Kasey Michaels - What a Hero Dares

He was followed by a trail of maids and footmen prepared to “Pack you up, you murdering whore,” and denied her an allowance unless she limited her visits to the Manor to one month out of each year.

He then paid a covert visit to Grosvenor Square. He politely thanked the aging Keeper and mentor in the ways of the Society for all he’d done, and told him to say hello to Charles a moment before tossing the old fool down the marble stairs.

Two weeks later, he purchased that same Grosvenor Square mansion, leaving his father’s outrageous monstrosity in Cavendish Square for his mama’s use. Let her live with the ghosts there.

And let the games begin!

While his still young and beautiful mother traveled on the Continent or partied in Mayfair, he appointed his very best friend, Turner Collier, to act as the group’s Keeper, guardian of the bible. They then went about gathering up any of the original Devil’s Thirteen and minions still aboveground, and the Society was soon back in business. He met and married a barely royal Spanish beauty he deemed a suitable broodmare, put a child in her as often as he could, enlarged both the Manor house and its lands. And plotted. And schemed. And added more and more like thinkers and helpful minions to his Society.

All within the confines of his first and truly only love, Redgrave Manor.

For nearly ten years of planning and conniving and bribing, all seemed to go quite swimmingly. His negotiations with the French king would soon come to fruition. Until the fall of the Bastille dealt the first crushing blow to Barry’s ambitions. That was closely followed by his drunken decision to stand up in a duel against his wife’s French lover, only to fall on his handsome face when a weapon fired from the trees put a bullet hole in his back and a period to his existence. The new widow, smoking pistol supposedly still in her hand, promptly deserted her four young children and ran off to France with her lover.

What followed was open conjecture throughout the ton concerning some sort of salacious hellfire club, and even speculation that Barry Redgrave had been whoring out his wife to his devil-worshipping friends, and that was really why she shot him. There were whispers of sedition and treason as people remembered his father and those rumors, dragging them out for another airing. But, mostly, it was the titillating scandal of the murder, the reason behind it, and the insult to those who deemed the Redgraves immoral, unsuited to retain the earldom (or the Manor, or all that lovely money).

It was as if Barry was more of a danger dead than he’d been while alive. The Redgraves were about to lose everything...including control of their secrets.

Enter the determined Beatrix, Dowager Countess of Saltwood, and fiercely protective grandmother to Barry’s four good-as-orphaned children. The by now deliciously notorious Trixie, who had spent her entire widowhood playing May games with society, most especially the men—those she loathed, those she admired, and those she might someday be able to use.

She’d learned a lot from Charles....

Perhaps because she had more brass than a chamber pot, but most probably because she knew more than most men would like the world (and especially their wives) to know, she managed to make it through the scandal. She spent decades tenaciously (and perhaps more cleverly than legally), holding on to the earldom for her eldest grandson, Gideon, who had been only nine when his father was hastily interred in the family mausoleum.

Her husband’s Society, her son’s intention to follow in his father’s footsteps—these were never mentioned within earshot of the grandchildren. Trixie would rather die a thousand deaths than reveal what had gone on within the Society, the part Charles had forced her to play those long years ago. Her grandchildren knew of the scandal caused by their parents’ actions, yes—that would be impossible to hide from them as they matured and traveled to London, but with the Society long since gone, there was no reason for them to know anything else.

In truth, they seemed to delight in being those scandalous Redgraves. Welcomed everywhere, because to deny them would be folly. Quick, intelligent, dangerous, no door was shut to them. Who’d dare?

But now, suddenly, the Society was back for a third go-round, even using Redgrave land as its headquarters. Its methods the same, its partner this time none but the upstart new French emperor himself, Napoleon Bonaparte. For years, he had longed to add England to his long list of conquered countries. The Society would be more than eager to assist him in that endeavor in exchange for—God, what did they want? Certainly not the Crown; that silly Stuart business could only be gained through the Redgraves, and they certainly had no part in this new incarnation of the Society.

No, the methods might be the same, but the aims were different. Still, at the end of the day, if the Crown got so much as a whiff of what was going on, the Redgraves would pay the price, and this time no amount of Trixie’s machinations would save them.

Gideon, already suspicious that something odd was going on at Redgrave Manor, had learned about the resurrected Society through Turner Collier’s daughter, Jessica. He immediately confronted Trixie, demanding she tell him everything she knew. Consulting with his siblings, they then decided they were left with no other choice than to secretly, quietly ferret out the members and this time bury the Society too deep for it ever to be raised again.

First and foremost, of course, the Redgraves were all loyal to the Crown. But they were also loyal to the Redgrave name, and to the incredibly brave woman who had raised and protected them. They knew neither could survive the possibility of being connected to this or any earlier incarnation of the Society.

Plus, even with some early quick successes, they knew they were running out of time, having been forced to bring Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in on what they’d learned about Society efforts to sabotage troops and supplies heading to Wellington on the Peninsula.

Gideon’s sister, Lady Katherine, had scoured Redgrave Manor, locating the journals from both her grandfather’s and father’s time but not, alas, the all-important bible, the tome having been reduced to ashes by the Keeper. His brother Valentine, following clues found in those journals, had dared to infiltrate a portion of the Society, nearly losing his life in the process, but adding to their knowledge.

They were getting ever closer to the core of the Society and these new, unknown leaders who hid behind masks and code names while going about their dirty business.

Unfortunately, these successes also alerted the Society that the Redgraves were onto them, most certainly fueled by information given to them by the dowager countess.

Only a few short days ago, following a nearly successful arson in the mansion in Cavendish Square with a bold attempt on Trixie’s life on the streets of London, the hunters had suddenly become the hunted.

There couldn’t be a better time for Maximillien Redgrave, currently doing his own investigating from the other side of the Channel, to return to the estate where, unbeknownst to him, his family was all already gathered, and under siege.

Max also didn’t know his own past was sailing to Redgrave Manor with him.

But he was about to find out.

CHAPTER ONE

MAXIMILLIEN REDGRAVE had last seen his birthplace from the seat of his curricle as he set off to London and a quiet meeting in a small office tucked away in the bowels of the Royal Admiralty. He felt he’d been traveling ever since, going about the king’s business, with only a few, flying visits to London. It was during one of those visits that he’d learned about the Society, so that his work on the Continent now included searching out anyone who might be affiliated with the treasonous hellfire group.