Much Ado About Rogues

She shook her head. “I’m fine on my own.”

Jack ran his gaze up and down her breeches-clad body. “Yes. Any fool could see that. Hug yourself close to you, Tess. Don’t let anybody in.”

“How dare you! It wasn’t me who—”

But he was gone, seemingly disappearing below her line of sight, taking the candlelight with him. Stairs. There was a flight of stairs behind the cabinet. Tess looked toward the opened door to the hallway, knowing if she left the study, Jack would want to know why she hadn’t followed him. She’d have to trust Emilie. Emilie would have learned by now that Jack had come to the manor house. She’d know what had to be done. Please, God, just this one time, toss the dice in my favor.

Tess quickly lit a candle and followed Jack down, into the depths.

WHEN HE’D GONE away, she’d still been more girl than woman.

No more.

Jack hadn’t known what to expect when he saw her again, either from her, or from himself. Seeing her had turned out to be both better and worse than he’d imagined.

The hurt was still in her eyes, undoubtedly made more raw by her father’s disappearance and his refusal to include her in his plans. This was an old pain for Tess. She’d told Jack she understood: Sinjon Fonteneau was not a demonstrative man, making him uncomfortable with any displays of emotion. He loved his daughter, yes, he did, but praise did not flow easily from his mouth. She understood, but understanding and acceptance are often strangers to each other, and Tess clearly was still trying to please her father, make him admit out loud that he was proud of her.

She was wearing René’s breeches. Because she felt less constricted dressed that way while destroying rooms in her search? Or just because that’s what she now wore? What the hell had gone on here these past four years?

With the familiarity of his former acquaintance with the underground room easing his way, Jack dipped the brace of candles again and again, lighting a dozen squat candles, illuminating the cool, dank-smelling room.

“Damn,” he bit out as he turned in a full circle, seeing what was there, taking note of what was gone.

He heard the click of Tess’s boots on the stone steps and quickly rid his face of all expression as she joined him in the center of the room.

“I’d often wondered where he kept…” she said, but then her voice trailed off. “Did René know?”

Jack nodded, not wanting to discuss the fact that Tess’s twin had been privy to this sanctum of sanctums, but she was not. Not then, not since René’s death. “He kept everything,” he said, still taking his mental inventory. “The disguises, the pots of paint and powder, the wigs.” He walked over to pick up the crude wooden crutch leaning against one of the tables. “I remember when he used this. He’d even tied up his leg beneath his greatcoat to lend more credence to his role of crippled veteran. The French lieutenant actually pushed a sou into his hand before Sinjon slashed his throat. And all of it accomplished while balanced on one leg. I’d argued against the disguise, pointed out that a one-legged man was vulnerable. I should have known better.”

“He only killed when necessary,” Tess said firmly, her belief in her father’s motives unshaken. “He only does what is necessary. Ever.”

Jack replaced the crutch and turned to her. “Yes, of course, the sainted Marquis de Fontaine. And what is so necessary for him now, Tess? The war’s over, he’s been rewarded for his service to the Crown, cut loose, left to live out his life in peace and security. That’s all he wanted, wasn’t it, all he ever said he wanted for all of you?”

“Both of us,” she corrected, wandering over to the large desk and opening the center drawer. “He never really wanted René to be like him.”

“All right, Tess, let’s do this now, get it over with,” Jack said, walking over to slam the drawer shut. “Your brother was young, foolish. And wrong. Sinjon never favored me over his own son. René had nothing to prove that night. Nothing.”

Her eyes flashed in the candlelight. “He had everything to prove. To our father—to you. He worshipped you. He wanted nothing more than to be like you. The so-brave and clever Jack. See, René, how Jack does it. Observe and learn, René, Jack will show you how it is done. Jack, so fearless as he enters the wasp’s nest. Jack, who is steel to the core, with the mind of a devil and the skills of an army. Watch him, even if you can never hope to equal him. He is one in a lifetime. Fearless.”

“Christ,” Jack bit out, putting the width of the desk between them. “Because I didn’t care. Because I had nothing to lose but my life.” Until you, he added silently.

“But it wasn’t your life that was lost, was it, Jack?”

“And do you think you’re the only one who grieves his loss? René was my friend.”

“No, he was never your friend. You have no friends, you make sure of that. I knew him better than anyone. René was meant for books and beauty, never destined to bleed out his life’s blood in that Whitechapel alley.” Tess pounded her clenched fist against her chest. “Me, Jack. I should have been there.”

“To die in his place?” Jack asked her, his voice hard, cold.

“None of you would have been in that alley if you’d allowed the original plan as my father and I drew it up, damn it, and you know it! René would never have been in any danger. We all knew he was too eager to please you and Papa, too eager to remember his lack of skill if the opportunity to… to…”

“To show off for us presented itself? Are you finally ready to admit that, Tess? Is Sinjon? Or am I still to take all the blame?”

“You convinced Papa to change the plan, to keep me out of it.”

Jack felt the fabric of his composure split. He’d never wanted Tess involved in any of their missions; that had been Sinjon’s choice to use his own children, Sinjon’s mistake. “Because I loved you!” he all but shouted, his words echoing back to him from the stone walls. “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.” He pulled himself back together, not without effort, then ended quietly, “And lost you anyway…”

Tess said nothing, the silence lasting nearly to the breaking point, turning the physical space between them into a yawning chasm that stretched across the lost years.

“Wherever he is, he’s well armed,” Jack said at last, looking toward the glass-fronted cabinet usually filled with weapons both deadly and unique. Tools of the trade. The cabinet had been the first thing his eyes had gone to when he’d entered the room, for he knew it would tell the tale. A man didn’t carry a dozen weapons into the woods with him if all he meant to do was blow out his own brains. Clearly it was destruction of some kind Sinjon had in mind when he’d done his flit, but not self-destruction.

He heard the drawer slide open once more. “There’s this,” Tess said, apparently just as eager as he was to put their recent confrontation behind them. “The Gypsy hasn’t been active in England for several years, not since… since René. Why would he have kept this?”

Jack returned to the desk to pick up the calling card Tess had placed there.

“Cheap theatrics,” he said coldly, looking at the card made of rich black stock and embossed with a golden eye with a bloodred pupil at its center. He passed it back to Tess. “I never agreed with Sinjon on that.”

“Papa says the government believes the man is Romany, and the eye symbol is that of the querret, the seeker. That’s why he was given that name. The seeker. As if he follows some higher purpose in what he does.”

Jack shook his head. As the son of an actress, he believed he could recognize a flair for the melodramatic when he saw one. “He seeks lining his pockets, and always has. Working for the French, working for anyone who will pay him, and filling the rest of his time working for himself. Whoever he is or once was, now he’s a thief and a murderer, and leaving these cards behind is his way of tipping his cap at those bent on stopping him. He’s an actor playing a part, and we who pursue him are his audience. Each time he places that card on another body, on the cushion where some treasure had been resting moments earlier, he’s taking his bow. We’d actually begun to believe him dead. But we found one of these cards a month or more ago, left behind after several very good pieces were removed from the Royal British Museum.”

Tess looked at him for long moments. “So he’s back. And you’re hunting him, aren’t you? Because of René. Because… because of everything.” Then her eyes went wide. “You… you don’t think…?”

“I don’t know, Tess. He’d have to be mad to try to find him on his own. Has he spoken of the Gypsy often?”

She sat down on the chair behind her, her long fingers tightly clasping and unclasping around the ends of the chair arms. She was nervous, a highly strung filly ready to bolt at any moment. Why? She should be searching the room, eager to see what was there. Was it him? Was it that difficult to be in the same room with him?

“Never. Not since René died. It was all over then, just as you said. The war, the assignments, the reason for the fight. Mama was still dead, and all the revenges he’d exacted for twenty years hadn’t changed that. He was given a small pension and told his services were no longer required. He still taught me things, although obviously he never trusted me, not if I wasn’t allowed to see this room.” She looked up at him. “But you know that. He’s never been quite the same since René died. Since you left. Suddenly old, and defeated.”

“I had no reason to stay, you’d made that plain enough. And it’s clear nothing’s changed there, either.”

“Not for you, certainly. You’re still working for the Crown, still doing their bidding. Which brings us back to why you’re here. You’ve as good as said Papa summoned you by disappearing. I think I know what the Crown would ask you to do once you found him. But what does Papa want from you?”

“When I find him, I’ll be sure to ask,” Jack said shortly, suddenly needing to be out of this room, out in the fresh air, away from Tess and her incisive questions.

“I won’t help you, you know. I’m not a fool. I know I can’t stop you. But I won’t help you.” She got to her feet. “In other words, Jack—for us, it ends here. I’ve seen your party trick with the cabinet and I thank you for it. But now I’m telling you to leave. You’re not welcome beneath this roof.”

He looked at her as she stood there. Magnificent. Frightened, but hiding it so well, the way she’d always done. He wanted her so badly he ached with it.

When she made to sweep past him, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her around, chest to chest with him in the flickering candlelight, her wrist still in his possession, their bent arms pressed between them. She raised her chin, stared at him in defiance, didn’t flinch, didn’t fight him, didn’t blink.

He needed her to blink.

“I know about this room, Tess. If you think there’s only one way in here, you’re not as intelligent as I gave you credit for being. I know every secret in this house, which clearly you don’t. If I want to be here, I’ll be here, with or without your permission. I will go where I want, when I want. Take what I want.”

He captured her mouth, grinding her tight against him by cupping the back of her head, holding her still as he plunged his tongue between her lips, pressed his leg between her thighs. Four years of longing, of needing, of pent-up frustration combined in that kiss, stripped him of his hard-won ability to mask his every emotion.

Her free hand snaked up his arm to his shoulder, clasping it firmly, lovingly, her fingertips lightly pressing against him. For a moment, she gave. For that moment, she let him in. For a moment, they were fire again.