What an Earl Wants (22 page)
T
HE
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 life and mischief. And kindness.
How strange to look at such a well set-up gentleman and think
first and foremost: this is a kind man.
“Kate’s at Redgrave Manor after a brief visit here in town, and
Max is still off North somewhere, aiding Trixie in one of her stunts, so the
two—no, the three of them, remain heartfree. Unless you’ve somehow been struck
by one of Cupid’s arrows, only two things have changed since you left. I’ve
married, and these two miscreants have finally learned to perform their only
party trick outdoors, rather than on the carpet in my study.”
“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?”
* * *
T
HEY
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? Burke, his wife and their
daughter.
Val also agreed having Kate find so much as a single journal
could prove disastrous, unless he and even Max were there to physically wrest
the thing from her hands before she so much as opened it.
Or, to quote him exactly, and Gideon knew he wouldn’t soon
forget his brother’s words, “You put a job in front of Kate, she does it. If she
finds something, she won’t simply hand it over, you know. No, she’ll demand
complete inclusion in whatever the hell it is we may end up having to do—which
would be your fault, Gideon. And if she thinks she’s been put to hunting mares’
nests just so you have her out of the way, well, then, brother mine, it will be
more than your fault, it will be your
head.
Either
way, I don’t know that you thought this plan of yours through very well, did
you?”
Which he hadn’t. Gideon knew that. Having his youngest brother
point that fact out to him, however, brought home to Gideon how little he
had
been thinking these past weeks, perhaps even
months. He should have brought his brothers in on his suspicions long ago. Why
hadn’t he?
But he knew the answer to that question. He was the oldest
brother. He was the head of the Redgrave family. The burdens belonged on his
shoulders. He hadn’t wanted his brothers involved, hadn’t wanted Max or Val and
definitely not Kate to learn how much of a monster their father had been, how
much of a victim their mother had been. And Trixie? Well, there was no stopping
them from learning about Trixie, as the woman lived her life quite openly,
didn’t she?
There was one other thing. He could have been wrong. The deaths
he’d begun to notice could all have been accidents and coincidental. Just as the
cave-in of a tunnel beneath the greenhouse could have been a natural event, the
lanterns in the forest carried by poachers.
Of course, finding out their father’s body had been taken might
have been a good time to bring at least his brothers into his confidence.
Still, he could have been wrong about the rest, at least until
the night he’d dragged his physician to that stable and they’d found the hole in
Turner Collier’s skull.
He should have brought them in then. Except then he’d met
Jessica. Val may have heard most of what Gideon had learned, what Trixie had
confirmed, but Gideon had told him only that Jessica was Adam’s half sister,
estranged from the family after making an unfortunate marriage. He’d seen no
reason to go into more detail than that. The past was the past, Jessica’s past
her own. It was the uncertain future that had to concern them all now.
He’d had so many very good reasons to not do what he had all
along known he should.
He was so used to being a man who kept his secrets to himself,
the worst of his family’s sordid past carefully hidden behind closed doors. It
was Jessica who’d changed that, with her openness and honesty, even when the
facts proved painful.
And the burden of his family shame, shared now with Jessica,
was lighter just as he’d told her. Speaking with Val had made it lighter
still.
No, it wasn’t the past Gideon carried with him now, it was the
future that lay heavily on his shoulders, and the responsibility to correct
whatever may have been set on a dangerous course so many years ago.
