“Wonderful! Thank you for keeping them, Gideon.”
Jessica looked to Gideon. She hadn’t known Cleo and Brutus weren’t his dogs.
“I didn’t have much choice, did I? You simply left them here and rode off.”
“Yes, but Freddie said he couldn’t afford them, not now his father’s taken that bad turn. What else was I to do?”
“Nothing, I suppose. But now that you’re back, I think it’s time they adjourned to the country. Clearly these are animals who belong out-of-doors, or at least at Redgrave Manor, where we’ve got the dog gates to keep them from running through the entire house as if there may be a rabbit behind every door.”
“Only if Kate remembers to latch the gates,” Valentine said, getting to his feet again. “My leg still aches when the weather turns damp.”
Gideon sat down next to Jessica and explained that last statement. A few months earlier, Kate had left open the gate at the bottom of the staircase, allowing three of the family dogs free to race upstairs to see Valentine, only to knock him head over teacup down the stairs to the first landing, his brother suffering a broken leg in the fall.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jessica said, looking at Valentine.
Gideon laid his arm behind her on the back of the couch. “Don’t be. My brother was simply being rewarded by the fates for stepping in and doing a good deed, or what he thought was a good deed. It wasn’t, and the leg was probably a suitable punishment. Not that you learn, do you, Val? You missed my nuptials thanks to your latest act of charity, escorting Freddie home to his recently impoverished father. Kate was here.”
“Kate was here. Yes, you said that,” Valentine repeated, pulling a face. “But not Max? Are you planning to ring a peal over his head, as well, when he returns?”
“I’m not ringing a peal over yours, brother. I’m merely pointing out, as does our sister when she’s anywhere close, that one day you’re going to do one favor too many and end up missing more than a wedding. Kate worries about you.”
“But you don’t,” Valentine said, sipping from the glass of wine he’d poured for himself. He was resting nearly on the bottom of his spine as he slouched in the facing couch, his booted legs crossed at the ankle and propped on the low table between them. Jessica had seen the same pose from Gideon and from Kate, and now had no doubt when she met Max she would know him first by his extraordinary ability to relax.
“I don’t stay up nights, pacing the floor, no,” Gideon admitted. “Now that you’ve returned the coach, when do you head to Redgrave Manor?”
“When do I deliver Cleo and Brutus to Redgrave Manor, you mean. Why? And don’t say it’s because you want me to stay in town for the remainder of the Season because you know I won’t do that, much as I love you. One Redgrave gone to the Marriage Mart a season is enough, no insult intended, Jessica.”
“None taken,” Jessica said, still fascinated by this youngest Redgrave. “You’d rather be in the country?”
“I’d rather be in Paris, but since Bonaparte grows more frisky by the moment, I’m stuck in London, a sorry substitute I’m sad to say. I’ve already visited two of my clubs this afternoon and found them thin of company and fairly flat, thanks to a boxing mill taking place this week in some faraway village in the back of beyond, so there’s really nothing keeping me here. I’d like to leave in the morning, actually,” he said, looking to Gideon. “And yes, I’ll take the reformed piddlers with me.”
“More than the dogs, Val. I was hoping you or Max would be back in town soon. As it’s you, consider my request to be in the nature of performing a good deed.”
“And if it had been Max?” Valentine asked.
Gideon shrugged. “I suppose I would have attempted to convince him he was about to go on some adventure. In any event, since you’re the one who arrived first, I’d like you to take Jessica’s brother with you as, well. You remember my ward, don’t you?”
Valentine pushed his boots against the edge of the table as he sat up straight. “The twit? He’s Jessica’s brother? Really? Well, now, that explains how you two met. And you want me to haul him off to—No, that won’t work, Kate will lock him in the cellars. After she murders him.”
“No, she won’t. She’s met him and thinks he’s highly entertaining.”
Valentine grinned at his brother. “Oh, she does not. Not unless she’s fallen on her head. Or he has, perhaps knocking his brain into something less resembling a block of cheese.”
Jessica bit her lip to keep from laughing.
Gideon helped her to her feet as Thorndyke announced he’d ordered another setting at table, and dinner was now served. “Adam’s not here this evening, as I’ve given him permission to attend the theater with his keeper. It’s my fondest hope he can restrain himself from throwing oranges into the pit from our family box, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does, as he informed me that’s what all the fashionable young idiots do. I need you to take him under your wing, Val. Make a man of him. You can do that, surely.”
“I’ve seen him, remember, and if he manages to clunk anyone on the head with an orange I’ll be mightily surprised, and that’s with the pit directly below our box, for God’s sake. Make a man of him? I’d first have to strip him to the buff and start over—Again, Jessica, no insult intended.”
“Again, none taken. Adam is very young and silly,” she answered as they entered the dining room. “Would that mean Cleo and Brutus would be riding inside the coach with them? All the way to Redgrave Manor?” she asked Gideon, carefully keeping her expression neutral.
Her husband smiled, and Jessica learned something new: husbands and wives could speak volumes without actually saying a word. Wasn’t that nice. For instance, right now Gideon’s smile was saying, “Yes, I’m as amused by that prospect as you are.”
“Jessica and I are promised to something this evening, Val,” he said as he helped Jessica into her chair, “so we’ll be leaving you directly after dinner. There’s things you need to know before you head off tomorrow, however, so I’m afraid we’ll be having a fairly unusual mealtime conversation.” He seated himself at the head of the table. “I’ll begin with Trixie.”
“Trixie?” Valentine placed his serviette on his lap. “And you announce her name in nearly the same breath as you say unusual? That raises a question. Am I going to be amused or terrified?”
THEY DIDN’T LEAVE Portman Square until nearly eleven. Gideon purposely left their departure late, so that he and Jessica wouldn’t become part of the masses herded onto a curving flight of stairs and forced to stand there for an hour or more, slowly inching their way, step by step, up to the receiving line outside the ballroom.
The Earl of Saltwood much preferred to make an entrance, especially with his bride on his arm.
The hours in between sitting down to dinner and their departure had been busy ones, but now Valentine had been brought abreast of what was going on, what Gideon suspected, what Trixie had confirmed. Val had agreed Kate was probably even now ripping Redgrave Manor apart, from attics to cellars to chicken coops, hot on the hunt for the journals their father had found more than two decades previously and added to every year since then, until his murder.
The journals and the bible, although Gideon and Trixie now both believed the bible, at the very least, had been turned over to the new leader and was still in use. After all, hadn’t Burke, Barry Redgrave’s loyal valet, disappeared the day after the small, private funeral?