Much Ado About Rogues (25 page)

“Oh, don’t worry about Cyril, or standing on ceremony at all, for that matter. We’re rather an odd household. Actually, we’re an exceptionally odd household.”

When Tess only nodded, Chelsea rolled her eyes. “What? Is something wrong?” she asked, following the other woman out of the nursery.

“Nothing,” Chelsea said, heading down the stairs. “I was hoping for a good gossip, I suppose, but if you’re going to be so unfailingly polite as to ignore my bald hints, I suppose I’ll have to introduce Regina to the mix. She could get the Sphinx to talking, I swear it.” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned to Tess. “Aren’t you in the least curious? About Adelaide, I mean. About, well, about all of it? And Lord knows we’re curious about you and Jack. Jack? With a son? We didn’t even know for certain that he was
human!
Regina and I have decided you must be the bravest woman in the world. Oh, or hopelessly deranged, of course. There’s always that.”

Tess laughed as she continued to follow Chelsea through the wide corridors that had to be the private living quarters of the huge mansion. “Jack said I’d like you,” she said as they walked into a curtained antechamber that opened into an enormous bedchamber currently peopled by a dark-haired young woman who was just then leaning over what appeared to be a priceless china bowl, very definitely being sick to her stomach.

Chelsea immediately ran to her side, putting a hand to her back. “It’s all right, Regina. But I did warn you, didn’t I? It doesn’t matter how much you enjoy kippers, not that I can understand how anyone would. But for now at least, you really should confine yourself to things that have a better chance of remaining where you put them when you ate them.”

The woman named Regina, by the process of elimination, Puck’s wife, said something Tess couldn’t quite hear, and Chelsea laughed.

“Oh, you will eat again, I promise. Just not for a few weeks. Look at me, for pity’s sake. I can barely
stop
eating now, and you know that wasn’t the case last month, not by a long chalk. Tess? Tess, tell her—it does get better, doesn’t it?”

Tess watched as Regina Blackthorn set down the bowl and pushed back her dark hair that had been hanging in her face, and then turned to look at this clearly unexpected witness to her bout of nausea.

“I once ate an entire roasted chicken,” Tess admitted. “In a single sitting. An
entire
chicken. With plum sauce. It was…heavenly.”

Regina was already at the basin, pouring water she then splashed on her face and hands. “That’s very encouraging, if slightly alarming. Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Now, if you think you could manage a dish of tea, which I highly recommend at times like these, perhaps we can all sit here and get to know each other, and talk about Jack because I really adore talking about Jack, and then talk about Adelaide because I think I really need to know more than Jack has told me about his mother, and then talk about anything else Chelsea here can think of that she’d like to gossip about?”

The two young wives exchanged grins.

“Puck told me I’d like you,” Regina said as Chelsea danced off to summon a maid to bring the tea tray. “We already did, Chelsea and I, because you’ve made Adelaide a grandmother before either of us had to tell her that we’re also making her a grandmother.” She sobered. “She’s not taking it well.”

“Yes, I already gathered that,” Tess said as they adjourned to a lovely alcove set with striped slipper chairs and a view of a large ornamental pond. “Chelsea informed me that she’s hiding in her cottage.”

“Hiding? Oh, never say hiding. She has
retired
to the cottage, where she is replenishing her artistic soul even as she prepares for another hugely successful tour with her sterling band of traveling players. She leaves in two days, and good riddance. Poor Cyril. He’s caught between wishing her gone and begging her to stay. It’s…difficult to watch.”

“Here, here, Regina, you’re starting without me!” Chelsea remonstrated as she joined them. She sat herself down and grinned at Tess. “I just now saw Jack in the hallway, on his way up to the nursery, and told him we ladies are having ourselves a lovely coze before dinner, the three of us getting to know each other better. He looked positively terrified. Isn’t that nice?”

Tess settled more comfortably into her own chair, and even dared to slip off her shoes and tuck her legs up under her. She’d been worried about meeting these women, worried about so many things connected with Blackthorn, but most worried about these women. She’d never really had friends, only her brother for company, and these past four years she’d been terribly isolated at the manor house.

She hadn’t known what to expect, or how she would be expected to comport herself—after all, she was Jack’s mistress, really, and the unmarried mother of his son. But here she was, within an hour of her arrival, swept up into the very real welcome offered her, and wondering why on earth she’d ever been apprehensive.

“Jack, terrified? Oh, yes,” Tess said as a maid entered the chamber, nearly staggering under the weight of a heavily laden tea tray, “I’d have to say I consider that to be very nice, indeed.”

* * *

“H
ELLO
,
Mother.”

Jack had been standing under cover of the trees, watching as Adelaide posed in the gardens of her thatch-roofed
cottage,
which was the ridiculous name she had given to the equally ridiculous structure she’d coerced Cyril into having built for her on the estate grounds. It was a country cottage the way the Serpentine in Hyde Park was a lake—too perfect to be natural, real. It was more like somebody’s ideal of what a cottage should be, but not a real cottage.

Rather as if it had been built for the stage.

Even as Adelaide had been built to trod that stage.

She was quite petite, nicely curved, but with bones so slender they could be bird bones, filled with air, as she was filled with air—light, fragile, but with enormous cornflower-blue eyes that seemed to fill her face.

She didn’t walk. She floated. She didn’t merely speak. Her voice sang a sweet song each time she deigned to open her rosebud mouth. Her skin was like cream, her smile brought out the sun, her laugh could make the angels weep in envy.

Jack had once thought her the most beautiful creature in the world. Now? Now he believed she was a creature. A quite strange, complicated creature, perfect in so many ways, save for the absence of a heart.

Adelaide didn’t garden at the cottage. She would never dirty her hands or exert herself in any way. What she did was
pose
in the gardens cared for by someone else. She would carry a basket while someone else cut the blooms for her. She would sometimes be seen with a shepherdess’s crook adorned with a large yellow bow, and watch as somebody else prodded at a lamb to make it scamper for her, as she supposed lambs should do. She would call her children to her, shower them with kisses, hug them to her scented bosom, proclaim her great love for them, and then shoo them away if they dared to actually
act
like healthy young boys.

All the world’s a stage…

While he’d stood there, watching her, she’d untied her enormous straw sunbonnet and shook out her heavy, nearly waist-length blond hair. It had always been so blond it was nearly white, but now it seemed more white than blond. She would be wise not to go out with her head uncovered on a bright day, because the sunlight revealed the passage of time as it was marked on her face.

Still, she looked much as she’d done the last time Jack had seen her, a long decade ago.

She’d tilted her head to one side and begun combing through her hair with her fingers, smoothing it away from her heart-shaped face, perhaps trying to lighten it with the sun. She looked a portrait, one some artist would itch to capture on canvas.

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels all women in the magic of her locks, and when she twines them round a young man’s neck she will not ever set him free again.

Jack twisted the ring on his index finger, wondering yet again why he still wore it. He didn’t need it to remember who he was, what he was. She’d made that abundantly clear to him that last night, when she’d told him about his father. The highwayman who had been hanged years earlier. The Gypsy, who he’d last seen riding away from the manor house only a few short days ago.

“Jack!” Adelaide exclaimed now, turning on the intricately filigreed cast-iron bench, her hands already busy twisting her hair and securing it atop her head with a single long pin. “I see you’ve successfully banished any shreds of common decency since last we met. I believe I’d made it clear, dearest. You don’t belong here. You demean yourself by crawling back to Cyril, who is too much the gentleman to turn you away. And I had thought you cared for him. Obviously you’ve grown hard over the years.”

Jack opened the white picket gate and stepped into the garden, and then closed it behind him. “I’m my father’s son,” he said as he approached and then sat down beside her. “Thanks to you, I’ve grown into the role you assigned me. In fact, I’m damn lucky to be alive. It was a close-run thing for a few years, you know, as I endeavored to follow in my sire’s footsteps.”

Adelaide’s eyes grew wide. “Never say you went for a highwayman! Oh, Jack, that wasn’t my intention. Not at all! But you agreed you didn’t belong here. You were always so vibrant, so hot for living! Not like that plodding,
responsible
Beau, or the so-silly Puck. You were meant for
adventure,
Jack! I couldn’t bear to watch you
suffocate
here, not even a son of the house. You needed to fly, Jack, fly free!”

“I needed to be gone, so as not to be a constant reminder of your betrayal of a good if misguided man who had finally begun seeing you for what you are. I knew that then, I know that now. Can’t we at least be honest with each other, Mother?”

His head snapped to the left as her palm made sharp contact with his cheek.

“How dare you! You insolent cur! You dare to speak to me that way? I. Am. Your
mother!
”

“No. You’re a bloody whore, Adelaide, and your time has just run out. When all you have are your looks, it’s inevitable.” He stood up, glared down at her, wondering when he’d feel the outrage; he should be feeling the outrage. “No more sulking like some ignorant child. You will be at table, tonight. You will meet Tess, and you will be civil. To her. To me. And then, tomorrow, I want you gone.”

“You dare to tell me to leave?”

“Would you rather I told Cyril who I just saw?” Jack leaned down to speak next to her ear. “I saw him, Adelaide. I saw Andreas. I saw my father.”

“No! No, that’s impossible! You’re wrong, Jack. Listen to me!” She grabbed at his shoulders, her fingertips digging into him through his shirt. “He’s dead. He was hanged. He’s dead!”

“Oh, Mother, that was entirely the wrong answer. You should have looked at me blankly, in all your most lovely confusion. Andreas? Who is this Andreas you speak of? I do not know the name.”

“Well, yes, of course. I didn’t realize you had said a name. You…you took me by surprise. Your vehemence. You frightened me. I…I…”

Jack put his hands over hers and rather roughly removed them from his shoulders. “No wonder you never trod the boards within ten miles of Covent Garden, Adelaide. You’re a terrible actress. Almost embarrassingly so. I suppose you must be very…inventive in bed. Not that Cyril seems to care about that anymore, does he, and Andreas a long time before that?”

“You’re
filth,
” she ground out, looking truly ugly, as if her inside had just for that moment become her outside.

“And you’ve outstayed your welcome. By about ten years, as I’ve heard the thing. Dinner tonight, Adelaide, and you will be on your best behavior. You can politely retire to your cottage before the tea tray is brought, as you’ll want to pack before departing tomorrow morning. Everyone will believe you’ve simply gone back with your acting troupe. But we’ll know better, you and I. You will never return here again. You’re no longer welcome. Yet, remarkably, and contrary to everything you always wanted me to believe,
I am.
”

“I should have drowned you when I saw you were his,” she said as Jack turned his back. “Black bastard.”

Jack kept on walking, wondering when she’d notice that he’d left the onyx ring on the bench beside her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
ESS
STOOD
IN
front of the pier glass, wishing her wardrobe were more extensive. Wishing her hair could be tamed, made sleek and sophisticated, or whatever it was that it clearly wasn’t, for only five minutes after the maid had finished with it, several tendrils had worked their way out of their pins. Wishing she wasn’t so tall. Wishing she had more curves, or at least more bosom.

Regina had a lovely bosom.

Chelsea had the most engaging smile.

All Tess had, she decided, was a fairly attractive nose.

Possibly.

What would the marquess think of her? Indeed, what would she think of the marquess? What could she say to him? How would Jack introduce her?
Your lordship, may I present to you the mother of my child?

She rolled her eyes. No, Jack wouldn’t do that, would he? Not that it wasn’t obvious. After all, Jacques was upstairs in the nursery, wasn’t he? Jacques spoke of the man as his grandfather, for pity’s sake. What sort of man was the marquess? He acknowledged his bastards, and his bastard’s bastard.

It was just as Regina had said. This was a very odd household, indeed.

The afternoon had been wonderful, thanks to Chelsea and Regina. By turns hilariously funny and then incredibly sad, their conversation had run the gamut, from their own stories—which were also at times harrowing, at times delicious—and then on to what they knew of the complicated matter of the marquess’s late wife, Abigail, and her sister, Adelaide.

Beau and Chelsea had their own estate not ten miles from Blackthorn, given to them by the marquess, just as he had deeded another unentailed estate to Puck, who was supposedly now dedicated to learning all about something he called animal husbandry. They were only here at Blackthorn because Jack had promised to meet with the marquess, a request the man had first made over a year ago, shortly before his wife died.

Her new friends were certain that Jack, too, would soon be a landowner, courtesy of his “father.” But Tess doubted that. Jack was much too proud, and much too stubborn, to accept anything from the man who was not his father. He’d rather sleep beneath the hedgerows.

She’d like to think he’d unbend enough to allow the man to ease his conscience, or whatever it was the marquess felt the need to do, remembering that he now had a son to care for. But she didn’t have much faith in that. She could only hope he’d somehow manage to be polite as he declined.

And then there was his mother. Nothing Chelsea or Regina had told her had served to make her hold Adelaide in less than complete contempt. She could only hope she’d somehow manage to be polite when she finally saw the woman.

No, Tess was not looking forward to going down to dinner.

There was a knock at the door leading to the dressing room connected to the chamber, and she turned about in time to see Jack enter, dressed in evening clothes. He looked so handsome, so very much the gentleman. Or he would, if he could have somehow managed to take the scowl from his face.

“Loins sufficiently girded?” he asked as he approached.

“Yours or mine?” she returned, nervously patting at her hair. “At least you’re presentable. I look terrible.”

“You do? Where?” He walked completely around her, and then put his hands on her shoulders and looked deeply into her face. “No. I don’t see it. You’re beautiful. And much too good for me, clearly. I always want to remove the pins from your hair, and then bury my face in its warmth. Why is that, do you suppose?”

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the mirror. “It looks as if you’ve already done that,” she complained morosely. “My gown is three years old, and entirely the wrong color. It was supposed to match my eyes, but it doesn’t, not at all.” She raised a hand to her bare neck. “A king’s ransom in ancient jewelry moldered in the cellars for years, and I haven’t so much as a simple string of pearls. Small pearls.”

“There is this,” Jack said, taking her locket from his pocket.

“My locket! I thought I’d lost it. Where did you find it?”

He motioned for her to turn around as he lowered the chain over her head and fastened the clasp. “In the dirt in front of the buttery. The chain broke, no thanks to Andreas and his rough handling of you that night. I had the chain replaced while we were in London.”

Her bottom lip trembled as she clasped the locket tightly in her hand and then let it go, looking at the way the longer chain caused it to hang just below the neckline of her gown. “Did…did you open it?”

“I did. Your mother was a beautiful woman. René favored her.”

She lifted the locket to her mouth and kissed it. “I can’t tell you what it means to me, to have this back. Your first gift to me, and now you’ve given it to me again. Thank you, Jack.”

He ran his fingertip down her cheek, and her stomach seemed to do a small flip inside her. “Consider it your shield as you go into battle. That is how you feel, isn’t it?”

She lowered her eyes. “It’s that obvious?”

“As I’ve never heard you worry about your gown or your looks, yes, it is. They none of them bite, you know. Well, perhaps my mother, and we’d have to apply to Cyril to be really sure.”

“Jack!”

Tess slapped at his chest to protest his silliness, and he gathered her close, tipping up her chin. “She leaves here tomorrow, on my order, and she won’t be coming back.”

“On
your
order? Why would she do that? Good God, Jack, what did you do? How much havoc can you wreak in a month, if you can do this much in one short afternoon? Does the marquess know?”

“No, and that was the point. I hinted that I would tell Cyril about Andreas unless she left. It was calling her bluff, if we’d been playing at cards, I’ll admit that. I was chancing that she’d told him about her lover, but then begged his forgiveness, telling him Andreas was dead, for one. I doubt Cyril would continue to finance her damn acting troupe if he found out she’d lied to him yet again. And it worked.”

“Clever. You look fairly smug. I don’t think I like that.”

“Then you’ll probably like this even less. I’m going to follow her when she leaves. I’m convinced she’ll be heading straight to Andreas to find out what happened. My mother is clever in her way, but no one has ever accused her of being overly intelligent. Now, before you tell me all the reasons why I shouldn’t do this, let me remind you yet again that the Gypsy killed René. He’s not my father. If I ever had a father, it’s that man waiting for us downstairs, who I’ve treated very badly, I’m afraid. Andreas is nothing to me other than a criminal soon to be brought to the bar, and the king’s justice. I can’t just walk away, Tess. I can’t. Some scores have to be settled, and this is one of them.”

She fussed with his neck cloth, proprietarily, protectively, ridiculously protectively, as if she had any control over his personal safety. “I know. Sometimes we have to settle the past before…before there can be a future. I think I’ve always known that, even as I was stupidly trying to pretend we could just…forget.”

“There’s another reason, a selfish one. If I can—
when
I can hand over the Gypsy, Liverpool will know a chapter has at last been closed. Sinjon, gone. The Gypsy, hanging for his crimes. The war’s over, and he has plenty of minions for his purposes now, he doesn’t need me anymore. I can resign from his service, Tess, hoping I won’t have to watch my own back. Will had me half-convinced we can walk away, but Henry never believed it. Even presenting Liverpool with the Gypsy might not do it. It would still probably be best if I were simply to disappear.”

She pushed away from him. “And is that also what you plan to do when this is over? Disappear?”

“I won’t know that until I’ve spoken with Liverpool. If he assures me my services were highly valued and thanks me for my service, wishes me success in my future endeavors?”

“Then you’ll stay?”

Jack grinned. “Hell, no. I’ll run like a rabbit, knowing he’d just handed me a bag of moonshine.” But then he sobered. “I’ve lived by my wits for a lot of years, Tess. But it’s no life for a woman, a child. You understand that, don’t you? I can’t ask that of either of you. I—”

“Yes, yes, I heard you. You can’t,” she said, cutting him off. “But some could. Just not you. You still don’t understand, do you, Jack? That you’re
worth
the trouble you cause? Because you do cause trouble, you know. You’re arrogant, and prideful, and stubborn, all the while thinking you’re worthless because your father is a thief and a murderer and probably a traitor, and your mother is—what is your mother, Jack? Let’s go find out, shall we?”

“Oh, Christ. Tess, wait a minute, damn it. You don’t understand. We have to talk.”

“No,” she said, snatching up her shawl, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. “Let’s not. Oh, and when you follow her tomorrow, when you confront the Gypsy? Don’t think you’re going alone. I’m fighting for my future, too, and our son’s—with or without you.”

“You’re the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

“At least I’ve got a good reason—I have to deal with
you.
”

She all but ran for the staircase, Jack following behind her, where she was lucky enough to encounter the third Blackthorn son, Beau, who bowed and introduced himself, and then offered his arm as they descended the staircase, only looking back at Jack a single time, but then putting his hand on hers and giving it a reassuring pat, as if to say,
Don’t worry, we’re used to his black moods. I’ll protect you from the ogre.

Caught between anger and despair—with anger definitely winning—Tess forgot to be nervous as she was presented to the marquess, who excused himself for not rising when she entered the room, pointing to the walking stick propped next to him.

He was quite a handsome man, although something, some pain either physical or otherwise, had etched deep vertical lines on either side of his mouth. His hair was white but she could imagine it as blond as that of his two sons, who very much resembled him. Jack was so unlike the three of them that only a fool would believe him to be the man’s offspring. She wondered if a young, confused Jack had ever spent time anxiously peering into a mirror, straining to find some resemblance to the man he’d called
Papa.
It was strange; even when she wanted to strangle Jack, her heart broke for him.

She curtsied as she offered her hand and the marquess bent his head ever so slightly as he took it, squeezed her fingers. “Your son is an angel, my dear. Thank you so much for entrusting him to my care, for however long as you desire. It is my delight and pleasure. Jack? Have you seen your mother? I’m certain she’s anxious to meet this lovely young woman.”

“We spoke at the cottage this afternoon, yes,” Jack said, presenting Tess with a glass of wine, and indicating that she should sit down next to the marquess. “
I’m
certain she’ll be with us this evening.”

Did anyone else recognize Jack’s answer for what it truly was? His tone smooth, his words innocuous enough, but with so much more there for anyone who dared to listen closely.

If the marquess heard anything more than the words, he gave no indication, instead apparently continuing a conversation already begun with Puck, one that apparently centered on someone named Jethro Tull and his publication concerning horse-hoeing husbandry, which seemed to concentrate on the benefits of some new principles of vegetation and tillage.

“Yes,” Puck said, winking at Tess after the marquess had made his point, “but you will admit it has been more than a century since the man’s horse-drawn seed drill—and, yes, his horse-drawn hoe. So why isn’t it time for improvement, that’s what I say. I can envision a steam-powered engine at work in the fields, much like those James Watt is so famous for, including this idea I’ve had concerning his separate condenser, which is a truly—”

“Which is a subject more truly stultifying than I can tell you, husband,” Regina Blackthorn said as she took him by the hand. “Come along, Farmer Puck, and give Chelsea your opinion on the subject of grosgrain versus satin for the new ribbons she’s contemplating for her second-best bonnet. You do remember when such things interested you, don’t you? Over and above the proper spreading of manure, I mean.”

Puck hung back to say to Tess, “She exaggerates. I was never all that interested in bonnet ribbons. I could, however, wax poetic over the cut of a new waistcoat for hours, and still could, actually. I’m that ashamed, really.”

Tess laughed, as she was sure she was supposed to do, but then, as if her mind was somehow tied to Jack’s—which it might well be, she thought almost sadly—she found herself looking in his direction just as he seemed to draw himself up straighter, as if anticipating a physical blow.

“And will you just look at this scene of domestic bliss! All my loved ones, together again. Oh, my heart simply
swells
at the sight!”

Tess turned to look at the author of this nonsense, delivered in a marvelously throaty voice, as if emoting for spectators in some gallery.

Adelaide, for who else could this petite goddess be, posed just inside the doorway, one small hand held up just inches below her perfect chin, her fingers spread, her palm facing her audience—for what else could they be but her audience. Her head was tipped just so, her magnificent white-blond hair done up in intricate curls and threaded through with what could very possibly be diamonds.