Much Ado About Rogues (12 page)

He nodded, and was halfway to the foyer before he turned around to look at her one last time. “Thank you, Tess,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

She smiled, blinking back tears, and sat down once more, feeling it was the first really
right
thing she’d done in four years.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
ESS
STOOD
BEHIND
the chair and leaned in close. “That’s probably too obvious, Jack. We can’t insult him,” she said, reading what he’d just written.

“I’d like to do more than insult him, if admitting to that doesn’t break our recent truce,” Jack said. But then he crumpled the paper and tossed it in the general direction of his first several efforts.

They’d been closeted together in the study for over two hours, working out the puzzle of how they would handle the next few days. And they hadn’t gotten much done past finally agreeing to allow Wadsworth into their plans. Jack had already seen the man in action, and he had no worries there; the butler was more than competent. And, happily, more than willing. He’d pointed out that he hadn’t had any excitement since Master Puck last came to town, unless one was to count the day a bat made its way down from the attics and he had somehow ended up beating it to death with a bust of Sophocles, which was the closest thing to hand and now had a decidedly shorter nose than formerly.

Jack laughed softly, remembering the statement.

Tess turned herself about and sat down on the edge of the desk, facing him. “Something’s suddenly amusing?”

“Not really, no. My mind wandered, that’s all.”

“Jack? Are you sure this plan of yours will work? I mean, as it concerns your…cohorts.”

“Will and Dickie.” He put down the pen and sat back in his chair. “It will work as long as Sinjon has anticipated that whomever he sends to pick up the correspondence in Cleveland Row will be followed, yes. But he’s gotten this far. I doubt he’d make such an elementary mistake now.”

“And it’s that important that your friends fail? I understand not wanting too many people involved. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

Jack shook his head. “A dog with a bone,” he said in some admiration. “Yes, it is. They both know my orders.”

“You’ve been ordered to silence him. Kill him.”

“Twenty years of secrets, Tess. Twenty years of sweeping up behind some of the most spectacular blunders and indiscretions of what was and still is basically a corrupt government. Yes, they want him dead. Frankly, I don’t know why they allowed him to continue to draw breath for a single day after the war, and his usefulness to them, ended.”

“They think he’s harmless,” Tess told him, avoiding Jack’s eyes. “There were some small assignments after you left, for a while, but then nothing for months. Papa felt certain he would soon be seen as a liability. So I wrote to Liverpool myself at his direction two years ago, to inform the man that Papa had suffered some sort of attack that left him unable to speak or grip a pen to write. I begged for an increase in his pension, to cover the cost of caring for him in his profoundly debilitated state. If the government didn’t believe me, we were going to be forced to flee, but even if they did believe me, we knew—Papa assured me—he’d still always be watched.”

“I never heard of this,” Jack said, sitting forward once more.

Tess’s shrug was purely Gallic and delightful. “Perhaps because the watchers were all very bad, and Papa is very good at what he does? If you were to ask any of our few servants, anyone in the village, they would tell you that the poor, dear marquis is but a shadow of his former self these past two years, leaning heavily on a walking stick and, well, mumbling and drooling. It’s only in his bedchamber and in his study, always with the doors firmly locked, that he is the man you remember.”

“And he’s kept up this elaborate charade for
two years?
”

Another graceful shrug. “He said he was biding his time, but he never would tell me what biding that time was in aid of, as much as I asked. Now I suppose we know. He was waiting for the Gypsy to come back. Where do you suppose he went, Jack?”

“Where the pickings were best, I’d imagine. A man with his talents could turn a tidy profit in several countries on the continent. Not to mention the opportunities presented by the Congress of Vienna. Selling secrets, spying on one’s friends and enemies, doesn’t stop just because the battle has been won. All that does is start another quieter battle. Not to mention the ease of picking up bits and pieces of
treasure
while the world is still reeling. What’s interesting is that Sinjon obviously believed the man alive and sure to return to England.”

“I suppose,” Tess said, frowning. “Papa keeps up a lively correspondence with several friends on the Continent. Or so he says. Perhaps those friends were more in the form of informants? I remember him telling me about the theft of some painting in Paris. I’d wondered how he’d known about that. And then, last month, that daring theft here in England. What Papa was waiting to see. It’s all so clear now I can’t imagine why I never realized…”

“We should get back to composing our application to the good Mr. St. John,” Jack prompted her, as she looked as if she was about to blame herself yet again for not seeing what Sinjon had so deliberately hidden from her.

“Yes, we should. But first—you’ve decided to disobey your orders? That’s why you want it to appear to your friends that Papa has eluded you yet again?”

“A fruitless exercise, to your mind, as you think Sinjon is setting himself up as some sort of sacrifice so that the Gypsy reveals himself to my blade. But yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I need them to feel included, even as I make sure they’re excluded. When we finally do get the location of this supposed
sale
your father is setting up, I’ll give Will and Dickie the incorrect time, and hopefully have Sinjon safely out of there before they arrive.”

“And if either of them guesses what you’ve done?”

Now it was Jack’s turn to shrug. “The Gypsy’s body should be enough for them. That, and the Mask of Isis, your father’s most prized possession. Liverpool will be content with that. Sinjon has to pay, Tess. In some way, he has to pay.”

She looked at him for long moments, and then nodded her head. “Yes. Yes, he does. For so many things.” She pushed a clean sheet toward him. “Let’s try again.”

Jack reached once more for the pen, wondering what the Lord’s penalty for sins of omission might be. It was true enough that Will and Dickie would expect Jack to eliminate Sinjon. They knew his orders. But he couldn’t be sure he knew
theirs,
if it should happen that Jack didn’t follow his.

Dickie was one thing; transparent as glass, but Will Browning was quite another. A random line from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
had been tickling at the back of Jack’s brain ever since Henry died, every time he met with Will Browning.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.

“Jack? You aren’t listening to me.”

He shook himself back to attention. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about something Jacques said to me earlier in the garden.”

“Oh, and what was that?”

“That’s the problem. I couldn’t quite make it out. Something about a—a
hugit?
”

Tess smiled softly, knowingly, and painters all over the world would weep with joy to paint her as a Madonna. “That’s his rabbit. Emilie sewed it up out of his softest blanket. It’s all silly and long-eared, and Jacques sleeps with it.
Hugging it.
You must have tired him out this afternoon. When he asks for his hug-it, it’s time to put him down in his cot.”

“Smart boy, my son.”

Tess looked at him questioningly.

“To want something soft to take to bed with him.”

Now the Madonna was a stern schoolmistress. “The letter, Jack. It has to be written, remember?”

“Yes, indeed,” Jack said, smiling as he bent his head to the task. “My dear Mr. St. John… It was with great interest that I read your notice…”

This time they were both pleased with the results, and Tess held the wax stick over a small flame until it softened and then made a smear of red wax on the folded page. Jack took off his ring and used it to press a
B
into the wax before it hardened.

“After all of that, you’re giving us away? I thought we weren’t going to be obvious,” Tess said, watching him.

“I owe him at least one small insult,” Jack told her, getting to his feet. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to meet with my small band of rogues one more time, to make sure they see how dedicated I am to locating our quarry.”

Tess pushed herself away from the desk. “I have no right to ask, but will you be very late?”

“That would depend. Will there be someone soft and
huggable
waiting for me here in my bed?”

She rolled her eyes and walked away from him. He sat down once more, leaned back in the chair, and watched her go, enjoying the view.

Life wasn’t good. Not yet. But it was showing signs of getting better.

And then, out of the blue, it got worse…

“Well, hello, beautiful lady. Which one of us, do you suppose, has stumbled into the wrong residence?”

“Son of a— Puck?” Jack leapt to his feet and headed out to the corridor to rescue Tess from his brother’s charms.

“What in bloody hell are you doing here?” he asked, glaring at his handsome, openly amused sibling. “Go away.”

“Jack—” Tess began in a scolding voice, but Puck merely waved his hand to dismiss her dismay.

“Your easy display of affection, as usual, bids fair to unman me, brother. Let me hazard a guess here. I’ve come to town at an awkward time?”

“My letter arrived at Blackthorn, didn’t it?”

“Letter?” Puck frowned, and not even a frown could mar his handsome face. “You’ve learned how to write now, have you? Beau and I have been reassuring our father that you never mastered the skill, or learned to find your way home once you’d left.” He turned and inclined his head to Tess. “Just as he has never quite gotten around to acquiring even rudimentary social graces, so I will introduce myself. I am—”

“Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn,” Tess interrupted. “You’re nothing alike, are you, in either looks or temperament.”

And she was off again, clamping back down on one of those damn bones of hers. She might ease off for the moment, with Puck here, but the questions would begin again later when they were alone. Sooner or later, he’d have to answer them.

“Although we all know he already knows, Lady Thessaly Fonteneau, allow me the dubious pleasure of introducing to you my younger brother, known best as Puck. Puck, make your bow to Tess, daughter of a good friend of mine, the Marquis de Fontaine.”

Puck did as ordered, making an elegant leg before bowing his blond head over Tess’s offered hand and launching into a torrent of flawless French, expressing his delight in his good fortune as to meet her when he’d been expecting only his dark, brooding dragon of a brother.

Tess looked delighted and answered him in French as he offered her his arm, and the two of them headed for the front of the mansion and the drawing room, leaving Jack to either follow or go back in the study and sulk.

Jack considered his options, and fell in behind them like some puppy hoping for a treat. Damn his brother. He didn’t need this complication.

Puck was handsome in the way only those comfortable in their skin can be, his hair tied back severely at his nape, his tailoring the creation of a master, a twinkle always in his eye, a smile very nearly always on his face, and a tongue that naturally seemed to find just the perfect words for any occasion. And, beneath that carefully built facade of amiable silliness lay a mind as sharp if not sharper than Jack’s own.

“Other than to annoy me,” Jack said once Tess was arranging her skirts about her on one of the couches, “why are you here, Puck?”

“No other reason,” Puck said, grinning as he poured wine, holding up the first to Tess as if to ask if she’d like some and being told yes, she would. “Our father asked Beau to arrange for the first banns to be read this Sunday. Chelsea is planning something magnificent—her word, magnificent—with flowers, and my own dearest Regina is already consulting with the Blackthorn chef on the menu for the wedding luncheon. Do you like pears? On fire, I mean? At any rate, my bride is a happy woman, and that’s all that matters to me. Shall I tell you what Mama is doing?”

“Oh, God, she’s there? I should have taken a page from Beau’s book of idiocy and chosen a run for the border.”

“What is your mother doing, Puck?” Tess asked, the two of them clearly having cried friends during the short walk from study to drawing room. Jack couldn’t understand that ease of simple friendship. He’d spent his life avoiding close involvement with anyone. Until Tess.

Puck handed her a glass of wine. “Taken to her bed, actually. All three of her sons, married? And Beau and Chelsea to present her with a grandchild before Christmas, not that she knows that yet. Beau’s conflicted, Jack. Should he tell her now, or wait until we see if she either recovers or expires? Not until she’s chosen the perfect soliloquy, of course. When I left her she was poring over a copy of her script of
Macbeth.
A perfect choice, although I cravenly refrained from telling her that. In short, in long, Adelaide is, and I quote,
not best pleased.
I envision her draped all in black from top to toe at the wedding.”