Kasey Michaels - [Redgraves 02] (7 page)

“And you are very much your own woman, if you’d let yourself realize that, and not allow Val or Gideon or your grandmother or anyone else to tell you to change. The last thing you aren’t, however, is either of your parents. Or am I wrong, and the fact I’ve learned certain things about your family isn’t what’s standing between the two of us getting to know each other better?”

Kate tilted her head to one side, rhythmically tapping her small riding crop against her thigh. Too close, he was getting too close. “You know, Simon, just when I think I can begin to like you, you go and say something like that. What makes you think you can presume to peek inside my head?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s because we’re more alike, you and I, than you know. We feel...responsible.”

“And what is
that
supposed to mean?”

Simon looked past her, down the hill. “It means you’re not the only one who would like all of this to disappear, have never happened. Can I trust you?”

Kate could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. For the first time, she knew he was being deadly serious. “I don’t know. Should I trust you?”

“I won’t presume to answer that for you, Kate. Make up your own mind. I’ll be waiting with Henry and his hound at midnight. Some things are easier said in the dark.”

“Henry? Who told you about Hen—?”

But Simon was walking away from her, his right hand already extended to grab the bridle of Valentine’s horse. “Did you get lost along the way?”

Valentine dismounted, looking somewhat harassed. “Nothing that simple. It seems Adam got himself locked in a linen cupboard.”

Kate looked at Simon, who was a distinct distraction and puzzle, and then to the doors of the mausoleum, which were both beckoning her and repelling her, and decided, for the moment at least, she’d much rather hear about Adam.

“How did he get locked in a cupboard?” she asked, joining the men. “More important, whatever possessed you to let him out again?”

“It wasn’t an easy decision, believe me. Then again, listening to him bleat about there possibly being spiders sharing the dark with him was equally embarrassing as the reason he was in there. When nobody seemed able to locate the key, I suggested a hatchet, but Adam screamed I was trying to kill him, so we gave that up as a bad idea. As to the why of the thing, it would seem our new relative woke early today, feeling amorous, and spied out a maid bending over the fireplace grate. Needless to say, Adam needed no further invitation.”

“Oh, the poor thing,” Kate said in dismay. “Who is she?”

“I didn’t ask, but I’m told by Mrs. Justis the girl is fine. I sent her my compliments and gave her the rest of the day off. Now, let me get on with the story, which I’ll relate quickly. The nameless but brilliant maid suggested they postpone their liaison until she quickly did something Mrs. Justis asked her to do. Adam was to await her in the large linen cupboard on the third floor, as Adam’s valet was just in the other room, because, and I quote, ‘I gets noisy sometimes, you know?’ All of which he agreed to, of course, because he’s a bumble-brained idiot. She waited in the shadows until he was inside, then snuck up and locked the door before disposing of the key. She threw it from the nearest window. It took six of us to locate it.”

By now Kate was nearly bent in half, suffering a case of the giggles. She’d have to find out which of the maids was involved, and then invite her to her bedchamber so she could hear the story again, with many more of the details.

“Excuse me, Kate, for this indelicate question, but I have to know,” Simon said, “as I’m already building a picture of this in my head. Val, were his breeches on or off?”

“On,” Valentine responded, his smile lopsided, at last losing the glowering expression he’d arrived wearing. “But buttoned incorrectly. Otherwise I might have been tempted to choke him with them. That boy needs some straightening out, with no thanks to the claptrap his father fed him. I ordered him to present himself to me—properly buttoned—in Gideon’s study in one hour. If you knew what he said to me—” Again, he looked at his sister. “Never mind.”

“Don’t look at me like that, Val. I don’t need to know
everything.
Besides, I’m busy building my own unlikely pictures, although I’m having some trouble painting one of you being the stern voice of reason and maturity.”

Valentine looked relieved she hadn’t pressed him for more. “Don’t pin all your hopes on that eventuality, Kate. I may bring home my points by repeatedly dunking him head and shoulders into a horse trough until he either drowns or promises me he understands.”

They all laughed, but then Kate remembered the last piece of Valentine’s tale. “If you’re busy schooling Adam, does that mean we can’t continue the search until this afternoon?”

“No,” Valentine said, extracting a large black key from a pocket in his hacking jacket, “you two can manage well enough on your own this morning without me, I’m sure. It may be time to broaden the search from the house to the grounds, anyway. Now let’s get this over with, not that there can be much of anything to see.”

Kate looked to the heavy iron doors, suddenly not so anxious to go inside the family tomb as she had been the moment she’d heard about the theft of her father’s body. She’d never been inside the mausoleum, not in all of her life. No Redgraves had died in her lifetime except her parents, and Trixie was adamant about leaving the dead in peace, even going so far as to say she’d probably haunt anyone who dared disturb her rest with weeping or the cloying smell of too many flowers.

Now Kate found herself wondering if her grandmother feared death, and deliberately avoided any reminders Redgraves weren’t immortal. It certainly couldn’t be just any mausoleum that bothered her; she’d just tripped merrily off to a pair of funerals. Or was it that she couldn’t face evidence of her only son’s death in particular?

“Kate, are you coming?” Valentine called to her. “This was your idea, remember?”

“I remember,” she said, allowing Simon to take her hand as he stood on the marble steps, to assist her. “You can let go now,” she reluctantly whispered as they followed Valentine into the high-ceilinged, dome-top crypt. It was both cold and dim inside, the only light provided by the leaded glass panes in the ceiling and two small stained-glass windows, one definitely a recent replacement, as its many-colored panes were grime-free. Clearly even Mrs. Justis and her small army of maids considered the mausoleum out of bounds between interments.

That explained why it had taken nearly twenty years and a fallen tree branch for anyone to discover her father’s body had gone missing. It didn’t explain Trixie’s avoidance of the final resting places of both her son and husband.

Or was Kate now looking at everything she believed with new eyes?

“You won’t see much if you don’t open your eyes,” Simon told her softly, leaning in close to her as if he knew she was all but shaking in her boots. “Stacked to the dome on three sides. Extremely impressive. There must be more than a hundred tombs in here.”

Kate kept her chin lowered and peered upward through her lashes, not really wanting to see. Simon was right. Everything was excruciatingly neat, almost mathematically so; row upon row of long cubicles, each fronted with marble and inscribed with a name and two dates. They’d started at the top, and descended from there, row by row, as if the tombs were a linear depiction of the Redgrave family tree.

The family must have dug up any ancestors who had been planted elsewhere and brought them here when this enormous mausoleum was built. And wasn’t that...disturbing.

On the right wall there were still four rows of empty shelves. Twenty more bodies and the mausoleum would be filled. They looked like dark, empty maws, awaiting their prey.

Kate looked away, feeling ashamed. She’d never considered herself fanciful, but she could swear all these generations of Redgraves were calling to her; pleading
fix this, don’t allow us all to be shamed by the actions of a few.

“Here it is, Kate,” Valentine said, directing her attention to the last opening on the fifth shelf. “Gideon thinks they chiseled out the stone and then carefully put it back, but with inferior mortar. That’s what happens when supposed gentlemen are forced to put their hands to real work. The stone was found on the floor, cracked in two, and Barry’s coffin gone. You can see bits of mortar sticking to the iron shelving and the stone, as well. Now can we get the hell out of here?”

“In a moment,” Simon said, still holding Kate’s hand as he approached the violated tomb, but then passed by it to the next one. “‘Charles Barry Redgrave, Sixteenth Earl of Saltwood.’” He rubbed his hand across the stone. “It looks as if something was affixed here, just below the dates, and then removed. See the holes, and the damage to the stone? As if someone went at it with a chisel, and rather angrily at that.” He leaned in closer. “A coat of arms, perhaps?”

Valentine repeated Simon’s action, and then began examining other stones, walking around the room, stopping here and there. “Well spotted, Simon. It looks as if each earl sports a replica of the Redgrave coat of arms, all done up out of silver and colored enamels. I suppose we need to replace my grandfather’s, and Barry’s, as well, if we can find it. You’re certain it didn’t just loosen and fall out?”

Now Kate took her turn in front of the stone, running her gloved fingers over it, still able to feel the small chinks in the otherwise flat surface. “But wouldn’t both have been found on the floor when Gideon came to inspect it after the servants’ report about the crypt being empty? Do you think they were stolen?”

“They’re silver, Kate, so it’s possible. But why steal only two when you can take them all? Besides, Dearborn actually keeps the only key inside a locked box, and that key with his ring of butler keys that never leaves him. Nobody comes in here unless they’ve got his permission. Any other suggestions? A ghostie wielding a hammer and chisel, perhaps?”

Kate pulled a face at her brother and turned to leave the mausoleum. She didn’t know what she’d hoped to find, or feel, or learn here. She’d just known she’d had to come. Now all she wanted was to be gone, flying across the fields of the West Run with Daisy, the chill of the stone tomb and the stench of stale air replaced by the warmth of sunlight and a clean, fresh breeze. She needed to take herself as far from death as she could get.

“Here, I’ll boost you up,” Simon said from behind her, even as his hands clamped about her waist and she was lifted high, then settled into the sidesaddle with such ease it was embarrassing.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she told him, adjusting the military shako hat that had slipped down over her eyes. “I could have managed. My brothers never believed in coddling me, and I actually much prefer it that way. I often ride alone on the estate, and they felt I should know how to remount if I fell off—which I never have.”

“That very nearly makes sense, except for the part about you riding out without a groom in tow, which is bloody stupid.” He handed her the reins. “Very well, remind me to do you no more favors.”

Rough and tumble.
That’s what he’d said was how his father had described his younger son. And for all Simon’s outward polish, clearly something about her allowed him to speak and act as his real self. She believed she could be either flattered or insulted, and immediately decided on flattered. Especially since it allowed her to be herself.

“I have reminded you, repeatedly. I’m not helpless, and don’t care to be made to feel that way.” She raised her voice so Valentine, who was still locking the doors, could hear her. “I’m heading for the West Run. You can follow or not.”

“And the breeze will dry those tears you don’t want anyone to see,” Simon said quietly, shaking his head. “You’re the prickliest woman I’ve ever met. Have you ever wondered what you’re trying to prove?”

Kate opened her mouth to say something scathing, but then realized she had no answer for the man. He’d bested her. She tugged on the reins with more force than care, so that a confused Daisy actually turned her head as if to be sure who was atop her before setting off toward the fields of the West Run.

Maybe somewhere along the way, Kate thought, she might discover why she felt it so important to keep Simon Ravenbill at arm’s length. She’d already thought up and discarded several reasons, from his hair color, to his and Valentine’s attempted deception, to her family pride. But did she really want him gone? Even her foolish plan to keep him away had hinged on deliberately drawing him closer.

Was she afraid of Simon Ravenbill? Or was she afraid of how Simon Ravenbill made her feel? He made her feel like a woman, and she wasn’t certain she was comfortable with that.

CHAPTER FIVE

S
IMON
WATCHED
AS
Kate rode off, her spine ramrod straight, wondering if he looked long enough whether he’d see smoke emanating from her ears. She was the most interesting, maddening, not romantically inclined, exotically beautiful woman he’d ever encountered, and the more she pushed him away the more he longed to know her better.

He might consider her actions to be a ploy meant to draw him closer. But, no, not Kate. He was more than certain she said what she meant. Or what she thought she meant...

So. Did he now tag along after her like some lovesick swain hoping for crumbs—or possibly a rousing argument—or did he ride back to the Manor with Valentine to tell him what he was beginning to suspect?

If he told Valentine without including Kate in the telling, he would be at least figuratively putting his life in her hands.

Then again, chasing after her could pretty much guarantee the same result.

Simon laughed softly as he considered his dilemma.

But, if he was going to be hanged, it might as well be for a sheep rather than a lamb.

“She says you allow her to ride unaccompanied,” he said, watching Valentine mount.

Valentine settled into the saddle. “Oh, she did, did she? At least she almost got it right. It’s more that we’d rather she do it openly than sneak behind our backs. Either way, she rides when she wants to ride. Did you see the bell nailed to the stable wall?”

“No, I haven’t yet visited the stables. But doesn’t the bell go on the cat?”

Valentine laughed, acknowledging the joke. “Whenever Kate rides out alone one of the grooms rings the bell, an action repeated across the estate by those who hear it. Rather a heads-up to be on the lookout for her, you understand. If she’s off to the West Run, we know it by the bells. Toward the village, we know that, as well. Et cetera. She’s not as alone as she thinks, everyone watches for her. When she returns, the groom rings the all-clear. It sounds convoluted, I know, but believe me, it’s much simpler than trying to keep Kate to the rules.”

“And she doesn’t realize this?”

“Of course she does, unless she thinks some bloody angels are ringing mystical cowbells as they greet her along the way. She doesn’t acknowledge it, which to my sister’s mind is rather as if it isn’t happening. I suppose you could say she’s being accommodating. She may even think she’s won. You never know with Kate.”

“Yes, I’m beginning to see that. No cowbells needed today, I’ll go after her. In a moment. What did that hen-witted twit say to you?”

Valentine brushed at the sleeve of his riding jacket, as if attempting to remove a smut of something unpleasant that had got stuck there. “Nothing worth committing to memory, I assure you. He’s as ready to go as any young lad of his age, but with twice the brass because he’s been convinced he’s
entitled.
He’s a parrot for his father’s teachings, you understand. What randy young pup doesn’t want to hear women have been placed on this earth to please him? Men rule the world and are, again,
entitled
to anything they want. Oh, although we can thank our lucky stars Turner Collier hadn’t gotten so far in Adam’s lessons to actually
show
him how men gain strength and power by bedding as many women as possible, most notably during their supposed ceremonies. So everyone can observe and join in, perhaps applaud, you understand. The mind fairly boggles, doesn’t it?”

“It’s disgusting,” Simon said, fighting back a mental image he could feel forming in the back of his brain.

“Despicable, I agree. But useful for keeping members in line and blackmailing their carefully selected guests—the journals, remember? Gideon remarked that it comes down to a simple strategy of play tonight my good fellow, to the top of your bent, unaware you’ll pay tomorrow. You’ve had your every sexual whim provided for, and will so again—we just ask you to first do us this one small
favor.
”

Simon nodded. “Such as the recent attempt to divert supplies meant for the troops massing on the Peninsula. Not traitors, not primarily, but weak-minded men who don’t want their pleasures taken away.”

“As far as it goes, yes. You’re forgetting the implied or
else.
Lord only knows the forms the threats might take. We think the first
favor
is fairly innocuous, but then they’ve really got the man on their hook. After that, they own him pretty much body and soul, and the favors turn to outright crime, even treason, poor bastards. Didn’t Gideon share all of this with you in Perceval’s office?”

“He skirted the issue quite neatly, but I suspected as much.”
I know as much. Your brother isn’t the only one who says only what must be said.

“My apologies. Since the strategy began with our father, perhaps even our grandfather, I doubt Gideon wished to elaborate more than he thought necessary. In any event, we believe that same system of control remains the current Society’s reasoning behind whatever the hell they’re plotting now as concerns our government, as the current Society seems to have ambitions that far outstrip those of my father.”

Simon bit his tongue, not about to say:
If what I suspect now is true, I think these current traitors are aiming far low of your family’s ambitions.

Valentine seemed to wave away any further discussion of the Society. “Enough of that. Getting back to our resident randy young goat, what stuck deepest in Adam’s mind and holds there is his enthusiastic belief a woman’s place is on her knees. Literally. So to answer your earlier question truthfully, yes, the idiot’s trousers were hopelessly tangled around his ankles while he crouched in the cabinet, the most visible sight when I opened the door his pasty white rump.”

Simon knew he shouldn’t laugh; this was a serious problem in desperate need of solving. But surely he could be allowed a small smile? “Tangled. Or you would have strangled him with them, you said?”

“Not really. My brother Gideon quoted something Robert Burton supposedly wrote a long time ago and said I was to repeat to myself whenever I was tempted to throttle the twit. ‘Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.’”

“The blame goes to the father. Yes, I can see that. But the father’s dead. I don’t quite picture you in the role of the boy’s new, much more stern father, though, Val.”

“Neither will Adam,” Valentine muttered, shaking his head.

Simon allowed the anxious Hector to dance in a small circle for a moment, eager to be off. “I know
how
you’d like to point that out to him, but it isn’t true. You can’t literally beat sense into a person’s skull.”

“No, but I can tell him some home truths about his father, about the Society. Jessica wanted to keep it from him as long as possible, but the only alternative I can see is to geld him, and Jessica might not approve. He’s still young enough to save.”

“I sincerely hope you’re right. I wish you luck, then, and would appreciate a recounting of his reaction later, perhaps over brandy and cigars. As for me, I’m off now to bell the cat.” Simon turned Hector toward the West Run even as Valentine shouted a laughing warning after him having to do with exactly who could end up gelded.

He’d soon catch up with Kate, who was doubtless holding back her mare, saving her for a good gallop, and did the same with his mount. He believed she needed some time to settle herself after the visit to the mausoleum. His family had actually enjoyed picnics on the grass just outside the Ravenbill mausoleum while their parents told their sons stories about their ancestors. The Redgrave family avoided their dead like the plague, mostly, it would seem, on Trixie’s orders.

He’d have to find a way to speak with the Dowager Countess of Saltwood at some point, even if he doubted she’d be more than marginally cooperative.

As he rode, he thought about Holbrook, the
if onlys
ringing in his head, keeping pace with Hector’s hooves. If only he’d been the older son, able to ride herd on Holbrook and his mad starts. If only his brother had confided in him. If only Holbrook hadn’t so much money, so few restraints put on him, such a burning need to be accepted by those he wished to impress. If only he hadn’t been such an easy sheep to lead, never realizing the promised pleasurable path could lead to the slaughter. If only, if only...

Simon caught sight of his quarry and her mount at the end of a tree-lined path looking out over fallow fields that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Redgrave Manor wasn’t an estate, it was a damn kingdom.

He pulled up beside her, Hector still unhappy and not reluctant to show it. Simon’s quick glance told him Kate was composed once more, and faintly belligerent, probably because he’d been stupid enough to comment on her tears. It couldn’t be easy, being a woman. Not when no matter how resolute the resolve to have her sex be a secondary consideration, no matter her wish to be treated as well as to behave like her brothers, as every man’s equal, she was still undeniably female.

Didn’t she realize it was only womankind’s softer hearts that kept men from total ruin?

Still, to politely inquire about how she was feeling now would be courting disaster, Simon was certain of that much. So he chose to talk about Redgrave Manor, which clearly held a good portion of her heart. At least then he could reassure himself he was working on his assignment, not selfishly pursuing the prickly young woman who had invaded his dreams last night.

“I didn’t realize your family’s holdings are so vast,” he said, casually lifting his right leg and hooking it in front of him on the saddle, as if willing to settle in for a comfortable chat. He deliberately waved one hand across the view to include the entire estate in his next words. “Your ancestors must have pleased somebody very much, to be given all this.”

Kate chuckled. “The trick, Trixie told me, lay in not
displeasing
anyone overmuch, and holding firmly to the policy of prudently shifting loyalties as required. They were a crafty, slippery bunch, my ancestors. What they couldn’t manage to wrangle as gifts from the Crown, they bought out of hand, sometimes paying twice the land’s worth, just to have it. An earldom isn’t that high to reach for a man of ambition, but it was as far as they wished to rise. Earls are more easily overlooked than dukes, you understand, when someone is hunting up a titled neck to put on the block.”

Simon looked at her profile. “You sound proud of them.”

“I’m not ashamed of them, no. Our father and grandfather, between them, nearly doubled our already vast lands, and I don’t doubt they would have been happy to double them again if they both hadn’t died at relatively young ages. Gideon is a magnificent steward of the proud Saltwood legacy.” She lowered her chin slightly as she turned to face him. “With a few notable recent exceptions, not quite so laudable.”

“Yes, but let’s not talk about them now. Hector here is still looking for a good long run. Possibly from here to that circle of trees and boulders off in the distance?” he suggested, pointing to an area in the midst of the vast, low hedgerow-lined fields someone must have decided not worth the effort needed to clear it.

“From one graveyard to another?” Kate asked, wrinkling her delicious nose. “Very well.”

“The hedgerows barely present a barrier to either of us, I’m sure. Wait. One graveyard to another?”

“I’ll tell you about it when we get there, if you’ll first tell me why you named that magnificent stallion Hector. I named Daisy when she was a foal and I was much younger, but I can’t see the same excuse for you. Did you name him for some Greek god?”

“Nothing so dramatic, no. My Scottish groom called him
Eachdonn,
which I could barely pronounce, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed. So he suggested the English form of the word, Hector. Put simply, in either language, it means brown horse.”

“That’s it? Brown horse? That’s a description, Simon, not a name. And not a very good one. Clearly you have no imagination.”

Simon smiled, possibly grinned, as he cocked one eyebrow. “Are you quite certain of that? I’d be willing to offer to change your mind, by way of a brief demonstration I believe would convince you otherwise.”

Kate let out her breath in an exasperated huff. “You’re the most
maddening
person I’ve ever met. And certainly not a gentleman.”

“Then we’re doubly well suited!” he called after her as she put Daisy to an immediate gallop, leaving Simon to hastily shove his right foot back into the stirrup as the impatient Hector took off after the mare, clearly a horse on a mission.

“Men,” Simon grumbled, tamping down his curly-brimmed beaver that was in danger of blowing off his head. “We’re all of us pitiful specimens, Hector, led about by the ladies.”

Kate cleared the first hedgerow ahead of him with no difficulty, and Simon relaxed, belatedly realizing she would have taken his words as a challenge, even if she’d never jumped a hedgerow in her life.

From then on, it was every rider, and horse, for itself. Their finish line was farther away than he had first imagined, thanks to the rolling nature of the ground that had shortened his assessment. Kate knew the fields, and he didn’t. She sat her horse as well as he did, and was clearly fearless, a neck-or-nothing rider. All of which didn’t mean he held back to let her win, knowing she’d blister his ears if he did. She’d already admitted Hector was the faster mount.

Simon had dismounted and looped the stallion’s reins around a low-hanging branch when Daisy plunged to a pouting halt, neighing at Hector who, being male, and stupidly proud, returned what many would construe a horsy laugh.

“Well run,” Kate congratulated him, and then smiled as she added, “and you did tolerably well, too, Simon.”

“Rather cheeky for the one bringing up the rear, aren’t you?”

“Never mind that. Aren’t you going to help me dismount?”

Something went sort of
ping
in Simon’s chest. Progress. They were making progress. “I wouldn’t so insult you.”

“I wouldn’t be insulted, since I asked. Don’t be thick, Simon. That wasn’t easy to say in the first place. Besides, you said a man lives for such opportunities, remember?”