Much Ado About Rogues

As his mother’s bastard son, Jack could understand that need for understanding better than Tess could know. But now was not the time to travel that well-worn ground again. His mother was a complex woman, in her way perhaps even more complex than Sinjon, and her motives doubly obscure. Like Tess, all he could do was learn to live the life he’d been given, play the cards he’d been dealt.

Careful not to wake her, Jack slipped from the tester bed and pulled on his clothing, his shirttail untucked, carrying his shoes with him as he slipped out of the room, his mind already engaged in the next step—his and Tess’s removal to London.

With any luck, Will and Dickie had picked up the man’s trail, making the mission easier. But Jack didn’t put much faith in luck.

Leaning against the wall, he pulled on his shoes, deciding he’d first visit Sinjon’s secret room. The man had taken much with him, but there was still much Jack might find useful.

The sounds of delighted laughter and running footsteps had him turning around in time to see the small, dark-haired child emerge on the second-floor landing just ahead of Emilie, the old woman’s face flushed from the exertion of racing down the narrow stairs.

“Jacques! Vous coquin, reviens ici! Jacques, viens à moi cet instant. Jacques—Oh, Jésus, Mary et Joseph, c’est toi!”

The boy stopped in his headlong flight to look up at the tall man standing in the middle of the hallway, blocking his way.

“Maman?” he inquired, his huge green eyes wide in his cherubic face. His curls were thick and black as night, his cheeks flushed from the excitement of his escape from his nurse. And then his face lit in a smile and he was off again, his sturdy legs taking him past Jack. “Maman!”

Jack turned to see Tess drop to her knees on the carpet as the boy ran into her open arms. She held the child tightly against her, her hand cradling the back of his head against her as she looked up at Jack, her eyes pleading with him for—God, who knew what she was thinking?

“Jack,” she began, his name a plea for understanding, he supposed. He didn’t wait around to find out. With one last disbelieving look at the child, he whirled about and bounded down the stairs, through the foyer, all but wresting the door from its hinges and leaving it swinging open as he blindly made his way down to the gravel drive.

He didn’t know where he was going. Just away. He had to get away. Where she couldn’t follow, where she couldn’t find him, couldn’t see what she’d done to him.

His son. He had a son. Goddamn her—he had a son!

CHAPTER FIVE

TESS RUSHED THROUGH her toilette as Jacques chattered and danced about the bedchamber all unawares. Emilie stood by wringing her hands, blaming herself for turning her back on the boy when he was so determined to visit his Maman’s bedchamber as he was accustomed to doing each morning.

The appearance of the tall man hadn’t made any impression on the child, except to remind him to ask Tess yet again for the whereabouts of his beloved grand-père.

Grand-père. Jacques was the light of her father’s life, and had been since the day he’d been born. The man who had mostly ignored his own motherless children while they were in the nursery was now this stranger who would stand at Jacques’s bedside, watching him sleep. His smiles were all for Jacques, and he’d bring him treats, bounce him on his knee and tell him silly stories when he thought no one else could hear.

It was Jacques who felt the hugs, received the kisses. Jacques who could so easily slip his hand into his grandfather’s and go on adventures in the gardens. Jacques who had somehow, at last, been more important than things.

Jack had been right, and he’d been wrong. Jacques was to be the keeper of her father’s legacy, the one he wished to guard, the one who must remember him with love, mourn him. He would live or die the hero, as the man who had at last put a stop to the Gypsy. Not for René, not for her, but for Jacques. And for himself… with Sinjon Fonteneau, there was always a hook.

“It’s all right, Emilie,” Tess assured the woman yet again, even as she struggled to do up the front-closing buttons of her morning gown with trembling fingers. “And probably for the best. We were wrong to hide Jacques from him. We’ve been wrong about too many things, and for far too long.”

The nurse only sniffled into her handkerchief.

“Come along, my love,” Tess said then, holding out her hand to her son. “Running is for outside, in the sunshine.”

“Jacques’s ball?” the boy asked eagerly as they made their way downstairs, bravely jumping down the last two steps and turning for the kitchens and the box near the door to the gardens, the one holding his prized striped ball.

Tess followed, waving away the muffin Cook held out to her, knowing she was too nervous to be hungry. Her world had turned upside down yesterday, and inside out this morning. Life would never be the same. This morning ritual might never be the same. But, for now, for Jacques, she would pretend nothing had changed.

“The path, Jacques,” she called after him as he eagerly ran for the expanse of lawn beyond the kitchen garden. “Parsley is for eating, not for stomping, remember?”

He turned and grinned at her, the picture of his father when Jack was warm from bed and in a mood to tease her, and kept running, throwing the ball ahead of him and then racing to catch up to it. He repeated the action a half dozen more times, until the ball rolled to a stop in front of a pair of shiny black Hessians.

Tess believed she could actually feel her heart stop.

Jack bent to pick up the ball and, still crouching down, handed it to his son. Jacques hesitated, but then reached out and put his hand on the ball, even while Jack still held it. For a moment, the two were a frozen tableau set out expressly to squeeze Tess’s heart, green eyes looking into green, dark heads close together.

“Merci, monsieur,” Jacques said, and then performed his much-practiced bow and added, “Thank you, sir,” just as he’d been taught.

She watched as Jack raised his other hand as if to touch his son’s cheek. But then the moment was gone and Jacques was off again, throwing the ball ahead of him and then chasing after it.

Jack stood up once more and approached Tess.

“Jack, I can—No, that’s not true. I can’t explain. I can’t even ask for your forgiveness.”

“No, you can’t,” he said shortly, his eyes on Jacques. “The boy should have a dog. That’s what thrown balls are for. There are plenty at Blackthorn, but we can get him his own. A puppy. Nothing too large to start with, or it will just knock him down.”

A dog? He was talking to her about dogs? “What?” she asked him, so nervous she was sure she must have misunderstood.

“Never mind,” he told her, still looking at Jacques. “I’ll see to it. Emilie is packing his things now and I’ve ordered the horses put to the coach. They leave in an hour, and should arrive at Blackthorn tomorrow afternoon.”

Tess shot a panicked look at her son. “You can’t do that. You can’t take him. He’s my son.”

At last he looked at her, but only for a moment before he returned to watching his son, following the boy’s every move hungrily, greedily. “You and I are for London this morning, correct?”

She hid her surprise that he was still agreeing to take her. Warily, she nodded.

“Leaving my son here, with only Emilie to watch over him. That’s not possible.”

“Why not?” Tess was fighting to keep from running to Jacques and scooping him up in her arms.

“Sinjon showed me his treasure room. We can’t be sure he did the same with the Gypsy, but the man knows of the collection. The sight of those treasures makes for a fairly impressive argument to fall in with his plans.”

“No. I don’t understand.” How could she think? Jack was taking her son from her. All she had, all she’d ever had.

“Haven’t you yet wondered why the Gypsy has never attempted to relieve your father of his treasures? He knows they’re here. He helped acquire many of them. And with only one old man standing between him and a fortune? Yet he’s never tried. Now why do you suppose that is, Tess?”

She watched as Jacques held the ball straight out in front of him with both hands and turned around and around in circles until he fell, giggling, to the grass. How strange. The sun still shone, a child still laughed. And yet her world was crumbling around her. She had to concentrate. Jack still spoke matter-of-factly, a man of no emotion. She’d always marveled at the way his mind worked. So coolly analytical. He’d figured something out in his head, and he had a plan. A plan that included removing Jacques from the manor house. Not from her, please God, but the house itself. “I… I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. But they worked together for well over a decade, remember. There may have been some bond between student and pupil, some honor among thieves. Either that, or the Gypsy promised to never come after the collection while Sinjon still lived, and in return, Sinjon promised to never come after the Gypsy. Only the two of them know how or why they came to the arrangement, and why they abide by it.”

“Papa always has a reason with a hook in it,” Tess agreed, wondering where Jack’s deductions had led him. “There’s a hook somewhere that’s kept the Gypsy away.”

“True enough. There could be many reasons. Of the two possibilities I’ve been able to come up with so far, I think the latter makes more sense. There is no honor among thieves. But your father didn’t like the terms anymore, not once he’d found me, once he felt sure I’d fall in with his plans to begin enlarging his collection again. So he tried to eliminate the Gypsy in Whitechapel. For that error in judgment, he paid with his son’s life.”

“Oh, God,” Tess said quietly.

“I don’t think God enters anywhere into this particular equation. Your father’s monster left his card on René’s chest. Sinjon somehow acknowledged the punishment, and they went back to their original agreement. Except that after a four-year absence, the Gypsy’s calling cards are back in England, announcing his return, and your father’s gone after him again. If he fails this time, the Gypsy might decide to come after the collection now, or to teach Sinjon another lesson. Either way, my son is not to be involved, because he’s not going to be here. He goes to Blackthorn today.”

“Our son, and his name is Jacques.” Tess felt her hands drawing up into fists. “Besides, this is all simply assumption on your part. Everything you’ve said since you came here has been conjecture, assumption. Everything you’ve told me could be a lie. Everything!”

She was like a drowning seaman clasping at bits of floating straw, and she knew it. But he was using what he knew to take her son from her.

“You’re right, Tess. Everything I said could be a lie. Or I could be wrong, straight down the line, and your father’s a damn saint and is simply having himself a lark in London for no apparent reason.” He looked to Jacques once more. “But are you willing to risk our son’s life on that? I’m not.”

“Then he goes to London, with us.” As Tess heard her own words she marveled at what she’d just admitted. Her father was a thief. Her father, if he failed, could be risking the life of his grandson. And her life… but she couldn’t be sure her father had considered her. Had she sunk that far, did she now think so little of her own father? Yes. God help her, yes. She had one objective now, one concern, and that was for Jacques. She’d risk everything, dare anything, to keep him safe, even if at the end of the day that meant losing him to Jack. Her father had sent Jack to them, hadn’t he, simply by disappearing…

Jacques took that moment to approach Jack with the ball held out between his hands. “Frow?”

It was fate. It was the hand of God. It was the dice, just this once, being thrown in her favor. Did it matter what it was, as long as Jack was now looking down at his son with his heart in his eyes?

“Throw, Jacques, not frow. Please throw the ball with me. Veuillez jeter la boule avec moi.” She would risk everything, dare anything. “Please throw the ball with me, Papa.”

OF COURSE THE reports to the Crown had contained no mention of a child. The child wasn’t important, but only the man. Those assigned to watch Sinjon over the years had not been chosen from the top ranks of those employed by the Crown. They would have seen no reason to mention that a child was now in residence at the manor house.

But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t have known. He should have hired his own watchers. He should have made periodic checks of his own over the past four years.

Except that he hadn’t been able to trust himself to see Tess again. He might have been inflamed by the impossible thought that she may have changed her mind, may welcome him back. He may have made a fool of himself again, ripped the scabs off a deep, slowly healing wound.

So he’d settled for the reports.

Coward. He’d been a coward. Selfishly protecting himself, falling into his old ways, as he’d done after his mother’s cruel admission. Run away, run away. You’re not wanted here. You don’t belong.

Jack rode ahead of the coach, leaving the Crown’s assigned watcher to tag along behind, not that the man would be much good if he hadn’t the independent judgment to report that there was a child at the manor house, or to inform his superiors that the marquis was acting strangely, disappearing for hours at a time over the past month.

He shouldn’t be doing this. Jacques should be on his way to Blackthorn, and Tess along with him. But, he’d told himself, Beau might be off on one of his inspections of the marquess’s other holdings, and God only knew what Puck was up to now that he’d an estate of his own. The last letter he’d received from his younger brother had been full of ecstatic exclamations about the calf he’d personally helped bring into the world. He’d named the thing Black Jack, he’d written, because it was both black and stubborn.

That left the marquess, and possibly Adelaide, if she had deigned to visit the estate. His mother would probably be appalled at the thought she’d been made a grandmother, and it wouldn’t do for the marquess to begin making grandiose plans for yet another bastard child.

Therefore, rationally, it was probably better that Jacques accompany his parents to London.

It was amazing how a man could rationalize selfishness until it suited his purpose. Papa. Jacques had called him Papa…

Jack eased back on the reins and allowed the coach to pull forward, and then paced his horse so that he was now riding just beside the door. He leaned down a bit to look inside. Emilie was dozing on the back-facing seat while Tess held Jacques close beside her, reading to him from some rather worn-looking book.

His heart squeezed at the sight, but even more so when Jacques spotted him and pushed away from his mother to press his palms against the side glass, smiling broadly as he mouthed something Jack couldn’t hear.

He motioned for Tess to lower the window but she shook her head.

“Now,” he mouthed silently, challenging her with his eyes. If he wanted to know what his son was saying, he’d damn well know, and she’d damn well not try to stop him. He held the cards, and she knew it. She also knew he wouldn’t be all that reluctant to play them. She’d kept his son from him for nearly four years, and that was a debt that wouldn’t be paid so easily.

Tess lowered the window while holding tightly to the squirming Jacques. “I was attempting to get him to sleep, you know,” she said accusingly. “Clearly you’ve never traveled with a young child for long hours inside a poorly sprung coach. He’s already been sick, twice. Not that it seems to bother him.”

“Horse! Horse!” Jacques was shouting overtop his mother’s complaints.

Jack looked at Tess. She did look a bit… disheveled. Beautiful, but perhaps a little worn about the edges four hours into their ride to London, her bonnet lying partially crushed on the seat, a few locks of blond hair escaping their pins. His son was obviously a handful.

Jack smiled at the thought. His son. Of course he’d be a handful!

He called out to the coachman to stop the coach, and then leaned down and depressed the latch to the door. “Hand him up to me,” he said to Tess. “What he needs is some fresh air.”

Tess looked ready to object, but then a slow smile curved her mouth. Some might have called it an evil smile. “Of course. But I warn you, he doesn’t smell all that fresh, not since the last time he was sick. How long until we’re in London?”

“No more than another hour. I’ll keep him with me until we’re actually in the city. Then I want him inside with you, and the curtains drawn. Agreed?”

“Oh, yes. Happily agreed,” Tess said, handing Jacques up to Jack. “Jacques, essayez ne pas cracher sur Papa’s bottes.”

Try not to spit on Papa’s boots? “Very amusing, Tess. Why don’t you take a hint from Emilie, and try to nap. You look as if you could use some rest. But then, you didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?”

Insults exchanged, Jack lifted Jacques and placed him in front of him on the saddle. Tess pulled the door shut with decided force, signaling the coachman to proceed.

It was like old days come back again. The teasing, the sparring, and quite often, the competition. Except with the child now between them. And so much more.

With his left arm wrapped securely about his son’s middle, Jack leaned down to kiss the child’s soft curls, not yet used to the swift fierce feelings just being near his son engendered in him. Mine. What a curious thing to think. Mine.

He’d had no future. Now he did. He’d had no hope. Yet now he was hopeful. There were no happy endings. But maybe there could be.

All that lay between him and Tess now was the past, in the forms of Sinjon and the Gypsy… and René. But was it him that she couldn’t forgive for what happened to René, or herself?

Jacques was now holding tight to the stallion’s mane and bouncing up and down in front of Jack. “Horse! Horse! Plus rapidement! Faster! Faster!”

“Oh, really? Faster is it? I should have known this couldn’t be your first time in the saddle, not with Tess for your maman. Very well, mon enfant, faster!”

CHAPTER SIX

“GOOD EVENING, sir,” the Grosvenor Square butler said as he personally held open the rear door that led in from the mews, just as if Jack had been expected. The man was unflappable, even if he’d had to run down three flights of stairs when alerted that Mr. Blackthorn had arrived at the stables behind the Blackthorn mansion.

“Good evening, Wadsworth,” Jack responded, and then passed him the soundly sleeping Jacques. “Any harm comes to this child and I’ll have your liver for lunch while you watch. Understood?” he added in the same pleasant tone.

“I would expect no less, sir. Good evening, miss,” he then said as Tess walked into the warm kitchens, looking about her as if to get her bearings.

“Lady Thessaly Fonteneau, Wadsworth. See that her belongings are taken upstairs.”

Wadsworth, soldier turned butler, had never quite mastered the intricacies of proper butlering. However, thanks to Masters Beau and Puck, he did have fairly recent experience in these matters to bring to the subject the disposition of milady’s portmanteaus. He wasn’t blind, after all, and Mr. Blackthorn couldn’t deny this dark-haired child any more than Wadsworth could stop the sun from rising come morning. “Yes, Mr. Blackthorn, it will be just as you wish.”

Jack almost thought he’d detected a wink from the man, but discounted it as Emilie swept into the kitchens with a rapid stream of authoritative French, relieved Wadsworth of his burden and demanded to be shown the nursery.

Tess put out a hand as if to stop the butler and nursemaid as they took her son away from her, but dropped her arm to her side at Jack’s slight shake of his head.

“I’ve been told the Blackthorn butler once knocked down ten of Bonaparte’s elite private guard just by blowing on them. I imagine there was more to it than that, but I’d trust him with my son, and you should do the same. Come along. We’ll go to the drawing room and the wine decanter I’m sure is already there, waiting for us.”

“Come along? I’d rather you didn’t order me about, Jack. It only serves to make me feel rebellious, and as I’m extremely thirsty, that would only be cutting off my nose to spite my face.”

“And such a pretty nose, too. All right.” He offered her his bent arm. “An it pleases you, milady, I would suggest we adjourn to the drawing room for refreshments. Lemonade, perhaps?”

She looked him up and down, as if inspecting him for vulnerable spots she might attack. “Arrogant and condescending, and both displayed within the space of a minute. Two of your less attractive traits, Jack, as I recall. Just lead the way, all right? I want to get the taste of road dust out of my mouth.”

Signaling to the sleepy-eyed cook who’d just appeared in the kitchens that food would be welcome, Jack led the way through the mansion to the drawing room. While Tess collapsed rather inelegantly on one of the satin couches, he poured them each full glasses of wine and offered one to her. Only Tess could act so rough and ready and still be the most beautiful, feminine woman he’d ever seen.

She downed it in one go. Ah, the French, weaned on wine from the cradle. He sometimes wondered if she could drink him under the table.

“That’s better,” she said, holding out the empty glass to him to be refilled. “Now, I’ve had an idea.”

“Not tonight, Tess. Sinjon’s been in London for more than a week. One more night won’t matter. Either we’re in time, or we’re already too late. We’ve other things to discuss.”

She shifted slightly in her seat. “True, but I don’t want to discuss them.”

“And yet that’s just what we’re going to do.” Jack took up a position in front of the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantelpiece below a portrait of the Marquess of Blackthorn.

It proved a bad choice.

“That’s your father?” Tess put down her wineglass and stood up, walking closer to inspect the portrait of a younger marquess, handsome, blond, fair of skin and blue of eye, the portrait probably commissioned when he was much the same age Jack was now. “You don’t favor him. Is your mother dark?”

“No,” Jack answered shortly.

“No?” Tess looked at the portrait again, at Jack again. “Your mother’s fair, then? Like me?”

“Adelaide is nothing like you, and you’re nothing like her. If you were, that child upstairs would never have happened. We’re here to discuss Jacques, and why you kept him from me.”

He shouldn’t have bothered to attempt to divert her. Tess, presented with a puzzle, was like a dog with a bone. She clamped on, and wouldn’t let go. “Your brothers. Oliver LeBeau and Robin Goodfellow to your Don John. All named for Shakespearean characters, courtesy of your actress mother. Don John was a bastard, Jack. I’ve never much cared for Shakespeare, I’ll admit, but I did learn that. Are the other two characters also bastards?”

“No, they’re not. And my brothers prefer to be known as Beau and Puck. Just as I prefer Jack. Why didn’t you tell me? My son, Tess. My son.”

He may as well not have spoken.

“Are they also dark? Beau and Puck?”

Jack deserted the mantelpiece for the drinks table, pouring himself another glass of wine. He never should have brought her here. He could have taken her to his house in Half Moon Street, but he preferred the mansion as being safer for Jacques. “They favor their parents,” he said, and then turned to challenge Tess with his eyes. “You’re not going to stop, are you?”