Much Ado About Rogues

And then the moment was over. She dug her fingers into him, pushing down hard on his shoulder with her hand as her knee came up swiftly, taking him and his arousal unawares. His knees buckled, his hold on her relaxed, and she was gone, leaving him to bend over where he stood, his hands on his thighs, forcing himself not to black out, or throw up.

“I taught her that,” Black Jack Blackthorn managed at last, speaking to the uncaring stone walls. And then, unbelievably, he smiled. “God, was I even alive these past four years?”

He looked at the far wall and then walked toward it, his hand out to push on one certain stone. It was time he saw what else Sinjon might be up to, what else might be missing.

CHAPTER TWO

TESS DIDN’T GO where she most longed to go, because Jack might follow her. She couldn’t risk that. Not that she was safe anywhere.

He’d said there was more than one way into her father’s secret room. But even if she managed to find the other entrance somewhere in the cellars or a third on the other side of the manor walls and block them, it would do her no good.

Jack was right. He knew the house better than she did, she who had grown up here. He knew her father better than she did.

The way he’d kissed her, perhaps he even knew her better than she did. Because she’d been a heartbeat away from surrender, from tearing at his clothes, biting him, urging him to press her down on the desktop as she wrapped her legs high around his hips, let him fill up all the empty places inside her as she took, and took, and took…

She heard Jack’s boot heels on the stone steps and quickly exited the study for the hallway, but only to press her back against the outside wall, taking herself out of sight but not earshot. If he was going to search the room now, she couldn’t stop him. But that didn’t mean she’d go off to tend to her knitting, or whatever it was she might be doing if she’d been born in a different time, to different parents, had grown to womanhood in a different, less dangerous world.

But, although Jack didn’t immediately exit the study, she heard nothing during the long minutes she stood guard. If he was searching the room, he was doing it with a stealth she could admire, if not at this moment.

Maddening! What was he doing in there? Were there more secret places her father had hidden from her? She wanted to peer around the doorjamb and see what Jack was up to. Desperately. But that would be as good as admitting her father hadn’t trusted her with his closest-held secrets, and that she needed Jack’s help. Damn him. Damn both of them.

“Boo!”

Tess nearly jumped out of her skin as Jack’s head and shoulders appeared around the doorjamb. “You’re not amusing,” she managed, trying to catch her breath.

“And you shouldn’t wear that lovely scent if you’re attempting to stay hidden,” he told her, walking into the hallway. “See that a room is made ready for me. My usual chamber… unless you want me to share yours? I’m fairly certain I could be talked round to that, if you ask prettily.”

“Go to blazes, you bastard,” she called out to his departing back, deliberately inflicting hurt where she knew it would cause the most pain.

His confident stride didn’t falter, and then he was gone.

Tess walked back into her father’s study and collapsed into his desk chair, dropping her head to her hands.

What was she going to do? She’d tried for a week—a full week!—to discover a single clue to her father’s whereabouts, cudgeled her brain attempting to remember conversations she’d had with him, hoping to recall something he’d said that might lead her to understand why he had gone, where he had gone and what he planned to do when he got there.

And nothing. If it hadn’t been that some of his clothing was missing from his clothespress, she could have thought he’d walked out into the trees and become lost, or was lying somewhere with a broken ankle, or worse. He’d been taking more and more long walks as of late, disappearing for entire afternoons. As it was, she’d spent half a day telling herself he had gone into the village and lost track of time, and half the night searching the nearby countryside before it had occurred to her that he’d simply gone. Left. Without a word to her. And without leaving behind enough of the ready to last them until the end of the quarter and the receipt of his pension.

He knew I’d come.

Jack was right. Her father had to know he was still being watched, the Crown never quite trusting the Frenchman, even though he had proven invaluable to them time and time again. He had to know that if he took a flit, the Crown would soon know of it. He had to know that the obvious choice to be assigned the job of finding their lost mercenary would be the man who knew him best.

But to expose her like this? How could her father do something so cruel? He knew how she felt about Jack, about everything else. Didn’t he, too, put most of the blame for René’s death at Jack’s door?

“Papa trained him. He knows what Jack can do. He needs him for something, but he’s too proud to ask for help. That has to be it. He’s trusting Jack to find him and then help him. What does it matter about his own flesh and blood, when the mission is all? At the end of the day, we’re all his pawns, and always have been. Nobody has mattered to Papa, not really, not since Mama. When will I ever accept that?” Tess exploded as she opened and slammed shut desk drawers for at least the tenth time, somehow still hoping she would see something she had missed in the last nine searches.

Instead, in the center drawer, she encountered an empty space where she’d seen something every other time she’d searched. She pushed back the chair, looked down at the floor, in case her last angry foray into the drawers had ended with her throwing something down… but no, there was nothing there.

She looked at the empty space again. What was it? What was missing? She squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to breathe slowly, concentrate. In her mind’s eye she saw the contents of the drawer. The daily receipts book. A small knife to trim pens. Sealing wax. The funeral ring made up after René’s death, the one Papa couldn’t wear these past months because his fingers were becoming increasingly crippled by old age and hard use.

The newspaper. That was it, a folded copy of the London Times. It was gone. Why would Jack have taken it, a newspaper more than a month out of date?

A month?

I last saw one of these cards a month or more ago, left behind after several very good pieces were removed from the Royal British Museum.

That was it. That had to be it! The newspaper had carried a report of the theft. She hadn’t read the article. The Gypsy had been responsible for the theft? Yes, that’s what Jack had said. He must have regretted saying it, and wanted any reminder of his slip removed before she could see the newspaper and remember.

His mistake. She had made a shambles of most of the room’s contents during this last search, causing him to believe she was sloppy and inept. The amateur he insisted upon seeing her as, if only to ease his conscience. But, even in her ever-increasing frustration, she’d been very careful to record everything in her memory, what it was, where it was, as she’d been trained to do.

Had a black calling card with the imprint of a golden eye with a red center been mentioned in the article? It must have been; otherwise, why would her father have saved it?

She heard footsteps and quickly closed the drawer.

“Lady Thessaly? You are requested upstairs.”

Tess smiled at her old nurse, easily falling into French along with her, as the woman may have reluctantly learned enough English in two decades of living on this damp island to get along, but she thought the language vile and “without music,” and avoided it whenever she could. “Yes, thank you, Emilie, I imagine I am.”

“But no more with the breeches the marquis so foolishly allows when you go riding on that devil’s spawn you favor. Master Jack has no need of such a show of immodesty.”

“It’s far too late for any modesty when it comes to Master Jack, Emilie,” Tess pointed out as she got to her feet, suddenly feeling as old as time, decades beyond her five and twenty years. “If you could have Arnette order up the tub for an hour from now and lay out my white watered silk gown, as I do believe Master Jack will be joining me for dinner.”

“The white, my lady? You haven’t worn that one in years. It will need to be freshened.” Emilie’s careworn face assembled itself into a knowing smile. “Ah, now I remember. As do you, as will he. It will be done as you say.”

“Yes, thank you, Emilie.” Tess sat back down after the servant left, the memory of the last time she’d worn that gown washing over her.

Look at you. So beautiful. Light to my dark, blessed day to my lonely night. I love you, Tess. God help me, I love you. Let me love you…

Tess closed her eyes, hugging her arms close about her. She could feel Jack’s hot, hungry gaze reaching out to her across the empty years, began to blossom again at the memory of his touch as he’d instigated increasingly bold forays that had sent flames of awakening desire licking along her every nerve. She could still savor the terror and thrill inside her as the white silk gown had whispered down her body to puddle at her feet before he’d lifted her, carried her to the bed, joined her on the cool satin coverlet.

What had followed had been an initiation of the senses, a tutorial of such precise, intimate detail that there could no longer be any question as to why God had formed her the way she was, Jack how he was, and for what purpose they’d been brought together.

He’d taught her all her own secrets, and then encouraged her to explore his. They’d touched, tasted. He’d taken her to the brink, again and again, with his mouth, with his clever hands probing her, taking her hand and introducing her to the pleasures of her body, teaching her what she liked so she could tell him, so he could follow her movements with his own.

Together, they discovered just the right rhythms to turn her limbs to water, to coax soft whispers and whimpers from her throat, to make her so ready for him she never noticed the pain that came and went in an instant, to be replaced with a fullness that had her grinding her hips against him, begging him to finish it, to let her fly free of this glorious torment.

She put a hand to her breast now, felt her rapid heartbeat. Allowed her other hand to drift down to the juncture of her thighs, to press her fingers against the ache growing there, the longing that threatened to destroy her. Release, that sweet, sweet explosion. She needed it, craved it, knew how to find temporary respite in the dark of a lonely night when the memories and the hunger became too much. But never how to truly satisfy it. Not across the long years, not now. Only Jack could do that.

But she needed more than that temporary release; she needed parts of Jack he’d never given her, and never would. She needed to be first to somebody. Before Crown, before duty, before revenge or hate or the thrill of the fight. She needed a man who wouldn’t walk away, even when she ordered him to go.

So not again, never again. They’d destroyed each other once, and once had been more than enough. She was a woman now, with responsibilities and no room in her life for what might have been. She knew that when it came to Jack she had few weapons in her arsenal. But that gown should serve her as well as any suit of armor. Jack would remember, as she remembered, and he wasn’t the sort to knowingly make the same mistake twice.

Disgusted with her temporary weakness, she stood up and quit the room. She had much to arrange before Jack returned.

JACK SETTLED INTO the chair in the private room of the Castle Inn, nodding his greetings to Will and Dickie as the latter filled a glass with wine from a decanter and pushed it across the tabletop to him.

“Learn anything today?” Will asked, using the point of his dagger to skewer a small bit of cheese and pop it into his mouth.

“Yes. There are times your table manners can be execrable.” Jack took a sip of wine. He wanted first to hear what they’d managed to unearth while he was at the manor house. “Dickie?”