Much Ado About Rogues (14 page)

“All right,” he said finally, as he dropped his hand and turned to face her. “I’ve only ever told this story once before, years ago, to Sinjon. The very night I first met him, actually. He has a way of ferreting out secrets you think you’d never tell. You don’t quite have his subtlety, but you know how to make your point. Let’s sit down, shall we?”

Tess longed to reach out to him, to hold him, cradle him against her the way she soothed Jacques when he fell and scraped his knee. But that would destroy any chance she’d ever have of hearing about the demons Jack carried with him.

She walked over to the wingback chairs flanking the fireplace and sat down, curling her legs up beside her. “Would you want me to ring for wine?”

“No. There isn’t enough of it in the cellars for this story,” he said as he sat down, turning his head to look into the fire. The devil, seeking his own. “Beau and Puck are bastards. I’m twice the bastard.”

“You can’t be twice the— I’m sorry. I think I know what you mean, though. You thought the marquess was your father, didn’t you? Until you learned that he wasn’t, of course. Your brothers are only your half brothers. Do they know?”

“I think so. I mean, they joke, call me the black sheep, Black Jack. We’ve never discussed it. No more questions, Tess, all right. Let me just tell you about Adelaide.”

She bit her lip, nodded. He had to want to tell his story as quickly as possible, without interruptions. Get it out, get it over and done. She couldn’t blame him. So, for the next half hour, she simply let him talk.

What he told her seemed part fanciful fairy tale, part tragedy.

The Marquess of Blackthorn was still quite a young man when he met Adelaide and her sister, Abigail. Of the two, the eldest, Abigail, was the more beautiful, almost ethereally lovely. But she also was fragile, in both body and mind. The marquess, while captivated by them both, instantly tumbled into love with the lively, enchanting Adelaide, and asked her to marry him.

She refused.

Adelaide, as the story went, loved her marquess very much, but she had long since dedicated herself to the notion that one day she would be England’s greatest actress, and it was a dream she could not deny, a desire that could not be quenched. She would be miserable in the role of marchioness, which would in time poison their love…

At this point, Jack actually smiled. It wasn’t a particularly lovely smile.

Adelaide, in fact, would have long since run away from her squire father and his new bride, to join with a traveling troupe of players and begin her journey to the London stage, except for Abigail. Dear, beautiful, vulnerable Abigail. Their father’s new wife wanted both stepdaughters gone, and had more than once threatened to have Abigail removed to “a place where she belongs, with other imbeciles like herself.”

And that was cruel. Abigail wasn’t an imbecile. She’d just never quite grown up.

Adelaide stayed, sacrificing her dream as long as she dared, to protect and care for her sister. She could, she supposed, marry the marquess and bring her sister to Blackthorn, but that would mean an end to what she wanted so much. A light inside her would go out, never to be rekindled. Oh, no, no, the marquess couldn’t allow that, not his dearest Adelaide. He would do anything—anything!—to make her happy. And so a plan was formed. Adelaide’s plan.

The most ridiculous, insane plan Tess had ever heard!

Adelaide and her darling, besotted Cyril would love each other, always and forever, but he would marry Abigail. Adelaide would be free to live her dream, financed by Cyril, and Abigail would be safe from the madhouse.

At last Tess could no longer hold her tongue. “And your fath—I mean, the marquess agreed?”

Jack shrugged. “He was young, desperate not to lose the woman he loved, and I don’t think he was thinking any further than his crotch, frankly. You haven’t met Adelaide, remember. I admit this sounds ridiculous, but the woman always seemed to have this
power
to bend people to her will and make them think what they’d just agreed to was all their idea in the first place.”

“You don’t like her.”

“I adored her,” he said shortly, and she could hear the pain in his voice, the pain of a little boy who’d grown into a sadly disillusioned man. “We all did. She swooped in and out of our lives just often enough to keep us wanting more of her. Her laugh, that flowery scent that wrapped around you as she hugged you close and showered you with kisses. The plays we’d put on for Cyril, her cottage on the grounds. And, when she wasn’t there, all of Blackthorn at our fingertips. We were raised like the sons of the house, in everything but name. And then there was Abigail.”

Jack’s expression softened as he spoke of his aunt. She was dead now, her frail health finally failing a little more than a year past. Abigail had been like a beloved younger sister, with all three boys being fiercely protective of her, something that seemed to endear them more to their father.

Theirs had been a strange household, Jack had admitted that immediately, but it was all the three of them knew. For them, their lives seemed nothing out of the ordinary, not strange in any way. They were happy, content.

As I thought René’s and my lives were normal, if not really happy,
Tess thought, believing she understood what Jack was saying better than most.

“What happened?” she asked when it seemed Jack had become lost in thought. “What changed?”

He looked surprised at the question. “Me? Yes, I think that’s probably the answer that makes the most sense. I changed. I began to grow up. Notice things. Notice how different I was. Dark to their light, in both coloring and the way I felt, thought. Thoughts Adelaide must have seen and encouraged. I realized that eventually. We…we were her creations, and she handed us each roles in the never-ending play that is her life. Beau was cast as the oldest son, the rock, the dependable one. Puck was the petted child, delightful to behold. And I was the outsider, the one who never quite fit in. Restless, reckless. The troubled one.”

“The marquess must have known,” Tess said, considering the thing. “Did he treat you…differently?”

“No. There isn’t a better man in the world, Tess. Or a weaker, sorrier one. In many ways, I despise him. When I don’t pity him. The moment Adelaide returned from one of her extended absences with Beau in her arms, it must have finally come home to him what he’d done. And when she came home with me in her arms, he had to know he was now twice the fool.”

“Yet Puck is younger than you. The marquess must have forgiven her.”

“As I said, Tess, you haven’t met Adelaide. But as time went on I think she knew her influence was slipping, that Cyril had more regrets than he could live with anymore. On my eighteenth birthday, the day she gave me this ring and told me she’d always loved me more than she did my brothers, that I held a special place in her heart. And then she told me what I’d long since suspected, that Cyril wasn’t my father.”

“She wanted you gone from the estate, didn’t she? Needed you gone if, as you say, Cyril was older now and no longer quite the besotted fool, but more the shamed father who’d destroyed his sons’ futures. You were a constant reminder of her betrayal of the love Cyril had for her.
I love you best, Jack, now please take yourself off somewhere, where the marquess doesn’t have to see you anymore.
”

“Yes, she did mention that last part. How did you know?”

“I think it was a reasonable assumption,” Tess said quietly, her hands drawing up into tight fists in her lap. “Like Papa, every praise has a hook in it. How could a mother do that to her son?”

“How could a father do that to his daughter?” Jack countered. “At any rate, she attempted to excite me, I suppose, telling me then that my true father was a highwayman, a dark and dashing creature she’d succumbed to while traveling with her acting troupe. He was wonderful, magnificent, daring, and I was very much my father’s son. Her eyes shone as she talked about him, but she refused to tell me his name.”

“Doubly cruel, but I suppose it would seem all the more dramatic that way. The beautiful actress, the dangerous highwayman. What did she suppose you’d do, Jack? Immediately go haring off to try to find the man?”

“That would have proven difficult in any case, as she told me he’d been caught up and hanged years earlier. But she saw in me the same wildness and thirst for adventure as she did in him, and knew it was
stifling
me to remain on the estate. She didn’t order me to go. She did point out that to stay would be nothing but a slow death for me, for I was her son as well, and she knew I was a caged bird, longing to fly free. She couldn’t continue to watch me suffer for her sin.” Jack smiled. “And so forth, mixing praise with guilt and romance, laughter with tears—all while I probably had yet to be able to close my mouth or think of a single damn thing to say. I left the next morning. The only time I’ve been to Blackthorn in the decade since was to sneak into the estate chapel at midnight to put a rose on Abigail’s coffin. I understand from my brothers that Adelaide wasn’t best pleased to see it there the next morning. After all, it meant that I hadn’t completely divorced myself from Blackthorn and those who lived there. Otherwise, how would I have known so quickly that Abigail had died?”

A log broke in the fireplace and Tess nearly jumped out of her skin.

Jack laughed. “My mother, no doubt—issuing a complaint. But she’s right. I think we’re done now.”

“Not completely. Where did you go? When you left, that is.”

“Everywhere and anywhere. Angry, yet still giddy with my freedom, I suppose. Living by my wits, for money soon became a problem, plus my abnormal desire to feed my belly at least twice a day. I’ve told you before, Tess, I probably would have been hanged by now, like my father before me, if Sinjon hadn’t found me.”

“And you never questioned that he found you?” she asked, wondering why the thought of her father seeing Jack and somehow recognizing him as someone who would fit his plans was suddenly so disturbing to her.

“I was down to my last few coppers, fairly drunk, and on the run from the local constable. Sinjon was manna from heaven to me at the time. No, I didn’t ask too many questions. But now I’ll ask you why you’re asking.”

“I don’t know,” she said, getting up from the chair to begin pacing the center of the large chamber. “I don’t wish to be insulting, Jack, but you don’t make it sound as if you were any great prize to him. Why would he bother?”

Jack joined her, stopping her as her nervous pacing brought her close to him. “Perhaps because we were in a dark alley and I was holding a pistol on him at the time. He never told you that? I wanted his purse, and he wanted to talk. He was very convincing.”

“Oh, Jack,” she said, sighing. “You were drunk and desperate and Papa allowed you to get the better of him, hold a pistol on him? Do you really believe that? Even now?”

CHAPTER TEN

J
ACK
LAY
BESIDE
Tess as she slept, the last words they’d spoken on the subject of his first meeting with Sinjon repeating in his head.
Papa allowed you to get the better of him, hold a pistol on him? Do you really believe that? Even now?

How old had he been? Twenty-three? On his own for nearly five years, and not doing all that well, having in the past six months stooped to occasional dips into other people’s pockets in order to survive. He’d had several very good runs at the card tables, but they hadn’t been frequent enough, and his angry attempts to be as bad a man as his father had been had ended when he could no longer afford to feed his horse and the role of occasional highwayman had been lowered to that of petty thief.

He’d been about to join the army as a foot soldier, knowing he was otherwise going to end very badly, very soon. At least he might then have the chance to die for a better reason than being shot or knifed by an unhappy loser after a successful night with the cards.

Sinjon had talked him into joining him in an enterprise more worthy of his talents, and Jack had believed him. God, what talents had he possessed? Educated above his station, proficient in three languages, tolerably presentable. He wasn’t useless, but he was far from a prize any sane man would covet.

But he’d decided to listen, especially after the offer of dinner at the inn on the next corner. Sinjon had been sympathetic, nearly a Father Confessor, and by the time dawn had crept into their private dining room, Jack had told this smooth-talking Frenchman the sad tale of his sad life and was snoring at the table, his head in his plate.

He moved uncomfortably in the bed, embarrassed for his pathetic, gullible twenty-three-year-old self.

When he’d awakened, his head pounding thanks to the drink he’d consumed, it was to hear Sinjon issuing orders for a bath for the “gentleman,” followed by a hearty breakfast.

“Delightful as your company has been, Jack, I’m afraid I must be on my way. There’s a horse and saddle in the stable, already bought and paid for. Not the best, as nothing to be had here could be, but it will do,” Sinjon had told him, placing a folded piece of paper and a small leather purse on the table, just beside Jack’s head. “Do you remember the offer I made you last night? A nod is sufficient. Ah, good. I’ve written the directions to my home. Once you’re clean and fed, your next move is up to you, my son. Choose wisely.”

Jack had ridden his new horse five miles in the opposite direction before soundly cursing the man who had provided it. Then he’d pulled sharply on the reins and turned it around, thereby sealing his fate, someone like his mother would have said.

But he’d taken to his new life immediately, and shown a natural proficiency for intrigue that amazed him. He was welcomed into the de Fontaine household as if he belonged there. He enjoyed sleeping on clean sheets again, having a full belly, feeling…civilized once more. Life had taken a lot of the rebellious youth out of him, even as it had made him hard, a man who didn’t trust easily or feel the need for friendship.

Yet he was in awe of his mentor, a truly brilliant man. He’d found himself growing fond of René, fonder still of Tess. He fed on the adventure of it all, the danger of it all, the heady feeling that success brought with it.

He was doing something important. He was serving his government in a time of war. He was a bastard, yes, and that would never change. But he wasn’t his father. At last, he was his own man, one with a reason, a direction. A purpose.

And Tess slowly became more dear to him. And then against all reason indispensable to him. She was fire to his fire.

Sinjon knew. Sinjon missed nothing, so he had to have known. He’d done nothing to stop it. He’d said nothing, tacitly allowing the bastard to bed his daughter.

And then he’d pounced.

He’d told his own sad, drunken tale, and showed Jack his
collection,
offered his proposition. His daughter’s virginity in exchange for becoming Sinjon’s new tool, specially trained, fashioned and even compromised into helping him once again begin adding to his damned collection.

It was all so clear now.

Of course he’d seen Jack and wanted him. He’d wanted a thief, someone to replace the Gypsy. Not a common thug, he couldn’t use a common thug. Educated, civilized, but not quite a gentleman. And desperate. He wanted him grateful and willing and well trained, as only Sinjon could train him. Perhaps Jack was also chosen because he was passably handsome, and his daughter would see that, be attracted to him, or perhaps that had been a happy coincidence Sinjon coldly exploited. All in the name of that bloody pile of treasures that meant more to him than his own wife, his own daughter, his own son.

“That sonofabitch…”

“Jack?” Tess shifted her position so that she could look up into his face in the light of the false dawn. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, pressing a kiss against her forehead. “I was just kicking myself for being an idiot. At least twice over.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all,” she said, snuggling against him once more, “may I help? If we put our heads together I’m sure we could come up with an entire list of reasons why you’re an idiot, not just a piddling two. I’ll start.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Jack said, rolling her over onto her back so that he could leer down into her face.

She raised a hand to cup his cheek. “Are you all right now? I know it wasn’t easy for you last night, talking about…things.”

“It’s never easy to face the truth. For either of us. We should have talked more, Tess. Back then.”

“
Back then,
as you call it, we wouldn’t have had so much to say. We didn’t know what we know now. You weren’t ready, and I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said anything disparaging about my father.”

“When did you grow up, Tess, grow so wise? I walked away from a girl, a beautiful, headstrong girl. I’ve come back to find a woman.”

“You told me you wanted the girl back. Do you remember saying that? It was only a few days ago.”

“I told you I’m an idiot,” he said, leaning down to begin nibbling at the side of her throat. “You should most probably forget everything I said that first day.”

She sighed as he curled his hand over her breast. “Are we starting over, Jack? Do you think that’s possible?”

He raised his head to look into her face once more, saw the tears standing bright in her eyes. “We have a son. I think we need to at least try.”

“And is this the way to start? Or does it just confuse the issue? Because we’ve always had this, and it wasn’t enough.”

Jack closed his eyes, knowing she was right. Wishing she was wrong. There was still too much to be settled for them to even discuss the future. There was still the fact that, unless Sinjon had one more brilliant coup left up his sleeve, she would soon see her father dead, marched off to the hangman, or banished from England and her life, forever. With Jack the one in control of which way it would all end.

He rolled over onto his back to stare up at the emerald-green velvet canopy.

“Our son is an early riser,” Tess told him in a rush, turning back the covers. “I think I’ll ring for Beatrice, get dressed, and go up to the nursery and have breakfast with him. He’s accustomed to seeing me first thing every morning, as you’ll remember. I also have to speak with Emilie about the remove to Blackthorn. She won’t be pleased, but she’ll understand. Would…would you care to join us at breakfast? I suppose I can free him from his nursery prison and allow him downstairs. He needs to see more of Puck, for one thing, before they—”

“Tess? Come here. Please?” Jack said, taking her into his arms. He kissed her, not with passion, not with need, but just because he wanted to tell her something, and this was the only way they’d ever really communicated. She went rigid for a moment, probably expecting something else from him than the chaste kiss he was offering, and then melted against him until he placed his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away. “It’s all right. I understand. We start over.”

She bit her bottom lip. Nodded. And then, surprising him, she pulled the edges of her nightrail closer over her breasts, suddenly the shy, modest maiden. Just as if he didn’t know every inch of her, intimately.

“Now why don’t you go do what you said you were going to do? And please inform young Master Jacques that his father, never a slave to protocol in any case, requests the pleasure of his company at table this morning.”

Tess’s smile hurt his heart. “I’ll do that,” she said.

And then she was gone, into the dressing room, and he was alone.

But not really alone. Perhaps for the first time since he was old enough to look around and see the world as it was for him, he didn’t feel alone.

* * *

T
HEY
STOOD
IN
the mews, watching as the luxurious traveling coach bearing the gold-painted Marquess of Blackthorn’s crest pulled away from the stables.

Tess suppressed a sigh. She’d never been apart from Jacques. Her son had been the only real constant in her life these past years, since René died.

Only when the pair of outriders following the coach had disappeared around the corner did she turn for the house, Jack beside her.

“What were you and Puck whispering about while I was saying goodbye to Jacques?” she asked him. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“Ah, good, then it worked. That was the purpose of the whispering,” he said, and she was struck yet again with his good humor this morning. As if a weight he had been carrying for a long time had finally been lifted from his shoulders.

“Did the whispering have anything to do with Jacques? You don’t expect any sort of trouble, do you? We didn’t announce his departure, have him carried out to the square and waiting coach, but you were only being careful. You’re not really concerned. Are you?”

“No, not at all. Although I may have been remiss in warning Puck about Jacques’s tendency to express his opinion of coach travel via his stomach contents. Do you think I should have done that?”

Tess smiled, relaxing. “It’s too late now. But he’ll know soon enough, I imagine. Poor thing.”

“Puck? Or Jacques?”

“I would think Puck. It doesn’t seem to bother Jacques in the least. But then what were you whispering about?”

“The marquess,” Jack told her as they entered the study, Jack heading for the chair behind the desk while she tucked herself up comfortably in one corner of a massive burgundy leather couch. “Puck was reminding me that Cyril is anxious to speak with me. With all three of us.” He picked up a brass letter opener and balanced it between his fingers. “As if I could forget, as both Beau and Puck have been hounding me about it for over a year.”

And, obviously, Jack had been avoiding that particular meeting.

“What do you think he wants to tell you?”

“I already know. He’s doling out unentailed parcels of land to each of us. Beau and Puck have already been given minor estates, and I imagine I’m to receive one, as well. I never took his damn allowance. I don’t know why he’d think I’d allow him to give me an entire estate.”

“Allow him?” Tess shook her head, smiling sadly. “It would be a privilege for him to do so, you think?”

Jack put down the letter opener carefully, as if it had been fashioned of delicate crystal, or so that he wouldn’t be tempted to throw it against the far wall. “I’m not his son, Tess.”

“He might consider you his son. You told me you were raised alongside Beau and Puck. Did he ever treat you differently, give you any indication you weren’t welcome?”

“That’s not the point,” Jack said, an edge to his voice.

“Then what is the point?”

She watched his face as he stared into the middle distance for some time, seeing things she couldn’t see, thinking thoughts she couldn’t know.

“Jack?” She waited. “Jack?”

He blinked, turned to look at her. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she told him, longing to go to him, pull his head against her breast in some effort to comfort him. “I’ve always wondered. Where do you go when you leave me like that? To Blackthorn?”

“I suppose,” he said, getting to his feet. “I loved him once, a son’s love for his father. Before I despised him for his weakness, his selfishness and stupidity. Puck has an interesting theory. He believes our mother hoodwinked Cyril into marrying Abigail because then he couldn’t marry anyone else and Adelaide would never lose her generous protector. Free to roam, indulge her obsession with the stage, yet always with a safe haven to return to and a man obsessed with her, one with very deep pockets. My brothers and I could have been unhappy surprises, temporary burdens that interfered with her dream. Me, most especially, I’d imagine. Why he took us in, raised us as gentlemen, tolerated me, none of us will ever know.”

Tess took a breath and asked what she believed to be the obvious, although clearly it hadn’t occurred to any of the Blackthorn brothers. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Jack stopped, looked down at her. “Well, of course. So simple. Ask the man. But no, thank you for the suggestion. We’d never do that.”

“They may be only your half brothers, but you all seem to have one thing in common. Pride.”