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 Why would Jack have taken it, a newspaper more than a month out of date?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?”
“I agree, and we didn’t just learn that today,” Dickie Carstairs said, grinning at Will. “Oh, you want to know what we’ve managed to ferret out, don’t you? Very well. Your mentor departed this benighted village eight days ago on the public coach heading north. He carried with him a fairly large trunk, purchased just that morning, and a rather cumbersome cloth bag he declined to place in the boot but actually put down the blunt for its own seat, so that he could keep it with him inside the coach. Although he is well-known here, the bumpkins I spoke with didn’t know they were seeing the marquis board the coach.”
“How so?” Jack asked, if only to keep Dickie talking. He already recognized where this story was leading. After all, hadn’t a part of his training been to pass unnoticed under the eyes of the villagers who had been seeing him almost daily for a year?
“Oh, that. Yes, well, it would seem that the passenger they saw was described as looking much like a member of the clergy. One of those queer, foreign autem bawlers, you know? Wearing skirts, and with a rope of beads with a whacking great cross hanging at the end of it tied
