Much Ado About Rogues (22 page)

“No, I’m sorry. I was just downstairs with Will, and he tells me Dickie may soon come into a small inheritance. So he’ll be leaving government service. Will…he’s going off to find another war. Venezuela. The war, that is. It’s in Venezuela. As they’ve both got other things to do, I suppose I’ll be finding something else myself. I don’t know what. I really don’t know anything else.”

“I see,” Tess said. Not that she did. What was he saying to her? “And do you think Lord Liverpool will allow that? Perhaps he’ll give you a pension and your own small prison, like this one?” She felt a hint of panic. “Maybe even this one?”

Jack shook his head. “Bastards don’t merit manor houses. Sinjon’s pension, this pile, were more to please the new French king than anything else. No, to hear Will tell it, I’m just a fly in Liverpool’s soup, and he’ll be happy to have someone spill it out and get him a fresh bowl. The house in Half Moon Street? That isn’t mine, either. I really don’t have much of anything to show for the years I’ve worked with Sinjon, with the Crown. And no skills beyond a minor aptitude for intrigue.”

At last she realized where this strange conversation was heading. “Will you soon be reduced to sleeping under the hedgerows, do you think?”

His one-sided smile caused her breath to catch in her throat. “The possibility does present itself, yes. But not for some time.”

“But you have nowhere to live, just as I have nowhere to live,” she said, prompting him, because she felt fairly certain that was what she was supposed to do. “So, because we have a son, and a son must be considered, I suppose we’ll now be traveling to Blackthorn, where we may hope to be taken in, at least for a time?”

“It would be, um, practical.”

“Practical,” Tess repeated. “I see. And nothing at all to do with that man declaring he’s your father. Nothing to do with confronting your mother about the circumstances of your birth. Nothing to do with seeing the marquess and, as Puck termed it, letting the poor man talk. Of course. I understand.”

“And nothing to do with the fact that our banns are about to be announced for the second time. No. Of course not. It’s pure expediency, visiting Blackthorn once we’re through here. I’ve told you, I’m not going to ask anything of you, Tess. I can’t. Especially now.”

“Now that you’ll soon be sleeping beneath the hedgerows. Or especially because—what, Jack? How many other
especially now
problems do you see? Other than the most obvious one—the Gypsy could very possibly be your father. You weren’t the one who put a period to Sinjon’s existence, but your
father
may have killed my brother. As if any of that is true, which is highly unlikely.” She looked toward the floor, then toward the ceiling, and then, finally, directly at him. “You really can be a stubborn blockhead, can’t you?”

“Apparently,” he said, walking over to the bed and lifting the top of the hatbox before she could stop him. “Packing?”

“We can leave in the morning, can’t we? Unless you think we should stay until someone can roll a very large boulder over his grave, to make sure he doesn’t get up again.”

Jack looked at her over his shoulder at her sudden vehemence. “You don’t have to prove to me that he’s better dead. You once thought the sun rose with the man. And not all that long ago.”

She took the lid from him, replaced it and placed the hatbox on the floor. “That changed when I saw why René died. I admit I found it difficult to believe your words, but it’s impossible to argue with what’s in that room. What was in that room. I suppose we’ll never know where it all is now. For all we know, it could be aboard some ship, bound for anywhere.”

Jack leaned his hip up against the side of the bed. “I don’t think so. He would have wanted to keep it close. Especially the mask. Or do you think he’d really hire someone else to move the collection for him?”

“He’d trust hirelings to effect a dangerous kidnapping of his grandson, but not trust them to move his
treasures?
Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s all a matter of seeing worth as measured through his eyes.”

“He didn’t have that much time to come sneaking back in here after we left, move everything. Which means it’s all close. Dickie wants to go looking.”

“I don’t,” Tess said shortly. “I saw it all once. That was enough. Let it rot, wherever it is.” And then her eyes went wide. “You aren’t suggesting that
we
— All this hand wringing about your straitened circumstances if you don’t continue working for the Crown. Damn you, Jack, that’s
indecent!
”

“Not to mention damned insulting,” he said, pushing away from the bed. “I doubt there’s any way for the Crown to learn where the pieces belong, not that I can see anyone trying, but at least we can take them out of the dark, the way Sinjon kept them, and let the world see them for what they are. Relics of the past, works of art. History. I was thinking they could be in the way of a gift to the Royal British Museum. Presented as a collection in the memory of René Louis Jean-Baptiste Fonteneau, Vicomte de Vaucluse. By the time the Crown hears of it, it will be accomplished fact, and Liverpool and everyone else will just have to smile graciously.”

Tess’s breath caught on a sob, and suddenly all the days, all the years, came together, collided in a dizzying kaleidoscope of pain, of memories, of lost dreams and shattered illusions. It all burst within her, all around her, and then the pieces reassembled themselves.

And there, against all odds, was the rainbow, lighting the way out of the darkness to, at last, make something
good.

Her knees buckled. “Oh, Jack…”

He was beside her in a moment, holding her as she cried. Cleansing tears, healing tears. She clung to him, taking his strength. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said, over and over.

“Shh, sweetings,” he soothed her at last, sweeping her into his arms and carrying her over to the bed, laying her down gently, disentangling her arms from around his neck. “Sleep now. Sleep as long as you want. We’ll think about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

She reached up her hands, grasping tight to his forearms. “No, please. Don’t leave me. Not tonight.”

“Tess…” he leaned in and pressed a kiss against her forehead. “This isn’t over. Andreas, whoever the bloody hell he is, didn’t come here to have drinks and cakes with an old friend. He came for the collection. He’ll be back, if we don’t beat him to it and find it, get it into the right hands. Just as you know I have to find him. I can’t leave things the way they ended tonight. I have to see Adelaide, confront her. I have to know, one way or the other.”

“But that’s tomorrow,” she argued, pleaded up into his dark eyes. “So many things for tomorrow. You said so yourself. Tonight, can’t it just be us? With no shadows, no questions, no future and no past. Just us? Just us, Jack…”

His eyes burned into her skin. She felt the deep, steady throb of his heart as his strong, masculine features softened in some emotion she all but dared to give a name. She touched her fingers to his cheek and he closed his eyes, swallowed.

She felt filled up, nearly overwhelmed. It was the first time. The only time. Everything was new, still to be discovered. Together.

His kiss was gentleness itself.

She wanted to weep again, with the joy of it.

When he raised his head it was to look into her eyes once more, as if attempting to understand what it was she wanted.
What you want, Jack,
she told him with her own eyes.
You. All of you.

He took her hands and she sat up, aimed her feet toward the floor, bringing her close up against his body, his hands now at her waist. Moonlight shone in through the open windows, the soft sounds of a country night the only accompaniment to the slow, sensual dance of two people who very much needed to hear the music.

He kissed away her dressing gown and nightrail, sculpted her with his hands as he went to his knees, nuzzled at her belly. And beyond.

Tess swayed where she stood and then bent her head to watch him, her hands skimming his shoulders, threading through his dark curls. She fisted her hands in the linen of his shirt, tugging at it, drawing him back up to her.

The buttons fell open and she kissed his heated skin, traced the definition of his sleek muscles, his flat belly.

And the moonlight danced over the walls and floor as a breeze ruffled the tree branches just outside the windows, and more buttons were eased from their moorings, and she slipped to her knees, and Jack fisted her long hair in his hands and moaned low in his throat.

When he urged her to her feet once more the intensity of his expression, the rapid rise and fall of his chest fed into her own building passion, her need for him. Not his body. Her need for him. His arms around her. A need to hold him close, draw him into her, until they weren’t two people at all, but one. One person, one heart, one mind.

He laid her on the bed and followed her down, holding himself above her open legs, his arms braced on either side of her head.

“We’re going to make it right this time, Tess,” he whispered as he sank into her. His words were a plea as much as a promise. “We have to make it right this time.”

She closed her eyes against the rawness of emotion, this strong man’s vulnerability, which he would only show her at moments like these. “We’ll make it right,” she promised him even as he took her over the edge. “Somehow, we’ll make it right…”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
HE
TUNNEL
FROM
the buttery had its beginnings behind a cabinet in the butler’s pantry. This was interesting, but not particularly useful. The two stone chambers built into the cellars indeed shared the same single entry from the study.

Or so it seemed. But with no success after a long, frustrating day spent looking elsewhere, last night Tess had insisted they visit the rooms again. She’d gone from never wanting to see Sinjon’s collection to being nearly obsessed with its discovery, and if she wished her father alive again for any reason, it would be so that she could hold a pistol to his head until he told her its location.

Now it was the morning of the second day, and she stood in the middle of the empty room that had held the collection, looking at the equally empty shelves. “Can you imagine it, Jack? Sinjon coming down here with a brace of candles, sitting there on that chair, in the damp, in the cold. Just…
looking?
What did he do here? Do you think he would relive each theft? How he’d selected the item he coveted, and then planned the theft, perhaps for weeks, perhaps for months, and then finally executed it? Was it possessing all of these things, or the game itself that he loved so much, do you think?”

Jack leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. “Does it matter?”

Jack looked and sounded tired, and very near the end of his patience. They could argue, if she wasn’t careful, just because there was no other way to relieve their frustration. “No, I suppose not. We don’t understand because we don’t think the way he did.”

“And thank God for that.”

“Not at the moment. At the moment, we need to think the way he did. You don’t suppose he told Andreas, do you?”

“He may have told him something, but not the truth. Andreas could be chasing his tail right now, thinking he knows where it is…or he could be out there somewhere, close by, patiently waiting for us to find it, thus saving him the trouble. You have thought of that, haven’t you?”

“More than once, yes,” Tess said, holding up a small lantern as she traced her fingers over the stone wall nearest the shelves. “I’m glad Will and Dickie agreed to stay for a few more days, and Wadsworth seems to make an admirable watchdog. It’s not as if we can leave here before we know whether or not we’d be leaving the collection behind. And we certainly can’t call back any of the servants, not when we don’t know if any of them are in Liverpool’s employ. We
have
to find the collection before he hears of it, we just have to.”

“Will leaves tomorrow, to get his affairs in order before he sails.”

“He’s really going, then? It sounds so dangerous.”

“Bread and butter to Will, and probably necessary for life. At least his life,” Jack said, taking the lantern from her.

Oh, yes, he was tired. Perhaps more than tired. “Will you miss it?” she asked him, searching his face for some sort of reaction. “I know the excitement can be…heady.”

“I don’t know. I’ll only be able to answer that once I’m out of it, and we’re not there yet, nor will we be if all we do is stand around and talk about Sinjon and how he thinks.”

“You don’t have to snap my head off, you know,” she shot back, and then bit her lip. “You’re thinking about your mother now, aren’t you? The questions you have for her. Many more questions than you had before.”

“No, there’s only the one. Who in bloody hell was or is my father. Only that one. I’m past caring why she did what she did.”

“Do you think she’ll tell you the truth? She may think she had a very good reason for lying to you.”

“Adelaide doesn’t need a reason to lie. She simply operates inside her own version of the truth. She lives a play written somewhere in her head, always casting herself in the leading role, be it a comedy or a tragedy.” Then he rubbed at his forehead, whether to ease the pain of a headache or wipe away some quick memory of his mother, she decided not to ask.

“I’m sorry. Let’s get back to it, all right?”

“Agreed, but let’s do it somewhere else. We’ve been over both rooms now, twice. Dickie and Will stepped off the foundation and the cellars, and these are the only two chambers down here. There’s no room for another one. We’ve checked all the outbuildings. I think we’ll soon have to conclude Sinjon did send everything off somewhere. Some hideaway we don’t know about. Or, yes, to be loaded on some ship and sent God knows where. I’m sorry.”

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “You’re right. It’s not here. I felt so sure he would have kept it close. He didn’t have time to do more than that. Not unless—”

“Not unless he had everything carefully planned, yes. Which is what we know Sinjon would have done. A pity he never kept a journal and felt some need to write about his own brilliance.”

Tess looked up at Jack in sudden excitement. “But he did,” she said, taking his hand, half pulling him toward the steps leading back up to the study. “My God, he did!”

“I never saw one,” Jack said as he placed the lantern on the desktop. “And Lord knows I heard the sermon from him on the stupidity of ever committing anything to paper. Where is it?”

Tess shrugged out of the shawl she’d worn while in the damp rooms. “Upstairs. In the nursery. It’s not a journal. Not really. He wrote stories, for Jacques. They were more like small puzzles, really. Silly things, rhyming things sometimes.
Now where are my slippers
—and then the several logical steps one would employ to trace where one had been, and then find the slippers.
Are they in cook’s stew pot? No, not there.
On and on. I…I thought it was lovely of him, except when I thought he considered the stories Jacques’s first lessons in growing up to be…to be just like his grandfather.”

“What we’re looking for is considerably larger than a pair of slippers, Tess,” Jack reminded her as they climbed to the top of the house and Jacques’s nursery.

Tess went directly to the cupboard beneath the dormer window and extracted two journals. He’d begun the second one about six months earlier, the first already filled with stories in his neat copperplate. “I was going to burn them. Here, you take this one. We’ll read them together.”

Jack looked around the nursery, a simple room, but Tess herself had painted one of the walls to look rather like a farmyard. “Is that a sheep?”

“You would pick the one I had most trouble with, wouldn’t you? Yes, that’s a sheep. Jacques loved it. Although the rooster was his favorite.”

Jack walked over to bend down, peer at the painted fowl. “A rooster,” he said flatly. “And you’re certain of that?”

“If you’re going to criticize…”

“No, not at all,” Jack said quickly, his grin wicked. “But we’ve better roosters at Blackthorn. The problem may come in convincing Jacques that they’re really roosters, now that he’s seen this one.”

Tess plunked herself down in the window seat. “Jacques likes blue. I knew I couldn’t paint a
real
rooster, Jack. So I painted a…a fanciful rooster.”

“Fancy that,” Jack teased, so that she longed to toss the journal at his head. But then he joined her on the wide window seat, lifting up her legs and resting them on his lap as the two of them opened the journals. “I don’t know what this is going to accomplish, but God knows we’ve tried everything else.” He turned the pages until he found the first story. “‘The Toy Soldier Lost His Drum.’ All right, and where did he go to look for it?”

“Don’t read out loud, Jack, I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and settled back to read the story, surfacing not five minutes later to say, “Well, unless Sinjon hid everything in the linen cupboard, I doubt we’ve found the key to the collection. Interesting—and unbelievable—as I find this, seeing this heretofore unknown side of Sinjon, I think we’re wasting our time.”

“Are we? Think, Jack. Sinjon never did anything out of
kindness.
He had a reason for everything he did. You remember what he taught us.
Everything
is a rehearsal for what is to come.”

“And the careful man plans,” Jack added. “So what you’re saying, or at least what I think you’re saying, is that what we have here are, what, a dozen hiding places? We’ve been looking for the collection, in total. Another secret room, a hidden door in one of the outbuildings, a false bottom in a wagon…”

“Instead of looking for a dozen smaller hidey-holes, yes,” Tess said, turning another page in the journal. “We’ve been searching for the haystack, when we should have been looking for needles.” She turned on the window seat, put her feet on the floor once more and stood up. “Get up, Jack. We can test my theory by finding the maid’s best apron.”

“In the window seat?” He pulled the cushion from the seat and lifted the lid to expose the storage space beneath it. “No apron,” he said as Tess bent over the opening.

“You enjoy being maddening, don’t you? Did you expect some golden helmet to simply jump up and announce its presence?” she asked as she began removing the contents of the cubbyhole. There were blankets, and some of Jacques’s outgrown clothing, and Emilie’s winter cloak, and— “Jack?”

“What?” His head appeared beside hers. “Oh, wait. Yes, I see it. Move over, Tess, let me give it a try.”

She moved away, but only marginally, as Jack reached in and lifted what appeared to be a loose board at the bottom of the compartment. “There!” she exclaimed, nearly giddy with the thrill of discovery. “What’s in it, what’s in it?” she exclaimed as he pulled out the oilskin bag.

Jack, with only one quick look of amazement shot in her direction, lowered the window seat and cushion once more and then upended the bag on it.

And there it all was, or at least some of it. They counted out a half dozen rings, a variety of bracelets, and dozen necklaces; some ancient, some perhaps only a few hundred years old, and all of them heavy with gold and jewels. One of the brooches carried the Bourbon royal crest.

“Is that all of it?” Tess asked, holding up a small golden collar that had to have been fashioned for a child, most probably an Egyptian princess. “I only saw the collection the one time, and I’m afraid I wasn’t looking as much as I was cursing him as I looked.”

“All of the jewelry? I don’t know,” Jack said, already replacing the rings. “Look at this one. I remember this one. A diamond the size of a pigeon egg, for God’s sake.”

The ring was enormous as she slipped it on her finger, fitting from knuckle to knuckle, and engraved with strange drawings that might have been some sort of primitive birds. Hers was perhaps the first finger that had been adorned by the thing in over a thousand years. “But it’s yellow. Are diamonds yellow?”

“I imagine anything that large can be any color it wants to be,” Jack told her. “There, that’s the last of it. But we’ve got a long way to go, Tess. Let’s find Will and Dickie. How damn many stories did Sinjon write for Jacques?”

“More than a dozen,” Tess said, grabbing up the oilskin bag and holding its considerable weight against her chest. “Jack, you know what this means, don’t you?”

“It means you’re smarter than I am?” he teased, kissing her cheek.

“Well, yes, that, too,” she quipped with a smile. “But what it really means is that Sinjon never planned to go anywhere. He was only hiding his treasures until he’d dealt with the—that is, with Andreas, and with you. He wasn’t
moving
his collection, as we thought. He was only temporarily
hiding
it, and he’d worked out his hiding places in advance. He truly did plan to end his days here, surrounded by the proof of his brilliance.”

“Well, he had it half right, didn’t he? He certainly
ended his days
here. Come on, Tess. There are a lot more stories, and a lot more treasures to be found. With luck, we can leave here tomorrow.”

Once Will and Dickie had been shown the contents of the oilskin bag, two decisions were made. One, Will and Wadsworth would leave for London immediately; Will to prepare for his journey to Venezuela, and Wadsworth to return with Jeremy and a small contingent of troops, so that if Andreas had any notion of relieving them of the collection as it was being transported, he’d find that task damn difficult.

And two, Dickie, Tess and Jack would use the journals to continue the hunt.

Emilie’s favorite bonnet ribbon—a pair of bronze busts—were unearthed in the scullery. Jacques’s wooden top—three gem-encrusted brass bowls—were hidden inside an old butter churn. Round Roman shields of various sizes were tucked up inside folded sheets on the shelves of the linen cupboard, and Roman helmets were run to ground in the henhouse, Dickie having been sent there to find “Where, oh, where could
Maman’
s pretty slippers have gone to roost?”

Not everything was found so simply. But once they realized they were looking for pieces, and not the entire collection, the large dining room table was soon piled high with the fruits of their search.

Small golden statues of Egyptian gods all nestled together beneath the hinged bottom stair of the flight leading up to the nursery floor. Heavy Roman breastplates wrapped in sailcloth and tucked up into the open beams in the attics. Intricate Greek mosaic medallions and plates nestled in with René’s clothing in an old sea chest in his chamber.