, I’ll have the man’s name tonight and his ears on my mantel tomorrow.”

“I didn’t mean I’m not innocent, Trixie,” Kate protested. “I’m simply not, well, innocent. Or do you forget who raised me? Remember when I was ten, and I asked you about those statues lining the staircase out there, and what those funny things were?”

Trixie shook her head. “Oh, I have so many sins to account for…” But then she rallied, as if eager to be on with it. “Very well, where was I?”

“There you go, Trixie. You’ll feel better for the telling, I’m sure, you poor dear. Now, he was roaring…” Kate prompted, grinning at Jessica.

“No, that wasn’t what I was saying. He was in the habit of roaring once brought to the, shall we say, summit. Tonight it was rather more of a surprised oh and then nothing. He simply collapsed on top of me. So I noticed only when I pointed out that, proud of himself as he might be, he was now crushing me and would he please move—which, sadly, he did not do. I nearly exhausted my strength until I could manage to extract myself from beneath him. I scribbled a note to Gideon and have been imbibing this lovely wine ever since, which is the only reason I’m running my tongue, which I shouldn’t be doing, although, after the first time, you’d think I’d be less prone to hysterics.”

Jessica sat up very straight. “This has happened to you before tonight?”

“Oh, yes, this makes it twice now. But other than to shamelessly trot after younger men, I see no escape from the possibility of a third time. Save celibacy, of course, which is out of the question.”

“Of course,” Jessica agreed weakly. It occurred to her it was a very good thing she wasn’t some sheltered debutante suddenly thrust into this scandalous nest of Redgraves.

Kate rested her chin in her hand and looked adoringly up at her grandmother. “I want to be like you. I never want to grow old.”

“We all grow old, pet,” Trixie told Kate, patting her cheek. “Why else do you think I try so desperately to tell myself I’m still young? Being old terrifies me, because each day brings me closer to the moment I have to face my sins before my God. You don’t want that sort of terrible moment for yourself, and I most certainly don’t wish it on you.” She took a steadying breath. “And now I believe I’d very much like another glass of wine, to aid me in maintaining my accustomed sangfroid.”

“I’ll see to it,” Jessica said when Kate looked at her, her full bottom lip caught between her teeth, tears standing in her dark eyes.

A minute later there was some slight commotion on the other side of the closed doors, and all three women looked in that direction. There were a series of muffled bumps capped by a string of barely contained curses, followed by the sound of footsteps, perhaps even the sounds of something being dragged across the floor and, finally, the closing of a door.

“‘Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ As long as you’re no longer resting under my roof.” Trixie raised her refilled glass in a salute, and then downed its contents in one long, smooth glide. “I wonder what Gideon decided to do with him? Oh, well, whatever it is, it won’t kill him. The marquis, I mean.”

An hour later, with Trixie now slumbering while almost politely snoring beneath a cashmere shawl on the couch, Jessica and Kate had that answer from Gideon.

“He’ll be discovered in his usual chair at his favorite club. His coachman was most willing to accommodate my request for both his help and the club’s direction, as he could see the inherent problems in explaining what his master was doing in Cavendish Square.”

“So you told the coachie what the man was doing?” Kate asked, yawning, as if the subject interested her still, but not enough to keep her awake for much longer.

“Yes,” Gideon said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “He was rather proud to hear it. They’ll keep the marquis in a small storeroom until the club closes, and then trot him out to his chair, where he’ll be found in the morning. Kept saying good on him, the randy old bugger, good on him—the coachman kept saying that, I mean. I haven’t been able to muster the same enthusiasm about Trixie. Are we going to leave her here?”

Jessica got to her feet, pushing her hands against the small of her back. One way or another, it had been a long night. Something to tell her grandchildren, she supposed, although she doubted she ever would. “She says she’s not going to sleep in that bed again, not until the entire thing has been stripped away, mattress, hangings, everything. She’s also quite drunk, Gideon. I imagine I would be, too.”

“Then we’ll learn nothing more here tonight, or should I say this morning. It will soon be dawn. Ladies?”

“Oh, yes,” Kate said, jumping up. “I’m more than ready to get back to Portman Square. Tomorrow is soon enough for you all to tell me more about whatever the devil is going on here.”

“There’s nothing going on here.”

“So you say, Gideon. Silly me simply doesn’t believe that,” Kate announced as she headed for the foyer.

Gideon and Jessica exchanged looks as they followed her.

“Just before she nodded off, your grandmother asked me to lean down close so she could whisper in my ear. She said to tell you she’s learned a few things, and that you’ll soon have your murderer.”

Gideon waited for Kate to be handed into the coach. “And Kate overheard. The girl’s got ears like a bat. Wonderful. Now we’ll never be rid of her.”

“I heard that,” Kate warned from inside the coach. “But you’re probably right.”

“Damn it, Kate—”

“Not now, Gideon,” Jessica begged. “We’re all exhausted.”

He nodded his agreement, and helped her into the coach. They were halfway back to Portman Square when Kate asked about the commotion they’d heard outside the drawing room. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Gideon answered shortly. And then, a few moments later, his shoulders began to shake. “We dropped him.”

Jessica looked at him in the dim light of the false dawn. He was smiling. “You dropped him?”

“It wasn’t all that terrible. We’d tied him up in a sheet, and partway down the stairs Soames lost his grip on his end.”

“Oh, Gideon,” Jessica said, her own lips twitching in amusement. “How…um, how horrible.”

Gideon shrugged as if unconcerned, but the devil had crept into his eyes. “I suppose we could have apologized, but the marquis didn’t seem to mind.”

They were all three of them still laughing as the footman set down the coach steps in Portman Square, Jessica going off into new peals of exhausted mirth when she saw the clearly apprehensive look on the young man’s face. “My goodness, Waters,” she managed to choke out, “you look as if you’ve just seen a dead man.”

At that, she felt herself being swept up into Gideon’s arms as he climbed the steps to the mansion and headed for the stairs. “Bed now, for all of us,” he said, including Kate in this order.

“When do we go back to Cavendish Square?” Kate asked as she actually pulled on the railing to help propel herself up the stairs.

“We don’t. You’re returning to Redgrave Manor.”

“Giddy,” she said, very nearly whined, “don’t make me badger you. You know you’ll give in.”

“Not this time. Good night, Kate.”

Jessica gave the girl a quick wave as Gideon kicked open the door to their bedchamber. Once the door was closed again—and locked again—they both made short work of ridding themselves of their clothes and tumbling into the unmade bed. He kissed her, thanked her and then turned onto his stomach, clearly intending to sleep away what little remained of their wedding night.

Goodness! They were behaving like a long-married couple. Or at least like a long-married couple that had just disposed of a dead marquis.

She lay on her back while he lay on his belly. She lifted her hand and idly began stroking his bare back, more content than she could even imagine. Which, if she were to think about the entirety of her current situation, wouldn’t be very sensible of her. But it seemed sensible enough for now.

“Giddy? Really?” she asked him after a bit.

He mumbled something she probably shouldn’t have heard, and then sighed. “Good night, Jessica.”

She smiled up at the draperies. “Good night. Giddy.”

GIDEON LAID DOWN HIS FORK with extreme precision. Indeed, he’d kept his entire posture under careful control throughout the length of Jessica’s embarrassed recitation of the conversation she and Adam had shared in the modiste’s dressing room. He’d asked no questions. Until now, with her final admission.

“A journal? He was told to keep a journal?”

Jessica nodded, not meeting his eyes. “Or a diary, I suppose. In any event, he called it a journal, yes. But weren’t you listening? Adam’s…keeping a tally. As if the whole thing were some sort of twisted game. Even worse, if that’s possible, our father had been giving him lessons in assassination. You have to talk to him, Gideon. I certainly can’t. As it is, I can barely look at you, just telling you about it.”

“I need to see this journal.”

Jessica put the lie to her last statement as her eyelids flew up, and she stared at him. “Must you? I’d like to see it burnt. The point is, my father was training Adam to be just like him.”

“No, Jessica. The point is, we now know without a doubt the Society remains active. You confirmed it existed five years ago. Adam’s journal tells us it’s still going on. You see, we know they all kept journals, all the way back to the beginning, with my grandfather. Trixie told me about him, about the journals, just yesterday.”

Jessica put a fist to her mouth, closed her eyes. “I thought it was just something my father thought of, rather like keeping score of his kills at the hunt. They…they all wrote down what they did?”

“In great detail,” Gideon said, and then told her what Trixie had seen in his grandfather’s journals.

“Drawings? Charts? Are they all insane?”

Gideon pushed away his plate, his appetite gone. “One would think so. Either that, or terminally naive, considering the members all turned their yearly journals over to my grandfather for this business of verification, so their exalted leader or whatever they called him could verify the information and make the additions to their blasphemous bible. Once they’d done it, turned over a single journal, they were bound to him for life. There was no choice but to continue the practice, year after year.”

“Didn’t they realize what they were doing?”

“You mean, turning over their lives to their leader, their futures? They had to, surely. With those journals, the leader held them hostage to whatever demands he might make on them. And don’t forget, Jessica, there were guests at these so-called ceremonies. One person’s word might not inflict too much damage, but to be able to produce a dozen different journals, all naming the guest, all cataloguing the same depravities? If knowledge translates to power, and it always has, my grandfather, and my father after him, held the reputations of perhaps dozens of important men and, at least in my grandfather’s time, even some women in his hands.”

“And after them, whoever carries on with the Society even now. You think the journals are the reason the members are being killed?”

“I’m not certain if it’s the journals themselves, although I’d certainly want them destroyed if I had written any of them, or had I attended one of their ceremonies and then found out they existed. To have some stupidity I’d engaged in at twenty—”

“Or eighteen,” Jessica interrupted, sighing.

Gideon pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Or at eighteen, yes. To have that act of idiocy brought back years later, when I was about to marry, or enter Parliament or some other government service? If I were to put my sights on becoming Prime Minister, or take the floor in the House of Lords to argue a position someone else might not care to have brought to a vote. On and on, Jessica. My life wouldn’t be my own. I could be forced to support causes that disgust me, vote against laws I felt proper. I could be forced to hand over copious amounts of money—even kill someone on command. The list of trouble those journals could cause a man is limitless.”

“But what about the leader? Your grandfather, your father, whoever else has served as the leader? The members could just as easily have controlled him, couldn’t they?”

“Try to control the one man who held all the evidence, on all of them? To threaten him, to expose him, would destroy them all. Who threatens the man who holds so many lives in his hand? But we have to consider the other side of this coin, as well. To belong to the Society, to be one of the chosen few—perhaps that prize was worth the rest.”

“And the…ceremonies. They may not want to give those up, either.”

“Your every vice indulged, your every perversion encouraged. Wine, women, opium. A new world order perhaps, with the Society in charge. All powerful persuasions. We’ll talk more about this when we know more.”

“Yes, but where are you going? It’s only eleven o’clock, Gideon. Adam’s still asleep.”

“Then it’s more than time he was awake.” He came around the breakfast table and put his hand on her shoulder. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

She looked up at him quizzically. “We are,” she said carefully. “Now why do I feel as if I’m not going to care for whatever you say next?”

He smiled and dropped a kiss on her hair. “Probably because, as I’m going to confront Adam, that leaves you to tell Kate what’s going on. I don’t think of myself as a coward, but the idea of Kate’s possible questions bids fair to make me consider a lengthy sojourn on the other side of the world.”

“I understand. I’d rather have a tooth drawn than have to listen to Adam say anything else on the subject. And then we’ll go to Cavendish Square, to hear what Trixie has to tell us?”

“Yes. But just the two of us. Adam stays under the guard of his keeper, but I want Kate back at Redgrave Manor, preferably on her way yet this afternoon.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to accomplish that particular part of the miracle, am I? Do you have any suggestions as to how I’m to do that?”

“Put her to searching the estate for journals and this supposed bible,” Gideon suggested, having already given the matter some thought during his morning bath. “Trixie burned the journals she found after my grandfather died, and searched for the volumes my father had without any success. Kate won’t find anything if Trixie didn’t, but it will keep her busy, or at least too busy to come riding back to town.”

“But what if she does find something? You know she won’t just send them to us. She’ll bring them. After reading them.”

Gideon grimaced. Yes, he could imagine Kate paging through the journals. “I’ll send Max and Val to help her, as soon as either one or both of them show up again. That keeps all three of them out of the way, and if any journals are found, at least my brothers will have the sense to keep them from her. And before you say there’s any number of flaws in this plan, remember, I should by rights be sending you to Redgrave Manor along with Kate. I am looking for a murderer.”

She covered his hand with her own as she looked up at him. “And that’s still all you’re looking for, Gideon?”

“No,” he admitted, “it’s not. Trixie called my father a monster and, before him, my grandfather. Now, all these years later, it’s up to this generation of Redgraves to learn what those monsters may have spawned. The scandalous Redgraves, Jessica. We all rather enjoy that reputation at times. Reckless, daring, impulsive, laughing in the face of society’s rules. That was the reputation we foolishly enjoyed. We had no idea how deep the scandal might run, where and why it had its beginnings. If the Redgraves started all of this, it’s up to the Redgraves to finish it.”

“Thank you, Gideon. Thank you for including me, for not sending me away.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth as he ran his hand down over her breast. “No, don’t thank me. I could tell you any number of lies about why it would be best all around for you to be here. I could say you deserve a chance at some revenge for what happened to you. I could weave any number of tales meant to ease my conscience. But the truth is, I’m being entirely selfish. I’m not ready to let you go.”

The moment he said those last words, he knew he had made a mistake.

“And when you are? Ready to let me go, that is. What then, Gideon?”

He stood back, looked down at her, her question repeating itself inside his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. I’ve never had to…”

Her smile came as a surprise to him, just as had her question. “No, I didn’t think you had. You’re one of those reckless, impulsive Redgraves, you admit it out of your own mouth. You see what you want, and you go after it with everything that’s in you until it’s yours, and the devil take the hindmost. But when the chase is over, once you’ve won? Once you’ve solved all the mysteries of the Society, perhaps even found your father’s remains and returned them to the mausoleum? Once you and I have nothing more in common than a need to explore each other’s bodies, a need I see no reason to deny? What then? What of this ring I wear? What of a future beyond tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her. He’d done what he’d done because it was the right thing to do. The Redgraves owed her for all the heartache she’d suffered in her life. That he desired her had been some fortuitous coincidence. But beyond that? Beyond tomorrow? Physical intimacy aside, clearly it was still too early for her to believe they might find love together, something deeper than the passion.

“I thought as much. Are all men little boys, Gideon? Even you? Not thinking beyond the end of your noses—although I’m sure your grandmother would say that differently? Oh, dear. What to do about Jessica, once you’ve found what you’re looking for, once you’ve tired of her, as you’ve tired of every one of the women you’ve bedded, hmm? This could prove interesting in the end, couldn’t it?”

“We’re married,” he said at last, knowing his answer wasn’t an answer at all, not to the real question Jessica had put before him. “That is the end of it.”

“Of course,” she said, turning her attention back to her plate. She picked up her fork. “I’ll see to Kate. You go rouse Adam, as you said, and tell him some home truths. As it is, he’s too eager to slip his leash. Let’s hope you can make him understand why that isn’t a good idea. My worry is he’s had a myriad of strange ideas drummed into his head, so he may think otherwise.”

“Jessica, I—” Gideon shut his mouth, because he’d nearly said something they’d both regret. Him, because he wasn’t sure if he knew what the word meant, and Jessica, because she’d know it would be too pat to be believable. He doubted he believed it himself. They enjoyed each other; they both admitted that; they even liked each other. But as to more? “I do care for you, Jessica. Beyond what we shared last night.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then took a bite of what had to be cold eggs.

Thank you? He’d said he cared for her, and she’d said thank you? What sort of answer was that? She may as well have thrown a bucket of cold pump water in his face.

“You’re…Yes. I leave Kate in your capable hands, hoping I can do even half so well with the journalkeeping nodcock. I should like to leave for Cavendish Square by one o’clock.” He quit the room then, knowing he should have said more, or less, or anything other than the words he’d chosen.

And then, halfway up the stairs, he realized he was angry, and not just with himself. They were adults, he and Jessica. They knew what they wanted, and they’d wanted each other. They still wanted each other, unless she had been attempting to tell him that last night—at least the parts before Trixie’s note had arrived—had been enough for her; she hadn’t needed the ring, the vows.

But he had, damn it!

It was just understanding why he’d felt he needed them, that was the question, because paying a debt seemed a pitifully lame explanation, even to him… .