Much Ado About Rogues

Jack had heard the story only a few weeks before René died. He’d found Sinjon in his study after midnight one night, sloppily drunk and embarrassingly maudlin on what he said was the twentieth anniversary of the death of his wife. He’d been both intrigued and flattered when the man motioned him to a chair and began to speak—and, in the end, he was appalled.

He doubted Tess and René had ever been privy to what had really happened, who their father was and had been, why their mother had died, what had brought them to England, what drove Sinjon to offer his services to the Crown against France.

The Marquis de Fontaine was a man of varied background and myriad talents. He’d prided himself on his knowledge of Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities; indeed, he’d devoted the first nearly fifty years of his life to amassing his collection, traveling the continent in order to add to it. Until he’d met his Marie Louise. He’d been amazed at the birth of the twins, slightly bemused as to what the fuss was all about, but they seemed to please Marie Louise, and he was free to go back to what he called his studies.

And his other pursuits.

Then came 1797, and suddenly Sinjon, whose facile use of a loyalty that seemed to bend with the prevailing wind had miraculously kept him safe in Lyon, was faced with the possible loss of his way of life. The worst of the Terror might be behind them, but the Revolutionary Army was becoming too powerful, thanks to the success of General Louis Hoche and some upstart Corsican named Bonaparte. Of the three, the Directorie, Hoche and Bonaparte, he feared the Corsican most, recognizing a lean and hungry ambition when he encountered it. Sinjon began working in secret with other Royalists to bring back the Ancien Régime and all the privileges of rank that went with it before it was too late for any of them.

But it had already been too late. He should have seen the signs, made a decision as to what was most important to him, and taken his wife and children to safety. Instead, he and his band of compatriots goaded and pushed the Directorie at every turn. Employing a plan devised by Sinjon, they nearly succeeded in an attempt to assassinate several of its leaders.

And that, to Sinjon, had been his single biggest mistake. The Directorie retaliated with all the might still at its disposal, hunting down and disseminating their opposition. While Sinjon and his men hid in cellars, not knowing what was happening, his adored Marie Louise had become one of the casualties of his folly.

He’d cried then, great blubbering drunken sobs. Jack sat silent, as there were no words that could comfort the man, heal his guilt and his loss. At that moment, no matter what Sinjon asked of him, Jack would do it. Because he was looking at a beaten old man who had lost everything; his wife, his country, his fortune. Here in England he lived in genteel poverty in a run-down manor house, employed by the Crown but never quite trusted.

Genteel poverty. Forced to plot and often kill, not only to exact justice for all he’d lost and rid the world of that upstart Bonaparte, but also to save a prime minister from scandal, find a way to disgrace those whose voices in Parliament didn’t agree with the Crown, employ his skills to clean up the many messes those in power made with regularity. He’d no choice.

Except that he did. He’d always had a choice. The man had been grieving? How much? Drowning his guilt and sorrows? Really? Jack knew he’d never know exactly where Sinjon’s clever mix of truth and fiction had merged that night, but only the reality of what he had seen. He had been the man’s audience, drawn in, made sympathetic to a supposedly sad and disillusioned wreck of a man. What had come next, his introduction to the second secret room, to the marquis’s secret life, would forever color his opinion of his mentor.

Now he would show Tess her real father, the damning part of the man that could readily be seen. A dose of truth couldn’t hurt her any more than the fiction she’d built up around the man, the fiction Sinjon had so cleverly encouraged.

“Give me the candles, Tess, and follow me,” Jack said, and then led the way down the steps and across the room to the stone he’d located earlier.

“There’s more to see?” Tess asked as he pushed on the stone and it pivoted easily.

Jack held the brace of candles at shoulder level as the cabinet holding Sinjon’s inspired arsenal slid aside. “Look at what’s there, Tess, and at what isn’t. As one important piece is missing.”

He stood back and allowed her to walk into the small chamber lined with shelves from floor to low ceiling on three sides. The only furniture in the room was a single chair placed directly in its center; where Sinjon would sit to admire his genius.

“To your left, the Greek. To your right, the Roman. Straight ahead, and most interesting of all for what isn’t there, the Egyptian. Your father’s treasures. Or should I say, your competition. What Sinjon loves most in this world. What he risked his family for, lost his wife for, sacrificed his children’s childhoods for, I suppose some may think. I know I do.”

Tess turned in a slow circle, the candlelight casting strange shadows on the rows and rows of artifacts, shining back to her from Roman shields and breastplates, dancing along gem-encrusted bowls, illuminating ancient busts, helmets, bracelets, necklaces… and reflected in the tears in her eyes.

Selling only a few small pieces would have provided more than enough to pay the village shopkeepers, repair the manor house, educate his son at the best schools in England, purchase a mansion in Mayfair, launch his daughter into Society.

If Sinjon could part with any of his treasures. If selling them on the open market wouldn’t mean the end of him.

“I don’t… I can’t… How, Jack? Why?”

“Let’s go back upstairs,” Jack said, taking the brace of candles from her and leading the way, holding on to her hand as they went. Her suddenly very cold hand.

He poured her a glass of wine and took it to her as she sat with exaggerated erectness on the leather couch, staring at nothing. She shook her head slightly in refusal so he downed it himself, and then positioned himself at the front of the desk, resting against its edge.

Jack would have spared her this if he could, but she’d made it impossible. Sinjon had made it impossible. The man she so admired, so longed to please, her so wonderful, perfect and heroic father. He wondered how long it would take her to understand the implications of what she’d just seen.

It didn’t take half as long as he’d thought. She’d always been very bright.

“He’s a thief, isn’t he?” she said finally. “My father is a thief.”

“I made that mistake myself, and was quickly corrected. He sees himself more as a private collector. A thief, you see, steals for profit. Sinjon was always most discerning, taking only the best and keeping it for his own private enjoyment. Your competition, Tess, the true loves of his life.”

Tess bent her head and began rubbing hard at her temples. “God. Oh, sweet Jesus…”

Jack pushed himself away from the desk and sat down beside her, taking her hands in his and lowering them to her lap, not letting them go. “It was easy in France,” he told her. “He had his title to protect him. Nobody suspected that the treasures he brought home with him from his travels were anything but the purchases of a wealthy man. He could display many of them openly, keeping only the most easily recognizable safely hidden away, where he could appreciate them. He was admired, sought after to speak about antiquities. An acknowledged expert, the so-fascinating Marquis de Fontaine. Nobody knew, Tess, not even your mother. That’s what he was trying to protect when he sided with the other Royalists. His way of life. His treasures. In the end, the new French government got most of them, so he came here, and started over.”

“Started over…” she repeated softly. “But… but he was working with the Crown.”

“What better excuse to travel where he wanted, make use of secret channels of transportation, have access to ships, to the plans of the mansions of the wealthy, museums… palaces. There was a war going on, treasures were disappearing everywhere, for many reasons. Some say Bonaparte brought half of Egypt back to France with him. I think Sinjon hated him most for that, and that the Emperor had the treasures and he didn’t. But your father also did his job, Tess, and very well, to give the man the credit due him. And then, when the mission was complete, he’d reward himself by adding to his collection. But Sinjon isn’t a young man anymore. He could still choose the prize, formulate the plans, but it soon became apparent to him that he needed someone else to execute them.”

Tess had been breathing rapidly, but now she took a deep, openmouthed breath that was nearly a gasp. She was attempting to get herself under control. “René?” she asked at last. “Did he…?”

“I don’t think he knew, no. In any case, he hadn’t proved as talented as Sinjon had hoped. You, however, exceeded his expectations, and he’d every intention of introducing you to that room down there. Until I came along. You want praise from the man, Tess? I’ll tell you something he told me. You should have been born the son.”

Tess smiled ruefully. “How very like him. Every compliment has a hook on the end, one that digs straight into the flesh. Praise for me, at the expense of my brother. We were in a competition, weren’t we? One of my father’s deliberate making. The winner gets to collect for him. I think I’m going to be sick.” But then she rallied, as another question struck her. “Did you… did you steal with him?”

Tess knew what he’d done before coming to the manor house. How he’d played at cards, played at highwayman, played at most anything, running wild and angry, always searching for something, never knowing what that something was. Never knowing if he was running toward something, or away from himself. The bastard who belonged nowhere.

Sinjon must have thought the gods had personally delivered Jack Blackthorn to him.

Jack shook his head. “He said I wasn’t quite ready, and that robbing a few coaches for a lark wasn’t the same as what he needed from me. He said I’d never experienced joy of the sort I’d know when the prize was much more than some silly matron’s gaudy diamond necklace. The prize was one thing, and worth any danger, but the joy of the acquisition itself, knowing what you had in your hand was now yours and yours alone, was worth more than anything else. But first I had to learn a few rudimentary things about antiquities, gain an appreciation for them so that I’d treat them with the care they deserved as I was… acquiring them.”

He’d told her most of it now, but there was more. “I thought I’d found a home, Tess, a real purpose in government service. Sinjon had saved me from myself, and you’d given me a reason to believe I didn’t have to be alone. Once he’d told me his secret, I knew my duty was to turn Sinjon over to the Crown. Yet how could I do that, knowing it would destroy you and René? Selfishly, I put off making my decision until we’d completed the Whitechapel mission. I shouldn’t have waited, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

“Whitechapel. Where René died. And I sent you away anyway. But you never reported Papa to the Crown. Why?”

“Sinjon was already seventy or more, or at least that’s the most he would admit to—definitely past climbing through windows or outrunning any pursuit. Without me, or someone like me, his collecting days were over. He’d lost. He’d lost his youth, his son and, when I walked away, his last chance at revenge. Because of you, I promised him I wouldn’t turn him over to the Crown, but that if he went back to his old ways I wouldn’t be held to that promise. And if he tried to recruit you, I’d know, and I’d kill him. He knew I meant what I said.”

“And he believed you,” Tess said quietly. “I would have.”

“He was a broken man when I left, Tess. I’d like to think the errors of his ways, and what those errors had cost him, had finally come home to him. Instead, the need for revenge must have been eating at him ever since.”

Tess shook her head. “Revenge? You mean on France, for what happened to my mother. But that was all so long ago.”

And here it was, the moment he’d been dreading more than any of the others. He’d never wanted her to know this particular truth.

“No, Tess. What I’m speaking of now has nothing to do with France or the war or any attempt to restore the monarchy. I doubt it ever was really about any of that, not for Sinjon. It was always about enlarging his collection. And remember this—he was already more than fifty years old when he came to England. I wasn’t the first pupil he trained to do his bidding. There was another, before me. An exceedingly apt and eager pupil, and quite ambitious. They worked together for years. Until the student, who saw profit where Sinjon saw beauty, eventually betrayed the mentor, striking out on his own, hiring out his unique talents for most any venture, any government, and taking his own rewards. You don’t know him, Tess, although you may have seen him here years ago. But you have seen his calling card. I’ve been hunting him for four years, ever since Sinjon told me exactly who he is.”

Her eyes were wide and shocked when she turned toward him on the couch. “The Gypsy. That’s who you mean, don’t you? The Gypsy. The man who murdered René. Papa trained him? And now he’s gone after him…”

CHAPTER FOUR

TESS SPENT THE next few hours alternately crying and cursing, pacing her bedchamber in her old nightrail and dressing gown, flinging herself into the chair in front of the fire, collapsing to her knees in the center of the room, wrapping her arms tight around herself, rocking in her grief and pain.

Jack had told her all of it. She’d pushed him until she’d heard it all.

A lie. Her father’s life was a lie; everything she’d thought about him, believed about him, was a lie. Her life was a lie. René’s death had been for a lie, and her mother’s, as well. For greed. For things.

She and René had always thought they weren’t worthy, weren’t good enough, had not been smart or clever or, yes, lovable enough. That somehow they had failed their wonderfully heroic father, had been a source of grave disappointment to him. But that hadn’t been it at all.

Things. People meant nothing to him. They were only the tools he needed to get him things. Her mother may have been the exception, but even she hadn’t been able to divert him from his first love, his true delight. Things, locked up underground in a cold stone room. Things, the hunt for them, the taking of them, the knowledge that now they were his, seen only by him, touched only by him.

She and her brother had thought their father a hero, dedicated to the service of his adopted country, doing his best to help rid France of the hated Bonaparte and set the monarchy back on the throne. They’d wanted only to help him, make him proud of them.

While he’d seen them as two more tools. Inferior tools at that.

And for this man, this unnatural man, she had turned her back on her one true chance of happiness? She’d cut Jack out of her life so effectively that even if he still believed he loved her, he could never forgive what she’d done.

What she’d done because the Marquis de Fontaine had told her it would be best for everyone if Jack never knew. That had been his punishment.

Now it was hers.

“Tess?”

She was sitting on the hearth rug, staring into the dying fire, and didn’t turn her head at the sound of his voice.

“I’m all right, Jack,” she said quietly.

He sat down beside her, wrapped his arms around his bent knees. Was that to keep himself from touching her? Could he still want her, after all he’d told her? “It’s all right if you aren’t, you know. None of what you’ve heard tonight could have been easy to hear. If there had been another way…”

“No, I’m glad you told me. I only wish I’d known years ago, when René was alive. We could have gone, left him to his collection. After all, we were never really necessary to him, were we? And our mother? Do you think she knew, Jack? Did she die knowing how unimportant she’d been to his happiness?”

“He may have lived long enough now to regret how he’s lived his life. All he’s lost. I know you’ve already considered this. Sinjon trained the man in the skills he then eventually employed to kill René. An old man, no longer seen as being useful to anyone, put out to pasture as it were, while the evil he spawned thrives? A man like that has a lot of time to think, to look back across the years, and try to make at least one thing right.”

“You think he’s somehow repented or some such ridiculousness? You want me to forgive him, is that it? You think I’m that generous?” Tess asked, still looking into the fire. “I can’t do that.”

“No, I suppose you can’t, at least not just yet. Sinjon has to know that, too. But you’re his legacy, Tess, all he has left. Everyone else is gone. Those things he spent his life collecting mean nothing compared to a child’s love, how he’ll be remembered when he’s dead.”

Tess turned to look at him at last, knowing something Jack didn’t know. “Do you really believe that? That he cares how—how I remember him?”

“The closer to death, the more a person realizes the need to be remembered, even mourned. He’d have to know that once I’d heard of his death that room downstairs would have to be emptied, his collection returned to the rightful owners, or at least turned over to the Crown. I lied to you this afternoon. There’s only one way into the cellar rooms. You were going to know the truth about him one day, one way or another. And one thing more, Tess. Sinjon has unfinished business.”

“The Gypsy,” she said her hands tightening into white-knuckled fists.

“Have you read Frankenstein, Tess?” When she shook her head he explained. “You should, it’s quite the talk of London right now, nearly the equal to the attention Byron received for his Don Juan.”

“Jack, I don’t see what a book has to do with—”

He held up his hand. “No, let me finish. Frankenstein is rather a cautionary tale. In attempting to create perfection, Dr. Frankenstein instead managed to breathe life into a monster. The Gypsy is your father’s creation and, right now, his legacy. I think he’s decided it’s his duty to destroy the monster. No, let me correct that. He plans to lead me to the Gypsy, so I can destroy the monster for him while he watches. While you watch.”

A single tear escaped Tess’s eyes. “Everything he does has a hook in it somewhere, doesn’t it?”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her. It felt like coming home. The feeling wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. There were things that could be explained, forgiven. What she’d done to Jack wasn’t one of them. She’d chosen her father over him, believed her father’s version of what had happened that night in Whitechapel rather than his, sent him away even before he could offer his own version of that last night. Yet, if only that had been the end of it there might still be a way to mend what she’d broken. But there had been more, so much more. Impossible to forgive.

“I want you, Tess,” Jack said quietly. “I know we can’t have what we had before—what we thought we had before. But what we did have was good while we had it, wasn’t it? I can help you make the world go away, at least for tonight. I know what you need, because I need it, too.”

Release. He was offering her release. That was all, no more than that. Anything else they’d thought they’d had never really existed. If it had been real, the past four years wouldn’t have been spent apart.

He stood up, reached down his hand to her. Dare she take what he offered? If her life had been empty before, how could she bear it when he left again? But it wasn’t forever that he was offering her. Only tonight. Was one night not nearly enough… or too much?

She hesitated.

He was Black Jack Blackthorn. A proud, complex man. He wouldn’t offer twice.

She looked up into his dark, handsome face and put her hand in his.

SHE WASN’T AS he remembered her. He’d initiated a girl four years ago, but a woman filled his arms tonight. Her body still slim, but more lush, the sweep of her hips somehow more welcoming. Her breasts heavier, even her nipples not those of a girl, but a more dusky pink than he remembered, and even more receptive to his touch, quick to pucker, to stiffen with her desire.

He took her first with his hand, pushing into her as she ground against him, calling out her pleasure as he found her center and exploited it with his stroking, pinching fingers. He bent over her, urging her on, watching her face as the tension rapidly built to a fever pitch, drawing her body taut as a bowstring before the pleasure washed over her, wave after wave, until there was nothing but sweet, boneless release.

Only then did he kiss her, only then did she wrap her arms around him, returning his kiss, burrowing into him, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Only then did he dare to love her as he wanted; slowly, with infinite care, learning her again even though he’d never truly forgotten.

There had been other women since her. Four years was a long time, and he’d had needs. But that’s all they had been. Never Tess, never what he’d found with Tess. Never this need to know, this never-ending journey of discovery that made each time feel like the first time. Her soft sighs. Her low cries of pleasure. The way she touched him, knew him, stirred him. How his heart could feel close to bursting when he knew he’d pleased her, how his pleasure intensified because he had pleasured her. The way she breathed his name just as he took her over the top… took him with her.

He kissed every soft, fragrant inch of her, soothing her, rousing her, taking her mind away from everything but the pleasure he was giving her, taking from her. Long strokes along her rib cage, trailing over the flare of her hips. Dipping between her thighs, raising her up to him, opening her, capturing her essence.

Only then did he move to cover her, bracing his upper body on his arms, watching her face as he slowly sank inside her. She slid her arms and legs up and around his back and held on tight, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she looked up at him, her eyes gone dark in just the way he remembered. Now, those eyes signaled to him. Yours, Jack. All yours. Take me now. Take everything I have as you give me all you have. Now.

He knew her rhythms, as she knew his. He knew that everything else had served to build to the next few moments, this most intimate melding of mind and body.

He began to move. Watching her, as she watched him. While inside his head, a part of him was chanting I love you, I love you, I love, love, love…

She slept in his arms as he watched the dawn beyond the windowpanes, reliving the past few hours. His silent words haunting him, keeping him from sleep.

He’d thought it was love all those years ago, believed it was love. Her smile, the way she had of biting on her full bottom lip when pondering a problem, her scent, which had never failed to move him. The way just thinking about her had made the world around him seem new and clean and hopeful. The way she looked at him, which made him believe he was a better man.

Their months together had been the best of times.

He hadn’t known anything was missing, that they’d lacked some certain elemental piece that would hold them together in the worst of times.

Jack had been alone all of his life, even as a child, never feeling that he belonged, that he fit anywhere. The bastard, yet somehow more the bastard than his brothers, different from his brothers. But he’d never known what it meant to be really alone until Tess was lost to him.

Now she was in his arms again, and he would have savored the completeness of it if not for the realization that the feeling could only be fleeting, that the dawn had come, the glory of the night was over and nothing had really changed. Nothing could change until and unless Sinjon was found, until and unless Tess found some sort of needed peace in her feelings about her father.