Kasey Michaels - The Regency Redgraves - What an Earl Wants / What a Lady Needs / What a Gentleman Desires / What a Hero Dares

Jessica was quiet for some time, her hands twisting in her lap, before she looked at Gideon again. “Do…do you think perhaps they took him—your father, that is—almost immediately? To, um, to perform their own ceremony? Oh, Lord, that’s disgusting.”

“And only one of several possibilities,” Gideon said, just voicing his thoughts of the past few months aloud easing his mind somewhat. “To whit—propping him up on some throne to overlook their activities? To grind up his bones into powder, mix that in with sheep’s blood or some such ridiculousness, and drink the man? To slice him up, as they did the saints of yore, with each member then blessed to carry a knucklebone as a memento, a holy relic? Don’t answer yet—I’ve had time to consider more than that. There’s one more. Did his followers, as my father was the acknowledged leader, believe the supposed treasure was interred with his bones, and come looking for it?”

Jessica held up her hand to stop him. “Not that last one, surely. A treasure? Why would your family do that? And why would anyone take the body with them, whether there was some sort of treasure to be found there or not?”

“I agree. It was only one of many possibilities, and a rather feeble one at that. However, I do believe, after years of not believing it, there may be some sort of treasure. Some precious gem perhaps, made a part of a larger golden rose, the symbol of the Society? Or something they prayed to—mayhap an enormous diamond stuck into the fat belly of a pagan idol?”

Jessica tucked her legs up on the couch, as if prepared to stay there all night, until she’d somehow solved the problem that so confounded him. “But wouldn’t every member of the Society know the location of that sort of thing? They all gathered for their—I hate saying ceremonies . The word is too respectable for what they did.”

“Drunken orgies?” Gideon offered. “Debaucheries? Deflowerings of whores paid handsomely to pretend they were intact innocents being offered up for some carefully orchestrated sacrifice? The open passing around of wives in some hope of alleviating the boredom of marital fidelity? Christ! Their own wives . Were they willing or unwilling, do you think?”

She shot him a dark glance that made him want to know more of what had happened to have her run off with James Linden. “I’m not convinced the members cared. All done in praise of the devil.”

“Devil worship. Imitators of Sir Francis Dashwood and his ilk, but without any cursory bow to a pretense of an interest in the intellectual. we’re back to that. I’d rather think them drunks and idiots. Otherwise I’d have to believe my father—my father!—discovered a way to make them all able to believe they were better than they were, acting in some higher purpose. Still, it’s possible. I don’t know how he’d have accomplished it, how any one person manages to twist minds to do his every bidding, no matter how vile, but he could have managed it.”

“Until his wife shot him in the back when he was about to duel down her lover,” Jessica said quietly. “I’m sorry. Was…the man one of the Society?”

“I can’t say anything for certain. I was only nine years old at the time. I thought he was my new tutor, a Frenchman who’d fled France immediately after the fall of the Bastille. He’d only been at the Manor for a few weeks before both he and my mother were gone.”

“Again, I’m sorry, Gideon. Not that your father was shot, I can’t honestly say that, but that you lost your mother. I’m certain she didn’t want to leave you. She must have felt she had no choice.”

“I wonder if she would have made that choice if she could have known she and her lover would be swept up in the Terror two years later and sent to the guillotine. As someone reminded me just today, in the end the bill must always be paid.”

For a moment, he could see his mother in his mind’s eye. Beautiful, loving, but sad. Her eyes had always been so sad. There had been times he could coax a smile from her, but those times had been seldom. He treasured those few good memories. Strangely, he remembered his father only through the painting of him as a young man that hung in the portrait gallery.

Damn, but this woman was getting to him. He never thought about the boy he’d been twenty years ago. He’d never spoken of any of this. Not with his siblings, not with his grandmother. He’d shut it all down, all he’d felt at the time, all he’d so carefully avoided since he’d been awakened to the news of what had happened just before dawn that long-ago morning. Max and Val had been too young, and Katherine only an infant. He’d been the only one to really understand what dead meant, what gone meant.

Jessica got to her feet. “So what bill has come due for the members of the Society?”

Gideon snapped himself back to attention.

“I can think of one theory. It’s not as if any of them could be proud of what they’ve done, and want it out in the world. The sins of relatively young men, trotted out for an airing twenty years later, could be more than embarrassing. Add even the whisper of devil worship to the mix, and the secret becomes dangerous. Your father sat in Parliament, remember. Someone may be blackmailing the others, or simply killing them off to silence them. I can’t even be sure how many of them there are. There could be some who no longer wear the rose.”

“Thirteen,” Jessica said quietly. “The devil’s dozen. At any time, there must be thirteen. James told me that much. One dies, two die, they must be replaced, or there can be no ceremonies. I promise you, they were still active five years ago. There could have been several new members since your father’s time. The usual method was to draw from the blood relatives of the members. And, of course, a member’s eldest son inherited his father’s position by right.”

Gideon looked at her curiously. One day they’d have to speak more of this James Linden. “No one has ever approached me.”

“You were a child when your father…died. As an adult, I doubt anyone would have dared. You’re a rather formidable man, Gideon.”

He looked at her in sudden realization. “Adam.”

“Yes, very good. Adam. Because the Society must still exist, I’m certain of that now more than ever. I’ll grant you, I was appalled at what I saw this morning, but not so much so that I’m not relieved he’s…he’s…well, we both know what he is.”

“A bacon-brained halfling who couldn’t locate his own backside with both hands?”

Jessica smiled. “Thank you. Adam is, after all, my brother. I didn’t want to say it myself.”

“You’re welcome. Still, until and unless you’re proven wrong, I suppose I’m now doomed to keeping him close, explaining that particular part of his inheritance, and then watching over him?”

“Yes. I was going to tell you tonight, if I thought I could convince you to listen to reason. Because you’re right, I can’t protect him from the Society if they’re desperate enough to go after him. But you can. My initial reaction was they wouldn’t want him. But if they’ve run out of suitable candidates, they might make an exception.”

“You say I can protect him, and I can. From the ones I know of, yes, but we can’t know them all,” Gideon said, the futility of what he was attempting to do all but smacking him in the face like a cold, wet cloth. He’d been curious, intrigued, and now he was beholden, damn it, the reluctant guardian of one Adam Collier, spotty-faced giggling twit who’d probably think dressing up in a mask and hooded cloak, playing at devil worship, to be the height of good fun.

But it was left to Jessica to really shock him.

“We might, soon. You’ve been seen sporting that horrible golden rose, remember? When I first saw it, I thought you were a member, something that should have occurred to me before I ever contacted you, I suppose. Still, I almost immediately realized you’re not. I believe you on that head.”