Kasey Michaels - [Redgraves 02] (18 page)

“You’ve a good memory. And then I suggested we’re more alike, you and I, than you know. That we feel responsible, would like it all to simply go away, have never happened.”

She nodded, her expression serious. “Yes. And when I asked what that meant, there was something about trusting each other. I don’t know that I did, then, which is why I didn’t meet you the other night, even though I was there for a while, at least to watch.”

“Watch me make a total ass of myself. Sticking my finger in Henry’s ear.”

“Well, yes, there is that,” she said earnestly, not a single twitch of her lips giving away her certain enjoyment. “But I do trust you now, Simon. So I suppose it’s only fair to ask if you trust me.”

He sat down beside her—the spider who sat down beside her, hoping not to frighten Miss Muffet away—unable to resist wrapping one of her loose ebony curls around his fingertip. “With my life, yes. In several other ways, probably too numerous to mention, no, not at all.”

She nodded thoughtfully as he tried not to smile. “Well, that’s sensible of you. Sometimes I don’t trust myself. You know about my family. Now tell me about your brother.”

Wasn’t it strange? He wanted her physically, with everything that was in him, but he also wanted her like this. Close, companionable, completely at ease and in harmony with each other.
Understanding
each other.
In tune
with each other. He could have known her all his life, and she known him all of hers. This was probably because she had three brothers, and had been comfortable with men since the cradle. As long as she didn’t think of him as a brother, that was all right.

“Where to begin? Holbrook was four years my senior, which meant little at some times in our lives, and saw us miles apart in others.”

“Let me guess. You were still plotting strategies with your toy soldiers—or planning your next sea battle, wading with your little ships in the estate pond—while he had begun educating himself via willing girls in the nearby villages?”

He’d given up being shocked at most anything Kate said, or pointing out she shouldn’t have said it, and simply answered. “Something very much like that, yes. In any case, we grew apart, and I look back on those years and wonder if anything could have been different. If I could have changed anything.”

Kate put her hand on his knee. “I think Trixie wonders the same thing. She hides it well, but I know she carries many regrets with her.”

This wasn’t easy. Simon stood up again, began to pace, as he’d often paced the decks aboard ship.

“Holbrook was naturally raised as the heir, while my father pointed out I didn’t quite have the temperament of a feckless younger son who did nothing but spend his quarterly allowance on fancy clothes, gaming and women. He encouraged me to follow my dream of entering the Royal Navy, a suitable destination for a second son. He died shortly after I received my commission, with me at sea and not knowing for months, and Holbrook suddenly the marquis. He wasn’t ready. He may never have been ready. My brother was a wealthy, titled man, answerable to no one, and quite devoted to indulging his own pleasures.”

Kate shifted on the couch, once more with her feet tucked up beneath her, as if engrossed in Simon’s words. “He wasn’t your responsibility, Simon.”

“Nor is your parents’ history yours. Does knowing that change anything?”

Her chin dipped slightly. “I see your point. No, it doesn’t. I still feel a responsibility to protect the family, as do Trixie and my brothers. Go on.”

“I won’t go into too much detail, because it would change nothing, but at some point, Holbrook drew the attention of the Society. You’ll understand why in a moment. He sent me a lengthy yet also maddeningly rambling and hysterical letter, one I didn’t receive until shortly before his death, begging me to come home, to save him from his folly.”

Simon paused, remembering his immediate request for leave, and then told Kate of his mad dash to Singleton via the first ship to set sail, and what he found when he reached home. Holbrook had already been in the family mausoleum for two weeks. He’d committed suicide, hanged himself in his study.

“I’m so sorry, Simon.”

“Thank you.” He perched himself on a corner of one of the heavy library tables. “He didn’t wait for me. The short note the butler handed me contained only his apologies. Perhaps he
couldn’t
wait. Perhaps he was too ashamed, or too frightened to go on living.”

“Frightened of the Society? Why?”

“His first letter explained all of that. The Society had given him anything he wanted, indulged his every desire, first as an honored guest, and eventually as a member. I would hazard Holbrook had begun to believe his only real happiness was within the Society. His valet told me he had been extremely lighthearted while yet secretive for several months, disappearing for days at a time. But then suddenly everything changed, and he refused to leave the estate. Near the end, he wouldn’t leave his study, spent his days and nights mostly drinking heavily and smoking opium. He ate there, when he could be cajoled into a meal, he slept there. He died there. He was interred with a small golden rose tucked into his cravat because his valet believed it to be one of his favorite things, and by now we all know what that meant.”

He looked up abruptly. “Christ, do you know? I’m never sure what you were told and what you may simply have overheard.”

“I know. He’d brought a virgin bud into bloom during one of their horrible ceremonies. It’s disgusting.”

“And some sort of privilege of membership, according to Holbrook’s letter. I found a pair of black leather breeches and matching boots, a hooded velvet robe embroidered with demonic or satanic symbols and a mask he must have worn. He’d written that he’d left them all safely tucked into a cupboard in my chambers.”

“A devil mask?” Kate asked. “I would suppose a devil mask.”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t know what it was meant to represent. I’m certain its intent was to frighten. If anything, it resembles a particularly ugly gargoyle. Knowing Holbrook, he had to have been rapturous, at least for a time. But then the suggestion came. He should bring in a new guest, a particular one, to join in their fun. One of Parliament’s leading supporters of recommencing the war with France. A man who was also Holbrook’s best chum while classmates at school. When his friend evinced no interest in indulging his pleasures, Holbrook was told to try again, and if he couldn’t convince the man, to summarily assassinate him. After all, Holbrook was the last man who would be expected to plunge a knife in the man’s heart.”

“Join, become one of us, do as we ask, or die.” Kate shook her head. “They are monsters, aren’t they, in every way.”

“Monsters and dupes, the Society is made up of both. It was all in his letter, garbled and difficult to decipher, I grant you, and Holbrook thought the Society leader was joking. At first. But when he was immediately cut off, told never to return until he’d earned his way back—no women, no indulgences, no opium—my brother knew he was left with few choices. If he’d been ordered to murder his friend, whom he’d told only the slightest things about the Society, then what would the Society do with him, as he knew so much more? That’s when he wrote to me for help. He couldn’t murder his friend, but he couldn’t exist without the Society. His letter made it clear he was terrified.

“The worst of it, if there could be a worst beyond Holbrook’s suicide, is he didn’t even know his fellow members, other than by some sort of code name. I know from his letter that he greatly feared the leader, who ‘stole my soul,’ and is ‘dangerous beyond belief,’ and the names of the two men who initially approached him. Lord Charles Mailer and the recently deceased Archie Urban, known to the Society as Post and City. Holbrook was Bird, of course, for Ravenbill, as it’s a wretchedly simple code, almost too simple to see. I took the letter, the names, went straight to London and Lord Perceval’s offices, and have been working with him ever since. It wasn’t difficult for Perceval to believe me, as the man Holbrook was sent to recruit had just days earlier drowned in his own tub. Poor Holbrook. Taking his own life didn’t save his friend. Val asked me how I knew the names, but I didn’t enlighten him. And I won’t.”

Kate unfolded herself from the couch and walked over to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and her head against his chest. “Yet you’ve just told me. Thank you, Simon.”

He slipped his arms around her waist, pressed a kiss to her head. “We can’t go back and correct the past, Kate. But we can do our best to defend it from exposure, and to thwart an otherwise destined future.”

She tipped her head back, looking up into his eyes, her expression determined. “We’ll find them, Simon. Find them and destroy them. The journals that represent the past, and the terrible men who want to dictate our futures. If we have a responsibility, that’s it. And damn them all to hell.”

“You’re a fierce little thing, aren’t you?” he asked, pushing the last minutes behind him and smiling down at her. “So are we going to take our poles and poke into the soft, moist earth, hoping to break through to the tunnel?”

“What?” Her frown was genuine. “Oh,
that.
I was just talking, saying anything I could think of to keep you looking at me, and the way I was terrorizing you with those cards. I should apologize for that.”

She didn’t move out of his arms, and he wasn’t looby enough to let her go. “Yes. I’m keeping a list. I should warn you, it’s growing rather lengthy.”

“Trust me in this, Simon, it will get longer. But was it a good idea? The poles, I mean? Surely safer than trying to unearth more of the tunnel by climbing back down into that pit.”

“If that’s what you want to do, then that’s what we’ll do. Tomorrow morning. In the afternoon, we’ll search anywhere you haven’t yet searched. Agreed?”

“Agreed. That would be any shed or barn on the estate. I haven’t been at it all that long, you know. Oh, and the dower house.”

At this, Simon raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You haven’t searched the dower house? Why?”

Now she did move away from him, curse him for asking too many questions. “Because it’s not ours, it’s Trixie’s. I mean, it belongs to the estate, but as she’s the dowager countess, it’s also hers, not that she goes there. It’s been done up in Holland covers for decades, with only the maids going in to clean now and then.”

“She never goes there? For
decades?
And this doesn’t pique your interest?”

“No. Why should it?” Kate now looked just a tad mulish. “And I would have gotten to it, eventually.”

Simon took hold of her hands, and brought them up to his chest. “Kate, who knows more about the Society than any of us, perhaps even more than many of the current members?”

“Trixie,” Kate said quietly. “But—”

“Who would most want to avoid unhappy memories?”

“Again, Trixie, but—”

“And who would most want to protect the people who could be hurt by the truth coming out more than anyone else?”

She pulled one hand away and held up an index finger to his face. “Don’t you dare interrupt me again, Simon Ravenbill. Trixie. The answer is the same. My grandmother. But she already told Gideon everything she knows, and has been marvelously helpful. She forgot about the journals, granted, until Gideon showed her the one Adam gave us, but then she explained why it existed and what its contents described. Trixie has already been endlessly helpful. You may speak again now, if you’ve anything of merit to say.”

So, Kate had already been questioning what her grandmother knew and didn’t know, what she’d shared and what she might still be hiding. Not that she’d come right out and say so. Her hint was more than enough. The woman had
forgotten
about the journals until Gideon had placed one in her hands? That was doubtful. Highly doubtful. Kate didn’t believe that, and neither did he.

Especially if the journals, the bible, detailed the Society’s insane ceremonies all the way back to its origins, when Trixie’s husband the earl could have written his wife’s name in them. Thanks to Turner Collier’s journal, they already knew wives were sometimes included in the ceremonies, as willing or unwilling participants. No wonder the woman
forgot
about the journals!

“Thank you,” he said gently, knowing, for a man planning to capture her heart, he was treading on shaky ground by pursuing his point. “But no, Kate, she didn’t tell the earl everything. She couldn’t have, or we’d know more than we know. She lived through the Society. Twice. With both her husband and her son. If anyone could help us in our search, it’s the dowager countess. I’ve never personally met the woman, but I’m positive she’s hiding something. With only the best intentions,” he added quickly.

Kate retreated to the couch and plunked herself down inelegantly, her breeches-clad legs spread and her hands to her mouth. “I know,” she mumbled, so that it was difficult but not impossible to hear her. She sat forward, her head in her hands, the picture of dejection. “But I don’t want to know. That’s why I have to find the journals, Simon. So nobody has to ask her. She must be terrified right now, knowing her own grandchildren are investigating, knowing what we might find. She may not look or act it, but she’s not a young woman, and she’s been through so much. The Society, my father’s murder...”

Suddenly she was on her feet again, and belligerent. “You’re
not
going to approach her. You’re
not
going to ask her anything. You and I.
We’ll
find what has to be found, or I’ll do it on my own.”

There were tears standing in her eyes, something he didn’t believe he’d ever see there. “You love her very much.”

Somehow, Kate managed a weak smile. “She always encouraged me to make my own rules, my own decisions, just as she does. I always said I didn’t ever want to really grow up, just like her. Until this happened, I never knew anything about...about the rest...”

“Come here.” Simon drew her into his arms, again kissing her hair, rubbing lightly at her back, attempting to comfort her.

“Simon,” she said, her head against his chest. “You’ve just kissed me. I think you kissed me before, but I wasn’t certain, so I didn’t mention it.”