from me. He said I’d never experienced joy of the sort I’d know when the prize was much more than some silly matron’s gaudy diamond necklace. The prize was one thing, and worth any danger, but the joy of the acquisition itself, knowing what you had in your hand was now yours and yours alone, was worth more than anything else. But first I had to learn a few rudimentary things about antiquities, gain an appreciation for them so that I’d treat them with the care they deserved as I was… acquiring them.”
He’d told her most of it now, but there was more. “I thought I’d found a home, Tess, a real purpose in government service. Sinjon had saved me from myself, and you’d given me a reason to believe I didn’t have to be alone. Once he’d told me his secret, I knew my duty was to turn Sinjon over to the Crown. Yet how could I do that, knowing it would destroy you and René? Selfishly, I put off making my decision until we’d completed the Whitechapel mission. I shouldn’t have waited, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“Whitechapel. Where René died. And I sent you away anyway. But you never reported Papa to the Crown. Why?”
“Sinjon was already seventy or more, or at least that’s the most he would admit to—definitely past climbing through windows or outrunning any pursuit. Without me, or someone like me, his collecting days were over. He’d lost. He’d lost his youth, his son and, when I walked away, his last chance at revenge. Because of you, I promised him I wouldn’t turn him over to the Crown, but that if he went back to his old ways I wouldn’t be held to that promise. And if he tried to recruit you, I’d know, and I’d kill him. He knew I meant what I said.”
“And he believed you,” Tess said quietly. “I would have.”
“He was a broken man when I left, Tess. I’d like to think the errors of his ways, and what those errors had cost him, had finally come home to him. Instead, the need for revenge must have been eating at him ever since.”
Tess shook her head. “Revenge? You mean on France, for what happened to my mother. But that was all so long ago.”
And here it was, the moment he’d been dreading more than any of the others. He’d never wanted her to know this particular truth.
“No, Tess. What I’m speaking of now has nothing to do with France or the war or any attempt to restore the monarchy. I doubt it ever was really about any of that, not for Sinjon. It was always about enlarging his collection. And remember this—he was already more than fifty years old when he came to England. I wasn’t the first pupil he trained to do his bidding. There was another, before me. An exceedingly apt and eager pupil, and quite ambitious. They worked together for years. Until the student, who saw profit where Sinjon saw beauty, eventually betrayed the mentor, striking out on his own, hiring out his unique talents for most any venture, any government, and taking his own rewards. You don’t know him, Tess, although you may have seen him here years ago. But you have seen his calling card. I’ve been hunting him for four years, ever since Sinjon told me exactly who he is.”
Her eyes were wide and shocked when she turned toward him on the couch. “The Gypsy. That’s who you mean, don’t you? The Gypsy. The man who murdered René. Papa trained him? And now he’s gone after him…”
CHAPTER FOUR
TESS SPENT THE next few hours alternately crying and cursing, pacing her bedchamber in her old nightrail and dressing gown, flinging herself into the chair in front of the fire, collapsing to her knees in the center of the room, wrapping her arms tight around herself, rocking in her grief and pain.
Jack had told her all of it. She’d pushed him until she’d heard it all.
A lie. Her father’s life was a lie; everything she’d thought about him, believed about him, was a lie. Her life was a lie. René’s death had been for a lie, and her mother’s, as well. For greed. For things.
She and René had always thought they weren’t worthy, weren’t good enough, had not been smart or clever or, yes, lovable enough. That somehow they had failed their wonderfully heroic father, had been a source of grave disappointment to him. But that hadn’t been it at all.
Things. People meant nothing to him. They were only the tools he needed to get him things. Her mother may have been the exception, but even she hadn’t been able to divert him from his first love, his true delight. Things, locked up underground in a cold stone room. Things, the hunt for them, the taking of them, the knowledge that now they were his, seen only by him, touched only by him.
She and her brother had thought their father a hero, dedicated to the service of his adopted country, doing his best to help rid France of the hated Bonaparte and set the monarchy back on the throne. They’d wanted only to help him, make him proud of them.
While he’d seen them as two more tools. Inferior tools at that.
And for this man, this unnatural man, she had turned her back on her one true chance of happiness? She’d cut Jack out of her life so effectively that even if he still believed he loved her, he could never forgive what she’d done.
What she’d done because the Marquis de Fontaine had told her it would be best for everyone if Jack never knew. That had been his punishment.
Now it was hers.
“Tess?”
She was sitting on the hearth rug, staring into the dying fire, and didn’t turn her head at the sound of his voice.
“I’m all right, Jack,” she said quietly.
He sat down beside her, wrapped his arms around his bent knees. Was that to keep himself from touching her? Could he still want her, after all he’d told her? “It’s all right if you aren’t, you know. None of what you’ve heard tonight could have been easy to hear. If there had been another way…”
“No, I’m glad you told me. I only wish I’d known years ago, when René was alive. We could have gone, left him to his collection. After all, we were never really necessary to him, were we? And our mother? Do you think she knew, Jack? Did she die knowing how unimportant she’d been to his happiness?”
“He may have lived long enough now to regret how he’s lived his life. All he’s lost. I know you’ve already considered this. Sinjon trained the man in the skills he then eventually employed to kill René. An old man, no longer seen as being useful to anyone, put out to pasture as it were, while the evil he spawned thrives? A man like that has a lot of time to think, to look back across the years, and try to make at least one thing right.”
“You think he’s somehow repented or some such ridiculousness? You want me to forgive him, is that it? You think I’m that generous?” Tess asked, still looking into the fire. “I can’t do that.”
“No, I suppose you can’t, at least not just yet. Sinjon has to know that, too. But you’re his legacy, Tess, all he has left. Everyone else is gone. Those things he spent his life collecting mean nothing compared to a child’s love, how he’ll be remembered when he’s dead.”
Tess turned to look at him at last, knowing something Jack didn’t know. “Do you really believe that? That he cares how—how I remember him?”
“The closer to death, the more a person realizes the need to be remembered, even mourned. He’d have to know that once I’d heard of his death that room downstairs would have to be emptied, his collection returned to the rightful owners, or at least turned over to the Crown. I lied to you this afternoon. There’s only one way into the cellar rooms. You were going to know the truth about him one day, one way or another. And one thing more, Tess. Sinjon has unfinished business.”
“The Gypsy,” she said her hands tightening into white-knuckled fists.
“Have you read Frankenstein, Tess?” When she shook her head he explained. “You should, it’s quite the talk of London right now, nearly the equal to the attention Byron received for his Don Juan.”
“Jack,