Kasey Michaels - [Redgraves 02] (25 page)

“Yes, son, you do. If you’re to agree to thwart my grandson in order to help me, you need to understand the urgency of my plea. Now, about the cave. I would have thought, we all thought, we’d traveled whole miles. Clever, clever old bastard. Eventually, most of us learned it was easier to cooperate. Even when they brought in the whores, and made us watch. Even when they brought in the virgins. God...the stories I could tell you, and the stories those fools told me, never thinking to fear this cooperative, so congenial and flattering
vessel.
The men who then feared
me
these many years, feared what I knew. I kept them on their toes until the day they died, still believing I held the bible, had it safely hidden with a solicitor, to be turned over to the king should anything happen to me. None of those foul men died happily, by the way, I take pleasure in that. Although I suppose I should make an exception for old Guy, who cocked up his toes, among other things, in my—”

Now Simon believed it was he who didn’t want to hear more. “Please don’t think about that now. You’re an exceptional woman. Not only did you survive, you shepherded a fine family who loves you unconditionally. I want to help you. Do you know where the entrance of the tunnel is, ma’am? It would assist me, immensely.”

“I told you. We were blindfolded, led like blind lambs to the slaughter. Month after month, on the first night of the full moon. Sobbing, praying, pleading, all to no avail.”

“That does help, ma’am. If they retain some of the old ways, we should pay special attention to the first night of the full moon.”

She lifted her chin, reminding him of Kate, although the two women looked nothing alike.

“Good. Now I want you to know the rest. I refused to so demean myself, to either cry or rave. I won’t attempt to justify what I did, how I learned to survive, even conquer, but I need to at least offer an explanation. I had been all but sold to Charles to settle my father’s gambling debts. Which was their sin, not mine. I was fifteen when Barry was born. A difficult birth, and there were to be no more children, no more
royal heirs.
There was no longer any reason not to, as Charles drawled so poetically, toss me into the pot with the others. And he did.”

Simon closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

But Trixie was in charge once again. “Don’t interrupt. When I saw his interest straying to someone else, no matter how
pleasing
I learned to be, I knew I would be replaced. She had the look of a fine brood mare, you see—large teats and broad hips. Not a looker, a breeder. After all, he had many other...outlets available to him for his pleasures, didn’t he? His bastards fairly littered the countryside. But he needed the safety of more legitimate male heirs. That’s when it became apparent what I had to do. For the sake of my child, who had to be protected at all costs. Until then, I reasoned I’d simply outlive him, be able to raise Barry without his father’s influence.”

Suddenly Simon recognized where this was all leading. He tried to ignore the shiver that went down his spine. “Please, you don’t have to...”

Her smile was nearly beatific. “But, again, I find I want to, after all these years. Isn’t that strange? Confession being beneficial, and all that nonsense. Perhaps I am growing old, and wish to cleanse my soul? Allow me to tell you something, Simon. There’s no such thing as a convenient death, coming just when it’s needed. That’s the stuff of pennypress novels. Such fortuitous demises such as my husband’s have to be...helped along.”

She sighed, as if a weight had been lifted, but not completely. “Now I’m done. I suppose I’ll feel better at some point, although I don’t discern any change as yet. Please ring for Dearborn, and he’ll locate Richard for you. You’ll of course need the key. Dearborn believes he has the only one, but Dearborn has been wrong before, although he’d never admit such a thing, which is better for us in the long run. I’ll have Richard get mine for you. How will you go about it? Destroying those journals?”

“A secret is best kept by two, Trixie, as I’ve recently learned,” he said, at last taking up her invitation. “Mr. Borders and I are sufficient for this one.”

Trixie nodded. “And you and I for mine. Kate must never know, none of them can ever know. Forgive my maidenly dramatics, but I truly couldn’t bring myself to live on another minute, if they knew.”

“They won’t,” Simon assured her. He already knew what he was going to do. After all, it had worked before. He bowed in her direction, turned to leave—and then turned back. “I have one more question, probably one you can’t answer. As I dodged cobwebs in that hellhole, it occurred to me that somebody had to have done the cleaning of the place during the time the Society was active. Would you have any idea who that might have been?”

Trixie tapped a be-ringed finger against her lips. “In my husband’s time, no. I wish I had. But with Barry? His man, Burke, and his wife and grown daughter ran off almost immediately after the interment. Very loyal, Burke. Perhaps it was them?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

K
ATE
SAT
WITH
her eyes shut, unwilling to look at her reflection in the dressing table mirror as Sally stood behind her and brushed her hair, still damp from her bath.

How did one live a lie for more than half a lifetime? Not only live it, but thrive. Laugh. Joke. Dance. Hide all the horror, the memories, behind a facade that convinced the world, even her own grandchildren, that life was a beautiful, joyful thing.

Not once, but twice. First her husband, and then her son, repeating his father’s sins. Monsters. Guilty of the worst crimes and abuses.

“I would have killed them both.”

“Your pardon, m’lady?” Sally asked, pausing in the act of easing a tangle with the pair of brushes.

“Nothing. I was merely contemplating the idea of having you snip away at least two-thirds of this unruly mop.”

“Oh, no, m’lady, you daren’t do any such thing. It would be a crime for me to do such a thing, that would.”

Kate smiled, and opened her eyes. “There are crimes and then there are crimes. I doubt anyone burned in hell for cutting someone’s hair.”

The maid took up her chore once more. “There was that lady with the veils and such. She cut someone’s hair and then they cut off his
head.
That’s surely worth a good burning in...in her nether regions.”

“Netherworld might be a better choice of description,” Kate said, her eyes looking somewhat alive again at last. “You’re mixing Salome and her veils and John the Baptist with Delilah and Samson, I’m afraid, and I won’t even bother with your misconception of where the nether regions are located in relationship to hell. Who told you these stories?”

Sally still looked confused. “The dowager countess, m’lady. We all so dote on her stories.”

Kate’s smile disappeared. “Yes, so did I. Are we through, Sally? Consuela looks more than ready for her bed—aren’t you, Consuela?”

The duenna shook herself out of her near slumber, to protest she was not in the least tired, and ready to guard her charge with every ounce of her blood and last breath of her body.

“Dear me, really? You’re expecting an imminent attack from Delilah’s Philistines, Consuela?”

“Only the one,” she answered, pushing herself up and out of her chair. “We have spoken this afternoon with Mr. Dearborn, and we are aware the fox is attempting to breach the henhouse. Her ladyship thinks it all a delightful mischief, but we are not so easily amused. Until your brother the earl is approached, and gives his blessing, we will remain vigilant. We know what is proper.”

“Yes, we certainly do, if only by listening to rumors and reading about it in books. But I highly doubt the marquis will be attacking my bedchamber door with an ax, demanding entry. Go to bed, Consuela. And you, as well, Sally. For the moment—or forever, if you have anything to say about it, Consuela—I sleep alone. Please, I’m nearly exhausted after an afternoon and evening of my grandmother’s delightful but fatiguing chatter.”

Kate continued to smile as maid and duenna curtsied and at last left her chamber, Sally for the servants’ quarters, Consuela for the cot in the dressing room.

“The door, Consuela!” she called after the woman.

Apparently reluctantly, as it took some time, the dressing room door closed. That had been their agreement: close the door or sleep elsewhere. One night of burying her head beneath a half dozen pillows to attempt (and fail) to drown out the woman’s snores had been more than sufficient for Kate to not feel terrible about making her demand.

And now she was alone. The mantel clock had struck eleven only a few short minutes ago, and she was alone; just her and her bed. That great, yawning abyss she alternately wished to throw herself onto to sob out her pain and longed to avoid because Simon would not be there to share it with her.

She untied her dressing gown, laid it out on the bed and climbed in beneath the covers, positive she’d never sleep.

How could she still want him, having seen the other side of what she had believed to be beautiful, wonderful, even magical? How could she touch him, feel his touch, without remembering there could be a dark and ugly side to what went on between a man and a woman? How could she look for pleasure where her grandmother and mother had probably known only pain, degradation, fear?

And hatred. They had to have felt hatred. Loathing.
Rage.

Trixie had outlived her nemesis; Maribel had taken matters into her own hands, ridding herself of her tormentor. And good for her! There was no longer any question in Kate’s mind as to why her mother had left her children in Trixie’s care as she and her French lover made good her escape. For all anyone could ever know, the two women had made a pact.

Kate had worked all of that out in her head as she put Daisy through her paces along the West Run, as she’d industriously, perhaps with an edge of frantic, ruthless energy, pulled the weeds half obscuring the graves of Torr Gribbon and his family.

She’d felt Simon’s eyes on her all through dinner, but they both had allowed Trixie to dominate the conversation with tidbits about the pair of funerals she’d attended, Richard Borders tossing her a name or subject when she seemed to lag, spurring her on to another hilarious, absurd tale as only Trixie could tell it.

Kate still had some trouble meeting Simon’s eyes, yet at the same time longed to be in his arms. What did that make her? How could anyone see what she’d seen today, realize everything she’d realized today, and still long to feel a man’s arms around her?

Trixie loathed men. Kate had convinced herself of that, too, during her long, introspective afternoon. She hated them, she used them...and, unbelievably, she enjoyed them. Had she ever known love? Kate doubted that highly. She would ask her grandmother the difference between wanting someone and loving someone, if she believed the woman would have an answer for her. But she didn’t believe that.

Wasn’t that sad...so sad....

Her eyes popped open wide when the hand came down over her mouth, followed by a low whisper. “We need to talk.”

“Howd’youpropo wedo yat wit y’and over m’—”

“With my hand over your mouth, yes,” Simon said, grinning down at her. “Good point. Will you come with me?”

Kate made note of the fact he still hadn’t removed his hand. How trusting of him. As if she’d call for Consuela! She nodded, furiously. Mostly because she was furious. What sort of dolt did he believe her to be?

He kissed her forehead. “I wasn’t certain you’d want to be...with me.”

Her entire body relaxed. He was the best sort of dolt—the sweetest dolt in the entire world.

She nodded again as he stepped away from the bed, and pushed back the coverlet, Simon already holding up her dressing gown for her.

“Where are we going?” she whispered as they tiptoed to the door.

Once in the hallway and heading in the direction of the west wing, he answered her. “I’d like to say far, far away from here. But there is that inconvenient business of the gates. And the moat.”

“We haven’t got a... All right, we’ll call it a moat. Where’s Dearborn?”

“Taken care of,” he said as they passed by the staircase. “It would seem he enjoys nothing more than a rousing game of dominos. He and Richard are in the dining room, betting fairly tame stakes while enjoying both your brother’s cellar and his cigars. Every man has his weakness, I’m to understand, and Richard found Dearborn’s.”

He stopped in front of the king’s chambers, never slept in by any of the realm’s rulers, but when her grandfather had built the wing he’d foreseen all circumstances. To her amazement, he then pulled the heavy key from his pocket.

“How...?”

“Let’s just say, thank you for having the foresight to return the cabinet key to its hidey-hole. Just, please, remind me to return it yet tonight. This is an impressive, but very large key. Dearborn would notice its absence from its hook in a heartbeat. Now, come on, let’s see how kings supposedly live.”

And suddenly, Kate froze where she stood. What had seemed so natural, even glorious, last night, now seemed sordid...even evil.

“Kate?” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “We’re going to talk, remember?”

She looked at the floor, which held no answers for her, and then peered up at Simon. “Talk,” she repeated. “This is...no,
I’m
being ridiculous. Why am I being ridiculous?”

“Because you’re not made out of wood, I suppose. You’ve a mind and a heart and precious little experience, no matter if you don’t think you’re still more the girl you were yesterday morning instead of the woman you suppose yourself tonight.”

“I have
no
idea what you’re talking about, but we probably should continue this on the other side of the door?”

He smiled so sweetly at her, she wanted to cry. He had become her rock, without her realizing it; her anchor, her sanity in the midst of all the madness. “That was going to be my next suggestion.”

Once the door was closed and locked behind her, Kate, led by the light from candles Simon must have lit earlier, made her way through the draped antechamber and into the cavernous apartment.

“It’s just as I remember it when I’d trail in here after the maids,” she said, looking about at the heavy tapestry draperies, the overly ornate furniture. “Possibly worse. Do you...do you know there are fresh sheets on that hideous bed? Trixie says it’s mandatory. One must always have all in order, just in the off chance some mooching royal decides to drop in unannounced for tea. Or, as Trixie explained the thing, if you have the crushing stupidity and overweening audacity to
have
a royal chamber, you’d damn well better be prepared to see the occasional king.”

She sat herself down on what had to be the most rigid, uncomfortable settee ever constructed. Again, as Trixie had told her, one has to make the king welcome, but not necessarily comfortable, or else he might decide to stay for days on end, his entourage and horses both eating their heads off at your expense. Trixie made everything and everyone a joke, and her descriptions of the foibles of society probably accounted for some of Kate’s lack of fear and even respect of these silly people as she made her come-out. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake....

She’d let her mind wander long enough.

“What did you do all afternoon while I was alternately feeling sorry for myself and strenuously biting my lip so I didn’t mistakenly say anything revealing when I visited Trixie in her chambers?”

Simon sat down beside her. “Nothing too strenuous. At your grandmother’s request, I accompanied Richard on a tour of the estate buildings.”

She sat up straighter. “The dower house?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have the key at that point, remember? You took it with you when you went for your ride.”

Sighing, Kate attempted to relax once more, but the settee made that impossible. The furniture in the king’s chambers was constructed for the ramrod spines of royalty, not the all-but-collapsible ones of the Redgraves. “I can’t sit here,” she said, getting to her feet, intent on repositioning herself on the floor at his feet.

“Not there,” he said, taking her hand. “I need to hold you. That’s all, Kate. Hold you.”

“I need that, too. Nothing else in this world seems solid to me anymore but you.” She attempted a smile. “And this furniture, of course.”

He led her to the bed, suggesting he approach it on one side and she the other, as it would most likely take the two of them to successfully turn back the heavy tapestry cover. “Otherwise, we’d probably smother,” he joked as they then took turns tossing many of the heavy tapestry pillows to the floor.

“You’d best remove your shoes,” she told him. “We needn’t worry about wrinkles, however. None of the maids would ever be so foolhardy as to tell Mrs. Justis the sheets had somehow been put on the bed without first being pressed.”

And then she ignored the wooden steps and boosted herself up on the mattress and arranged a few of the pillows behind her as she lay down, to peer up at the tapestry canopy.

“See anything of importance?” Simon asked her as he joined her on the bed, folding one arm beneath his head as he lay on his side, facing her, half the width of the immense bed between them. They’d been in much closer proximity on the settee; now she could barely see him, thanks to the velvet bed draperies that blocked most of the candlelight.

Kate was feeling stupid again. Panicked by his closeness, even as she wanted him closer. She wanted
him.
But what if she didn’t? What would happen then? What if she had asked him to stop last night? What if he’d asked her to do something she couldn’t bring herself to do? Men were stronger, physically. Trixie may have been smarter, but even she hadn’t found a way to stop whatever had gone on in that chamber of horrors beneath the dower house. Women were born physically vulnerable; it was the way they’d been fashioned. Weaker, softer. Vessels, not weapons.

And cursed with a desire to please.

She felt a touch on her shoulder and nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Damn. I should have followed you this afternoon, had this out between us before you had a chance to get everything tangled up in your mind.”

Kate sat up on the mattress and turned to face him. “My mind is
not
tangled. We did what we did, I am who I am, and that’s the end of it. You’re the one who felt some great need to tack marriage on to what we did. I didn’t. Can’t you see what that says about me?”

Simon sat up, as well. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know.” She barely recognized her own voice. She pushed her hands through her hair and knew it was wild; she should have allowed Sally to braid it before shooing her away. “I’m...I’m probably unnatural. Aren’t I?”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Simon all but moaned. “Come here.”

“No! I should be able to stand on my own. It’s...it’s wrong, so wrong to be...to be a slave to one’s passions.”

And Simon laughed.

He
laughed!

Kate went on the attack. Without giving a thought to her earlier rejection of his touch, she turned on him, knocking the two of them back onto the pillows, trying to get at him, pummel him as he continued to laugh, and laugh. “Stop it! Stop that laughing right now. There’s nothing funny about—”