What a Lady Needs

The boy carefully patted at his hair, dark and stiff with pomade, so that it probably wouldn’t have moved by a single strand in a gale. “Thank you, Kate.”

Lady Katherine rolled her eyes. “You’re welcome—looby.”

“Yes, well, Kate, shall we have our dessert in the main drawing room?” Valentine broke in. “We’ll join you and Adam there in an hour.”

Kate agreed, and the men all rose as she departed the room, smiling over her shoulder at Simon, who nodded his acknowledgment of her favor. He fought the urge to follow her.

“You’re going to have brandy and cigars now, aren’t you? I’d rather stay here with you and the marquis. My father and his friends used to step outside after dinner and piss off the balcony into the garden. I think they held contests. Do you do that, too?”

“We most assuredly do not,” Valentine said coldly. “Or, as my grandmother the dowager countess would say, were you raised by wolves? Now go harass Kate while the grown-ups among us talk.”

Simon watched the boy mince off in his red-heeled evening shoes and sat down once more. “That’s Turner Collier’s son? Was the man sure? I’d worry my wife had played me false if I ended up with a popinjay like Adam.”

“Jessica says he’s his mother’s child, down to his ridiculous shoe tops. Jess, um, she left home when he was only twelve, leaving behind, she vows, a sweet, bashful child who sang songs with her. Gideon ended up with the guardianship of him a few months ago, thanks to Collier’s ridiculous will that named the Earl of Saltwood, but didn’t happen to mention which one. You know Collier was involved with the Society in my father’s time, correct? From what we’ve been learning, he was also his closest friend and associate. Wait. Don’t answer yet.”

The baize door opened and Dearborn himself carried in a tray holding a crystal decanter and two snifters. He then employed the small key he’d carried with him to unlock a drawer in the immense sideboard. He extracted a rosewood humidor, smartly snapping back the lid and offering the selection inside first to his lordship’s guest, and then to Valentine, who took two, pocketing one for later, probably.

The butler then deftly managed the ceremony of assisting in the tip-cutting and lighting of the cigars for each man by way of a short candle also on the tray, bowed and retired from the dining room.

“He loves doing that,” Valentine commented as he puffed on the cigar and then smiled in satisfaction. “Ah, wonderful. Count on Gideon to have nothing but the best. I’m more of a cheroot man myself, but cigars take longer, leaving us more time to talk before we’ll be expected to rejoin the children.”

“Children? Your sister made her come-out last season. She’s hardly a child.”

“True,” Valentine said, putting a finger to his lips before quietly pushing back his chair. “Follow me. Quietly.”

Simon did as he was told, casting only one regretful look at the decanter of brandy as they headed for one of the many sets of French doors leading onto some sort of balcony. If the Earl of Saltwood’s good taste in cigars was matched by his selection of spirits, he knew he was missing a treat.

“What’s all this about?” he asked as Valentine gently closed the door behind him.

“Notice we’re on a balcony, Simon. It runs the length of the dining hall, with the only entrances leading from that room. If Adam’s right, I finally realize why the balcony may have been constructed this way, but I chose it because we’re a good twenty-five feet above the gardens and Kate won’t be able to hear us.”

“She’d eavesdrop? Why would she do that?”

Valentine leaned against the stone balustrade. “Because I’m an idiot, but she’s not. Within a minute of your going off with Dearborn, she asked me if you’d been a soldier. Because, if you can believe this, you eat quickly and efficiently, and walk with command in your step, or some such nonsense. It has been less than a full day and I already have the headache, watching her pretend—badly, I might add—watching you pretend. If I didn’t know you’re acting on orders, I’d actually believe you saw her and were instantly struck. But it isn’t going to work. Sooner or later, Kate is going to see through the thing from both sides. Hang Gideon and Perceval for sorry plotters and me for thinking I could boost Kate through some hoops of my own as long as we were putting on this charade. We have to call it off.”

“I thought I was doing fairly well,” Simon said, damned if he’d call it off, not if Valentine was going to use the failure to send him on his way. He was here to find those journals and anything else he could find. Besides, pretending an interest in Lady Katherine wasn’t the hardship he’d imagined. Not by a long chalk.

“Simon, if you did any better I’d have to pop you in your nose. But that’s probably because you haven’t met Kate yet. Not really.”

Simon smiled. “She’s a bit of her own person, isn’t she? She’s beautiful, entrancing, really, and quite unexpected.”

Valentine looked at the glowing tip of his cigar. “Go easy, my friend.”

“I’m doing my best, but even a brother should be able to recognize her unique beauty. That said, don’t think I was unaware that she was—how should I say this? Putting me on? Yes, that’s it. Crude, but correct. And all while somehow already knowing I was doing the same thing. Hell, Val, I’d compliment her, and her eyes would fill with laughter, all through dinner. So how do we fix this?”

“I’d say by you taking yourself back to London, but I doubt you’d go without a fight.”

Simon’s jaw tightened, and he wondered if the reaction was all because of his hunt for the journals, and had nothing to do with learning to know the intriguing Kate better. “And you’d be correct.”

“Which leaves us with telling her the truth, although Gideon won’t ever see it that way. Against all common sense, he still harbors the hope we can keep Kate away from the worst of this. Are we agreed?”

“Agreed,” Simon said, reluctantly pitching the cigar over the balustrade.

“Oh, too bad. Dearborn doles out Gideon’s prize cigars very carefully to younger sons,” Valentine said, peering down into the gardens. “I was going to ask Kate to join us in the dining room. She quite likes the smell of a good cigar.” Then he laughed and reached into his pocket. “Here—take this one, and I’ll go find her, bring her back here.”

“Don’t you think you should first tell me what she knows. I don’t want to say anything to shock her.”

“Redgraves don’t shock easily. Besides, what she hasn’t yet been told she’s probably conveniently overheard.”

“And Adam? What does he know?”

“I’d have to say he doesn’t even know how to find his own backside with both hands, but the truth is he was a font of information for us, even though he has no idea what his father was preparing him for, which was membership in that damned Society. That business about learning all the monarchs? Mostly, what his father was attempting to teach him was about assassinations, governments being overthrown, the how of the thing. What worked in the past, what failed. That, and giving him an education that went well beyond the usual visit to the local tavern on your sixteenth birthday and the trip upstairs with one of the barmaids as the entire taproom cheered you on your way. Can you imagine? Lessons in debauchery.”

“I noticed him ogling your sister overtop his peas,” Simon said, suddenly not finding the boy’s antics so amusing.

“Yes, we’d thought about having all the younger housemaids fitted with chastity belts. Either that, or arming them with pikes, so they could fend him off. But we’ve found he’s more boasting and wishful thinking than anything else. Collier had him keep a yearly journal of his conquests. Gideon said it read mostly as very bad fiction, which isn’t to say he hasn’t had his successes, willing ladies who like the feel of heavy coins in their palms.”

Simon rubbed a hand across his mouth. “And that’s how you—”

“Adam mentioned the lessons, the journal, to Jessica, and we quickly learned the boy also had a copy of his father’s journal for last year, given to him to use as a reference or some such thing. Dates, the participants, the, um, the actions taken. As I said, Adam’s entries were mostly that of an overactive imagination, but Collier’s journal was something else entirely.”

“So I’ve heard. The members’ names all listed somewhere in it, although in some sort of code. It’s how you discovered Sir Charles and the late Mr. Urban, correct? Again, I’d like to see one.” One in particular...

“And again, no, you wouldn’t,” Valentine said, shaking his head. “We especially dread finding anything our father wrote. And our grandfather, as well. Believe me, Simon, this isn’t easy for any of us. According to our grandmother, the Society members kept yearly journals from the beginning, during my grandfather’s, shall we say, tenure as leader of the group. And then the Keeper, as that privileged member is called, the latest one being Adam’s father, gathers the journals every year, compares them and dutifully records everything into their unholy bible. All the names, the secrets, the intrigues, the debaucheries, the supposed crimes, going back all those years. God knows who some of their guests were. Prime ministers, royal princes, men of letters, leaders of our military. Seduced, corrupted, blackmailed. Sometimes eliminated. Nobody knows the true extent of the Society’s activities. But we’re certain of one thing, none of that information can ever see the light of day.”

“I begin to see your point.” Simon had to tamp down his excitement at this revelation. The answers were in the bible. He had to find the bible. “I hadn’t heard of any bible. Just the journals.”

“Really? Gideon always did play his hands close to his chest. The journals will give us more clues, we hope, although we’ll be dealing with those blasted codes. Only the supposed bible will give us everything, all neatly spelled out for us. My brother has hung his hopes on it, at least. But now that you’re here, you might as well know the rest. We’re looking for one other thing.”

“And what would that be?” Simon spoke quietly, aware Valentine was speaking with some reluctance.

“Not what, who. The seventeenth earl,” Valentine said, forcing a smile. “A tree fell against the mausoleum last winter and broke a lovely stained-glass window—not that you need know all of that. We don’t visit inside the family’s final resting place unless we’re walling up a Redgrave, so nobody had noticed our father’s crypt had been broken into, or knows when, but we’ve decided it had to be shortly after he was interred. In any event, the old lech’s remains have been taken, providing we don’t believe he somehow got up and toddled off on his own with a whacking great hole in his back.”

The Redgraves had a lot to hide. Their sordid history going back two generations—and now a missing earl. “The Society took him? Why?”

Simon shrugged. “We don’t know. Gideon believes they propped him up somewhere and held their own ritual. Remember, the rumors include that of devil worship, and Barry was their exalted leader or some such rot.”

“Yes, I’d heard about that aspect of the Society. Rites, rituals, rumors of virgin sacrifices.”

Valentine looked at him curiously, and Simon realized he just may have said too much. The man bantered so easily, it was easy to forget he was a Redgrave, and probably much more intelligent than he let on. Gideon Redgrave got what he wanted through sophisticated intimidation; Valentine Redgrave probably did just as well with his outward charm.

“Is that so. Well, that’s discouraging, isn’t it? How would you know about that?”

“I’ve been investigating the two men you found for more than a year before you Redgraves joined the party, we could say. That included familiarizing myself with hellfire clubs in general. Scratch most anyone in one of the London clubs and they’ll soon come up with stories their grandfather told them about Sir Francis Dashwood, and others like your father,” Simon answered carefully, because he hadn’t heard any of that, not officially. But he’d made it his business to learn anything and everything he could about the Society. In the past six months, he’d made the Redgraves themselves targets of his investigation, half hoping they were behind it all and he could get back to his own life.

Then again, who could say whether or not the Redgraves were acting out of loyalty to the Crown, or in some convoluted, self-serving way meant to take suspicion away from them? Give the Crown one small success to prove their loyalty, and then be able to operate with Prime Minister Perceval’s full assistance. Simon wished he wasn’t so inclined to like this odd family. Especially when it came to the quixotic Lady Katherine.

“In any event, we hope he’s here, somewhere on the estate. We already know there were tunnels, because one caved in last year, as well as caves, although I’ve never seen one, so if they exist they’ve been cleverly disguised. It’s a large estate.”