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

“A journal? He was told to keep a journal?”

Jessica nodded, not meeting his eyes. “Or a diary, I suppose. In any event, he called it a journal, yes. But weren’t you listening? Adam’s…keeping a tally. As if the whole thing were some sort of twisted game. Even worse, if that’s possible, our father had been giving him lessons in assassination. You have to talk to him, Gideon. I certainly can’t. As it is, I can barely look at you, just telling you about it.”

“I need to see this journal.”

Jessica put the lie to her last statement as her eyelids flew up, and she stared at him. “Must you? I’d like to see it burnt. The point is, my father was training Adam to be just like him.”

“No, Jessica. The point is, we now know without a doubt the Society remains active. You confirmed it existed five years ago. Adam’s journal tells us it’s still going on. You see, we know they all kept journals, all the way back to the beginning, with my grandfather. Trixie told me about him, about the journals, just yesterday.”

Jessica put a fist to her mouth, closed her eyes. “I thought it was just something my father thought of, rather like keeping score of his kills at the hunt. They…they all wrote down what they did?”

“In great detail,” Gideon said, and then told her what Trixie had seen in his grandfather’s journals.

“Drawings? Charts? Are they all insane?”

Gideon pushed away his plate, his appetite gone. “One would think so. Either that, or terminally naive, considering the members all turned their yearly journals over to my grandfather for this business of verification, so their exalted leader or whatever they called him could verify the information and make the additions to their blasphemous bible. Once they’d done it, turned over a single journal, they were bound to him for life. There was no choice but to continue the practice, year after year.”

“Didn’t they realize what they were doing?”

“You mean, turning over their lives to their leader, their futures? They had to, surely. With those journals, the leader held them hostage to whatever demands he might make on them. And don’t forget, Jessica, there were guests at these so-called ceremonies. One person’s word might not inflict too much damage, but to be able to produce a dozen different journals, all naming the guest, all cataloguing the same depravities? If knowledge translates to power, and it always has, my grandfather, and my father after him, held the reputations of perhaps dozens of important men and, at least in my grandfather’s time, even some women in his hands.”

“And after them, whoever carries on with the Society even now. You think the journals are the reason the members are being killed?”

“I’m not certain if it’s the journals themselves, although I’d certainly want them destroyed if I had written any of them, or had I attended one of their ceremonies and then found out they existed. To have some stupidity I’d engaged in at twenty—”

“Or eighteen,” Jessica interrupted, sighing.

Gideon pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Or at eighteen, yes. To have that act of idiocy brought back years later, when I was about to marry, or enter Parliament or some other government service? If I were to put my sights on becoming Prime Minister, or take the floor in the House of Lords to argue a position someone else might not care to have brought to a vote. On and on, Jessica. My life wouldn’t be my own. I could be forced to support causes that disgust me, vote against laws I felt proper. I could be forced to hand over copious amounts of money—even kill someone on command. The list of trouble those journals could cause a man is limitless.”

“But what about the leader? Your grandfather, your father, whoever else has served as the leader? The members could just as easily have controlled him, couldn’t they?”

“Try to control the one man who held all the evidence, on all of them? To threaten him, to expose him, would destroy them all. Who threatens the man who holds so many lives in his hand? But we have to consider the other side of this coin, as well. To belong to the Society, to be one of the chosen few—perhaps that prize was worth the rest.”

“And the…ceremonies. They may not want to give those up, either.”

“Your every vice indulged, your every perversion encouraged. Wine, women, opium. A new world order perhaps, with the Society in charge. All powerful persuasions. We’ll talk more about this when we know more.”

“Yes, but where are you going? It’s only eleven o’clock, Gideon. Adam’s still asleep.”

“Then it’s more than time he was awake.” He came around the breakfast table and put his hand on her shoulder. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

She looked up at him quizzically. “We are,” she said carefully. “Now why do I feel as if I’m not going to care for whatever you say next?”

He smiled and dropped a kiss on her hair. “Probably because, as I’m going to confront Adam, that leaves you to tell Kate what’s going on. I don’t think of myself as a coward, but the idea of Kate’s possible questions bids fair to make me consider a lengthy sojourn on the other side of the world.”

“I understand. I’d rather have a tooth drawn than have to listen to Adam say anything else on the subject. And then we’ll go to Cavendish Square, to hear what Trixie has to tell us?”

“Yes. But just the two of us. Adam stays under the guard of his keeper, but I want Kate back at Redgrave Manor, preferably on her way yet this afternoon.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to accomplish that particular part of the miracle, am I? Do you have any suggestions as to how I’m to do that?”

“Put her to searching the estate for journals and this supposed bible,” Gideon suggested, having already given the matter some thought during his morning bath. “Trixie burned the journals she found after my grandfather died, and searched for the volumes my father had without any success. Kate won’t find anything if Trixie didn’t, but it will keep her busy, or at least too busy to come riding back to town.”

“But what if she does find something? You know she won’t just send them to us. She’ll bring them. After reading them.”

Gideon grimaced. Yes, he could imagine Kate paging through the journals. “I’ll send Max and Val to help her, as soon as either one or both of them show up again. That keeps all three of them out of the way, and if any journals are found, at least my brothers will have the sense to keep them from her. And before you say there’s any number of flaws in this plan, remember, I should by rights be sending you to Redgrave Manor along with Kate. I am looking for a murderer.”

She covered his hand with her own as she looked up at him. “And that’s still all you’re looking for, Gideon?”

“No,” he admitted, “it’s not. Trixie called my father a monster and, before him, my grandfather. Now, all these years later, it’s up to this generation of Redgraves to learn what those monsters may have spawned. The scandalous Redgraves, Jessica. We all rather enjoy that reputation at times. Reckless, daring, impulsive, laughing in the face of society’s rules. That was the reputation we foolishly enjoyed. We had no idea how deep the scandal might run, where and why it had its beginnings. If the Redgraves started all of this, it’s up to the Redgraves to finish it.”

“Thank you, Gideon. Thank you for including me, for not sending me away.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth as he ran his hand down over her breast. “No, don’t thank me. I could tell you any number of lies about why it would be best all around for you to be here. I could say you deserve a chance at some revenge for what happened to you. I could weave any number of tales meant to ease my conscience. But the truth is, I’m being entirely selfish. I’m not ready to let you go.”

The moment he said those last words, he knew he had made a mistake.

“And when you are? Ready to let me go, that is. What then, Gideon?”

He stood back, looked down at her, her question repeating itself inside his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. I’ve never had to…”

Her smile came as a surprise to him, just as had her question. “No, I didn’t think you had. You’re one of those reckless, impulsive Redgraves, you admit it out of your own mouth. You see what you want, and you go after it with everything that’s in you until it’s yours, and the devil take the hindmost. But when the chase is over, once you’ve won? Once you’ve solved all the mysteries of the Society, perhaps even found your father’s remains and returned them to the mausoleum? Once you and I have nothing more in common than a need to explore each other’s bodies, a need I see no reason to deny? What then? What of this ring I wear? What of a future beyond tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her. He’d done what he’d done because it was the right thing to do. The Redgraves owed her for all the heartache she’d suffered in her life. That he desired her had been some fortuitous coincidence. But beyond that? Beyond tomorrow? Physical intimacy aside, clearly it was still too early for her to believe they might find love together, something deeper than the passion.

“I thought as much. Are all men little boys, Gideon? Even you? Not thinking beyond the end of your noses—although I’m sure your grandmother would say that differently? Oh, dear. What to do about Jessica, once you’ve found what you’re looking for, once you’ve tired of her, as you’ve tired of every one of the women you’ve bedded, hmm? This could prove interesting in the end, couldn’t it?”

“We’re married,” he said at last, knowing his answer wasn’t an answer at all, not to the real question Jessica had put before him. “That is the end of it.”

“Of course,” she said, turning her attention back to her plate. She picked up her fork. “I’ll see to Kate. You go rouse Adam, as you said, and tell him some home truths. As it is, he’s too eager to slip his leash. Let’s hope you can make him understand why that isn’t a good idea. My worry is he’s had a myriad of strange ideas drummed into his head, so he may think otherwise.”

“Jessica, I—” Gideon shut his mouth, because he’d nearly said something they’d both regret. Him, because he wasn’t sure if he knew what the word meant, and Jessica, because she’d know it would be too pat to be believable. He doubted he believed it himself. They enjoyed each other; they both admitted that; they even liked each other. But as to more? “I do care for you, Jessica. Beyond what we shared last night.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then took a bite of what had to be cold eggs.

Thank you? He’d said he cared for her, and she’d said thank you? What sort of answer was that? She may as well have thrown a bucket of cold pump water in his face.

“You’re…Yes. I leave Kate in your capable hands, hoping I can do even half so well with the journalkeeping nodcock. I should like to leave for Cavendish Square by one o’clock.” He quit the room then, knowing he should have said more, or less, or anything other than the words he’d chosen.

And then, halfway up the stairs, he realized he was angry, and not just with himself. They were adults, he and Jessica. They knew what they wanted, and they’d wanted each other. They still wanted each other, unless she had been attempting to tell him that last night—at least the parts before Trixie’s note had arrived—had been enough for her; she hadn’t needed the ring, the vows.

But he had, damn it!

It was just understanding why he’d felt he needed them, that was the question, because paying a debt seemed a pitifully lame explanation, even to him… .

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE DOWAGER COUNTESS turned another page in Turner Collier’s journal and looked at Gideon over the top of a pair of simple half-spectacles. Collier’s name and the year 1809, and beneath that, The Society, were all embossed on the leather cover in gold script. She handled each page with only the tips of her slightly trembling fingers, as if the contact could prove poisonous. “Does the fool even know what this is?” she asked at last.