Much Ado About Rogues (23 page)

“A good thing he didn’t have some strange passion for golden thimbles or some such nonsense,” Dickie Carstairs said as they surveyed their findings several hours later, “or else we’d be poking about everywhere for weeks. Do you think that’s it, Jack? We’ve exhausted the stories, you know.”

Jack shook his head. “The stories, yes. And it’s not as if I could say one way or the other if this is all of it. I do, however, know what’s missing. The Mask of Isis.” He turned to Tess. “There’re no other journals?”

She shook her head. She was hot, and dusty, and longed for a bath, not to mention something to eat. They’d been at it for hours. “I suppose all we can do is search everywhere we haven’t already searched.” She looked toward the hallway. “Which is nearly everywhere, isn’t it? I never realized how large this house is.”

“Here’s an idea,” Dickie said, putting down the Egyptian lamp he’d been rubbing, as if expecting a genie to appear. “I’ll just nip down to the village and fetch us something to eat from the tavern, and you two can put your heads together again. You’ve been doing well enough so far.”

Tess pushed herself up from her chair after Dickie left. “I suppose we’ve been given our orders.”

“Orders, yes. But no ideas. That first day, you were searching Sinjon’s study. Fairly thoroughly, from the look of the room when I arrived.”

“But unsuccessfully, you’ll remember, if you’re thinking the room has any more secrets.”

“Then you found the compartment under the desk?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, I didn’t find the compartment under the desk,” she said through gritted teeth. “Is that what you were doing that day?”

“While you were standing outside, trying to hear what I was doing, you mean?”

“You don’t have to recount the entire series of events to me,” she said. “What was in the compartment?”

“Nothing,” Jack said, holding out his arm, encouraging her to precede him out of the dining room. “I haven’t looked there since. There seemed no need. The compartment would be large enough to hold the mask.”

They walked down the hallway and into the study, and Tess immediately went to the desk, walking behind it and sitting down in her father’s chair. “Don’t show me. Let me see if I can figure it out.”

Jack folded his hands across his chest, as if prepared for a lengthy wait. “Be my guest. Just let me know when you give up.”

“Oh, and smug, too. Remember who connected the stories to the collection,” she grumbled, opening the center drawer. She ran her fingers carefully along the inside edges of the drawer. It was a large desk, made of rosewood; the possibilities for hidden compartments were considerable. “You think he did actually take it with him, just in case he was somehow forced to produce a sample of his wares, as it were?”

“It’s possible. Where is my golden mask? It’s not in the butter churn, that is for butter. It’s not in the henhouse, that is for the chickens—and blue roosters. It’s not in the attics, it’s not in the cellars. Oh, where, oh, where is my golden mask?”

“Stubble it, Blackthorn,” Tess warned tightly. She had already worked through the remainder of the drawers, and was now on her knees on the left side of the desk, brushing her unbound and fairly disheveled hair back behind her ears before running her fingertips around the rosette carvings just beneath the overhanging top of the thing.

No, the rosettes were too obvious. Besides, Jack was still looking insufferably smug. She got up and walked to the front of the desk, motioning for him to take himself somewhere else to stand, and went down on her knees once more.

“Tenacity. One of your more laudable traits, Tess, when not taken to extremes,” Jack said as he walked over to the drinks table to pour himself a glass of wine. “Would you care for a hint?”

“No, I would not
care
for a hint, damn you,” she ground out, walking on her knees to the third side of the desk and repeating her inspection. “And before you ask, no, I’m not open to barter, either.”

“Ah, that’s a pity. Seeing as how you’re already on your knees—
Ow!
Damn it, Tess, you could do a man permanent injury like that.”

“Really? I was only hoping to render you speechless for a few minutes,” she said, returning to her inspection, a smile on her face. Their moods had turned lighter once they’d begun unearthing the collection, and there were moments when she still felt rather giddy. “And don’t say you weren’t trying to distract me. I’m close, aren’t I?”

“I’d answer, save that I’m speechless.”

And then she heard it, a slight
click
when she pressed on the third rosette from the end. But that’s all she heard, that single sound. No compartment opened anywhere.

“Perhaps there are two locks,” she said, getting to her feet. She returned to the other side of the desk, found the third rosette, and pressed.
Click.
Strange how she’d missed that the first time. “Maybe they have to be pressed in succession. First the one on the left, and then the one on the right. Yes, that’s probably it.”

“Closer. But not yet there. Come on, Tess, let me show you. Or don’t you care if the mask is in there or not?”

“I care, of course I do. But I want to solve the puzzle.”

“Life’s a puzzle, all of it. Puzzle upon puzzle. We can’t solve every one of them.”

She depressed the rosette on the left. Then the one of the right. Nothing. She reversed her actions. Nothing. She tried again, moving from one end of the desk to the other. “Oh, and would you listen to the man? Turning philosopher now, Jack?”

“Perhaps. What is life? What is truth? Can there be wrong, if nothing is right? Will Tess ever realize she has to depress
both
rosettes at the same time?”

“Wretch!” She stepped behind the desk and bent over, stretching out her arms, her nose against the desktop, only to find that she couldn’t quite reach both ends of the desk at the same time. “You knew it! My arms aren’t long enough. You knew I could never figure it out on my own.”

“Yes, but I was enjoying the show.” He stepped to the left side of the desk and put his hand on the rosette trigger. “At the count of three?”

The base panel next to her foot dropped down, and Tess went to her knees to reach inside the opening. For a moment she thought they were to be disappointed, but then her fingertips encountered what had to be a cloth bag, and she tugged on it. “Heavy,” she said as she tugged, until the bag slid free and she was able to pick it up. She reached into the bag to pull out something wrapped in softest cotton, and laid it on the desktop.

“Careful, Tess. It’s gold, but the painting on it is fragile, as I remember it.”

Hands trembling, she carefully unfolded the cloth, until the Mask of Isis was revealed. “Oh, God. It’s… How could he have taken this!”

Jack relieved her of the thing and laid it on the protective cloth once more. “It was his coup, he told me that. He wasn’t the first to steal it, by the way, because he told me he
acquired
it—he said that of all his treasures—in France. For all we know or will ever know, he stole it right out from under the nose of Bonaparte.”

“Who brought half of Egypt back with him, yes, I remember. And now England will have it. You’d think Sinjon would have learned something from that. Things. Ancient treasures from past civilizations? They can’t belong to you, not really. They certainly aren’t worth dying for.”

“Or killing for,” Jack agreed. “Ah, and there’s Dickie, back from the local tavern. What do you suppose it will be tonight? Country ham and cheese or cheese and country ham?”

Tess smiled, and then her entire body froze in place. Jack was standing with his back to the door to the hallway, where Sinjon had years earlier inconspicuously positioned a small mirror, high on the wall and tilted toward the front of the house. Anyone in the area of the desk could see who might be approaching down the hallway before that person was visible in the doorway. Sinjon had never cared for surprises.

“We have company coming this way, Jack,” she said quietly and folded the soft cloth overtop the golden mask. “Andreas.”

Jack acknowledged her words with the slightest nod of his head, motioning for her to drop down behind the desk.

And then he was on the move, silent as a cat, his knife drawn from his boot, his back pressed against the wall beside the doorway. His eyes widened as he saw that Tess hadn’t moved. He motioned her down, again, this time with anger evident in the gesture.

Clearly he was planning to wait until Andreas entered the study and then jump out at him, press the knife to the man’s rib cage. It wasn’t much of a plan, there wasn’t time for much of a plan, but it was good as far as it went. Except that Tess could see the pistol in the Gypsy’s hand. If there was a struggle, and there surely would be, it couldn’t end well for Jack. He could be shot, for one, or he could be forced to dispatch his own father, or at least the man who might be his father. Could he live with that possibility? Would that possibility make him hesitate when it was necessary to strike, which could prove fatal to him?

Tess wasn’t about to simply stand back and find out. She’d come too far,
they’d
come too far. They had a son. They were working toward a future, together. She wasn’t about to let the past color that future, not anymore, and most especially not in the form of the Gypsy. He’d taken enough from her. He would not take Jack.

Still, if she could lure the man into the room, dazzle him with the mask, perhaps, then Jack could possibly get the upper hand without bloodshed. But it worried her. She loathed her father, but her hand would probably have shaken if she had been the one who’d ended up holding a pistol on him, knowing she might be forced to fire. A parent was a parent.

What she really wished was that the man would simply go. Let somebody else have the capture of him. Not Jack. He shouldn’t have to carry that burden.

All these thoughts raced through Tess’s mind in the space of only a few heartbeats. And then she made up her mind.

She stayed where she was, watching the intruder’s slow but steady progress. “Dickie? Is that you? Have you seen Jack? I’m here, in the study. Come see, I’ve found something!” she called out, forcing her voice to remain steady.

Jack mouthed something under his breath. She was sure it wasn’t complimentary.

Andreas, the Gypsy, walked into view, but prudently remained in the hallway, more than twenty feet away, almost as if he knew what would happen if he stepped inside the room. He wore no cape or half mask today, and Tess could see his strong dark features. She did have a clear view on the pistol he was pointing in her direction. He might not hit her, not from this distance, but she also wasn’t eager to find out if she was right.

“Good afternoon, my lady,” he said, and she noticed something she had not the first time. He spoke with a very faint accent. Something vague and European. It was quite lovely, actually.
The Gypsy.

This man, who had killed her brother. All but executed her brother, in order to teach Sinjon a
lesson.

This man, who could be Jack’s father.

Jack was motioning to her. She knew what he wanted. Was the man close enough that he could turn and confront him? What were the odds? Should he make his move?

She almost imperceptibly shook her head.
Let me do this, Jack. Trust me to do this.
“Mr. Andreas, is the pistol really necessary?”

Jack’s expression hardened.

“I had considered a bouquet for the so-lovely lady, but decided on the weapon. My apologies.”

She grimaced at this ridiculousness. “So it’s true. You are the flamboyant fool my father believed you to be.”

The man’s teeth flashed white against his sun-darkened skin. Was his smile anything like Jack’s? He was tall, like Jack. Dark of hair. Well-muscled, like Jack, although certainly older. Not half so handsome. Rougher. Thicker. If they fought, the result was not Jack’s obvious victory.

“Oh? And which of us looks at the grass from below it today, my lady,” Andreas asked, “and who stands above it, about to take possession of all those lovely bits and baubles, hmm?”

“Bits and baubles?” Tess repeated, her arms tightening involuntarily around the cloth-wrapped mask. René’s legacy, his name always and forever to be connected to its beauty. This man wouldn’t have it. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. We know now that Sinjon had it all crated and sent to Dover, to be shipped to Athens. It’s not here. I can show you the bill of lading I just found in a secret compartment in his desk.”

“Lying doesn’t become beautiful women such as yourself. The fat one outside didn’t bother to lie.”

Dickie. He must have returned from the village.
“You didn’t hurt him,” she said. “He’s harmless.”

“Harmlessly sleeping at the moment. I saw the other two ride off earlier. I followed, until it was clear they were on their way to London. Where’s Jack?”

Close. Very close. But miles too far away to chance rushing at you, not while you hold that pistol.

“You mean your son?”

“Yes, yes, my so-troublesome son. Sinjon’s small joke. Where is he? Nearby, clearly.”

Oh, God. He’d just acknowledged Jack!

“Precisely where you so obviously think he is. Standing just inside the doorway, ready to pounce on you the moment you come in here to get this,” she said, and then unwrapped the mask and held it up temptingly. “You hesitate,
Andreas.
Why? You don’t believe me? I’m not lying now. This is what Sinjon always believed, that nothing and no one can be more important than the prize. And he gets his perverse revenge. For the father to kill the son, for the son to kill the father. How happy Sinjon will be, even looking up from beneath the grass.
Mais, puis, telle est la vie, oui?
”