What an Earl Wants. Kasey Michaels

seemed excessive and spoke of an unhealthy appetite, in her opinion. She knew he was a neck-or-nothing rider who often wagered on himself in races and had yet to lose. She knew he had knocked down Gentleman Jackson not once, but twice, until the renowned pugilist had declared he wouldn’t step in the ring with him again. She knew he won all the top prizes driving with the Four-in-Hand Club. She knew he gambled deep but never wildly. She knew he had no enemies because even the most foolish of London gentlemen perceived the wisdom of calling him friend.

      She had, in short, made a study of the man, indeed his entire family, these past weeks. But, really, when she got right down to it, she didn’t know anything about the current crop of Redgraves but what she’d heard.

      He had two younger brothers, Maximillien and Valentine, and a single sister, Katherine. Maximillen had sailed as one of the Royal Navy’s youngest coxswains, and Valentine had been classically educated in Paris and Toulon, managing to remain there even as Bonaparte conducted his on-again, off-again war on England, only returning home a few months ago.

      Katherine had come to Mayfair for her Season last spring but hadn’t really taken, seeing as how she was unfashionably tall and dark-haired, and favored her infamous Spanish mother in her looks in a year where petite blondes were considered all the go. Her suitors had hoped for the mother’s morals, as well, and their mamas had cringed at the thought of “foreign-looking” grandchildren. But it had been Katherine herself who had answered an impertinent question about her brother the earl, voiced in the center of the dance floor at Almack’s, with a stunning punch to the questioner’s nose, breaking it quite nicely, word had it. She hadn’t come to town this Season, which to Jessica’s mind made more of a statement about Lady Katherine’s disdain for society than any possible fear of it or shame over her actions.

      Jessica felt she most probably could like Lady Katherine. Lords Maximillien and Valentine were of no real concern to her, although she imagined they were no better or worse than their brother. As to their grandmother, the dowager countess? All Jessica had heard about the woman was that she knew every secret of every man and woman and even royal, and there wasn’t a single person in all the ton who wasn’t scared spitless by her.

      Jessica felt she most probably could like Lady Saltwood, as well.

      She did not like Gideon Redgrave, however. Not his reputation, not the man who had just very clearly made a complete fool out of her. Damn him.

      “Before your brother deigns to join us,” he said now, presumably having had his fill of looking at her as if she might be a bug under a microscope. “We’re quits of this ridiculous offer of yours? You insulted me with your patently insincere offer, not to mention that idiocy with the pistol. In short, as a seductress, Jessica, you are an abysmal failure. I, on the other hand, succeeded admirably in pointing out I am not to be insulted, not without consequences. And, much as you may believe yourself irresistible, I am more than confident I can stumble along through the remainder of my days without learning, firsthand, and, needless to say, most intimately, whether or not you are a true redhead. In short, I am willing to accept your apology and move on.”

      She was certain she now looked as if her eyes would simply pop out of her head. “You…you…how dare you!”

      He sighed and shook his head, as if saddened by her outburst. “Make up your mind, Jessica. Harlot or genteel widow fallen on hard times. Which is it to be? So far, I would have to say you’ve mastered neither role. But before you answer, let me make one thing clear to you. I choose my own women, and they come to me willingly or not at all. I’ve no desire to bed a martyr, no matter how lovely.”

      There was one part of Jessica, one very small, even infinitesimally tiny part of her that took in the words “no matter how lovely,” and considered them a compliment. She shoved that infinitesimal part into a dark corner of her mind and locked the door on it, intending to take it out later and give it a good scold.

      “You’ve made your point, Gideon. Several times, in a variety of unconscionably crude and insulting ways. In my defense, I can only point out that I was, am, desperate. I offered you the only thing I had—”

      “Please don’t tell me you’re referring to your virtue. I don’t believe that’s been yours to bestow for quite some time. Unless the fabled Mr. Linden was a eunuch?”

      “No,” Jessica said quietly, “far from it.” She took a steadying breath. “A month. You ignored my solicitor’s communications for a month, and then you came to see me in person, looking just as I’d imagined you. Arrogant, overweening, for all the world as if you owned it. You weren’t going to listen to reason. And you wear the golden rose. That told me all I needed to know. I…I offered you what interests you most. And damn you, Gideon Redgrave, I did it knowing who you are. What you are. If you had half a heart, which you don’t, you would have realized what that cost me.”

      Gideon sat back on the sofa, rubbing a hand across his mouth as he looked at her. He looked at her for a long time.

      “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

      “Excuse me?” She hadn’t any idea what he was going to say, but what he said made no sense at all.

      “I repeat, Jessica. I’m sorry. Tell me—sans the golden rose, would you have made your offer?”

      Slowly, silently, she shook her head. “No.”

      Once again, he rubbed his hand across his mouth, still looking at her closely. “And you believe it still goes on? The Society.”

      Jessica shifted uncomfortably on the cushions. “As of five years ago, yes. I can’t say for certain about now. But you know this.”

      “No, Jessica, I don’t,” he said, getting to his feet, suddenly seeming decades older than his years. “I only know that in the past twelve months, four of my late father’s cohorts in that damn Society of his have been murdered. Your father included. I wear the golden rose to signal that I know the hunting accident, the accidental drowning, the fall down the stairs, your father’s coaching accident—they all were in fact murders.”

      He had to be spouting nonsense. “I don’t understand. My father was murdered? He and his wife both? How can you know that?”

      “Later,” Gideon said, turning toward a small commotion in the hallway. “I believe I’m about to be gifted with the sight of a touching family reunion. Or not,” he added, smiling, as a tall, rail-thin, ridiculously overdressed and harassed-looking youth stomped into the room.

      “Now what the bloody blue blazes do you want?” the youth demanded, clutching a large white linen serviette in one hand even as he took a healthy and quite rude bite out of the apple he carried with him. Speaking around the mouthful of fruit, he continued, “First you order me out of bed without a whisper of a reason, then you say I leave the house on penalty of death—as if that signifies, as I might already be dead for all the life you allow me. Then you send me off to stuff my face when Brummell himself swears no sane man breaks his fast before noon, and now you want me in here to—Well, hullo, ain’t you the pretty one.”

      “Ad—Adam?” Jessica was on her feet, but none too steadily. This ridiculous popinjay couldn’t be her brother. Adam was sweet and shy, and sat by her side as she read to him, and cried when their father insisted he learn to shoot, and sang with the voice of an angel.

      The youth turned to her and gifted her with an elegant leg, marred only when he nearly toppled over as he swept his arm with a mite too much enthusiasm.

      “Bacon-brained puppy,” Gideon muttered quietly. “Your brother, Jessica. Behold.”

      She beheld. Adam Collier was clad very much in the style of many of the youths who, from time to time, were hastily escorted out of the gaming room as being too raw and young to be out on their own with more than a groat in their pocket, so eager were they to be separated from their purses. Unpowdered hair too long, curled over the iron so that it fell just so onto his forehead, darkened and stiff with pomade. Buckram padding in the shoulders of his wasp-waisted blue coat, a patterned waistcoat that was a jangle