She looked down at her body, closed her eyes for a moment as he
slid a second finger inside her. “I...I’ll reserve judgment on that.
You...ah...you’re very adept at this, aren’t you?”
“Modesty precludes me from answering that, but I do harbor
hopes. Do you have any idea how good you feel?”
“I’m...I’m beginning to,” Jessica said, leaning back slightly,
bracing her hands against the mattress. “Oh...that feels wonderful.”
“Yes. The purpose of the exercise. You don’t mind?”
She made a small noise, rather close to a purr. He took it for
a
no.
He moved his fingers again, slippery now with the liquid silk
of her quick arousal. Her breathing had gone swift and shallow, and he increased
the rhythm of his movements even as he moved his mouth along her body, licking
at her breasts, taking her nipple into his mouth.
She was all response, all heat and glory and freedom, at ease
with her body and how he made her feel. But she was far from passive.
Just when he thought he was about to take her over the edge,
she pulled away from him, only to push him down on his back and begin
unbuttoning his pantaloons. Her glorious hair fell loose around her face as she
looked at him. “I already know how I like it best, and that’s with you inside
me. Do you mind?”
Did he mind? Such an intelligent woman, such a silly
question.
The speed with which he divested himself of his pantaloons,
then lifted her up and over him, lowering her until their bodies meshed, became
one, was probably as good an answer as any.
* * *
“
A
ND
YOU
’
RE
CERTAIN
you locked the door?” Jessica asked him as
they lay there, bodies still delightfully entangled, attempting to recover their
breaths. Really, she was turning into quite the wanton after only a single day
of marriage. She rather liked it.
“I did. And warned Mildred we weren’t to be disturbed.”
“Good. Because I really don’t want to move. Not for days.”
“That’s convenient, because I don’t think I can move, perhaps
not for entire days, but at least not in the near future. You didn’t tell me you
ride,” he said, nipping at her earlobe. “You’re quite...accomplished.”
She didn’t pretend not to understand what he meant. What would
be the sense in that? “Thank you, naughty as that statement was. It’s been
years, but I’ve always loved to ride. Is that how you see the thing? As
riding?”
“How do you see it?”
She snuggled closer. “As much more satisfying than the
sidesaddle, that’s for certain. Is that why men ride astride and condemn women
to the sidesaddle?”
“Fearful you might gain pleasure from it, you mean? I hadn’t
considered it, but you may be right. Shame on us.”
She slid off him, her expression once again pinched, her cheeks
pale. “Yes, shame on men. Not all of you, but certainly enough of you. Where did
men first get the idea women are here for their pleasure but are to be denied
any of their own? Really, denied much in the way of any sort of freedom. As if
our minds are feeble, and we’re not to be trusted with our own bodies. I’m sure
Trixie has opinions on that.”
“Yes, and she’s been taking her own peculiar brand of revenge
for most of her life.”
Jessica laid her head on Gideon’s shoulder and absently stroked
her hand over his bare chest. “I hadn’t thought of that. But she is, isn’t she?
I remember teasing Richard about women always being the downfall of men, in one
way or another. Is that it, Gideon? Are you men afraid of us?”
He kissed her hair. “Terrified.”
“Well, you probably should be. We seem to know your
weaknesses.”
“You’ve certainly found mine,” he agreed, lifting her hand to
his lips. “As for the rest of it, on behalf of all mankind, I most abjectly and
humbly apologize.”
“Thank you. But it’s not enough.” She gathered the sheet about
her and sat up, looking down at him. “I don’t mean you, not precisely you. I
mean men. In general. Apologies are not enough. Especially since most of them
wouldn’t mean a word they said in any event.”
“Probably not.”
Jessica ignored him, for she’d gotten the bit between her teeth
now, her mind whirling with various bits of information that seemed to be parts
of a puzzle she’d carried with her for a long time, its pieces suddenly falling
into place.
“Men are stronger, physically. You can’t be afraid of a woman’s
inferior strength. So it has to be our minds you fear. After all, you can take
our bodies—because we’re not as physically strong—but that doesn’t mean you can
control our minds.” She looked at him again as he pushed himself up against the
pillows. “You think we’re smarter than you, don’t you?”
“It’s not that simple, Jessica.”
“Oh? Then you admit we’re smarter?”
“And there’s your answer, just in the way you so neatly turned
my words to your advantage,” he said, pulling her against his shoulder.
She laughed. “I rather did, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. And we men have yet to learn how to defend
ourselves from that particular little trick. You’re smarter, softer, definitely
prettier, with the ability to think with your hearts as well as your minds—while
we men have just to look at you to lose our control over both. You possess the
ability to have us make total fools of ourselves, madam, and we resent the hell
out of that. We’d much rather think of you as weaker, in body and mind and
morals, devious and manipulative by turn, needing our guidance and
protection—and we reserve the right to blame you for anything stupid we do, as
well as any evil anywhere in the world.”
Jessica considered all of this for a minute. “Oh,” she said at
last. “That actually makes sense. You’re afraid of us, but since you’re
physically larger and stronger than we are, you’ve been able to create laws and
all sorts of rules meant to keep us firmly under your thumbs, and make false
declarations of how better fashioned you are to take care of us, not in order to
protect us, but in order to protect yourselves from us.”
“And since you’re smaller and softer and so much smarter than
we are, you continually find ways around the barriers we’ve so carefully built
around our supposed superiority.”
“And then you condemn us as devious, when it’s you who force us
to employ those superior weapons, because otherwise we’d be nothing.
Chattel.”
“Sex is a woman’s game, Jessica, even if men believe they
invented it. It’s the lever, when placed in the right spot, which has always
been able to move the world. We men can’t give you any more weapons than you
already hold—a place in government, or commerce, or even on the battlefield. We
know you’d be too good at all of it. Why else do we insist on calling the great
Elizabeth Tudor our
virgin
queen, made her, in our
minds, not really a woman at all, but more of an aberration. We can’t risk
seeing you as equal to men, treating you as our equals, not when we know you’re
vastly superior.”
She looked at him assessingly. “And you really believe that? I
mean, that women pose so much danger, and have to be kept under the thumbs of
men?”
“Me? Absolutely not.”
“Yes, but if you
did
subscribe to
this supposed theory, would you admit it?”
His grin was wicked. “Absolutely not.”
“Why, you—” She launched herself at him half-playfully, and he
snagged her wrists, all but flipping her onto her back, his body lying across
hers. “Oh, so now you’re out to prove your superior strength?”
“On the contrary. I’m about to prove yours. Do you remember the
first day you came to Portman Square?”
She wriggled her body beneath his, rather enjoying the feelings
he was arousing in her. “I do. But what does that have to do with—”
Her wrists still trapped, he brought his head down to within
inches of hers, his eyes clearly contemplating the sight of her slightly parted
lips. “Do you remember our wager that day?”
“The dogs,” she said. And then, beginning to understand, she
wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“You’re not playing fair, Jessica. Some would say
just like a woman.
But yes, the dogs. You wagered me
Brutus wouldn’t be able to withstand temptation for ten seconds, but that Cleo
could and would.”
Sex is a woman’s game.
He’d said
it, and she was beginning to believe him.
“I believe he didn’t make it past four.” She moved again,
lifting her leg and curling it around his. “Cleo could have managed twice that
and possibly more. Just as I could outlast you with ease.”
Gideon raised one expressive eyebrow. “Really? Would you care
to wager the five pounds I lost on that assumption?”
She noticed his breathing had become rather shallow. “Oh, yes,
I’d wager twice that. Who is
really
the stronger,
that’s the wager, who can better resist temptation. I’ll put my blunt on myself,
naturally.”
“Naturally. With one caveat, if you don’t mind.”
“And what would that be?”
“That you stop moving your hips against me.”
She looked at him in feigned surprise. “Was I doing that? And
that...upsets you? I’m so sorry. We’ll neither of us move, all right? I’ll call
the count, shall I? One...”
She lowered her eyelids so that she could watch him through her
lashes.
“Two...”
She drew in a breath that raised her breasts slightly, released
her breath on a sigh.
“Three... Is it warm in here, Gideon? Your skin feels slightly
slick
against my breasts. But it’s nice.”
She watched his throat move as he swallowed.
“Four... I could do this all afternoon, you know, as I’m quite
comfortable. Are you comfortable, Gideon? Five... And it was
your
idea. It’s difficult to believe you could
possibly lose, being so much
larger
and
stronger
than—”
Thank goodness,
Jessica thought as
Gideon ground his mouth against hers.
I never would have
made it past six....
“A
ND
YOU
’
RE
POSITIVE
you and Trixie are correct? All because of
my father’s journal?”
Gideon finished fastening the diamond circlet around Jessica’s
throat before turning her about so that she could look into his eyes when he
answered her, see that he was sincere.
She looked beautiful tonight, a certain glow about her, the
sort that signaled to the knowing that she had spent the afternoon in bed. And
not alone.
“As certain as we can be, yes. With the last of the original
members from my father’s time now dead, and with Trixie admitting she doesn’t
recognize the other code names, I believe it’s safe to assume that...well, that
you’re safe. You, Trixie, Adam.”
“Because the Society is no longer seeking out the eldest son to
take his deceased father’s place, and that’s why Trixie doesn’t recognize all
those other code names.”
“Yes, and because those who knew James Linden are those same
now-deceased members. No one will look at you and wonder what you might know,
what he may have told you. And, lastly, there’s no one remaining aboveground who
would realize Trixie knows anything at all. Thank God.”
Jessica stepped away from him, to check her reflection in the
pier glass. She looked beautiful in ivory lace, just as he’d known she would,
and he was well satisfied with the demi-train he’d added to its design. “Whoever
ordered my father to...to hand me over? Are you certain that person wouldn’t
look at me now and, well, and wonder? Because we did decide the Society has a
new leader, didn’t we? A strong leader? He could have been the one who
ordered—”
“Here again I defer to Trixie. There are two things the members
of the Society lend no credence to—women and hirelings. As far as the Society is
concerned, you managed to convince Linden to run off with you. Or do you really
think you would have made it even halfway to Dover if there was any concern
either of you could prove a danger to them?”
“I never really thought about that.” Jessica walked over to her
dressing table to pick up her reticule. “There were storms in the Channel. We
had to wait in Dover for three days before we could set sail. James was
terrified. He wouldn’t leave the rooms he’d hired at the inn once he’d finally
managed to sell the jewelry. But I suppose we would have been easy enough to
find.”
“And that answers the question, doesn’t it? Nobody came,
because nobody felt the need. You’re safe, Trixie’s safe, Adam is not going to
be issued an invitation to join the Society.”
“And the rose? You haven’t worn it again, but certainly it was
noticed.”
“By whom? The Marquis of Mellis was in Bath, and the other
members from my father’s time were already dead. There are thirteen members,
correct? Yet nobody else ever wore the rose. Jessica, there’s nothing tying any
of us to anything that’s going on within that damn Society. Nothing. If we want,
it’s over. We can walk away.”
“If we want,” Jessica repeated as he held out his arm to her,
to escort her downstairs. “Not even the search for your father’s body?”
She had him there. “That still bothers me, yes. But with Mellis
gone, there’s no one else left to question. The tunnel beneath the greenhouse
collapsed thanks to an unusually wet spring and the ravages of age, and the
lights in the woods were most probably cast by lanterns carried by poachers. Not
everything is a mystery. Not when taken separately.”
“Six men have been murdered,” she reminded him as they
approached the drawing room. “Including my father.”
“You want to avenge him?”
She sighed. “I should say yes, shouldn’t I?”
“I wouldn’t. Somebody carried off my father’s body, and I see
that only as a personal insult to the Redgrave name, a name already carrying
enough dirt on it. Trixie could have ordered him buried in a bog for all I ever
cared about the man. I don’t relish telling her that her son’s body was taken,
no. She deserves the right to one day rest beside her only child for eternity.”
He stopped her as they were about to enter the drawing room. “I like this,
Jessica.”
She looked at him in confusion. “Pardon me?”
“Being honest. Open. Being able to talk with you this way. I
don’t know why you make it so easy, but you do. I’ve never been honest with
anyone about what it means to be a Redgrave, what it means to be the eldest son
of a man so depraved and twisted his own wife shot him in the back, the eldest
son of a mother so desperate to be free of her husband that she’d desert her own
children. You sometimes don’t realize the weight of the things you carry through
life with you, until you put them down. I’m feeling considerably...lighter.”
She bowed her head for a moment, and when she raised it again
he could see tears standing in her eyes. “I feel much the same. Lighter.
Cleaner,
if that makes any sense at all. But I still
need to tell you—”
“Tell me we can neither of us walk away from what we suspect,”
he ended for her. “I know. There’s a reason those six men were killed. We have
two of the names of current members, thanks to Trixie. We know the code names
for four more, thanks to your father’s journal. Yes, the journal is out of date.
And, lastly, no, we don’t have the rest of the names. But we’ve enough to go on
with. We know the Society still exists.”
“With a purpose larger than what Trixie called naughty little
boys playing at games. I agree with you on that head.”
“And how do I take any of this to the Crown? For one, I have no
real proof, and secondly, I might be reporting what I believe to one of the new
thirteen or one of their blackmailed
guests.
No,
it’s us, or it’s nobody. I said we could walk away, but I can’t turn my back on
this, Jessica. Not knowing it was my family who one way or another laid the
foundation for it all.”
“I didn’t think you were applying to me for permission, either
way. But I would like to think you still want my help. That was the plan in the
beginning, wasn’t it, because we thought it would help us protect Adam?”
He leaned in and kissed her. “It was a part of the plan,
certainly. But not above and beyond my overwhelming need to have you in my bed
and easing my conscience by telling myself my offer of marriage provided a way
to compensate for what happened to you.”
“I don’t know if you need to be
that
honest, Gideon. Not that I’m not...flattered.”
He smiled. “Not that I’m not grateful. But to get back to our
now slightly altered plan? I’m counting on your discerning eye and your powers
of observation as we learn more about our friends Lord Charles and Mr. Urban,
yes. I want you to read them, assess them, as you would players at the card
table. And more than that, I believe I want you to cultivate their wives. If
there’s a weakness in the Society, I think it would have to be the wives.”
“Because they’re weaker?”
“No, I think we settled that earlier.”
“Yes, and you still owe me five pounds. But I know what you
mean. There can’t be many women who would be happy with the sort of arrangement
Trixie spoke of, being passed about to the other men in the Society. It’s
sickening, to think such a thing is happening in this day and age. I don’t know
how I’d broach the subject, but I think I will be able to tell if these two
women are unhappy.”
“All right, play the game any way you like. Just promise me you
won’t try to
bluff
anyone.”
She rolled her eyes. “Really, you and Richard—”
They both turned toward the stairs and the sound of the knocker
being banged on with considerable enthusiasm, followed closely by a cheery voice
exclaiming, “Thorny, you old dog, if you’re going to scowl every time I bring a
little rainwater inside with me, I may go into a sad decline. M’brothers here?
One or both? I like being prepared before I face Gideon’s scowl or Max’s— Well,
what does Max do, anyway, other than find new ways to grow his hair? Damme, it’s
wet out there tonight! What did you say? Speak up, man. No! Say that again.
Where is he? Is he upstairs? That
dog!
”
“Valentine,” Gideon said, breaking into a grin. “Prepare
yourself, Jessica, you’re about to be bowled down by my youngest brother.”