Gideon wrapped his hand across his forehead, rubbing hard at his temples with fingers and thumb. His head felt ready to explode. Bound hand and foot. Turner Collier was so very lucky he was dead. “Go on.”
“Jess never told me too much, except about that time he’d—Well, we already spoke of that. They married in Brussels, with Linden knowing a wife is chattel, my lord, and anything he did with her was above the law, as it were. If she ran, he’d be within his rights to haul her back, punish her without fear of consequences. Again, at least that’s how I see the thing, why he insisted they marry. She was young, sir, in a strange land, alone. There was no going home, not to a man like her father. There was nothing else she could do.”
Gideon wanted a drink. Needed a drink. “I agree. She had no choice.”
“There’s nothing stronger than the will to stay alive, no matter how terrible the living may be, poor mite. They traveled the continent, Jess and Linden. He always kept them moving, always looking over his shoulder as if fearful some would find him. He avoided cities, where he might be recognized, plying his talents in villages and small towns.”
“And what talent was that?”
“The cards. He gambled every night, sometimes winning, sometimes losing—more often losing. And always with Jess forced to stand just behind his chair the whole night long, dressed in one of those thin, dampened gauze gowns Empress Josephine and her sisters so favored back then, tricked up beyond all modesty and common decency, her face painted, her hair piled high like Josephine’s, her body meant to distract the bumpkins at the table. She stood quite still, hour after hour, her hand always on Linden’s shoulder. A living statue.”
Richard closed his eyes, shook his head. “She never reacted, not by so much as a blink, keeping her attention on the cards. That’s how I first saw her. I’d stopped at the same inn just outside Lyons, for I made my own blunt at the gaming tables. We were fairly stranded at the inn, as spring storms had made the roads a mass of mud. In any event, I looked at her, disbelieving what I was seeing. That sweet, beautiful girl, amid all the ugliness. Then, when I asked to join the players, she looked at me for a moment. There was something in her eyes… .”
Gideon nodded. Yes, he agreed. There was something in Jessica’s eyes. Some vulnerability she couldn’t hide. Some nebulous, unexplainable something that made a man want to slay dragons for her. “I wondered why she dresses herself the way she does. I referred to her black gown as armor.”
“And well it is, your lordship. It was either one nasty outfit or the other, each night. She’d had enough of dampened gowns, or cruel corsets laced so tight she could barely breathe. Enough of rough louts and gapemouthed farmers in taprooms leering at her, thinking she was there for their amusement. Each evening, when she’d appear with Linden, I wanted to strip off my jacket and cover her, take her out of there.”
Richard sat back in his chair and sighed. “Three nights later, when the roads were all but dry again and fit for travel, I did.”
“She did say we, yes. You emptied his pockets and left him on the bed he died in.”
Richard shifted his eyes to the floor. “The bed he died in, yes. We’ve been together ever since, Jess and me. She didn’t waste the months she spent with Jamie Linden, not once she’d got her spirit back, but had been biding her time, learning what she had to learn in order to be free of him. She plays a splendid hand of cards, your lordship, and can all but tell you what cards you’re holding before you’ve taken a good look at them yourself. She’d been planning on how to escape him, thinking to gamble her way back to England with the money she’d been lifting bit by bit from Linden’s purse when he was lost in his drunkenness. Brave, brave girl. It was a daring scheme, but she wouldn’t have fared well, bless her. She can read the cards better than most, but all but a blind man can read her. I have her wear an eye shade when she fills in at the tables, elsewise we’d be living in a gutter.”
At last Gideon smiled, albeit ruefully. “She couldn’t bluff her way out of a wet sack, I agree, at least not to a discerning eye. So you’re saying you’re a father to her, Richard? Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s just what I’m saying. Father and friend. Is that what you wanted to hear, your lordship? Or is all this concern about who might be bedding her? You’re no better than that? Knowing what I know, I wouldn’t dream to touch her. She was a child, she’s still a child, and innocent, for all her three and twenty years. And she’s older than time itself. She’s who she is, what her father and Jamie Linden and the world made her, and what she’s made of herself since. Leave her be.”
“I can’t do that, Richard, no more than you could. I have my reasons. How did James Linden die?”
“How do you think he died, your lordship?”
Gideon stood up and returned the chair to its place at the table. “Why, Richard, I think you looked, you saw, you understood and then you did the only thing an honorable man could do in your situation. I think you bided your time until you believed you could safely get her away, and then you bloody well killed him.”
Richard’s bushy white eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Gideon waited him out for some moments and then asked, “Did he suffer?”
“Not enough, no,” Richard said as he also stood up, his knees faintly creaking at the exertion. “By that third night, I was nearly made mad with the waiting, listening to him rage at her. He’d lost that night and clearly blamed her. I could only imagine what was going on in that attic chamber next to mine, and my thoughts made me ill. When I finally heard his drunken snores, I knew it was time. I’m not a strong man, your lordship, or a young one, but a well-placed pillow and a man too drunk to put up a proper fight was well within my ability.”
“Dead in his sleep. Plausible. You couldn’t have employed the club, as the wounds would have been too obvious.”
“That’s how I saw the thing, yes,” Richard said quietly. “It pained me deeper than you can know, to wait until I was certain he was finally asleep. I had to keep telling myself it was the last time he’d hit her, I’d see to that. I’m not sorry for killing the man. I’d do it again.”
Gideon held out his right hand and shook the other man’s hand warmly. “Thank you, Richard. I believe I can manage from here, although you could wish me luck.”
“Sir?”
Gideon had made his decision. He’d come to it in a flash of understanding halfway through Richard’s recitation. How brave she’d been to offer herself up to gain her brother, when all she knew of men was pain and humiliation. Why she had reacted as she had when he’d taken her to bed…the hesitation, the moments when he’d felt she’d gone away from him to someplace in her mind…and then the surprised passion, the reluctant and then, finally, eager giving. It could all have ended in disaster, but it hadn’t. It had been the most memorable, soul-shaking night of his life. More so now than ever.
“Go pack your belongings, Uncle Richard. You and your widowed niece and whomever else you choose to bring with you are to be situated in Portman Square yet today. I’ll have my town coach sent round at five. The tongues will wag mightily once the betrothal is posted in the newspapers, sure I’ve some dastardly plan to wrest the nincompoop’s inheritance from him by wedding his half sister, but I think we can withstand that. After all, it’s nothing more than most of them would expect from a Redgrave.”
“You’re going to…to marry her, your lordship?” Then Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“If I had the answer to that