What an Earl Wants. Kasey Michaels

as if, having said the name often enough, she’d believe what her horrified eyes were telling her. She didn’t want to believe it. Her brother hadn’t grown up, he’d simply gotten taller, slathered his face with paint to hide his spots and turned into an idiot. His only submission to the formalities was the black satin mourning band pinned to his upper arm. And that was edged with black lace. He wasn’t oppressed, he certainly wasn’t heartbroken. He was his brainless twit of a mother, in breeches.

      “I fear you have the advantage of me, madam,” Adam drawled with a truly irritating and affected lisp as he approached, clearly intent on kissing her hand. His red heels made his progress somewhat risky, but he managed it, nearly coming to grief only when Brutus ran up to him, intent on sniffing his crotch. “Stupid cur. Do I look like a bitch in heat to you?”

      “Don’t blame the dog, you sapskull. You might instead want to rethink the brand of scent you bathe in. As it is, we’re chewing on it,” Gideon said, retiring to the mantel, but not before shooting Jessica an amused look. “Say hello to your half sister.”

      Adam stopped, searched among his many chains for a gilt quizzing glass on a stick, and lifted it to his eye. “M’sister? Jessica, was it? No, that’s impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s dead these past half-dozen years or more. Bad fish, something like that. Mama told me most distinctly.” Then his mouth opened in shock, and he pointed the quizzing glass accusingly in her direction. “Imposter! Charlatan! The old reprobate cocks up his toes, and they come out of the woodwork, looking for his blunt. Fie and for shame, woman!”

      Gideon rejoined Jessica in front of the sofas. “I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Linden. I may have been unduly hasty in denying your request for guardianship, and even thin-skinned. It must have been the pistol. Perhaps we can reopen negotiations,” he suggested quietly.

      At last Jessica regained use of her tongue, which she’d been in some danger of swallowing. “I don’t think so,” she told him, still goggling at the creature in front of her. “You can have him. As to the other, I’ll expect you in Jermyn Street tonight, at eleven.” Then she clapped her hands to her mouth, realizing what she’d said. “The…the other being discussing this business of murders. Not…not you know.”

      “What? She’s leaving? I’ve routed her, by God!” Adam clapped his hands in delight. “Yoicks! And away!”

      “Oh, stubble it, you nincompoop,” Jessica bit out as she brushed past him.

      Gideon’s delighted, infuriating laughter followed after her, all the way down the stairs.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “YOU’RE LOOKING HARASSED,” Lord Maximillien commented as he entered the study in Portman Square and perched himself on the corner of his brother’s desk. “At least you’d look harassed if you were anyone else. The Earl of Saltwood is never harassed. He is a—Is there such a word as harasser?”

      “What do you want, Max?” Gideon asked, putting down the letter opener he’d been balancing between his fingertips.

      “Me? To bid you farewell, I suppose. I leave for Brighton in an hour, on orders from Trixie. There’s some clever barque of frailty she’s befriended, a bit o’muslin with a problem our grandmother thinks might rouse me from my boredom. In any case, she’s been matchmaking. In a weak moment, I agreed to sign on as cohort. It’s my adventurous spirit, you understand.”

      Gideon looked at his brother and shook his head in mock dismay. “You even look like an adventurer. Your shirt cuffs are unbuttoned and too long, that cravat’s an insult, those smoked glasses a ridiculous affectation—and I may soon enlist Thorndyke to help hold you down while I scrape all that hair off your face.”

      Max bent his head and looked at his brother overtop the blue-smoked rimless glasses he’d discovered a few months earlier in a small shop on Bond Street. “All that hair? A simple mustache, a cunning patch beneath my bottom lip—hardly all that hair.”

      Gideon pointed up at him, twirling his finger. “And the rest of it? Looks to be the beginnings of a beard to me. I imagine even a whore with a problem won’t tolerate a fellow who only allows himself to be shaved three times a week.”

      Max stabbed his fingers through the heavy thatch of dark brown hair he wore halfheartedly parted in the center of his head, its length covering his ears, the whole waving around his almost aesthetically beautiful face. Only his dark eyes, so like Gideon’s, threw out the warning that this was no pretty fool; perhaps why Max had delighted in finding the smoked glasses. “Allow? I’m not so lazy. I shave myself, brother. Shave myself, dress myself, wash my own rump.”

      “And two of those tasks performed in the dark, apparently. Never mind,” Gideon said, not about to admit his brother was one devilishly handsome creature, the sort who could cause small riots among the ladies if he put his mind to it. “What’s the Cyprian’s problem?”

      “Other than being ambitious, penniless and of questionable morals? Transport. I’m simply to find a way to get clever girl and ardent swain to Gretna, wed over the anvil and all but publicly bedded so there can be no annulment, all accomplished ahead of any pursuit. You know Trixie. She’s a romantic.”

      “She’s a pernicious troublemaker, and that’s in the best of times. Who’s to be the gullible groom—and you’ll notice hearing Trixie has cultivated a whore as bosom chum holds no shock. No, it’s the groom who interests me.”

      Max grinned wickedly. “So you see it, too? I did a bit of checking. It’s Wickham’s only grandson. Geoffrey something-or-other. Second in line to the dukedom until his papa, cursed with a spotty liver and still sucking up gin morning till night, sticks his spoon in the wall. Which will probably happen any day now according to Trixie, as they’ve already laid straw outside the man’s door in Grosvenor Square so the invalid isn’t pestered on his sickbed by the noise of traffic, and called in the Autum bawlers for some final-ditch prayer vigil. He should be toes cocked up just in time for the new heir—that would be this Geoffrey fellow—to present his fait accompli bride to his grandfather, shocking the old fellow to the point of apoplexy.”

      “Two deaths? That’s ambitious, even for our grandmother. She’s counting on an even pair?”

      “Apparently. She’s already had me scribble a wager in the betting book at White’s. A certain interested party offers odds of eight-to-five a certain duke Wdot-dot-dot—as if nobody would know it’s old Wickham—will depart this earthly coil on or before fifteen June of the current year. Lord Alvanley’s holding the stakes.”

      “Of course it’s Alvanley. The man’s always in need of funds, and I’m sure Trixie is paying him well. Plus, I think she once had him as a lover. So. Wickham. It took her long enough,” Gideon said, nodding approvingly. “Damn near twenty years. I wouldn’t wager against her, or attempt to stop her. Go with God, Max.”

      “I’ll go with most anyone, as well you know. But first—what’s this about twenty years? This isn’t just her usual mischief? What did old Wickham do to set her off?”

      Gideon leaned back in his chair, mulling the idea that his brother should be made aware of their grandmother’s motive. After all, Max had already decided Trixie was up to something. “I suppose it’s time you knew. Trixie has always felt she had some…scores to settle. One of them is that, hard on the heels of our family shame, Wickham suggested the Saltwood title and holdings be dissolved and returned to the Crown, due to the scandal. More than suggested. The petition grew legs and damn near got as far as to have an airing in Parliament before it could be squashed. We stood to lose everything.”

      “Bastard.”

      “He gives bastards a bad name. Self-righteous prig, that’s what he was, casting stones while setting himself up as some holier-than-thou man of impeccable morals. And it wasn’t only him. There were three others heading up the action, until they were shown to be not as moral as they purported themselves to be, and the petition