Much Ado About Rogues (19 page)

Jack smiled, as he knew he was supposed to do. Puck was doing this best to get over this heavy ground as lightly as possible. “You were eavesdropping?”

“All but scribbling notes so we could compare them later, yes. That’s when we learned for certain that you’re not Cyril’s—not that he doesn’t consider you his. Raised you from a pup, I think were his exact words, and damn well somebody had to, seeing as how she wasn’t a fit mother to a flea, let alone three fine sons. There was more, much more. About Abigail, about our mother’s selfish ways, about his own madness having already ruined his own sons, his sickness for her—that’s the word he used,
sickness.
God. She cried, she pleaded, she accused him of every sin in creation. Horrible things, Jack, about Cyril and Abigail. Perverse, ugly accusations. Lies, of course. He’d never… Well, the upshot was that she left and didn’t return for over a year. She’s rarely there now, and never closer than the cottage.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He couldn’t find any words.

“He still goes to the cottage when she’s there,” Puck continued after raising the mug to his lips and then obviously thinking better of the idea of actually drinking any of its contents. “She’s still Adelaide, the aging enchantress, I suppose you could say. But now it’s she who clings, who seems desperate, and not him. I’m surprised none of us grew up seeing love as a disease, a failing. Or perhaps worse, a trap. In any event, whatever spell she worked on him all those years ago has mostly worn off now. And it began to wear off in earnest the day she sent you away. Not for what she did to him, or to Beau, or to me, but what she did to you.
You,
Jack. So don’t tell me that man doesn’t think of you as his son.”

Puck reached his hand across the tabletop, laid it on Jack’s. “He needs his sons’ forgiveness. If it takes the form of accepting the unentailed estates, then so be it. He’s been waiting for over a decade for you to come back. You were going to send Jacques to him. You can’t hate him and do that.”

“I never said I hated him. I’ve no reason to hate him. I despise what he did to you and Beau, but I don’t hate him. I actually feel sorry for him. We’re all Adelaide’s victims, one way or another.”

Puck sat back once more. “Shelley translated Goethe’s
Faust.
I read it in France and was struck most by a few lines in the Walpurgisnacht scene. Let me see if I have it right. Ah, yes, I remember. ‘Beware of her fair hair, for she excels all women in the magic of her locks, and when she twines them round a young man’s neck she will not ever set him free again.’”

“Yes, I’ve read that old legend. Faust made a bargain with the devil, as I recall the thing. So you’re suggesting Cyril made a bargain with Adelaide, and like Faust, has lived to regret it? An interesting theory.”

“More than a theory, Jack. I’m not saying Cyril is seeking absolution from us, but we do owe him something. All he’s asking is that we listen.”

“I already said I’d go, Puck.”

“I know that. And I know you’ll be fair.” He smiled rather sheepishly. “I hope. Trusting him with Jacques would be a good beginning. You do still plan to send him to Blackthorn, don’t you?”

“He’d see it that way? That I was sending Jacques to him, and not to you and Beau?”

Puck shrugged. “I can make him see it that way. If you let me.”

There can be no new beginnings without endings.
That’s what Jack had thought when he considered Tess’s need to close the door on her childhood, her brother’s death, her father’s duplicity. She needed answers, or so she told herself. But did she? Did he? Should they both insist on some proverbial pound of flesh from those who had wronged them before they could move on? Or was moving on what was really important?

“All right,” he said at last. “If you feel well enough to travel, let’s get you and Jacques to Blackthorn. I’ll give you a note for Cyril, asking his kind indulgence in keeping…in keeping his grandson until Tess and I can join him. Is that enough?”

“More than enough. Good on you, brother mine, good on you!” Puck lifted his mug to toast Jack, took a large swallow of its bitter contents, and spent the next minute coughing and sputtering and spitting into his handkerchief while Jack laughed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
ESS
STUDIED
THE
sketch Jack had made of the interior of Number 9 Cleveland Row. The setup was a very straightforward affair, the rooms all coming off a wide, central hallway except for the kitchen to the rear, and a butler’s pantry tucked between the small drawing room and adjoining dining room. They’d reconnoitered the previous day, relying on their combined memories for the interior and not entering the building, but counting windows, noting doors, checking vantage points from the rooftop across the street.

There were several drawings in fact. The surrounding streets, blocked out and labeled. Drawings of the building showing each side, each elevation. They’d even counted out the times between patrols of the night watchman, who couldn’t be relied upon to do more than get in the way, in any case.

Perhaps to her shame, she’d enjoyed it all very much.

Over the years, she’d planned hundreds of forays, tricks, ploys, scenarios and whatever in her head. She’d studied tactics the way other girls her age would have studied the fashion plates and formed a battle plan for storming the London Season on the hunt for a husband.

She’d reveled in the exercise of her mind, matching wits with her father as he played the part of either quarry or pursuer.

She’d done it for practice, for the joy and satisfaction of the thing, and for the year before René’s death, she’d not only helped form the plans but also often had been included in the implementation of those plans.

And she’d learned one thing. Her father never lost. She’d never once beaten him.

“Still studying those things?” Jack asked, walking into the room. He’d been gone for hours, not telling her where he was going. Perhaps she should have asked. Perhaps he should have offered.

They’d come so far. They still had so far to go…

The drawing shook in her hand and she laid the paper on the desktop, hoping she hadn’t betrayed her nervousness to Jack, who rarely missed anything.

“I think we should include your friends,” she said as he perched himself against the corner of the desk. “You won’t let me go inside with you—and I understand that, I really do—and Wadsworth is certainly brave, I’m sure. But Mr. Browning and Mr. Carstairs are probably better prepared for…for this sort of thing.”

“One of the two of them probably has been reporting to Sinjon about me, or have you forgotten that? I prefer knowing who has my back, not worrying about my back. I’m more than satisfied to have Wadsworth there. However, I’ve decided I was wrong about excluding them entirely, which is why I met with them this morning. Dickie will be here,” he said, leaning in to put his finger on the drawing of the streets, “and Will, here. Jeremy will take up his position in the alleyway behind the building. And you,” he ended, giving her a stern look, “will be here.”

She bridled. She knew that look. He was going to be difficult. “You aren’t pointing to the drawings.”

“That’s because your part in this ends with the planning. When I say
here,
I mean exactly what I say. You’ll be in this house, awaiting my triumphant return. Or my return, at the least.”

She’d probably known from the beginning that he’d attempt something like this. But not this time; she would not be left behind to go quietly insane while he was risking his life. “You can’t do that, Jack. I said I wouldn’t interfere, and I meant that. But don’t you dare think you can cut me out of this. I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t
allow
it?” He stepped away from the desk, and then turned his fiercest glare on her. “You wouldn’t want to rephrase that, madam, by any chance?”

“You’re going to play the bully now, Jack? Don’t bother, as I’m not in the slightest impressed. That’s never impressed me, actually, not when I know I’m right.” Tess got to her feet, her hands pressed hard against the desktop. “He’s
my
father. He attempted to kidnap
my
son. He got
my
brother killed because he didn’t tell us we were going up against the Gypsy rather than just another bumbling Frenchman selling secrets that were probably already out of date. He did his best to ruin my life, my son’s life.
Our
lives, Jack. Yours and mine. If he hasn’t already succeeded in that, because if you tell me again that I have no right to be there tonight you and I are still poles apart in how we see each other. This is my fight as much as it’s yours. Maybe more so.”

“And you’re prepared to see him die. At my hand? Because it could come to that, Tess.”

She struggled to keep herself under control. “You won’t do that. You won’t kill him.”

“Sinjon’s counting on that,” he told her coldly. “You shouldn’t.”

So they were back to that? Who he was, why he was here with her in the first place? Because he hadn’t come to her on his own. She couldn’t seem to forget that fact. On his own, they might never have met again. “Because you have your orders?”

He slammed his fist down on the desktop and she jumped back involuntarily at his vehemence. “No, damn it! Because I bloody well want the man dead. Your son? He’s my son, too, the son he convinced you to hide from me until he found a use for him. That was my brother in that coach. Not only your brother, but my friend who died in that Whitechapel alley. My life he looked at as if I was some bug under a glass, and then manipulated me,
built
me into one of his tools. Now he
dangles
some knowledge he supposedly has of my life in front of me so I’ll kill for him? He can go to hell, Tess, and that’s exactly where I want to send him. So don’t think I’ll keep him alive just so that he can try to manipulate either one of us again, because I won’t. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to go there tonight at all, that wants to do instead the one thing he’d never expect—simply leave him to deal with the Gypsy on his own.”

“Then why don’t you?”

The anger seemed to slip away from him. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why I said that. Maybe it’s something Puck said to me. I can’t get it out of my head.”

She walked out from behind the desk, daring to lift a hand, press it against his cheek. She was still so angry with him. She loved him so much. They were at war with Sinjon, but she was also at war with herself. And Jack was still fighting his demons. “And what was that?”

He turned his head to press a kiss against her palm, and then took both her hands in his. “That it’s time to let it go. All of it. I’ve been…angry for a long time. But can I really end it if I don’t finish it?”

“Are we talking about Sinjon here, Jack? Or more than that?”

He lifted his eyebrows, shook his head. “You know, for a man who’s lived his life keeping his own secrets, for the last few days the entire world seems to know more about me than I do. I thought I could walk away. From anything. At any time. I’ve thought I was better off on my own.”

Tess tried not to react. She knew what he was saying was true, but she didn’t really want to hear it. “I see.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said with a one-sided smile, a self-mocking smile. “For a man with little to be proud of, it would seem I’m as prideful as the devil. Life on my own terms. I convinced myself I didn’t need anyone. No one and nothing touching me, because I wouldn’t let it.” He squeezed her hands. “I was so bloody wrong.”

How easily he slipped through her defenses…

“Jack, you don’t have to—”

The pain in his voice was palpable. “Yes. Yes, I do, and now’s as good a time as any. How…how the hell did I walk away from you? Every time I look at you. Every time I touch you. This time, Tess, you’ll have to walk away from me. And even then I’d come after you, on my knees if you asked. Do you know how that frightens me? To need anyone so much? To know I’d have nothing if you were gone? To know I could still lose you?”

A single tear escaped her eye, and he looked at it as it rolled down her cheek and then shook his head, probably cursing himself for having brought her to tears. She should tell him why she was crying, but she could only do that if she knew the reason herself. Perhaps it was for the lost years, and how different their lives would have been if only he’d said those words to her then rather than now. He’d said Puck had told him to
let it go.
She had some letting go of her own to do, hadn’t she? Let the past be the past. But, oh, it hurt. She was still working her way past the hurt of those lonely years, much as she wished she could simply
let it go.

He released her hands and walked over to the fireplace to stand beneath the portrait of the man who was not his father. “I’d never ask you to stay with me. I thought I could order you to, that I could use Jacques to help convince you if you left me with no other choice. I can’t do that, either. I don’t…I don’t know what we really have, Tess, I don’t think either of us do, or if it’s enough to make up for the mistakes I’ve made. Sinjon only played on my weaknesses, it was up to me to overcome them.”

“We’ve both made mistakes. I refused to listen to you,” Tess reminded him, for she carried her own share of guilt. “If I’d been stronger, Sinjon couldn’t have convinced me that you were responsible for what happened to René. Perhaps I could have told myself that I wasn’t partly to blame, knowing that if you hadn’t thought yourself in love with me, you never would have insisted the plan be changed. You aren’t the only one with demons to put to rest. I think we can do that in time, for some things. But not Sinjon. That part of our past has to be settled if we ever hope to escape him. It’s malevolent, and will otherwise destroy us.”

“I know. And much as I’d like to believe Puck’s right, that we should just walk away from what we can walk away from, and forget the rest? I can’t do it. There has to be an ending before there can be a beginning. At least for me. I don’t want to come to you and Jacques with shadows still between us.”

Tess nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She’d seen Jack truly vulnerable only once before, the day he’d knelt in front of his son and hesitated as he lifted his hand to touch Jacques’s hair. Her heart was breaking for him now as it had then, but he wouldn’t want to know that, for her pity wasn’t what he was asking her for, even if he still couldn’t say the words.

Even if she might not yet be ready to hear them. She’d heard as much as he felt able to say, and it would be cruel to push him for more. Not now.

“All right, then, Jack, at least we’re in agreement on this. We finish it. All of it, with Sinjon, the Gypsy, your family. Put everything else behind, no matter how we resolve what’s between us. Starting tonight.” She returned to the desk and sat down, picking up the diagram of the streets and forced herself back to the task at hand. “With Browning at the head of the same alley we were in a few days ago, and Carstairs in the darkened doorway just opposite Number 9, I could very safely wait in your coach at this corner. Not in the middle of things, but not out of them, either. Close by, so that Wadsworth can come get me once you feel it’s safe. I can’t just wait here, Jack. I’d go mad.”

“That’s as good as saying you want to confront him.”

“Want to, Jack? I never want to see him again, hear his voice, listen to his lies. But I need to. You of all people should understand that. Please?”

“There’s another way,” Jack said, rejoining her at the desk. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re right. Who am I to keep you from the end of things?”

He had her full attention. Tess relaxed, even as she still trembled inside at Jack’s admission of his need for her. A need he wouldn’t act on anywhere but in the dark of night unless she signaled that she was ready. Knowing she had unfinished business of her own with her father, their shared nemesis. “You’ll let me go with you? Be inside with you when they all enter?”

“No, Tess. Since I never planned to take you along, I’ve been allowing you to think that, but it’s impossible. I never planned to be inside. Too many eyes watching. And Sinjon would know that. We’re destined for a street fight. Ugly and messy, and totally lacking in finesse. With Sinjon having a figurative front-row seat even as he’s ready to bolt in the confusion if things don’t go exactly as he planned.”

Tess frowned at the pile of diagrams. “Out in the open? Really? I’ll admit it has been bothering me, the location. The windows are barred, and there’s only the one other door at the rear. It certainly isn’t a position of strength. I wouldn’t have chosen it, and I doubt the Gypsy would freely enter a place where he’s unfamiliar and Sinjon had all the advantage on his side. But it’s awfully risky, even slapdash. Sinjon plans better than this.”

She looked up at Jack, who was wearing the far-off expression that had once annoyed her but now intrigued her. He was thinking. Deeply. As if no one else was in the room. “Jack? Did you hear me, or are you ahead of me?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. We’re wrong, Tess,” he said slowly. “And what you just said proves it.”

She got to her feet and walked over to him, seeing the tension in his eyes. “What did I just say?”

“That Sinjon plans better than this. ‘You look familiar, sir.’ At which point I’m supposed to leap from the shadows and plunge a dagger into the Gypsy’s black heart. Really? What a passel of melodramatic rubbish. What happens once I’ve dispatched the man, Tess? He tells me who I am and then magnanimously tosses us the Mask of Isis and gives us his blessing, hoping we’ll have a lovely life while he and the remainder of his damn collection begin anew somewhere else? No. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it, not when I take it all apart, piece by piece.”