If I Fall (31 page)

“Are you coming or going?” Jack asked as he rounded the corner in the hallway, and found Bridget at the door to his bedchamber, with her hand on the knob. By the little jump she gave, and the way she blushed thereafter, Jack knew he had surprised her. What he didn’t expect was the way she turned on him, with accusation in her eyes.

“Neither,” she said coldly, coming right up to him, stuffing something into her pocket as she did so. But his curiosity about the content of her pockets would have to wait, judging by the way she assessed him coldly.

“You look lovely tonight, Bridget.” Jack decided to try with a charming smile. After all, he knew that she responded to his compliments in a girlish way—he wasn’t blind to her crush. “Are you ready for the dinner party?”

“I’ve decided not to go,” she answered directly. No hint of girlishness. She assessed his clothing, his very casual attire. “Are you?”

Jack looked down at himself and felt the blush spread on his cheeks. “I’m not going. I have previous plans with Mr. Whigby.”

“Do you now?” Bridget drawled. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Bridget,” Jack began, slightly wary, “what is it? Have you been fighting with Sarah again?”

“No, quite the opposite.”

“Oh. Good.”

“What are you doing to Sarah?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.

“I?” he asked bewildered. “Nothing. I’m doing nothing to her.”

Bridget leaned forward. “I think it best if you keep it that way. Forresters don’t take well to being played for fools.”

Jack’s mind ratcheted around, looking for some kind of explanation. And landed on Bridget’s feelings for him, and her sister, respectively. “Bridget,” he sighed gently, “you know that I am just friends with your sister. As I am friends with you.”

But the girl simply held his gaze, as if she could see straight through him, to his every last secret. And stalked past him, her head held as high as a queen’s.

It would be much later that Jack realized what Bridget was saying. After the family had left for the Comte’s dinner party. After he gathered up his disguise, but could not locate his false moustache, and was forced to go without it. Yes, it was right around the time when everything was going to hell, that Jack decided he would have done better to heed Bridget’s warning.

Indeed, it was proved, Forresters don’t take well to being played for fools.

“W
HERE
is your moustache?” Marcus Worth whispered to him as he unlocked the music room window for Jack.

“Missing,” Jack shrugged. “Laundress might have mistaken it for lint.”

“Or a rat’s hide,” Marcus grinned. Which only made Jack wrinkle his nose in disgust. “You’re late.”

“I had to wait for the carriages to thin out, and the guards to loop around again,” Jack replied. “Too many eyes.” Indeed, Jack had been waiting on the rooftop of the mansion across from the Duke of Parford’s stately classical home in the heart of Mayfair for over an hour. The arrivals of the glittering ton who had garnered an invitation to what had turned out to be the dinner party of the Season had taken ages, with people making their entrances as if they were attending a royal wedding—moving with that stately grace reserved for being seen. Of course, this meant they moved abominably slow, and Jack found it difficult to leap from the next-door roof across the high wall to the Duke of Parford’s roof without causing a stir.

“A little performance anxiety?” Marcus grinned at him.

Jack shot him a droll look. “If I wanted cheap shots at this time, I would have made your brother come along.”

“He couldn’t, you know that.” Marcus replied.

It was true. Over the past week, Jack had spent the daylight hours playing watchdog over Sarah—because he would be damned if he was going to leave her alone with the Comte, knowing what was suspected of him. A courtesy she seemed to appreciate, if not for the same reasons. The number of times she sent him an amused glance over her shoulder or an eye roll when the Comte was pontificating again on his Burmese adventure had made Jack’s heart sing. Meanwhile, his nights had been spent working with Marcus and Byrne on their plan of attack for the Comte’s dinner party.

One that Jack would be infiltrating alone.

After making sure Jack pulled off the first part of the adventure, Byrne had left the city for his home in the Lake District. When Jack asked why the Blue Raven would possibly leave halfway through an operation, Marcus replied carefully.

“My brother … he has certain weaknesses the city caters to. He can keep this part of himself in check if his family is with him, but falling into the Blue Raven business…” Marcus looked down at his desk, contemplating, then returned his eyes to Jack. There was bleakness there. “Suffice to say I do not begrudge him the decision to go home. Nor will you,” he commanded. And that was all Marcus would say on the subject.

Marcus had managed to obtain the original sketches of the floor plans for the Duke of Parford’s home from the days of its construction. How Marcus was able to obtain these papers, Jack did not question—but they turned out to be a gold mine of information on how they would enter and search the residence. It wasn’t a terribly old manse, Georgian in style and built within the last century and, therefore, easy to navigate—not Byzantine like some medieval structures, nor involving some of the more elaborate “romantic” architecture that was now popular, with turrets and passageways that lead nowhere.

Even though Jack could have been invited, if he so desired, he knew it was best if he not attend as a guest—he could too easily be noticed as missing from the dinner table. Therefore, they decided that Jack would enter through the garden, when everyone was still arriving—all of the attention would be at
the front of the house, not the back. But to get there, he would have to jump from the roof of the property next door, over a high wall and into some fortunately thick shrubbery—without arousing the suspicion of any guards that happened to be posted nearby.

Of which, it turned out, there were several.

From there, Marcus, who they had made certain was invited to the party, along with his wife, Phillippa, would make sure the path was clear for him to enter through the back gardens, where he would quickly slip in a downstairs window, to the music room. Since Jack had somehow managed to persuade Sarah to exclude traditional music from that evening’s entertainments, that room would be dark and unused.

And apparently, quite dusty.

“I don’t think anyone’s been in this room in years,” Marcus whispered, as he ushered Jack in through the window. “Be careful not to disturb the drop cloths, or any of the surfaces. You want to leave no trace of having been here.”

“What kind of French aristocrat doesn’t have his home—even a borrowed one—dusted regularly?”

“The kind who either doesn’t appreciate music, or is harder up for money than we thought,” Marcus replied.

“Well, it will make searching the rooms the Comte and Mr. Ashin Pha occupy simpler.” Jack mused in a whisper. At Marcus’s quizzical look, he continued. “If the dust in a room is thick and undisturbed, then no one has entered for a number of years—therefore, no hidden secrets from short-term residents in those rooms.”

Marcus nodded in agreement. “Good point. Now I must hurry back, before anyone notices I’m missing. We’re still all in the sitting room, but will be going into dinner shortly. You’ll be most free to move about the house then. You know what to look for?”

Jack looked heavenward. This had been drilled into him. “Just a guess … letters stained with blood?”

“Not only will they prove either the Comte’s or Mr. Pha’s involvement, but hopefully they can give us a clue as to who is pulling the strings. Best get to it, then.” Marcus said, slapping him on the shoulder before he tiptoed to the door.

“Marcus,” Jack called, and he turned. Jack’s voice became
a grumble as serious as thunder. “Don’t leave Sarah’s side tonight.”

Marcus nodded gravely, right before slipping out the door and back into the brightness of the hallway beyond.

Leaving Jack to carry out his mission. Careful not to disturb the dust of the stale room, he immediately went to where he knew the hidden door to the servant’s staircase to be, and slipped inside.

This particular corridor he knew, thanks to memorizing the house’s schematics, lead to the servants’ bedrooms—and since all of the maids and footmen would be dealing with the party, it was predictably unoccupied. A quick rifling of all the servants’ rooms turned up nothing. Except for the fact that
none
of the servants appeared to be English. Jack wondered briefly what had happened to the housekeeper and skeleton staff most aristocratic houses retained even when they were not in use. But since he located no letters, let alone bloodstained ones, he put his questions into a spare corner of his brain and moved on.

Since the main floors of the house were occupied by the party, Jack moved silently up the servants’ staircase to the top of the house, where the storage rooms and nursery were. The nursery was predictably dusty and unused (no call for someone without young family to open up those rooms), but the attics were clean as a whistle … and unaccountably empty. Jack searched every corner, but came up with nothing. It was deeply suspicious, because the Duke of Parford was said to have been a collector, with every one of his homes full of beautiful things. Even if he had lent this house for the Season, why would he have bothered to clean out the attic?

There was, indeed, something very strange going on in this house.

But since there was nothing in the way of communiqués, Jack had no reason to stay, and as such, he began working his way down the house, room by room. And coming up with nothing. Even the Comte’s bedroom—which was a mess, and spoke to his valet’s lack of discipline—contained nothing of note that Jack could find. Nor did Mr. Ashin Pha’s—and he seemed to be living in a state of dissolute grandeur to rival his friend’s.

There was a hairy moment or two when Jack knew he had
to move from the family rooms to the public rooms below, the sounds of laughter, warmth, and clinking silverware drifting up the main staircase. Apparently the dinner party was a great success. But Jack would have to ruminate on Sarah’s party-planning abilities later, as he was confronted by the unexpected—a footman, stationed at the top of the staircase.

Judging by the dark man’s size and the ill-fitting uniform, he had not been “just” a footman in India. And he was to make sure that no guest moved up the stairs to the family rooms.

Lucky for Jack, he was not expecting anyone to be moving in the opposite direction.

It was dark enough at the top of the stairs that dragging the heavy man’s inert form into a linen closet went unnoticed—but Jack knew his absence would be noted soon, and therefore, his search of the most important rooms would have to be as quick as it was thorough.

He slipped down the staircase, holding in a shadowed alcove, as a number of servants moved past with empty trays and decanters. The doors up the hall from him were the dining room and drawing room, respectively. From the sounds and light, Jack guessed dinner was in its last throes.

He would have to hurry, then.

There was only one door at the end of the hall—the Duke of Parford’s library. And if Jack was going to wager money, he would bet that what they looked for was in there.

When the last servant passed with the last tray of empty plates, Jack slipped out and made his way to the library door. Of course it was locked, which only heightened Jack’s expectations.

Now he just needed to pick the lock. Luckily, the Blue Raven spent the better part of a week teaching him how. Less luckily, that had always been with much better light.

“Come on,” Jack breathed to himself, as he maneuvered the mangled hairpin in the latch. Byrne could do this with a breath and wrist flick, he thought ruefully. Female noise from down the hall were getting louder … The ladies were retiring to the drawing room … They would be in the hallway at any moment.

Blessedly, the latch gave way with one last flick of the
wrist, and Jack slipped inside the library door, just as the dining room doors were opening.

Immediately, Jack knew that had he been a betting man, his pockets would be fuller right now. The Duke of Parford’s library absolutely tingled with discovery.

This room was used, and used often. Even in the dark, Jack could see the piles of papers, maps, and objects from foreign lands scattered seemingly at random about the room.

He moved swiftly to the desk, and the stack of papers that was haphazardly strewn there. Nothing but bills—massive ones, but just bills all the same. No bloodstains. He rifled the books, to the same result. The cushions of the lounge chairs, the uncomfortably high desk chair … and found nothing.

The only thing he found out of place was the excessive amount of ash in the fireplace—it had been too warm for the past week for any need of a fire. Was someone burning bloody letters?

He had just ducked and begun gingerly sifting through the ash when he heard a sound at the door. Someone was turning the knob.

Swiftly he pulled his hood firmly over his head, seeking darkness, obscurity. He moved to hide himself beside the doorjamb … quickly pulling out the seaman’s dagger he had concealed in his boot. He waited, as the door handle clicked … and the massive carved plank of solid oak was pushed in…

And Sarah Forrester ducked her head around the corner.

“
God damn it,
” he breathed.

When she turned, and saw only a dark figure in the dark with the shine of a blade in hand, she did what any sane person would. She opened her mouth to scream.

Which he could not allow.

Thus he did the only thing he could think of at that moment. Roughly, he pulled her to his body and kissed her.