Free What an Earl Wants by Kasey Michaels Page B

looking forward to her bed.
    Doreen had already left her post at the door to help with the
first supper, but Jessica didn’t have to sit in at Richard’s chair at the faro
table so that he could take the maid’s place. Not now that Seth was being taught
by Doreen and Richard as to how to go on. His imposing size seemed to be enough
to “go on” with so far. His open smile and boyish face, when put in contrast
with his enormous frame, sent a clear signal: we’re delighted to see you, but if
you don’t belong here or don’t behave, I will cheerfully hold you up by your
heels while I carry you outside to bounce your head on the cobblestones.
    Richard had somehow procured a decent suit of clothes for the
boy, although the jacket did seem to strain at the shoulder seams, and Doreen
had explained—undoubtedly in her usual excruciating detail—about the need to be
careful as to who was admitted to the house. It would take him some time to
become familiar with the usual faces, but he’d learn. Doreen, bless her wise
Irish eye, could spot a constable at thirty paces.
    Being hauled off to the guardhouse for operating an illegal
gaming house was to be avoided at all costs! As far as her neighbors and most of
the world was concerned, Jessica and her “Uncle Richard” held nightly soirees
for those of an intellectual nature—the reading of self-composed bits of poetry
and literary criticism, etc.
    Richard had actually penned an “Ode to Dame Fortune;” he then
had ordered the thing framed, personally hanging it in the ground-floor foyer.
He thought it a fine joke.
    After glancing at the mantel clock to see it lacked only
fifteen minutes until eleven, Jessica surreptitiously rubbed at her right
temple, hoping to ease the headache that had followed her back to Jermyn Street
and still stubbornly refused to vacate the premises.
    Her brother was a twit. A fool. An uncanny reflection of his
brainless, flighty mother. Worried for his soul, Jessica had thought to rescue a
nearly grown version of the sweet, shy, delightful Adam she remembered, only to
come face-to-face with a simpering, posturing jackanapes rigged out like some
Tatony pig, and displaying a similar intelligence.
    Her only solace was the look of aggrieved pain on the earl’s
face when Adam had presented himself in the drawing room. She had thought her
sweet brother was in imminent peril of being corrupted by those scandalous
Redgraves. Instead, if anyone was in any danger in that new association, she
would have to lay odds Gideon Redgrave would be the first to run screaming into
the night, begging rescue.
    Jessica covered her smile with her hand. Poor Gideon. She’d
handed him an easy escape, and he’d gotten his back up about her demand and
refused. By rights, when he showed up here tonight—if he dared—she’d have to ask
him if he symbolically carried his nose with him in a small velvet bag...having
sliced it off to spite his face.
    Still, she felt dreadful at having so quickly deserted the
sinking ship that was Adam. It had been the shock of it; that had to be the
reason. It wasn’t as if the boy was mean or evil. He had simply left the nursery
and become a nincompoop. If there could be any pleasure in that knowledge, it
had to be that their father must have been yanking his hair out by the roots
each time he contemplated his fribble of a son.
    But that’s what happens when you wed a nincompoop nearly thirty
years your junior for her looks and her fertile womb. You had then set yourself
up for fifty-fifty odds of her giving birth to a nincompoop. Really, you’d think
more men would consider this.
    Of course, that also meant he’d gone into the union with
fifty-fifty odds she would have produced a likeness and disposition that
mirrored his own.
    Either way, Jessica realized now, too late, whatever way Adam
was to go, he’d already gone there in the five important, formative years she
had been separated from him, and there was no going back.
    And there