The Regency Redgraves: What an Earl Wants / What a Lady Needs / What a Gentleman Desires / What a Hero Dares

Jessica looked down at her toes. There was nowhere else to look, not really.

“He always roared like some great bear when he was—I really shouldn’t be saying this, not to you two innocent girls. I must be more overset than I imagined.”

“Gideon and Jessica married tonight, Trixie,” Kate supplied helpfully. “From the way they were looking at each other when they went up to bed at ten o’clock, I don’t think Jessica’s innocence should be a worry to you.”

The dowager countess smiled in Jessica’s direction. “No grass growing under my grandson’s feet, is there? I should have realized he wouldn’t wait so much as another day. I’ll expect a grandchild within the year.” Then she turned her attention back to Kate. “However, if you tell me you’re no innocent, I’ll have the man’s name tonight and his ears on my mantel tomorrow.”

“I didn’t mean I’m not innocent, Trixie,” Kate protested. “I’m simply not, well, innocent. Or do you forget who raised me? Remember when I was ten, and I asked you about those statues lining the staircase out there, and what those funny things were?”

Trixie shook her head. “Oh, I have so many sins to account for…” But then she rallied, as if eager to be on with it. “Very well, where was I?”

“There you go, Trixie. You’ll feel better for the telling, I’m sure, you poor dear. Now, he was roaring…” Kate prompted, grinning at Jessica.

“No, that wasn’t what I was saying. He was in the habit of roaring once brought to the, shall we say, summit. Tonight it was rather more of a surprised oh and then nothing. He simply collapsed on top of me. So I noticed only when I pointed out that, proud of himself as he might be, he was now crushing me and would he please move—which, sadly, he did not do. I nearly exhausted my strength until I could manage to extract myself from beneath him. I scribbled a note to Gideon and have been imbibing this lovely wine ever since, which is the only reason I’m running my tongue, which I shouldn’t be doing, although, after the first time, you’d think I’d be less prone to hysterics.”

Jessica sat up very straight. “This has happened to you before tonight?”

“Oh, yes, this makes it twice now. But other than to shamelessly trot after younger men, I see no escape from the possibility of a third time. Save celibacy, of course, which is out of the question.”

“Of course,” Jessica agreed weakly. It occurred to her it was a very good thing she wasn’t some sheltered debutante suddenly thrust into this scandalous nest of Redgraves.

Kate rested her chin in her hand and looked adoringly up at her grandmother. “I want to be like you. I never want to grow old.”

“We all grow old, pet,” Trixie told Kate, patting her cheek. “Why else do you think I try so desperately to tell myself I’m still young? Being old terrifies me, because each day brings me closer to the moment I have to face my sins before my God. You don’t want that sort of terrible moment for yourself, and I most certainly don’t wish it on you.” She took a steadying breath. “And now I believe I’d very much like another glass of wine, to aid me in maintaining my accustomed sangfroid.”

“I’ll see to it,” Jessica said when Kate looked at her, her full bottom lip caught between her teeth, tears standing in her dark eyes.

A minute later there was some slight commotion on the other side of the closed doors, and all three women looked in that direction. There were a series of muffled bumps capped by a string of barely contained curses, followed by the sound of footsteps, perhaps even the sounds of something being dragged across the floor and, finally, the closing of a door.

“‘Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ As long as you’re no longer resting under my roof.” Trixie raised her refilled glass in a salute, and then downed its contents in one long, smooth glide. “I wonder what Gideon decided to do with him? Oh, well, whatever it is, it won’t kill him. The marquis, I mean.”

An hour later, with Trixie now slumbering while almost politely snoring beneath a cashmere shawl on the couch, Jessica and Kate had that answer from Gideon.

“He’ll be discovered in his usual chair at his favorite club. His coachman was most willing to accommodate my request for both his help and the club’s direction, as he could see the inherent problems in explaining what his master was doing in Cavendish Square.”

“So you told the coachie what the man was doing?” Kate asked, yawning, as if the subject interested her still, but not enough to keep her awake for much longer.

“Yes,” Gideon said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “He was rather proud to hear it. They’ll keep the marquis in a small storeroom until the club closes, and then trot him out to his chair, where he’ll be found in the morning. Kept saying good on him, the randy old bugger, good on him—the coachman kept saying that, I mean. I haven’t been able to muster the same enthusiasm about Trixie. Are we going to leave her here?”

Jessica got to her feet, pushing her hands against the small of her back. One way or another, it had been a long night. Something to tell her grandchildren, she supposed, although she doubted she ever would. “She says she’s not going to sleep in that bed again, not until the entire thing has been stripped away, mattress, hangings, everything. She’s also quite drunk, Gideon. I imagine I would be, too.”

“Then we’ll learn nothing more here tonight, or should I say this morning. It will soon be dawn. Ladies?”

“Oh, yes,” Kate said, jumping up. “I’m more than ready to get back to Portman Square. Tomorrow is soon enough for you all to tell me more about whatever the devil is going on here.”

“There’s nothing going on here.”

“So you say, Gideon. Silly me simply doesn’t believe that,” Kate announced as she headed for the foyer.

Gideon and Jessica exchanged looks as they followed her.

“Just before she nodded off, your grandmother asked me to lean down close so she could whisper in my ear. She said to tell you she’s learned a few things, and that you’ll soon have your murderer.”

Gideon waited for Kate to be handed into the coach. “And Kate overheard. The girl’s got ears like a bat. Wonderful. Now we’ll never be rid of her.”

“I heard that,” Kate warned from inside the coach. “But you’re probably right.”

“Damn it, Kate—”

“Not now, Gideon,” Jessica begged. “We’re all exhausted.”

He nodded his agreement, and helped her into the coach. They were halfway back to Portman Square when Kate asked about the commotion they’d heard outside the drawing room. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Gideon answered shortly. And then, a few moments later, his shoulders began to shake. “We dropped him.”

Jessica looked at him in the dim light of the false dawn. He was smiling. “You dropped him?”

“It wasn’t all that terrible. We’d tied him up in a sheet, and partway down the stairs Soames lost his grip on his end.”

“Oh, Gideon,” Jessica said, her own lips twitching in amusement. “How…um, how horrible.”

Gideon shrugged as if unconcerned, but the devil had crept into his eyes. “I suppose we could have apologized, but the marquis didn’t seem to mind.”

They were all three of them still laughing as the footman set down the coach steps in Portman Square, Jessica going off into new peals of exhausted mirth when she saw the clearly apprehensive look on the young man’s face. “My goodness, Waters,” she managed to choke out, “you look as if you’ve just seen a dead man.”

At that, she felt herself being swept up into Gideon’s arms as he climbed the steps to the mansion and headed for the stairs. “Bed now, for all of us,” he said, including Kate in this order.

“When do we go back to Cavendish Square?” Kate asked as she actually pulled on the railing to help propel herself up the stairs.

“We don’t. You’re returning to Redgrave Manor.”

“Giddy,” she said, very nearly whined, “don’t make me badger you. You know you’ll give in.”

“Not this time. Good night, Kate.”

Jessica gave the girl a quick wave as Gideon kicked open the door to their bedchamber. Once the door was closed again—and locked again—they both made short work of ridding themselves of their clothes and tumbling into the unmade bed. He kissed her, thanked her and then turned onto his stomach, clearly intending to sleep away what little remained of their wedding night.

Goodness! They were behaving like a long-married couple. Or at least like a long-married couple that had just disposed of a dead marquis.

She lay on her back while he lay on his belly. She lifted her hand and idly began stroking his bare back, more content than she could even imagine. Which, if she were to think about the entirety of her current situation, wouldn’t be very sensible of her. But it seemed sensible enough for now.

“Giddy? Really?” she asked him after a bit.

He mumbled something she probably shouldn’t have heard, and then sighed. “Good night, Jessica.”

She smiled up at the draperies. “Good night. Giddy.”

GIDEON LAID DOWN HIS FORK with extreme precision. Indeed, he’d kept his entire posture under careful control throughout the length of Jessica’s embarrassed recitation of the conversation she and Adam had shared in the modiste’s dressing room. He’d asked no questions. Until now, with her final admission.