Much Ado About Rogues

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?”