Much Ado About Rogues (29 page)

“Here we go. Aren’t we all so lucky to be able to witness Jack being thick as a plank?” Puck said, sighing. “The law is the law, Jack, not to mention that I think it’s a splendid idea, and I don’t hear Beau here objecting, do you, does anyone? For the love of heaven, brother mine, even as I know you’re unfamiliar with the action,
bend a little.
”

Now Tess did dare to look at Jack, and what she saw in his face caused her to speak. Did nobody else see the pain in his dark eyes? “I see no sense in beginning an argument about something that may well not happen. If your mother successfully avoided the truth all these years, I find it difficult to believe she’ll have a change of heart at this point.”

“And there you’re wrong, Tess, although I thank you for, yet again, springing to my defense. Adelaide will eagerly testify to the legitimacy of the marriage lines. I’ll see to it.”

Beau slung his arm around Jack’s shoulders. “No, Jack, not on your own. That’s up to all three of us, acting together. We’ll make her see reason.”

“Reason? You’ll make a fine marquess someday, brother, upstanding gentleman that you are. But it’s my particular talents that are needed now.”

“Jack’s right, Beau,” the marquess said, sighing. “I’ve always believed your mother to be somewhat in awe of Jack. Or afraid of him. Do you have a plan in mind, son?”

“Most of it, yes, sir. I’ll work out the rest, Tess and I will, on our way to confronting her.”

Beau seemed to consider this and finally nodded his agreement. “Then you’d better plan quickly. I could see the drive from where I was standing. The caravans are gone, but not that long ago. You can probably catch up with them easily, although I’ll be damned if I know how you think you can convince her to return to the estate.”

“No,” Jack said shortly, his tone hard. “We’ll meet with her elsewhere. She never comes back here. Never again.”

Tess immediately understood what he was saying. He was protecting the marquess. If she knew nothing else about this man she loved, she knew he would slay dragons for those he cared for, and he’d use every weapon in his arsenal to do so, fair or unfair. She was looking forward to helping him plan his mother’s downfall, perhaps even more than she was about the prospect of capturing the Gypsy. At least Adelaide carried her knives in her mouth, and words never killed anyone. Although God knew they could cause great harm.

“Never return? Why? No, I suppose I’m not to inquire about that, either?” Beau asked. “At any rate, do we even know where she’s heading?”

“Where she always goes, when she’s not with me. To be with her lover,” the marquess said quietly. “To be with your father, Jack. It was always him, even before I met her, which is a bit of bitter fact she flung at me one night when she particularly wanted to hurt me. Him, and their free and unfettered lives. The
excitement
she needs as the rest of us need air. I must say, I admire him in a way. He picks her up and he puts her down, sometimes for months on end. This last time, for over three years. Poor Adelaide, how she suffered. But he’s back now, I’m certain of that. I can always see the difference in her when he’s back. If I was a fool for her, she is a fool for him, always stepping to his tune. A smart man, her lover. Wiser than I ever was.”

Puck cleared his throat. “In that case, even as I hesitate to point this out—Jack, are you prepared to meet the man who sired you?”

“We’re already met, if only briefly,” Jack said tightly. “And all I’ll say beyond that is to agree that our mother is a fool.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“T
HEY
’
RE
CALLED
BOTTLE
ovens,” Jack said as he and Tess halted at the crest of the low hill and looked down at Stoke-on-Trent, also known simply as The Potteries. “Because needless to say, they resemble nothing more than the tops of enormous brick bottles. These, however, belch black smoke. When the kilns are all firing, it can be difficult to see the sun.”

“How fascinating. They’re
enormous.
There must be at least one hundred of them. It’s as if they’ve created their own landscape. You’ve been here before?”

“A time or two, yes, for the Crown. I don’t recall a theater, however. Unless that’s changed, Adelaide will be taking some sort of makeshift stage in the town square. Adelaide, and the smoke. So much for her grand ambitions.”

“It’s difficult to understand, I’ll grant you. But clearly it’s what she lives for. After all, duplicitous or not, she is the Marchioness of Blackthorn. Even if she doesn’t care enough for her sons to put things right, I should think she’d acknowledge that fact for her own benefit. There’s something we’re not seeing, Jack. There has to be. You don’t think she— No, that’s impossible.”

“If you were about to suggest that she joined Andreas from time to time in his exploits, I’ve already thought of that. What Cyril said the other day is correct. Sometimes she’d be gone for over a year. She may have left the estate with her troupe, but do we really have any way of knowing that she stayed with them? She could have been anywhere, doing anything. She lives for excitement. She feeds on it.”

“You said she’s quite an accomplished horsewoman. I don’t know why, but that surprised me.”

“And she’s fearless. She plays at the helpless damsel, but she has a will of iron. She’s so many different women, Tess, and all of them fairly fascinating. I doubt she even knows who she really is, as her entire life has been one role after another. We were all under her spell, I suppose, but Cyril most of all.”

“While she, according to his lordship, has been under the Gypsy’s spell. Imagine Sinjon’s delight when he met your father, and at some point learned the entire story from Andreas. Of course he’d find some way to use what he knew to keep the Gypsy under his control.
You.
”

Jack nodded his agreement. “Me, yes. There were so many ways he could have used the information he had. In the end, however, he chose only to please himself, watching as father and son confronted each other, me all unknowing.”

“Always with another plan,” Tess said as they urged their horses forward once more, this time at a walk. “And always the hook at the end of it all. Can you imagine his delight as he complimented you on ridding him of a dangerous enemy, and then announced that,
by the way, that’s your father you just killed, Jack, the price you had to pay for leaving my employ.
”

“Christ. It’s strange. We called ourselves rogues, Henry and Will and Dickie and I. We thought ourselves to be very bad men, but always for a good reason, always in a good cause. Because we saw evil, in many forms, and in our foolishness thought we knew the game and played it better than anyone else. We saw evil in the pursuit of power, in the name of greed. But never like this, never just evil for evil’s sake, just to be
better
than your adversary. And God knows my mother’s motives, because they make no sense at all to me. She’ll probably tell us she did it all for
love.
Damn, Tess, I want this over.”

“I’m simply hoping she’s here, and the Gypsy with her. It’s nearly noon, Jack. Let’s go.” Tess tapped her heel against the mare’s flank, urging it into a canter.

Jack watched for a moment as she moved ahead of him on the roadway. She was clad in one of the Blackthorn maid’s Sunday best, and he was clothed as a laborer, in smock and leggings and a worn slouch hat. They made quite the pair. There were a dozen reasons why he should have insisted she remain at Blackthorn, but it had taken only one to convince him he needed her with him.

At least he would know where she was, because unless he tied her to the bedpost, and even then, she would have found some way to follow him.

Smiling at the thought that she continually believed he needed her protection, he spurred his mount forward.

Ten minutes later he was cursing himself as he realized it must be market day in Stoke-on-Trent, for the center of the town was clogged with wagons, carts, food stalls and too many people to make it easy to locate Andreas if he was somewhere in the crowd gathered in front of a makeshift stage in the very center of the square. There were at least twenty rows of benches set in front of the stage, and the audience was shoulder to shoulder, without a single open spot on any of the benches. It was a far cry from Covent Garden, but Adelaide must be in her glory.

He and Tess left their horses at a small livery stable and continued on foot, keeping to the alleyways as they slowly made their way around the square. Not that Jack expected Andreas to be standing in the open, not if Adelaide had met with him, told him what she’d learned at Blackthorn.

If Cyril was right, she was at least a little bit afraid of her son, his capabilities. She’d feel she had to warn her lover that his son was searching for him. The man had avoided a confrontation at the manor house, would he likewise run from one now? Was he already on horseback and miles away? Would Jack have to content himself for now with convincing Adelaide that it would be in her best interests to tell the truth about her deception that day at the altar, and leave the hunt for Andreas for another day?

Or did Jack’s father feel as he did, that the time for running was past now, and there had to be an end to what had begun so many years ago?

Jack slipped his hand inside his waistcoat, to feel the knife tucked there. Could he use it if it came to his life or his father’s? Is that why Tess was with him, to take that decision out of his hands? Could she do it, would she dare it?

Andreas, to save himself if cornered, could very well strike at his own son.

The man had murdered her brother.

Yes, she could do it. Which was probably the only reason Jack knew he could do it. He’d killed before, too many times to count. He would not allow her to live out the remainder of her days carrying that sort of memory.

“Damn it,” he said quietly as their circular approach at last brought them within earshot of the stage. “They must have begun early. They’re already more than halfway through the last act.”

Tess had been reading a printed broadsheet nailed to the wall of the tavern. “That’s all right. We’ll just wait for her to come down from the stage. She is there, isn’t she?”

Lifting the slouch hat he’d worn to help conceal his identity, Jack dared to look up at the players. “Yes, she’s there. She’s taken the role of Beatrice. She looks…beautiful. Damn, she does love it, doesn’t she?”

Tess squeezed his arm. “I know this is difficult.”

“Difficult. Yes, that’s one word to use, I suppose. Come along, Tess. We need to make our way to the side of the stage.”

“In a moment. Jack? Aren’t Gypsies sometimes called travelers? I’m sure I read that somewhere.”

“Hmm?” He’d just noticed that there were a few empty spots on the first row of benches. There were only four people comfortably seated there; two couples, much more elegantly dressed than the majority of the audience. One of the men threw back his head, laughing at one of the lines spoken on stage, and Jack got a clear look at his face. Sir Edward Starkley. Interesting. That had to be his lady wife beside him, and…yes, their lovely blond-haired blue-eyed daughter and her very recently, almost unseemly recently, acquired husband. Rusticating in the country, taking in a play put on by a band of traveling players. Wasn’t that lovely.

And interesting.

“Come along, Tess,” he said, his mind whirling with possibilities.

“I
said,
” Tess complained, pulling on his arm as he attempted to move away, “aren’t Gypsies sometimes called travelers? Because the role of Benedick, according to this broadsheet, is being performed by someone named John
Traveler.
Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

“Sonofabitch.”
She had his attention now. First he read the broadsheet, and then he turned toward the stage. Damn, Benedick wasn’t in this scene. But he’d be in the next one.

He took Tess’s hand and pulled her into the alleyway.

“Do you think it’s him? Do you think he’s— Just think for a moment, Jack, he could travel all over the countryside, all over
any
country’s countryside, with no one the wiser. Just another traveling troupe of actors. Who pays them any mind?”

“Sonofabitch,”
he said again. “Adelaide traveled with him, she had to have done. She
knew
what was going on, and probably reveled in it, if she didn’t also help him. And Cyril, all unknowing, financed them. All these years…all these years.”

“Jack, you can’t do this. You can’t be angry,” Tess warned him as they finally made their way to a place closer to the rear of the stage, the crush of people concealing them. “He’s here. That’s what you have to think about. As…as for Adelaide? I’ll keep her out of your way, don’t even think about her, only Andreas. Jack. Do you hear me?”

Jack could barely think. Barely see for the red haze of anger in his eyes. Everything and everyone Adelaide touched was used, even compromised. Abigail, his brothers. Even Cyril. She was a damn pestilence!

“It’s all right, Tess,” he assured her, the plan he’d already half-formed in his mind when he’d seen Sir Edward and his daughter once more in the forefront of his thinking. It could work.

He’d make it work.

He put his hands on Tess’s shoulders. “They’re nearing the end of the play. I don’t have time to explain, sweetheart. Just be ready to grab her if she attempts to run.”

“I can do that. I’ll
sit
on her if I have to,” she said fervently.

Jack smiled at her fierce expression and then kissed her. Held her for a moment, his world steadying, and then left her to find her way to the opposite side of the stage.

He made his way to the rear of the stage and the caravan closest to it, where he felt certain those actors not needed onstage were congregated, slipping quickly behind a fat farmer holding a cage of chickens as Andreas stepped out of the caravan and stood on the topmost step, adjusting an ornate brocade cape around his shoulders.

“Ah, good sir,” he said as he spied the farmer. “Those will do nicely. Ring their necks and deliver them to the innkeeper at The Fox. Tell him my lady and I will repair there in one hour and require a private dining room.”

Jack quickly hunched over to disguise his height and turned his back as the farmer ran forward to catch the coins Andreas tossed in his direction before flourishing his cape and bounding toward the wooden steps leading up to the stage. Bare moments later he could hear him speaking his first line. What a flamboyant piece of work—it was very nearly embarrassing to watch him, although he’d probably make a passable Benedick.

Much Ado About Nothing
was one of Shakespeare’s comedies, involving wronged lovers, confused motives, mistaken identities and one villain, the bastard, Don John. As the villain, he would of course be vanquished at the end and taken off to jail as Beatrice and Benedick celebrated their love.

Jack had never cared for the play, for obvious reasons. He’d been named for the bastard villain. By his own mother. But more than that, as he’d told her when she cajoled him into helping her with her lines, he believed the ending to be less than satisfying, with the capture of Don John taking place off stage. He’d had more of a thirst for violence than Shakespeare’s farce had allowed.

But that didn’t matter, as he was about to change the ending.

“You,” he said, clapping his hand on an actor who stepped down from the caravan, clearly preparing for his own entrance. “You’re the messenger, correct?”

“Unhand me, cur,” the man demanded, but quietly, so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the stage.

The pressure of Jack’s fingers, digging into the man’s shoulder, laid emphasis to his next words. “I asked you a question, my good man. Are you performing the role of the messenger?”

“And every other small, meaningless role. What of it? I should be Claudio, but Jeremy, that wretched sorry excuse for a thespian, stepped into the role when John returned.”

“Yes, yes, you’re sorely used, I can see that.” Jack fished a coin from his pocket. “A crown for your hat, your cape and your silence, good sir?”

The actor eyed the coin, and then Jack, who certainly did not look like a man who’d ever seen a gold crown in his lifetime. “Are you mad?”

Voices could clearly be heard from the stage. Time was running short. “There’s a strong possibility I am, yes. But I wish to play a small joke on my good friend John. There’s no harm in that, is there? And you’re richer by a crown.”

The man pulled at the lacing holding his cloak around his neck even as Jack removed his hat and tossed it aside. “And my sword? You’ll want my small sword.”

Jack looked at the wooden sword and shook his head. “Thank you, but not necessary.” He snatched the low-brimmed, feathered hat from the actor’s head and slapped it on his own before swinging the cape up and over his shoulders. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m soon to hear my cue.”