Кейси Майклс - What a Lady Needs

“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.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

“Our grandmother doesn’t know. We just want to find him and put him back. Barry was a rotter to his toes, from all accounts, but he was her son.”

“And your sister knows this, as well? That the body has gone missing?”

“She does now.”

Both men turned to see Kate standing at the other end of the balcony, more than half-hidden in the shadows. She stepped forward, her face pale in the moonlight, her arms wrapped about her as if she’d taken a chill. Simon felt an insane urge to go to her, hold her in his arms, comfort her.

“When were you going to tell me, Valentine? When I tripped over him?”

“Kate, I—”

“Never mind. I probably know the rest. The journals, the bible and the rest of it—the reborn Society and its plans to open England’s door and let Napoleon stroll in. I’m a woman, yes, but I’m a Redgrave first. I’m a part of this. God help us, it’s our heritage. So now that the farce is over, and not a moment too soon, we’ll meet tomorrow morning at seven to take that ride, and then resume the search. Oh, and one thing more. Simon, I don’t know how you’re involved, or why Gideon allowed you here, but know this. You stay the bloody hell out of my way or I’ll have your liver on a stick.”

With that, she pulled open one of the other French doors and was gone.

Valentine took a long pull on his cigar and then rather violently tossed it down into the garden. “My apologies, Simon,” he said tightly. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce you before she took her exit. That was my sister Kate.”

Simon was still looking at the empty spot where Lady Katherine had stood. He felt incredible helplessness, not unmixed with guilt. “Shouldn’t you go after her? Clearly she’s upset.”

Valentine looked at him in some surprise. “That’s what you got from that? She’s upset? She’s homicidal, man, not that I blame her. Hell of a way to find out about old Barry.”

“I wouldn’t care for the method, no. Does she even remember him?”

Valentine shook his head. “No, she was only an infant. I don’t even remember him, or my mother for that matter. You can look at Barry in the Long Hall, but Maribel’s portrait is up in the attics if you want to see her—or you could just look at Kate.”

Simon thought for a few moments. “Sometimes it’s more comfortable to build castles in your mind than to actually live in one.”

“How marvelously obscure. But I understand what you’re saying. Kate probably built our parents into perfect beings in her mind, victims of circumstance and a cruel fate. They were far from that. Our grandmother told her everything she felt she had to know before her first season, but these past weeks have been a painful revelation to all of us. Kate probably most of all. You’re right, I have to go to her. If I don’t appear by the time our mounts are brought round tomorrow morning, check to see if my body has been stuffed behind a rosebush. Here, take your cigar.”