Much Ado About Rogues (17 page)

“Tess, we’re being watched. We’ve been watched ever since we entered this house, and probably while we were in the alley. It’s time to go.”

She nodded her agreement and waited behind him as he opened the door, looked outside, scanned the windows of the buildings across the narrow street, and then stepped out into a drizzle that had begun while they were searching the flat.

“Should I wave?” she asked facetiously. “Or would that be tempting fate?”

“I’d rather we both look confused, and angry.”

“That won’t be too difficult,” she said, and struck a pose with her hands on her hips, looking up at the sky as if for divine assistance. “There’s someone on the roof directly across from us, Jack. He just ducked behind a chimney. Sloppy.”

“I told you. Hirelings. Ah, and look who’s coming back, clearly to report their lack of success. I’d hoped we’d be long gone if they happened to return. Stay here. Turn your back, if you please, and keep your head averted.” He stepped out into the street as Dickie Carstairs set the brake on the wagon. “So?”

“A waste of our time,” Will Browning told him, pulling up the collar of his jacket, as the rain was beginning to fall in earnest now. “The boy was set down only a block beyond here, with the hackney barely stopping to perform that service. He ran off, and that was that. We saw no need to follow him, but remained in pursuit of the hackney.”

“As you’d be expected to do. And?”

“And there was suddenly a rain of hackneys, Jack. They seemed to come from everywhere. All black, all undoubtedly hired to confuse us, but Dickie here amazed me by noticing that
our
hackney had one brown wheel, so we were able to keep it in sight.”

Jack rubbed at his mouth, deciding not to tell the two men that the brown wheel was no mistake, no accident. He and Sinjon had used a similar ploy years ago, in Brussels. The paint on the damn thing was probably not quite dry. “Go on. Don’t drag this out, Will. You caught up with the brown-wheeled hackney, only to find it occupied by—?”

“Nobody,” Dickie said, sighing soulfully as he climbed down from the bench seat and rubbed at his abused backside. “I don’t know how, but the fellow must have been able to shift himself from one hackney to another when they were all bunched so close together. I’m that sorry, Jack.”

“Don’t be. It was the boy you should have followed in any case, I’m sure. He still had the letters,” he said shortly. “Very well. No need to meet tonight, and no need to meet at all until we hear from Sinjon. I’ll keep you alerted.”

“So there was nothing in the building? No evidence that the marquis was ever there?” Will asked as he joined them on the flagway. Dickie was already turned and poised to walk away.

“No. Nothing. He’s running us a merry chase, gentlemen. But we’ll get him in the end. Dickie? Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Dickie looked around him as if the action might jog his memory. “No, I don’t think so.”

“There’s a wagon half-filled with cabbages behind you,” Jack pointed out as, behind him, Tess laughed into her fist, quickly turning it into a cough.

“Oh.
That.
No, not mine. I was only borrowing it, as it were.” He turned to look at Will. “Think there’s any hackneys left anywhere for us to hire? I could use a bird and bottle. And a roof,” he added, pulling his jacket closer around him.

“In a moment, Dickie,” Will said. “Jack? This old bastard’s making us look the fools. I don’t care for it.”

“Shouldn’t say that, Will,” Dickie murmured as he kicked at a cobblestone, doing his best to speak without allowing his lips to move.

“It’s all right, Dickie. I know what Will meant. And he’s right. The old bastard’s still ahead of us. But we’ll catch up, even if it’s only when he wants us to.”

“And that sounds disturbingly like you admire the man,” Will said quietly. “Perhaps it’s time you handed over the reins on this assignment.”

“To you, Will?” Jack returned just as quietly, even as Dickie took two prudent steps away from both of them. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“I am, yes. You’re too involved. Oh, and pardon my manners—good afternoon, my lady.”

Jack took a half step toward Will, but then stopped. “All right, you’ve made your point. What do you propose?”

Will’s smile was wide and nonthreatening. “And there’s the rub, Jack. I don’t know what to propose. This entire mission is already so bollixed up, we may as well simply wait at the docks in Dover to wave the man on his way to wherever he’s going, taking twenty years of government secrets with him. If he hasn’t already gone, and all of this is just some twisted revenge on you, meant to keep you busy while he makes good his escape. Have you thought of that, Jack?”

“Am I supposed to?” Jack asked him, watching as the smile left Will’s face.

“You sonofabitch. Is that why I saw Jeremy Hopkins skulking around as if trying to avoid us? You’ve got somebody watching
us?
Why? What are you implying?”

“Nothing more than you, I would imagine. Because somebody is in Sinjon’s employ, Will. Think about that. I know I am.” He then turned to Tess, and the two of them walked off down the flagway, turning at the first available alley.

“Why did you do that?” she whispered urgently as they headed for the small town coach waiting for them two blocks away. “What did you think you were going to prove? Now they know you’re onto them. One of them, whoever it is.”

Jack swore under his breath. “I know, I know. It was stupid. I let my frustration get the better of me. Damn it! Let’s just get back to Grosvenor Square and see what Sinjon has to say for himself.”

The rest, the disguise he’d seen on the last man to deposit a request in the box tacked to the front door of Number 9? He’d keep that to himself for now. It could have been coincidence. It could mean nothing. It probably meant nothing.

Or it could mean more than even the most imaginative brain could conjure up without recourse to fiction.

* * *

T
ESS
SAT
ON
the hearth rug in her dressing gown, brushing her damp hair after her bath, having dismissed Beatrice to return to the nursery.

It would seem that Emilie had abdicated her role as nurse to Jacques in order to spend a good part of the day fussing over Puck, who had seemed to enjoy the old woman’s fussing. The nurse had actually blushed when Tess had complimented her on her concern for Jack’s brother, before bustling back to the sickroom.

Yes, Tess had decided. There was something about the Blackthorn men. She would be interested in meeting Beau, the oldest.

The drizzle had turned to a downpour before they reached the town carriage, and while a bath hadn’t been necessary, Tess had wanted some time to collect her wits before she and Jack read the communication from her father. She’d taken the letter from Jack, and it sat now on her dressing table, the wax seal intact, all but glaring at her malevolently, impossible to ignore much longer. The truth couldn’t be avoided forever.

There was a knock at the door and she turned in time to see Jack enter, followed by Wadsworth, bearing a silver tray holding a teapot, cups and a plate of iced cakes. The butler deposited the tray on one of the tables, bowed to Tess, and withdrew.

“That’s wonderfully thoughtful of you, Jack, but I don’t think I could eat anything. Not even cake.”

He looked…wonderful. Handsome in his dark breeches and white shirtsleeves. He was a physically beautiful man. He couldn’t help that, could he? But he also looked competent. In charge. Dependable. A safe haven.
Her
safe haven.

She twisted her hair into a damp knot and walked over to join him at the table, stopping only to pick up the dreaded communication from Sinjon. Not her father. Not anymore. He was Sinjon now. He was the bastard Will Browning had termed him, not by birth, but by nature.

“I’d rather you read it to me,” she said, handing it over to him as she sat down, both of them pretending her hand wasn’t shaking slightly. When he took the letter and then sat down across the table from her, she performed the duty of hostess automatically, preparing dishes of tea for both of them. Jack liked sugar. Three cubes. She remembered that. Like Jacques, he liked sweet things. Wasn’t it strange that he also liked her…

Jack broke the wax seal and unfolded the page, each small sound of breaking wax, unfolded paper resounding like gunshots in the quiet room.

“There’s no salutation,” he said, looking over the top of the page as he told her. “I imagine he knew who would find it and be doing the reading. All right, let’s get on with this. I dislike the thought that he’s sitting somewhere in his web, rubbing his hands together in delight at our frustration.”

Tess sat with her hands in her lap, twisting the smooth linen of her serviette, as the mind of Sinjon Fonteneau, Marquis de Fontaine, was laid open for them, surely not wholly, certainly minus the candor of a deathbed confession. He would play the game until the end, and then try to confound St. Peter into opening the gates of Heaven for him rather than send him spiraling down to the depths of Hell.

“My congratulations are offered that you’ve gotten this far, save for the sad realization that you’ve proven no more than a mediocre imitation of the master. I’d hoped for better, more of a challenge. Even your one small triumph is not yours to claim, as you sent the boy off, all unawares. Luck is not laudable, it is only luck, and does not last. Neither bad luck nor good.

“You might inquire this of the Gypsy, and he could tell you of his incarceration in a quite unlovely prison in Spain these past few years, courtesy of my efforts, and of his escape not so long ago, a result of stupidity on the part of the Spanish authorities. With luck, he was meant to die there. But such is life. Luck is not constant. The intelligent man prepares.

“With you, Jack, I prepared. I found you because I wanted to find you. You came to me because you had nowhere else to go save, one day, the hangman. Now you will repay me for my generosity. You are the man I made you.

“The Gypsy is a man of many faces, and for the nonce, with a single intent. My destruction. He has had long years to reflect on where he took the first misstep that led to his arrest in Spain, and doubtless concluded he’d made a bargain with the devil. You see, after René’s death, he’d agreed to leave my Collection to me while I lived, and I’d agreed to discontinue my pursuit of him and furnish continued information that would be helpful to his lucrative contacts inside Bonaparte’s puffed-up regime. So convivial, so civilized a settlement of our small falling-out. Equals, the Gypsy and I, in mind and heart, or at least in his. He truly believed me, that one day the Collection would be his for the taking.

“Ah, but wars end, don’t they, Jack, jumped up emperors are banished, and the possessions of one’s mentor will be then looked to with greedy anticipation. Our friend the Gypsy failed to realize this inevitability, as stupid men often deny the obvious.

“I returned to my Collection, and the Gypsy, armed with what he believed to be vital information Bonaparte would pay quite heavily to have, sailed for Spain.

“So now you understand, yes? In my generosity, I felt you should know. The Gypsy is back, and he is angry. But fool that he is, he doesn’t strike at once, but plans to first terrify me, make me suffer for his years in Spain. The flaw of the flamboyant, Jack. A cobra strikes, it does not just sit up and wave its hooded head about, hoping to incite fear.

“But think, Jack. Think how the Gypsy must think. Four years is a long time. Where has Sinjon’s Collection gone? Is it still at the manor house, locked in secrets? Or is it moved, gone? He needs me alive. I insist he die.

“He announces his return with that amateurish theft in London, his taste for melodrama always distasteful to me. In return, I throw down my gauntlet as Mr. St. John. We two go to war. Exciting, for a time, after too many years of idleness and ennui, feigned infirmity, feigned affection. But where is the sport, Jack, in fooling fools?

“So now I end this comedy and disappear, begin again, sans the Gypsy, sans Liverpool and his ilk, sans encumbrances. I had long since planned my exit from this damp isle. There are always beginnings, for those who earn them with their wits.

“Why didn’t I go sooner? Take myself and my Collection off, hide myself away? You’re asking that, surely, even as you know the answer. The Marquis de Fontaine does not run away. He exits, triumphantly. In his own time.

“That time is now.

“The Gypsy dies, at your hand. You will indulge me by employing the knife I entrusted to you today. He will recognize it just before he breathes his last, as he sees it buried to the hilt in his chest. Ah, I grow poetic in my advancing years, do I not? For this great favor to your mentor, I give you what you believe you already possess, and much more you had no hope of knowing. But for you to know, the Gypsy must die, and I must live.

“In two days’ time, at ten in the evening, in the one place a fool would never think to look for me. Make your preparations, as I have made mine, and do strive to display more competence than you have thus far. Strike from the shadows when I say, ‘You appear familiar, sir.’ Simple, yes? After all of this, a simple ending.

“Strike true,

“Sinjon.

“One thing more, as I feel generous tonight. You had once asked me René’s dying words to his papa. A curse on me, Jack. Much like the one you may be uttering now. This is irony. For once in his life a man, and then dead…”