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.”
T
HE
DRIVE
BACK
TO
J
ERMYN
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.”
Gideon felt his muscles tensing. “He hurt her?”
“He hurt her,” Richard answered simply.
There was no easy way to ask his next question. “Only him?”
“Did he pass her around? Sell her body? Is that what you’re
asking? Not after the first time, no. He couldn’t afford to lose his only
asset.”
“Explain that.” Gideon felt physically ill and nearly on the
sharp edge of madness. Everything Jessica had suffered, endured, could be led
straight back to his father, the man who had begun it all.
“Look at her wrists.” Richard stood up. “I’ve got to get back
to work, customers tonight or not. Damn, and what are we supposed to do with all
that fish chowder?”
“Sit down. I’m not finished. How did you meet her? How did you
end up here, together?”
“Most all of that’s not my story to tell, my lord.”
“Richard, you can tell me the whole, or I can choke it out of
you. In my current mood, I’m amenable either way.”
“Yes, I can see that. You care, don’t you? Thank you. Very
well.” Richard took up the chair once more and then fell silent, as if
attempting to line up his facts in good order. “He took her up as he was
ordered—I suppose when you say you know what happened, you know what I mean, and
who gave him the order.”
“Her father, yes?”
Richard nodded his head. “But who ordered
him,
my lord? That’s a question I can’t answer, nor can Jess. Jamie
Linden took that knowledge to his grave with him. The only thing she knew was he
was terrified of someone and itching to get himself free of the country.”
Damn. One speculation put to rest, unfortunately. As of at
least five years ago, there was a new leader. A strong leader, a dangerous
leader. Another Barry Redgrave. One, if Trixie was to be believed, Turner
Collier was prepared to hand over his own daughter to as a way of showing his
loyalty to the man.
“So Linden had himself a problem,” Gideon said, just to keep
Richard talking.
“He did that, sir, certainly. He’d seen someone that day he
shouldn’t have seen. He was in a wild state. It would be his death he could be
facing if anyone knew, but he had no money to flee with until they paid him for
bringing her to the ceremony, so he had to risk it.”
“Money more important than his life? That’s quite the gamble.
None too intelligent, was he?”
“No, my lord. He wanted to help her, he swore he did, but the
way he saw it, there was no choice but to do as her father had told him. That
part of the story never fit so well for me, to tell you the truth, but, again,
Jess said Linden wanted to help her, he simply couldn’t. She believed him, my
lord, not having much choice, I’d say. And damn if she didn’t up and tell him
she knew where her stepmother kept her jewels, offered them to him if he’d take
her with him. Eighteen, just a girl, tied up hand and foot and half out of her
mind with fear, I’m sure, but she found a way to survive. I think Linden put a
value on Jess, just like he did on the jewels, and saw himself a safer man, a
richer man. Yes, that’s how I see the thing.”
Gideon wrapped his hand across his forehead, rubbing hard at
his temples with fingers and thumb. His head felt ready to explode.
Bound hand and foot.
Turner Collier was so very lucky
he was dead. “Go on.”
“Jess never told me too much, except about that time he’d—
Well, we already spoke of that. They married in Brussels, with Linden knowing a
wife is chattel, my lord, and anything he did with her was above the law, as it
were. If she ran, he’d be within his rights to haul her back, punish her without
fear of consequences. Again, at least that’s how I see the thing, why he
insisted they marry. She was young, sir, in a strange land, alone. There was no
going home, not to a man like her father. There was nothing else she could
do.”
Gideon wanted a drink. Needed a drink. “I agree. She had no
choice.”
“There’s nothing stronger than the will to stay alive, no
matter how terrible the living may be, poor mite. They traveled the continent,
Jess and Linden. He always kept them moving, always looking over his shoulder as
if fearful some would find him. He avoided cities, where he might be recognized,
plying his talents in villages and small towns.”
“And what talent was that?”
“The cards. He gambled every night, sometimes winning,
sometimes losing—more often losing. And always with Jess forced to stand just
behind his chair the whole night long, dressed in one of those thin, dampened
gauze gowns Empress Josephine and her sisters so favored back then, tricked up
beyond all modesty and common decency, her face painted, her hair piled high
like Josephine’s, her body meant to distract the bumpkins at the table. She
stood quite still, hour after hour, her hand always on Linden’s shoulder. A
living statue.”
Richard closed his eyes, shook his head. “She never reacted,
not by so much as a blink, keeping her attention on the cards. That’s how I
first saw her. I’d stopped at the same inn just outside Lyons, for I made my own
blunt at the gaming tables. We were fairly stranded at the inn, as spring storms
had made the roads a mass of mud. In any event, I looked at her, disbelieving
what I was seeing. That sweet, beautiful girl, amid all the ugliness. Then, when
I asked to join the players, she looked at me for a moment. There was something
in her eyes....”
Gideon nodded. Yes, he agreed. There was something in Jessica’s
eyes. Some vulnerability she couldn’t hide. Some nebulous, unexplainable
something that made a man want to slay dragons for her. “I wondered why she
dresses herself the way she does. I referred to her black gown as armor.”
“And well it is, your lordship. It was either one nasty outfit
or the other, each night. She’d had enough of dampened gowns, or cruel corsets
laced so tight she could barely breathe. Enough of rough louts and gape-mouthed
farmers in taprooms leering at her, thinking she was there for their amusement.
Each evening, when she’d appear with Linden, I wanted to strip off my jacket and
cover her, take her out of there.”
Richard sat back in his chair and sighed. “Three nights later,
when the roads were all but dry again and fit for travel, I did.”
“She did say
we,
yes. You emptied
his pockets and left him on the bed he died in.”
Richard shifted his eyes to the floor. “The bed he died in,
yes. We’ve been together ever since, Jess and me. She didn’t waste the months
she spent with Jamie Linden, not once she’d got her spirit back, but had been
biding her time, learning what she had to learn in order to be free of him. She
plays a splendid hand of cards, your lordship, and can all but tell you what
cards you’re holding before you’ve taken a good look at them yourself. She’d
been planning on how to escape him, thinking to gamble her way back to England
with the money she’d been lifting bit by bit from Linden’s purse when he was
lost in his drunkenness. Brave, brave girl. It was a daring scheme, but she
wouldn’t have fared well, bless her. She can read the cards better than most,
but all but a blind man can read
her.
I have her
wear an eye shade when she fills in at the tables, elsewise we’d be living in a
gutter.”
At last Gideon smiled, albeit ruefully. “She couldn’t bluff her
way out of a wet sack, I agree, at least not to a discerning eye. So you’re
saying you’re a father to her, Richard? Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s just what I’m saying. Father and friend. Is that
what you wanted to hear, your lordship? Or is all this concern about who might
be bedding her? You’re no better than that? Knowing what I know, I wouldn’t
dream to touch her. She was a child, she’s still a child, and innocent, for all
her three and twenty years. And she’s older than time itself. She’s who she is,
what her father and Jamie Linden and the world made her, and what she’s made of
herself since. Leave her be.”
“I can’t do that, Richard, no more than you could. I have my
reasons. How did James Linden die?”
“How do you think he died, your lordship?”
Gideon stood up and returned the chair to its place at the
table. “Why, Richard, I think you looked, you saw, you understood and then you
did the only thing an honorable man could do in your situation. I think you
bided your time until you believed you could safely get her away, and then you
bloody well killed him.”
Richard’s bushy white eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Gideon waited him out for some moments and then asked, “Did he
suffer?”
“Not enough, no,” Richard said as he also stood up, his knees
faintly creaking at the exertion. “By that third night, I was nearly made mad
with the waiting, listening to him rage at her. He’d lost that night and clearly
blamed her. I could only imagine what was going on in that attic chamber next to
mine, and my thoughts made me ill. When I finally heard his drunken snores, I
knew it was time. I’m not a strong man, your lordship, or a young one, but a
well-placed pillow and a man too drunk to put up a proper fight was well within
my ability.”
“Dead in his sleep. Plausible. You couldn’t have employed the
club, as the wounds would have been too obvious.”
“That’s how I saw the thing, yes,” Richard said quietly. “It
pained me deeper than you can know, to wait until I was certain he was finally
asleep. I had to keep telling myself it was the last time he’d hit her, I’d see
to that. I’m not sorry for killing the man. I’d do it again.”
Gideon held out his right hand and shook the other man’s hand
warmly. “Thank you, Richard. I believe I can manage from here, although you
could wish me luck.”
“Sir?”
Gideon had made his decision. He’d come to it in a flash of
understanding halfway through Richard’s recitation. How brave she’d been to
offer herself up to gain her brother, when all she knew of men was pain and
humiliation. Why she had reacted as she had when he’d taken her to bed...the
hesitation, the moments when he’d felt she’d gone away from him to someplace in
her mind...and then the surprised passion, the reluctant and then, finally,
eager giving. It could all have ended in disaster, but it hadn’t. It had been
the most memorable, soul-shaking night of his life. More so now than ever.
“Go pack your belongings,
Uncle
Richard. You and your widowed niece and whomever else you choose to bring with
you are to be situated in Portman Square yet today. I’ll have my town coach sent
round at five. The tongues will wag mightily once the betrothal is posted in the
newspapers, sure I’ve some dastardly plan to wrest the nincompoop’s inheritance
from him by wedding his half sister, but I think we can withstand that. After
all, it’s nothing more than most of them would expect from a Redgrave.”
“You’re going to...to
marry
her,
your lordship?” Then Richard’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“If I had the answer to that question, my dear fellow, I would
sleep much better tonight. Or never sleep again. I only know you’re a fine man,
but from this day forward, Jessica is in my care, and God help the man who would
try to hurt her. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Yes. Yes, of course!” Richard grabbed Gideon’s hand this time,
in both of his, pumping it up and down in some agitation. “Not many men would do
the honorable thing, sir, knowing what happened to her.”
“I’m not many men, Richard. In point of fact, I may just now be
discovering exactly who I am.”