Soames, neatly snagging the second glove, couldn’t restrain his chuckle.
“I’m just so gratified to amuse you both,” Gideon said, looking at Trixie’s reticule, a silly thing of beads and ribbons, and judging it too small to hold what he’d hoped to see. “You failed?”
Trixie walked up to him and raised a hand to pat his cheek. “Let’s be clear about this, Gideon. I tease you. You do not insult me. Soames? Give the boy what he wants before he expires of anticipation.”
“Yes, my lady,” the butler said, tucking the gloves into his pocket and then reaching inside his waistcoat to withdraw a rolled sheet of thick vellum and handing it to Gideon.
The Special License. She’d done it. It had been his blunt that helped ease the way, granted, but it was Trixie’s way with persuasion that had turned the trick with the speed of the thing. He unrolled the document and quickly scanned it. The archbishop could sign, of course, but so could any number of other high church officials. “Whose signature is this? I can’t make it out.”
“You aren’t supposed to, pet. Suffice it to say the license is completely legitimate and aboveboard.” The dowager countess subsided onto her one-armed couch, drawing her dainty feet up beside her. “Did you ever wonder what below board could be?”
Gideon was still working on deciphering the signature and answered absently. “To be aboveboard, as I know the term, means keeping your hands above the gaming table at all times. So to be below board, you’d have to keep your hands—”
“Precisely where I had them as our mostly eminent church official was signing the license. Interesting.”
Soames turned on his heels and left the room, his ears positively burning red.
“I have to keep reminding myself not to walk into your little traps,” Gideon said. “Did you enjoy that?”
“Soames’s embarrassed reaction, or my ability to bring things to attention? I would have to answer yes to both. Oh, don’t scowl, pet. Next you’ll be telling me you’re putting in an application to warble in some choir. You knew what I was going to do when you applied to me for help. If I learned nothing else from my unlamented husband, it is the power of sex. We females hold most of that power, by the way, and can enjoy its rewards longer. By the time you’re my age, Gideon, you’ll be happy most evenings with a roaring fire, your dogs at your feet and a snifter of brandy at your elbow, while I consider myself, modesty aside, to remain near the top of my form. After all, most times all it takes is a strong hand. Ah, finally I’ve managed to raise a blush from you.”
“You’re right, I shouldn’t have asked for your help. I tried to tell myself you would apply to some bonds of friendship with whomever you visited today. I should have remembered you don’t have friends, do you, Trixie?”
“No, I don’t. I have family. And, if the gods are kind, and you’re truly as hot to bed this woman as it would seem, soon I will have more of it.”
“And here I was earlier, wondering why I don’t visit as often as I should. I don’t wish you dead, Trixie, but I do selfishly wish you older.”
“And cuddlesome, perhaps even quaintly dotty?” she asked as he dangled a slim diamond bracelet in front of her eyes. “Ah, now isn’t that pretty? Your thanks would have been enough.”
“Then I’ll have it back?”
“Give it to your wife once I’m planted,” she said, holding up her arm to him so that he could close the bracelet about her wrist. She turned her hand this way and that once the clasp was secured, admiring the way the diamonds, formed into an endless circle of petite flowers, caught the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Quite lovely. You’ve exquisite taste, pet. Do you have any news for me?”
“No, nothing. I’ve stopped wearing the rose, you’ll notice. I’m keeping a close eye on the nincompoop, but nobody’s approached him. Frankly, I’ve reached a dead end.”
“A temporary setback only, I’m sure. Now a kiss, please, and then you may go. I’ve an engagement this evening, and to shine at night, it is sometimes necessary to nap during the day.”
Gideon bent to kiss her cheek. “You’re admitting to age, Trixie?”
“One must sometimes make allowances, yes. I’ve invited Guy Bedworth here for a midnight supper, and it wouldn’t do to not be awake on all suits with that one.”
“Bedworth? The Marquis of Mellis? That doddering old fool? What do you want with him?”
“That doddering old fool, pet, was at one time the youngest member of your grandfather’s original coterie of scoundrels. Before you count on your fingers, yes, your grandfather died roughly forty-eight years ago. The marquis won’t see seventy again, or even seventy-five, but was still, shall we say, amorously active when your father decided to resurrect what he may have thought a family tradition. Naturally, Guy, risen to the title by that time, was invited to participate, and to lend his expertise in the finer points of ceremonial rites, I would imagine. As a sort of mentor.”
“And to continue in that role after my father died? Perhaps even as long as five years ago?”
“Who’s to say, one way or the other? Well, in point of fact, Guy is to say, which I sincerely intend to have him do tonight.”
A sudden thought struck Gideon. “How would my father have known the marquis was a member of Grandfather’s…coterie?”
“Through the journals, I suppose,” Trixie said, shrugging. Then her eyes went wide. “I did tell you about those blasted journals, didn’t I? Dear God, maybe I am growing dotty.”
Gideon sat down on a corner of the low table. “Grandfather wrote things down? About…about his group?”
“No name, pet. Simply the Society. He thought it safer that way. Your father wasn’t quite so brilliant and devised those ridiculous golden roses. Although they have made your search for members that much easier, which proves your grandfather’s point, doesn’t it?”
Trixie began turning her new bracelet over and over again around her wrist. “But, yes, he very carefully catalogued their actions, year by year. They all did. In excruciating detail. Dear God, there were drawings, charts, codes. They called them testaments, of all things. Truthfully, I burned the ones I found in your grandfather’s study. What went on during the blessedly few years of our marriage was not, I felt, anything to preserve for the ages. I was young and powerless, and he…But that was a long time ago. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate all of them. the rest were hidden somewhere.”
“At Redgrave Manor?”
“In the Manor, or somewhere on the grounds. I never found them, but clearly your father did. And they all kept journals, each member, before annually handing them over to your grandfather like the fools they were, as it was up to the Keeper to review them, check them for veracity and then assemble all the information into their bible. I never found that, either, although I had seen it a time or two. Some of the etchings were very nearly true art, if disgusting. The things I read, however, the things I could tell you about people the world admires? Ah, but most of them are dead now, so what does it matter?”
“Was my grandfather a Jacobite? Were he and his devil’s dozen plotting treason?”
Trixie smiled. “No. His motives were even less laudable, I’m afraid. He did what he did, they all did, merely for the pleasure of it. Half-hearted Satanists, reckless libertines, naughty little boys obsessed with their drunken preoccupation with sex. It was left to your father to see the opportunities for something more. When