Free Much Ado About Rogues by Kasey Michaels

her son. “Running is for outside, in the sunshine.”
    “Jacques’s ball?” the boy asked eagerly as they made their way downstairs, bravely jumping down the last two steps and turning for the kitchens and the box near the door to the gardens, the one holding his prized striped ball.
    Tess followed, waving away the muffin Cook held out to her, knowing she was too nervous to be hungry. Her world had turned upside down yesterday, and inside out this morning. Life would never be the same. This morning ritual might never be the same. But, for now, for Jacques, she would pretend nothing had changed.
    “The path, Jacques,” she called after him as he eagerly ran for the expanse of lawn beyond the kitchen garden. “Parsley is for eating, not for stomping, remember?”
    He turned and grinned at her, the picture of his father when Jack was warm from bed and in a mood to tease her, and kept running, throwing the ball ahead of him and then racing to catch up to it. He repeated the action a half dozen more times, until the ball rolled to a stop in front of a pair of shiny black Hessians.
    Tess believed she could actually feel her heart stop.
    Jack bent to pick up the ball and, still crouching down, handed it to his son. Jacques hesitated, but then reached out and put his hand on the ball, even while Jack still held it. For a moment, the two were a frozen tableau set out expressly to squeeze Tess’s heart, green eyes looking into green, dark heads close together.
    “Merci, monsieur,” Jacques said, and then performed his much-practiced bow and added, “Thank you, sir,” just as he’d been taught.
    She watched as Jack raised his other hand as if to touch his son’s cheek. But then the moment was gone and Jacques was off again, throwing the ball ahead of him and then chasing after it.
    Jack stood up once more and approached Tess.
    “Jack, I can— No, that’s not true. I can’t explain. I can’t even ask for your forgiveness.”
    “No, you can’t,” he said shortly, his eyes on Jacques. “The boy should have a dog. That’s what thrown balls are for. There are plenty at Blackthorn, but we can get him his own. A puppy. Nothing too large to start with, or it will just knock him down.”
    A dog? He was talking to her about dogs? “What?” she asked him, so nervous she was sure she must have misunderstood.
    “Never mind,” he told her, still looking at Jacques. “I’ll see to it. Emilie is packing his things now and I’ve ordered the horses put to the coach. They leave in an hour, and should arrive at Blackthorn tomorrow afternoon.”
    Tess shot a panicked look at her son. “You can’t do that. You can’t take him. He’s my son.”
    At last he looked at her, but only for a moment before he returned to watching his son, following the boy’s every move hungrily, greedily. “You and I are for London this morning, correct?”
    She hid her surprise that he was still agreeing to take her. Warily, she nodded.
    “Leaving my son here, with only Emilie to watch over him. That’s not possible.”
    “Why not?” Tess was fighting to keep from running to Jacques and scooping him up in her arms.
    “Sinjon showed me his treasure room. We can’t be sure he did the same with the Gypsy, but the man knows of the collection. The sight of those treasures makes for a fairly impressive argument to fall in with his plans.”
    “No. I don’t understand.” How could she think? Jack was taking her son from her. All she had, all she’d ever had.
    “Haven’t you yet wondered why the Gypsy has never attempted to relieve your father of his treasures? He knows they’re here. He helped acquire many of them. And with only one old man standing between him and a fortune? Yet he’s never tried. Now why do you suppose that is, Tess?”
    She watched as Jacques held the ball straight out in front of him with both hands and turned around and around in circles until he fell, giggling, to the grass. How strange. The sun still shone, a