“If we want,” Jessica repeated as he held out his arm to her, to escort her downstairs. “Not even the search for your father’s body?”
She had him there. “That still bothers me, yes. But with Mellis gone, there’s no one else left to question. The tunnel beneath the greenhouse collapsed thanks to an unusually wet spring and the ravages of age, and the lights in the woods were most probably cast by lanterns carried by poachers. Not everything is a mystery. Not when taken separately.”
“Six men have been murdered,” she reminded him as they approached the drawing room. “Including my father.”
“You want to avenge him?”
She sighed. “I should say yes, shouldn’t I?”
“I wouldn’t. Somebody carried off my father’s body, and I see that only as a personal insult to the Redgrave name, a name already carrying enough dirt on it. Trixie could have ordered him buried in a bog for all I ever cared about the man. I don’t relish telling her that her son’s body was taken, no. She deserves the right to one day rest beside her only child for eternity.” He stopped her as they were about to enter the drawing room. “I like this, Jessica.”
She looked at him in confusion. “Pardon me?”
“Being honest. Open. Being able to talk with you this way. I don’t know why you make it so easy, but you do. I’ve never been honest with anyone about what it means to be a Redgrave, what it means to be the eldest son of a man so depraved and twisted his own wife shot him in the back, the eldest son of a mother so desperate to be free of her husband that she’d desert her own children. You sometimes don’t realize the weight of the things you carry through life with you, until you put them down. I’m feeling considerably…lighter.”
She bowed her head for a moment, and when she raised it again he could see tears standing in her eyes. “I feel much the same. Lighter. Cleaner, if that makes any sense at all. But I still need to tell you—”
“Tell me we can neither of us walk away from what we suspect,” he ended for her. “I know. There’s a reason those six men were killed. We have two of the names of current members, thanks to Trixie. We know the code names for four more, thanks to your father’s journal. Yes, the journal is out of date. And, lastly, no, we don’t have the rest of the names. But we’ve enough to go on with. We know the Society still exists.”
“With a purpose larger than what Trixie called naughty little boys playing at games. I agree with you on that head.”
“And how do I take any of this to the Crown? For one, I have no real proof, and secondly, I might be reporting what I believe to one of the new thirteen or one of their blackmailed guests. No, it’s us, or it’s nobody. I said we could walk away, but I can’t turn my back on this, Jessica. Not knowing it was my family who one way or another laid the foundation for it all.”
“I didn’t think you were applying to me for permission, either way. But I would like to think you still want my help. That was the plan in the beginning, wasn’t it, because we thought it would help us protect Adam?”
He leaned in and kissed her. “It was a part of the plan, certainly. But not above and beyond my overwhelming need to have you in my bed and easing my conscience by telling myself my offer of marriage provided a way to compensate for what happened to you.”
“I don’t know if you need to be that honest, Gideon. Not that I’m not…flattered.”
He smiled. “Not that I’m not grateful. But to get back to our now slightly altered plan? I’m counting on your discerning eye and your powers of observation as we learn more about our friends Lord Charles and Mr. Urban, yes. I want you to read them, assess them, as you would players at the card table. And more than that, I believe I want you to cultivate their wives. If there’s a weakness in the Society, I think it would have to be the wives.”
“Because they’re weaker?”
“No, I think we settled that earlier.”
“Yes, and you still owe me five pounds. But I know what you mean. There can’t be many women who would be happy with the sort of arrangement Trixie spoke of, being passed about to the other men in the Society. It’s sickening, to think such a thing is happening in this day and age. I don’t know how I’d broach the subject, but I think I will be able to tell if these two women are unhappy.”
“All right, play the game any way you like. Just promise me you won’t try to bluff anyone.”
She rolled her eyes. “Really, you and Richard—”
They both turned toward the stairs and the sound of the knocker being banged on with considerable enthusiasm, followed closely by a cheery voice exclaiming, “Thorny, you old dog, if you’re going to scowl every time I bring a little rainwater inside with me, I may go into a sad decline. M’brothers here? One or both? I like being prepared before I face Gideon’s scowl or Max’s—Well, what does Max do, anyway, other than find new ways to grow his hair? Damme, it’s wet out there tonight! What did you say? Speak up, man. No! Say that again. Where is he? Is he upstairs? That dog!”
“Valentine,” Gideon said, breaking into a grin. “Prepare yourself, Jessica, you’re about to be bowled down by my youngest brother.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SOUND OF RIDING boots hitting the marble stairs was closely followed by the appearance of Lord Valentine Redgrave’s smiling face and tall, lithe body.
“Gideon!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide as he approached, but then lowering them again as he espied Jessica. He tipped his head to one side and grinned. “This is the bride? Thorny told me just now, but I didn’t believe him. My lady,” he said, sweeping Jessica an elegant bow. “Whatever lies did my brother tell you to get you to agree to join your life to such a sorry specimen?”
Jessica laughed, as she really had no choice in the thing, and held out her hand to be bowed over. Except Lord Valentine Redgrave clearly was having none of that, because he grabbed her up in his arms and soundly kissed both her cheeks. “My God, you’re gorgeous. Are you sure you want Gideon? I’m clearly the better choice.”
“Put her down, you fool,” Gideon said, laughing. “Jessica, may I present my youngest brother, Lord Valentine Redgrave, connoisseur of all things frivolous, carefree bon vivant, generous by nature, soft of heart and yet somehow still managing to be an all-round menace to society. Val, my lady wife, Jessica—and no, you can’t kiss her again.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lord Valentine,” Jessica said, dropping into a curtsy.
“Please, call me Val,” Valentine said, “and I’ll call you Jess? Jessica? Sister? Gideon, you’ve given me a new sister. Do you have any suggestions as to what we should do with the old one? She will persist in hanging about, won’t she? Or have the both of you found romance in my short absence? I won’t ask about Max, as there’s nobody who’d want him.”
Gideon motioned for Jessica and Valentine to precede him into the drawing room, at which point Cleo and Brutus made a dead set at Valentine, tongues lolling, tails wagging. He went to his knees and allowed them to lick his face.
His incredibly handsome face. Jessica could see hints of both Lady Katherine and Gideon in Lord Valentine, but there was something else there besides the attractively mussed dark hair, faintly bronzed skin and magnificent bone sculpture. She decided it was Valentine’s eyes. They were light amber in color, quite startling in fact, ringed with long dark lashes beneath sweeping black brows…and they were full of