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

Gideon pressed a wineglass into her hands. “She’ll have it from you one way or another, you know. Trixie? Who was Jamie Linden, other than some anonymous baron’s bastard?”

“When I knew him? Thank you, pet.” She took the wineglass and quickly downed half its contents. “No, the foul taste is still in my mouth, just from saying his name. Who was Jamie Linden? I suppose that would depend on the day of the week. Card shark, schemer, purveyor of pipe dreams too numerous to enumerate and always with airs above his station. When riding high, he was accepted on the fringes of society, as he always knew the location of the best cockfights, the jockey who could be bribed to lace his mount with pepper to get a good run—there was this one time he managed to have a live river eel shoved up a stallion’s rump just before the race. Ran like the wind, pet, that horse did, and if it hadn’t managed to expel the thing before the bets were settled, your father would have pocketed a tidy purse.”

Jessica felt herself blushing. She had been the man’s wife. How could she look at Gideon again and not see condemnation or, worse, pity in his eyes?

“So Linden was one of my father’s contemporaries?”

Jessica could feel Gideon’s gaze on her, imagine him adding figures in his head.

“Yes, but not a friend. Jamie Linden was your father’s man of all work, Gideon,” Trixie said. “He would make arrangements, ease his way whenever necessary. Provide the entertainment for their gatherings, as it were. If the ceremonies did go on, I would imagine he continued to offer his services as procurer.”

Jessica took a swallow of wine, as her mouth had gone quite dry.

“You would imagine, Trixie?” Gideon asked, his voice low and hard. “You’re still telling us you didn’t know? I think Jessica’s right. Either you’ve lost your touch, knowing everything there is to know, or you’re lying.”

“And you’re impertinent,” the dowager duchess told him sharply. “All right. I may have…heard things. Five years, you said, dear? I suppose that could be true. As I remember it, old Walter stuck his spoon in the wall five years ago, so they would have needed to hunt up a replacement. Explaining the investiture ceremony Jessica spoke of, you understand. Oh, don’t glare, Gideon, I didn’t make up the rules!”

“What else do you expect me to do?” he asked angrily, and Jessica bowed her head, attempted to make herself invisible if possible.

“I agree. It was all…terrible. And yes, I’ll admit I suspected it was still going on five years ago, in its own haphazard way, not nearly as efficient as when Barry was in charge. He had a true talent for leadership, your father, much of it sadly wasted on feeding his myriad vices as he eventually caught himself up in his own trap. Not all of them continued to wear that damnable rose your father concocted, so you wouldn’t know their names. If they still meet, they’re much more covert now, more of the members from a generation not as familiar to me.”

“But perhaps with the requisite number still replenished with eldest offspring, as Jessica suggests? And yet I was never approached.”

Jessica raised her head to look at Trixie when she didn’t immediately answer Gideon’s question.

“They knew better than to dare come anywhere near you,” she said at last, for a fleeting moment looking every day of her years. “I would have destroyed them.”

“And Adam?” Jessica asked, her heart pounding.

Trixie retook her reclined position. “Yes, please, back to the twit. He’d be the perfect candidate, actually. Devoted to his own pleasures, not too sharp in his wits, although clearly with a high opinion of himself even if everyone else refuses to see his brilliance. Easily coddled into most any stupidity, led by his most intimate appendage, as it were, introduced to the delights of the flesh as his birthright, told he was better than anyone, privileged, untouchable. Heady stuff, especially for a twit. He’d do as a lesser member—everyone can find a good use for a biddable idiot.”

Gideon sat down beside Jessica; she resisted the urge to reach out, take his hand. What his grandmother was saying couldn’t be easy for him to hear; it certainly wasn’t easy for her. “Lesser member? There are—were—degrees of membership, even inside the devil’s dozen?”

“Everything has tiers, pet. And leaders. There were their other interests to consider—our way of government being uppermost. Barry was very much impressed by the French and their third state, the tiers état, and I’m sure, had he lived, would have applauded them for having the good sense to eventually separate their monarchs’ heads from their shoulders.”

“There was a dislike for kings?” Gideon asked, sounding somewhat surprised. Jessica decided he had a flair for playacting, and that Trixie was only now getting to the part of her tale that interested him most.

“Hatred would be a better term. Disgust, for another. Hanoverian upstarts, beginning with the first George, who brought his odiferous sauerkraut and guttural language to the Crown, followed by his forgettable son. And then Farmer George, our current mad king, who lost us the American colonies. Barry didn’t live to see the posturing buffoon who is destined to be the fourth George come into his full flower of idiocy, but I can imagine his displeasure with the man. And for all government save the one he and his acolytes would have erected in its place. Remember, pet, your father died in 1789. The Bastille had just fallen. Passions were running quite high throughout England, both in support of the French and in fear of the same thing happening here. But that’s enough of that, and I’m sure it all died with Barry.”

“They were planning their own revolution?”

“You’ll badger me until you get it all, won’t you? You’re a lot like me in that regard. Very well. But then we will never speak of this again. I mean that, Gideon, never again. Even two decades in the past, what your father planned could come back to destroy the Redgraves. Sedition? Regicide? No, we don’t speak of it.”

She held out her wineglass to be refilled, waiting until Gideon had replenished it and handed it to her before speaking again. “Your father and his cohorts were not the only ones to dream such dreams. Again, remember the times. Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Pretty words for the masses, opportunities for the ambitious. There were many hot-blooded young men who looked to France and saw what they believed were great opportunities if repeated here in England. your father planned a lot of things. He was young, yes, but as with Caesar’s Cassius, he was ambitious. He took what your grandfather began in the pursuit of pleasure, and saw the possibilities for so much more.”

“But there were only the thirteen,” Jessica pointed out, immediately wishing she hadn’t spoken. The dowager duchess was clearly unhappy with this conversation.

“Yes, thirteen. But providing carefully selected invited guests—there were so many guests, safe they believed, in their masks and cloaks—with free and unbridled access to their every vice, their every twisted appetite? Gathering those of weak moral fiber and yet with entry into every corner of society, every door in government from the House of Commons to the King’s Privy Council, corrupting them, thereby owning them? Think about that. Stupidly, unwittingly, they gave Barry power over them all. It was a brilliant if distasteful strategy, I suppose, as far it went. If I told you some of the names, which I will not, you would be appalled. Sadly, these two decades later, some of them still occupy positions of power.”

She took another sip of wine. “Barry saw in the French unrest what Napoleon Bonaparte must have recognized several years later, knowing someone eventually had to rise from the ashes and take the reins. Although the victories that would bring your father and his handpicked minions into power would not be on the battlefield, but covert—and more than faintly disgusting. I never wanted you to know any of this, Gideon. But he was quite mad, your father. Brilliant, but quite mad. Could he have succeeded? I sincerely doubt that, his appetite for opium would have brought him down, eventually. But it became increasingly clear even to me, his own mother, that he must soon be stopped, one way or another. We would have been ruined if he failed, ruined if he succeeded. I both mourned and rejoiced the day he died, almost welcoming the scandal that followed, as we had been saved from the most damning scandal of them all.”

Jessica turned away as the dowager blinked back tears before taking refuge in her wineglass once more.

The room was silent for a time, a long, uncomfortable time, before Gideon spoke. “How many other members from my father’s time are still alive?”

“One,” she said quietly. “With Turner gone now, too, just the one.”

“Yes, but you’re forgetting those who took their places,” Jessica said, her mind racing. “The eldest offspring. Why couldn’t one of them be our killer, to protect his father’s memory, or to protect his own reputation if word were ever to get out? And what about those guests Trixie spoke of—one or more of them might also feel vulnerable. Your father’s Society was plotting the overthrow of the monarchy, Gideon, for pity’s sake. The Society was still active five years ago in some ways, I promise you that, although I can’t say it functioned as it once had. It may still go on today, in one form or another. But to be a member today would make it logical for anyone to believe there are still plots against the government, and all while Bonaparte threatens to invade us. That’s reason enough for a dozen murders.”

“Now you’re simply speculating, my dears, and rather wildly at that. Without Barry, their leader was gone,” Trixie reminded them. “The ceremonies, the masks, the orgies, the opium eating, I’m sure they went on. It was that side of things that most attracted many of the members, as Barry well knew. So, yes, I know they went on. But I was assured by Ranald Orford himself, the rest of it quickly shriveled to nothingness. Barry made them believe they were capable of anything. Without him, they had to convince themselves, and that wasn’t possible. If they still meet, it’s only to be naughty little boys, nothing more.”

“Naughty?” Jessica was instantly incensed. “My father was going to turn me over to be used in some horrible ceremony.”

Trixie shrugged yet again. “He may have been attempting to impress someone with his loyalty. It has been done before.”

She turned her attention back to Gideon. “That would be unsettling, however. It would mean there’s a clear new leader, perhaps even as strong as Barry. You force me to do some investigating. Go away now, Gideon. Thank God you’ve left off wearing that damnable golden rose. You can’t allow anyone to speculate that you’ve stumbled onto them. Your best strategy is to do nothing else until you hear from me.”

“I don’t know that I want you involved, Trixie,” Gideon said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to Jessica. “If we’re anywhere close to correct with our speculations, you might be putting yourself in danger.”

“Danger? You forget, I have weapons of my own, so don’t worry your head about me. As to the boy? If you truly believe the ceremonies continue, in any way or form, I’d suggest locking him up somewhere. When the world goes mad, you can’t take too many precautions.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DRIVE BACK TO JERMYN Street was accomplished in tense silence, but when Gideon tossed the reins to Thomas and followed Jessica inside, she didn’t object.

“We’ll be upstairs, Richard,” he called over his shoulder at her business partner. “See to it we’re not disturbed.”

“Yes, but—” the man protested before Jessica motioned him to silence.

“Take the knocker from the door, please, Richard. I’m sorry, but we won’t be entertaining for a while. I’ll explain later.”

“We won’t—Jess? What’s going on? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Go on up,” Gideon told her, touching his hand to her back. “I’ll join you shortly.”

She looked as if she might wish to argue the point. She looked at him for a long time, actually, as if memorizing him or some such thing, but then nodded and headed for the stairs.

“Richard? If you’d kindly put down that thing you’re waving about, I believe we need to have a conversation.”

The older man looked at the feather duster he’d been wielding and then laid it on one of the sheet-covered tables. “I wasn’t planning to employ it as a weapon,” he said. He reached beneath the sheet and came up with a nasty-looking wooden club. “This has served me well enough over the years. Do I need it now, my lord?”

“I most sincerely hope not,” Gideon said wryly as he pulled two chairs out from one of the card tables and pushed one toward Richard, choosing to turn his own around and straddle it. “Tell me about Jamie Linden.”

Richard eyed the chair as if considering other uses for it but then sat down. “A fellow of much my own age, but much better set up, I should think people would say. A winning smile, a clever tongue. You could almost like him, I suppose, although not quite so much when he was in his cups. But I barely knew the man.”

“Really? And are you quite sure you want to go on with that? I’ve already had to wade through evasions and outright lies once today. I don’t have the patience for a second round. I know what he was before he and Jessica ran off to escape her father’s plans for her. Now I want to know about the time between then and the day he died.”

“No, my lord, you don’t.” Richard extracted a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his suddenly damp brow. “It was another time, another lifetime. The past is long behind her now, dead and gone.”