well as beautiful this evening, Jess. Is that because of the new gown, or the fact that his lordship awaits you downstairs?”
“He awaits me downstairs each evening,” Jessica pointed out as she lifted her hem slightly, to help her navigate the marble steps.
“Not with a pink rosebud pinned to his lapel. I wondered about that earlier, when I went down. I only came back up to fetch my handkerchief.”
“Uncles don’t say fetch, Richard. I have it on good authority.” Her heart then heard what Richard had said and decided to skip a beat. “A pink rosebud?”
“Yes, it shocked me, as well. He dresses fine as nine pence, but no geegaws for the man, not in the usual run of things. So I didn’t comment on it. And, we have a visitor.”
Jessica didn’t take that bit of information in immediately, either. She was too busy wondering how Gideon would have managed to produce a blue rose, if she had chosen the blue. Knowing the man, he’d probably have just dipped its stem in an inkpot until he’d achieved the proper shade. “Oh?” she said belatedly. “Who is he?”
“Not he, but she. And it’s Lady Katherine, his lordship’s sister, come into town for new boots or some such thing, and if I were thirty years younger, I’d be wearing rosebuds myself. Oops, nearly tripped there, didn’t you? You have to be careful where you step, Jess.”
He was trying to tell her something but without really telling her. “Yes, I suppose I do. In every way.”
They reached the first-floor foyer. Richard turned toward the closed doors to the drawing room, but Jessica held him back. “What is she doing here?” she whispered fiercely.
“I told you, something about new boots. Now come along.”
Jessica looked closely into her friend’s face. Saw the slight twitch of his left eyelid. “What’s going on, Richard? What’s really going on?”
“Now why would you be asking that?”
“I’m asking that because you never forget your handkerchief. I’m asking because Gideon doesn’t wear posies. I’m asking because nobody told me Lady Katherine was expected. I’m asking because the doors to the drawing room are closed. And I’m asking most of all because your eyelid is twitching.”
“It is not,” he said, and it twitched again, just as a small bead of perspiration made its way down his temple.
“It does when you’re lying. You may bluff with impunity at cards, but never with me. Something is awaiting me on the other side of those doors, and that something is more than Gideon’s sister.”
“I told him to send somebody else upstairs to get you,” Richard said, sighing, making use of his handkerchief to wipe at his brow. “Adam, for one. I still don’t think he realizes what’s going on, he’s so busy making a total ass of himself, running around tables and chairs in those bloody stupid red heels of his, trying to avoid the dogs. I have to ask the cook for a marrowbone for Brutus. He won’t let the fool alone. Just come along, Jess, won’t you? You knew this was inevitable, in any case.”
“I knew what was—”
The double doors were flung open, and Brutus, closely followed by Cleo, was escorted into the foyer by Thorndyke, who was holding some sort of raw meat chop aloft with two fingers, his expression one of extreme distaste. Jessica quickly bit her bottom lip until the butler and his tongue-lolling admirers had disappeared behind the baize door at the end of the hallway, and then released her delight in peals of laughter.
“Oh, good, she’s not a stickler. We can’t have one of those.”
The voice was female, and it had come from inside the drawing room.
“Lady Katherine?” Jessica whispered the question, as they were still near the stairs and could not see into the drawing room.
Richard nodded. “Beautiful. One might say exotic. But without a single air or touch of starch about her. Had me shake her hand rather than bow over it. And she’s wearing riding clothes, says there’s time enough later to change if she has a mind to, which she doesn’t.”
Jessica considered this for a moment. “But you think I’ll like her.”
It was Richard’s turn to consider. “It’s like with the earl, Jess. I don’t think you have a choice.”
“And since they heard me laugh, no choice about going in there,” Jessica agreed. “Richard, do you sometimes think it was easier when it was just the two of us?”
“No,” he said, grinning. “I like the gravy boat I’ve somehow been dropped into too much to say that. And so do you.”
Jessica was still smiling as she entered the drawing room, still hanging onto Richard’s arm, that smile only fading when she began taking inventory of its other occupants.
There was Adam, dressed this evening in shamrockgreen jacket and fawn pantaloons, bent over one of the many couches, snapping at the seat with his handkerchief, probably to dislodge any dog hair.
There was Lady Katherine Redgrave, exotic as Richard had said, in her deep burgundy riding habit as she all but sprawled on another couch, both arms stretched out along its carved wooden back, one long booted leg crossed over the other in a highly unladylike way that flattered her all hollow.
One thing Jessica could say about the Redgraves, at least the three she’d met; they certainly knew how to relax and didn’t appear to much care where they were when they did it. And, oddly, the more they relaxed, the more on guard you felt you needed to be.
Her ladyship’s darkest brown hair, glinted with golden highlights, was piled haphazardly atop her head, several softly curling tendrils escaping the pins in a way many would suffer hours of curling sticks and poked pins to achieve. Her eyes were huge and dark and slightly tip-tilted, her mouth wide and pink and lush, her nose rivaled the perfection of the profile on Jessica’s new cameo, as did her creamy complexion.
She tilted her head in Jessica’s direction. And winked.
Jessica smiled in return, hoping she looked pleased rather than terrified.
And there was Gideon, standing at the mantel at the far side of the room, dressed in his usual impeccable black and white, the rose visible on his lapel, seemingly deep in conversation with…who was that man, and why was he wearing—
“Oh, my God. Now? Tonight? Is he out of his—Richard, why didn’t you tell me about—Now?”
She must have spoken that last word above her strangled whisper, because Gideon and the man wearing the starched white collar of the church turned to look at her.
And that’s when the world stopped.
He left the clergyman where he stood and crossed the wide expanse of the drawing room in his coolly determined way, making a dead-set at her, his dark eyes never leaving her face. Smoldering. Yes, that was the word. He was smoldering. All sophistication, all his devilishly handsome dark good looks, all his fine clothes and finer physique enough to cause her to forget to breathe.
“Damme,” Richard breathed quietly, in some awe. “If there was ever a man who wanted a woman…”
Jessica
