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

Gideon lifted his hand to signal his agreement with Richard’s departure and then took up the seat he’d just vacated. “I had an interesting conversation tonight myself, with the husband of one of your new bosom chums.”

“Those two women are not my bosom chums,” Jessica protested. “Lady Caro is such a poor, whipped creature, and Felicity Urban, if I’m not being too fanciful, invited us to be guests at one of their horrible gatherings.”

“The cheek of the woman, to think I’d share you,” Gideon said, and then held up his hands in case Jessica decided to attack him.

But Jessica only sighed. “She ran so hot and cold. One moment as if in a daze, the next all cheery and friendly. And then, just at the end, there was a moment…”

Gideon lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss against her heated skin. “Yes?”

“She’s sending round an invitation tomorrow. I am to read it immediately. Really, it was as if she were giving me an order.” Jessica laid her head against his shoulder, her entire body sagging in fatigue. “I felt horribly sorry for them, they’re both so clearly unhappy. Did you learn anything from their husbands? You haven’t said.”

“I haven’t been given the chance to say anything,” he pointed out as he gathered her into his arms and stood up, having decided to adjourn to his bedchamber before she fell asleep against his shoulder. “However, I did manage to corral Archie Urban for five minutes. He said something interesting.”

Jessica wound her arms around his neck. “I’d say I’m too heavy for you and you should put me down, but I’m too selfish. I can’t even remember when last I slept, thanks to you. But tell me, what did he say?”

“I interrupted a conversation he was having with a few other gentlemen as they waited for an opening at one of the tables. Urban was offering the opinion Emperor Napoleon is a genius. Tactically, politically. His recent marriage to Austria’s Marie Louise a stroke of brilliance, et cetera. I raised my quizzing glass—an affectation, I know, but often quite effective—and asked if surely he meant evil genius, which he immediately agreed he did. However, I was left with the impression he was soliciting opinions, and one or two actually had agreed with him before I stepped in.”

“Are you saying Mr. Urban was sniffing the air, looking for like minds?”

“Oh, very good, Jessica. You’re better at this than you supposed.”

“Thank you.” Jessica turned her face into his chest to cover her yawn. “And that was all?”

“There was a little more. A few discreet inquiries inform me Urban’s responsibility is to see our troops quietly massing on the Peninsula are supplied adequately and in a timely fashion. Weapons, ammunition, foodstuffs, blankets, all funneled into Portugal, most especially into Lisbon. We’re preparing to go back at it with Bonaparte in full force once we’re assured of Spanish cooperation, that’s clear enough. An army is nothing without supplies. Knowing what we think we may know about the man, I find that unsettling.”

He put her down once they reached his bedchamber, and he began the pleasurable job of acting as lady’s maid for his bride.

“I find it unsettling that you were able to learn so much so quickly and easily. Why on earth would anyone tell you about—what was it you said?—a massing of troops on the Peninsula?”

“What? I’m not a man who inspires trust?”

She turned to face him, holding up her now unbuttoned gown, her nearly bared breasts distracting him mightily. “I believe you could coolly bluff your way into forcing your opponent to foolishly declare he can win the Misère Ouverte, and then make certain he doesn’t take more than three tricks. I would never play whist against you, or any other card game. Or any game at all, for that matter. Now tell me how you learned what you learned.”

“Spencer Perceval is a friend,” Gideon told her, guiding her to a chair so that he could help her off with her shoes and stockings.

“The Prime Minister? Really? Well, now I am impressed.”

“You’re weren’t before?” he asked, grinning up at her. “But much as I’d like to take the credit, it’s Max we have to thank for Perceval. He’s worked with him a time or two, on other matters. We all know how it is, Jessica. Even when we’re not formally at war with Napoleon, we’re at war with Napoleon, truces be damned.”

Jessica stood up and allowed Gideon to help her step out of her gown. She wasn’t being immodest, or coy, or anything that would give Gideon any reason for hope. She was simply a woman anxious for her bed. He may as well have been Mildred, he realized with some chagrin.

“You’ve called Max an adventurer, and now you tell me he’s performed services for our Prime Minister. Are you next going to tell me that Val is secretly working for the War Office or some such thing?”

He turned her about and headed her toward his turned-down bed, clad now only in her silk French drawers, following behind her to take the pins from her hair. “Valentine? I’d as much attempt to tell you I’m one of Liverpool’s advisers.”

It wasn’t an answer, but he hadn’t wished to give her an answer.

He watched, in some admiration, as Jessica crawled onto the bed and pulled the covers over her. “I’m not that silly. You don’t take orders from anyone.” She turned her back to him and sighed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you didn’t answer my question about Valentine. But I’m too exhausted right now to care. Good night.”

So much for his supposed genius… .

Gideon stripped off his clothing and joined her, pressing himself up against her back, curving his body to mimic her bent-knee position. “You do realize you’re in my bed, madam?”

He felt her body stiffen slightly, imagined her eyes going wide as she belatedly took in her surroundings. “Oh, God, I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” he spoke against her hair. “And I promised you some detailed groveling, I believe.”

“Gideon, you could recite lines from this Fanny Hill Trixie spoke of while hanging from one of the bedposts with a rose clamped in your jaws, and I will still be asleep in the next two minutes.”

He slid his arm around her, to cup her breast, rub the pad of his thumb lightly across her nipple. “Are you quite certain?” he asked, smiling in the near dark.

She turned onto her back and looked up into his eyes. “Oh, good, you’re not being serious.” Then she turned onto her side once more. “Good night, Gideon.”

Gideon had never shared a bed with a woman unless he was, well, bedding her. Now here he was, in bed with his brand-new bride, and he hadn’t so much as been offered a kiss good night. He’d been rather cavalierly dismissed, actually.

He thought about this for a while and then realized he was listening to the sound of Jessica’s soft, even breathing. He liked the sound. He liked listening to it. He liked being where he was, with her, even if that only meant they were together. He didn’t need more than that. Even in the midst of all he supposed, all that may pose danger to them, to England itself if he was right, he was content. Just to be here. Just to listen to his wife breathe.

How strange…

“HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S ABOUT under the blankets, don’t he, my lady? And that’s fine, it is, for you. But he doesn’t know much about what it takes to press the wrinkles out of a fancy gown, oh, no, he doesn’t. Will you have a talk with his lordship about that, ma’am? Doreen fair to cried when she saw your gown this morning.”

Jessica was caught between pointing out to Mildred that she didn’t wish to discuss her husband’s prowess under the blankets and the fact that poor Doreen seemed to be paying the price for that prowess. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said as the maid ran the sea sponge over her shoulders. “And I apologize again that the two of you waited up until three for me last night. It was highly inconsiderate of me.”

“That’s all right, my lady. We’ve all of us got to learn our way here, and that’s what I tell Doreen. Now, if you were to stand up, I’ll fetch you that bath sheet I’ve got warming by the fire.”

A few minutes later, Jessica was sitting at her dressing table and Mildred was standing behind her, muttering over the tangled hair she was doing her best to tame and suggesting mayhap his lordship might wish to consider learning how to weave a fine braid if he wasn’t going to let her lady’s maids within ten feet of her at night.

“Mildred?” Jessica asked, watching the woman in the mirror. “Is this all real, do you suppose? I mean…that is to say…it all seems like a dream, doesn’t it? And…and perhaps too wonderful to last?”

“Ah, and now you’re staring into the mouth of a gift horse, is that what you’re doing? That’s dangerous, my lady, and courting trouble. His lordship is bosky over you, any fool can see that. And it’s not a bubble soon to burst, I don’t think.”

“But how would a person know that?” Jessica asked, taking the brush from the maid’s hand, needing to do something more than just sit there; she had a long way to go before she could simply be waited on, she’d lived too many years on her own. “I met a pair of ladies last evening at the ball. Married ladies. Neither seemed very happy. They hinted husbands become disenchanted sooner or later. And when all you have is…How do I say this?”

“When all you have is that hot burning to be in each other’s drawers and then mayhap just as sudden there you are, stuck looking at each other across the mutton and trying to remember what all the fuss was about?”

Jessica turned about to goggle at the maid. “Mildred. How did you know? that’s exactly it, exactly what I meant to say. I mean, perhaps not in that way… .”

“Make it as pretty as you want, my lady, but it comes down to the same in the end, that’s what I’ve learned. One minute it’s, oh, laws, come here and let me have that, and the next it’s for the love of all that’s decent, keep that nasty thing away from me.”

“Mildred!” Jessica felt her cheeks go hot. It hadn’t been like that. She’d simply been tired. Exhausted. She hadn’t actually told him to go away. “I don’t think we should—”

The maid went about folding up the bathing sheet and continued as if Jessica hadn’t spoken. “It’s the same for the men, you know, but even worse. They want you till they get you, and use you every which way while they have you, but then it’s not a game anymore, you see. They won, and now it’s time to move on to the next one. That’s what they want most, the winning.”

Jessica didn’t protest this time. “I see.”

“I suppose so! And then there’s the worst of all of them. The lying buggers who swear they love you. Ha! We all know what it is they love, and it’s not our pretty smiles or pleasant ways.”

The maid’s voice had taken on a fierceness now, and Jessica bit her lips together and simply listened, turning about to see pain on the woman’s face.