Much Ado About Rogues (26 page)

Her gown was the exact shade of blue midnight and cut perilously low, one of the cap sleeves having slipped from her creamy white shoulder, whether by accident or design only another woman would know.

By design, definitely,
Tess decided, feeling horribly dowdy and plain.

When it was obvious that all eyes were now on her, Adelaide unfurled the lace, ivory-sticked fan that had been dangling from her wrist and fluttered it beneath that same perfect chin, setting the fairy-light wispy curls that artfully escaped her coiffure dancing in the slight breeze.

She and her scent drifted into the room as her sons and the marquess all got to their feet, Puck hastening to bow over her hand and effusively complimenting her on her
practiced
entry. In French. Which, clearly, his mother did not understand. Otherwise, she would have slapped his face rather than simper like a young girl and tip up her cheek for his kiss.

She simpered quite well, Tess would have to hand the woman that, even as she decided, without need of further evidence, that she did not like the woman. Not one little bit.

Adelaide spied Cyril and exclaimed fretfully as she rushed to him, urging him to please seat himself and then dropping gracefully at his feet, and laying her cheek against his knees. “Cyril, my sweetest, dearest goose. How many times must I urge you not to exert yourself simply because I have entered the room? Is your leg paining you again tonight? You should have had that horse shot for throwing you that way.” And then she looked up, her huge eyes deliberately innocent, blinked in supposed surprise, and said, “Well, hello. I didn’t even notice, my goodness, that gown positively
blends
with the couch, doesn’t it? You must be Tess, yes? Aren’t you…sweet.”

“Adelaide,” the marquess warned quietly.

“Cyril?” she singsonged back to him, getting to her feet. “My stars, what have I said? Surely I haven’t said anything. My dear? You took no offense, surely?” She blinked furiously, as if holding back tears. “I would never,
never
seek to offend. I simply speak what I think, before I can think twice. Isn’t that what you always say, Cyril, darling? And her gown
is
much the same shade as the couch, you must admit it. Not that it isn’t a very lovely couch.”

“Wine, Mother?” Jack said, all but shoving the glass into the woman’s face.

Adelaide’s smile stayed where it was, actually seemed to freeze in place as she took the glass in self-defense. “Ah, and there he is, my dashing rogue. Thank you, Jack. You’ve developed manners. I’d always held out hope, you know.”

“Jack tells me he stopped by the cottage this afternoon,” the marquess said as mother and son exchanged and held looks.

Adelaide’s creamy complexion seemed to go unhealthily pale. “Yes, he did stop by. How it warmed this mother’s heart to see the prodigal again.” She lifted her hand and pinched his chin. “But I forgive you for deserting us so cruelly. You were always a difficult child.”

“And there’s the dinner gong,” Beau said just a little too brightly, helping his wife to her feet. “We slaughtered a fine fat pig for you, Jack, as there were no fatted calves. Tess, I believe my father would reserve the honor to escort you to the dining room. Jack, you’ll take care of Mother?”

“I believe I can do that, yes,” Jack said, he and his mother still staring at each other. He offered her his arm. “Our first and last dinner together in ten long years. Are you still so set on leaving tomorrow, Mother?”

“I am, sadly,” she said as Tess waited for the marquess to struggle to his feet, leaving heavily on the cane. “I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.” She spoke over her shoulder to the marquess as the small parade headed for the dining room. “I know I promised to stay for a few more days, darling, and so happy to be here to welcome Jack home, just as you asked. But he convinced me that Stoke-on-Trent is much too distant to expect to make the journey in a single day, and we do perform there on Friday afternoon. I anticipate great success, thanks to the new costumes you so generously provided. We’re performing the bard’s
Much Ado About Nothing.
Oh, how coincidental, Jack. You were named for Don John, you know.”

Don John. The bastard. Tess’s spine went rigid. Really, the woman was a nasty piece of work.

“That’s quite all right, Adelaide. I understand,” the marquess said, and then he smiled at Tess. “Adelaide much favors Shakespeare’s plays, you see. Indeed, Adelaide, you perform only the bard’s works, don’t you?”

“We are Shakespearean players, darling,” Adelaide snapped rather harshly. But then she softened. “There is no one else who can hold a candle to him.”

“Really?” Tess said as a footman hastened to hold out a chair for her, unable to restrain herself. “I never really cared for his works, which seem more obscure in their language than necessary. For a rousing tale, I much prefer Cervantes. And our French dramatists,
naturellement.
Molière. And, as he has always been my favorite in both his plays and his letters, Voltaire. Such a brilliant man. He once wrote,
‘L’homme est libre au moment où il souhaite être.’
Ah, forgive me, madam,” she said, looking down the table to Adelaide, whose cheeks had gone an unflattering red at her insult to the bard, “as you do not speak French, I will translate. He wrote, ‘Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.’ Jack, you agree with that sentiment, don’t you?”

Seated directly across the table from her, Jack inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the double hit, the first to his mother, the second to him. “You were always well-read, my dear. And she paints, too,” he added, smiling sweetly. “Puck, with your new interest in all things agricultural, I believe you’d be amazed by her work. It’s quite singular.”

Tess laughed in true delight.
“Touché, monsieur.”

“I sense that I’m missing something,” Puck said. “However, as I consider it a crime to be silent when I can say something silly, I am reminded of another of Voltaire’s comments. Let’s see, how does it go? Ah, yes, I remember now. And remember, dearest, I am only quoting, not pronouncing.
‘Le mariage est la seule aventure ouverte de lâche.’
”

“‘Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly’? Robin Goodfellow, you’re a very lucky man that your wife knows you only say things like that in order to be amusing. Which, by the way, you aren’t. Not when I spend half my days with my head over—well, never mind.” Regina shot a panicked look toward the bottom of the table, where Adelaide reigned as hostess, and then quickly returned her attention to her plate, pushing at its contents with her fork, but not really eating anything.

“I’ve another,” Beau said into the silence. “I read the lines while serving in Spain, and they certainly colored my vision of the supposed glory of war. I’ll dispense with the French, as I’ve only read it in translation. ‘It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished
unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.’
”

“Well now, Beau, that’s fairly morbid,” Puck protested. “But, to redeem myself in my wife’s eyes, I’ll attempt another of my favorites from the man. ‘I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.’”

“Well, I think that’s above everything
ridiculous,
Puck,” Adelaide pronounced. “What does it even mean?”

Chelsea raised her hand rather timidly, as if reluctant to volunteer her opinion. “I believe, Adelaide, it means that a stupid enemy is God’s greatest gift.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jack said, raising his glass. “May all our enemies be ridiculous.”

“You have enemies, Jack?” the marquess asked with concern evident in his voice.

“Never for long, sir, no.”

Tess rolled her eyes, but then looked down the table once more and realized that Jack’s
ridiculous
statement had served to wash the angry color from his mother’s cheeks.

* * *

T
ESS
THREW
DOWN
her shawl and turned on Jack, who had followed her into the bedchamber. “Granted, it’s an enormous pile of rooms, but I could have found my way back here on my own. You can leave now. No, please allow me to rephrase that. Leave.
Now.
”

Jack walked across the room to lean against the bed as he removed one evening shoe. “And here I thought the evening went so well.”

“The
evening
was wonderful, save for your mother. Both for her presence, and for her, I suspect. You’re a cruel man, Jack. She knows you hate her.”

“Not hate,” he said, easing off the second shoe. “She isn’t worthy of hate. In fact, I find her fairly pathetic. She’s getting old, Tess. I don’t think she ever imagined such a thing happening, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

“We all grow old eventually, if we’re lucky. Why did you take off your shoes? Because you’re not welcome here, Jack.”

“No, you misunderstand her dilemma. Adelaide can’t grow old. Her beauty, her youth, those were always her weapons, her only charms. Her beloved bard? She speaks his lines like a parrot, not understanding anything she says, not really. I couldn’t have been more than twelve when I had to explain Birnam Wood to her, for God’s sake. From
Macbeth.
”

“I know where it’s from.” She picked up his shoes and held them out to him.

Jack ignored the gesture, instead shrugging out of his jacket. “I thought you didn’t like Shakespeare.”

She pushed the shoes against his gut until he took them. Then he placed them on the bed.

“Who doesn’t like Shakespeare, Jack? For pity’s sake, I was only getting some of my own back, and you know it. My gown is not at all the same shade of blue as your father’s
couch.
Oh, and then she apologized. So sweetly—while getting in yet another insult while she was at it. Adelaide is a horrible, horrible woman, and I’m so, so sorry she’s your mother. I’m sorry she’s anybody’s mother, because she doesn’t deserve to be, and nobody deserves to be her child.” She picked up the shoes yet again. “
Now
get out.”

He took the shoes.

They made two very satisfying thumps as they struck the door to the dressing room.

“How dramatic, yet stupid, because now you just have to go chase them. I mean it, Jack. We’re going to have a very
large
argument if you think you can come in here and…and attempt to do what I can clearly see in your eyes that you think you’re attempting. And how dare you! I must go alone. I must disappear. Oh, woe to poor Jack Blackthorn. He can’t ask a woman and a child to— Stop grinning! Are you insane? What are you grinning at? You look like the village idiot!”

“God, I love you,” Jack said, careful not to get too close, because she was really angry; only the village idiot wouldn’t know that. “You talk too damn much, but I do love you. Which I would have told you earlier, except that you wouldn’t let me, and Beau shot me a look that told me he’d appointed himself your protector from his ogre of a brother.”

He watched as her gorgeous eyes shifted left to right, as if somehow she could hunt down their earlier conversation and dissect it. And then she looked at him. “You weren’t done?”

“No, I wasn’t
done.
Would you like me to take up where I left off? Or do you want to yell at me some more?”

“I…I suppose you could, um, take up where you left off?”

“Thank you.” He bowed to her and then dared to put his hands on her waist. “I believe, to recap, that I’d explained what could very well become my rather perilous situation as to my soon-to-be former occupation. I also mentioned that I’d lived by my wits for over a decade, so the notion of doing that again, while not particularly palatable, was a very real possibility. Furthermore, again attempting to quote myself, I pointed out that it’s no life for a woman or a child. Children.”

“You didn’t say children,” she interrupted. “You said child. Referring, I believed, to the one we share.”

“For now. Neither of us can say for certain that…recent activity may have us already on the way to changing that number. And then, before you interrupted to say that you knew what I was saying, I pointed out that a life such as the one I very well might be facing is not something I can ask either of you to share with me.”

As he hesitated, she leaned her head forward, as if to help him get out the words. “But? Were you going to say
but?
”

“But,”
he said, not as confident as he hoped she believed he was, “I’m going to ask it anyway. Because I love you. Because I love my son. Because there is no life for me without either of you, and even though I know that’s selfish of me, and could even be dangerous, I’m going to ask it anyway. I don’t know where we’d go, or what we’d do when we got there. I only know I’m ready to go down on my knees and beg you to love me, to marry me, to join our lives together, now and forever. I’ve walked away from so much, Tess, thinking it was for the best each time I did. But right or wrong, I can’t walk away from you. Not again, not ever again. Don’t ask me to. Please.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

He attempted a smile. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you? I suppose I deserve that. Very well.” He went down on both knees, holding her hands in his as he looked up at her, sure his heart was in his eyes. “I’ll do anything you ask, be anyone you believe you need, go anywhere, do anything. I know I’m not an easy man, but in all fairness, you aren’t an easy woman. Yet there’s not a doubt in my head, Tess, that we’re better together. Right or wrong, rich or poor, as long as we have each other nothing and nobody can defeat us.”