If I Fall (37 page)

“I meant about the skirts!”

Another laugh escaped him. “Yes, I promise. Now give me your hands.”

She did, throwing her hands down and her skirts going above her head in one fell swoop. He caught her arms, but she let go over her legs too early, and they landed in a heap on the ground, all skirts and limbs. With him breaking her fall.

“Oh, Sarah.” He chuckled as he sat up, setting her to rights. “Promise me you won’t change too much.”

How had she forgotten all of that? Not the actions, per say, but the feelings? What it felt like to be worried about him. What it felt like to hold someone so close to yourself, in spirit if not in body, that their plights became yours?

They were so different now, but it was exactly the same.

Oh my goodness …
her mind became alight with wonder.

But before she could ponder on that further, a voice came from the window.

“You’re going to pace a hole in the carpet.”

“Jack!” she cried, running to his side. “Where have you been!” She tried to maintain a whisper, but knew she did so terribly. But by the time she reached him, she was ready to yell at him at full voice.

“You’re bleeding,” she stated dully, fear knocking out her immediate anger, and causing her eyes to fly to his.

“I fell on some glass,” he reassured. “I’m all right. It must be dry by now.”

“But not clean,” she replied. “Stay here, give me just a moment.”

She left him out on the balcony, shrouded by darkness. She crossed the room quickly and pulled a cord. Within a minute, Molly was at her door.

“Molly, could you bring me a hot water bottle and some cloths?” At her maid’s silent upticked eyebrow, she offered the only explanation a woman can give. “I feel my courses coming on. Please, Molly.”

“Yes miss,” Molly replied. “Would you care for a powder as well?”

“Certainly,” Sarah agreed. Not knowing exactly what Jack would need, surely a powder couldn’t hurt, could it?

When the maid left, Sarah trotted back quickly to the balcony.

“For heaven’s sake, you’re shaking,” she cried, her eyes popping wide. She bent down and helped lift him. He winced slightly when she touched his arm, but he bore through it, allowing her to help him into the room.

“I’ve been running all day. Your horse—”

“I don’t care about the horse,” she replied quickly. “Get on the bed.”

Jack gave a short, silent laugh at her insistent pulling. But he let her lead the way. “I’ve dreamed of you telling me that,” he said, blearily. She held off on blushing by focusing on the task at hand, namely, getting Jack to sit down and take off his shredded coat. “Your horse is fine, by the bye. She’s back in the mews.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. The task of removing his jacket done, Sarah tossed it on a nearby chair. Then she tilted her head to the side, examining the wounds on his arm and side through the rough twill of his workman’s shirt. “Although, that will be terribly difficult to explain to the Comte and Georgina.”

“Why?” his head came up.

“While you were out running all over God knows where…”

“Mostly Whitechapel,” he supplied.

“Excellent, you are very likely even filthier than you appear,” Sarah surmised flatly, at his mention of that seedy, labyrinthine section of London.

“Kept me away from more watchful eyes,” he remarked.

“And Worth House couldn’t have done that?” she argued. That had been where he had agreed to meet with Marcus after the mission. Worth House, thanks to Marcus’s connections and Phillippa’s exactitude, was a fortress.

“They followed me. I didn’t want to lead anyone back to you,” he replied quietly.

Sarah, unable to respond to that properly, stilled briefly in her probing. “Ah … like I was saying, while you spent the afternoon running around, I spent it in a dress shop with Georgina and the Comte, and then when we came back to the house it was in total uproar. Because apparently a man had broken in, stole a few thousand pounds worth of personal items, broke a window, and stole my horse to make his escape.” At his stunned expression, she continued. “The Comte offered to buy me a new one, but I settled for reporting it to the police, as a neighbor had seen the uproar and sent for them.”

“I didn’t steal anything,” Jack said, puzzled.

“I didn’t think so. But the mystery gets deeper. Apparently, Mr. Ashin Pha has gone missing, too.” A soft knock at the door stilled Sarah’s hands. Then she leveraged him up fully onto the bed, and drew the bed curtains closed. “Not a sound,” she admonished, before closing him in.

It was, as expected, Molly at the door. “Here is your hot water, and your cloths,” she said. “I’ve also brought some thin broth—always a help to me in my time,” she blathered as she tried to enter the room. Sarah stopped her with a hand.

“Thank you Molly,” she said firmly. “I’ll take that from you. If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone just now.”

As Sarah turned and put the tray of cloths, hot water, powders, and broth on the surface of her dressing table, her eyes fell to the chair by her bed, where she had tossed Jack’s lacerated jacket. She turned back, and stared Molly dead in the eye, holding her gaze, willing her not to notice the jacket.

“Thank you, Molly. I’m sure I’ll feel much better in the morning.”

Her nonplussed maid took that as a firm dismissal, and if she noticed the jacket, or the closed bed curtains, she was far too professional to mention it. When the door clicked shut, Sarah returned to her charge.

Who, somehow, had silently managed to remove his shirt.

Oh my goodness
.

She froze, her arm in midair, holding back the bed curtain, as light from her bedside lamp spilled over his well-formed
chest. She had been crushed up against that chest, his arms and cloak wrapping around her, so she could have guessed what had been underneath the heavy cloak. But she had no idea he was hiding
this
. All those years of life on a ship had honed his muscles into bulging ropes of strength, his belly flat and his chest broad. And at the moment, crisscrossed with red, angry cuts of varying lengths and depths.

She got so lost in staring at his torso—and perhaps, the line of muscle on his side that slipped beneath the line of his trousers, down to …
elsewhere
, that it took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, forcing her eyes up to his.

“I said that Mr. Pha must have taken some treasures as he absconded out of there,” Jack said, as he pulled his arm out of the cuff of his shirt, thereby freeing himself from it completely. This arm was far worse than his torso—especially the angry red gash that ran for five inches down his shoulder.

Sarah nodded in agreement, even as she kept a grim eye on that gash. “That’s what Marcus decided as well. He came when Phillippa called for him. In fact he was remarkably nearby, likely having been inspecting the entire incident at the Duke of Parford’s home since Phillippa had sent that note out. But why would Mr. Pha run away in the first place?”

“Because his lie had been discovered.” Jack surmised. Then, with a look to her, “He is not Burmese. And there are ramifications of that discovery.”

“But how do you know?” she asked, as she remembered her purpose and fetched the hot water and cloths to the bedside. And so, as she sat gingerly next to him, he told her. Told her of the fight, and how men of aristocratic birth would never fight like that—no matter where they are from. Then he told her why the man never spoke in public.

“He likely doesn’t know a word of Burmese,” he said in conclusion, as she dabbed hot water on the smaller cuts on his arm, wiping away dried blood, dirt that had congealed into a paste with sweat. He’d gritted his teeth, but talked his way through the worst of her ministrations.

“Does Sir Marcus know?” she lifted her eyes to his. “When he arrived on the scene, the Comte was very upset, so he took
him to his club for a drink to calm down,” she explained. “But I don’t think he really took him for a drink, if you take my meaning.”

In fact, while Miss Georgina and Mrs. Hill had acted with the practicality borne of women, going through each room, trying to decipher what had been taken, questioning the staff, and speaking to the police about increasing foot patrols of this supposedly good neighborhood, the Comte had simply started going red and blathering that it wasn’t his fault, and who knew where his friend—the missing Mr. Pha—was now. When Marcus offered to take him up in his carriage “for a drink at the club,” the Comte agreed readily.

Miss Georgina at first seemed worried—she was rightfully nervous about she and Mrs. Hill being left alone in the house without any male protection. But the Comte simply looked her dead in the eye and said, “Georgie, never fear. I’ll be fine.”

She seemed to swallow that, and sent her stepbrother away with a whispered word and kiss on his cheek. Little did she know she was sending her brother—alone for the first time—into the arms of those who suspected him of treason.

“Yes, Sir Marcus knows,” Jack said. “I managed to get word to him.”

“How?”

Apparently, getting word to him involved a hastily scrawled note to be delivered into either Sir or Lady Worth’s hands, and paying a young street lad to hand deliver the note to the door of the Worth’s house while he watched from around the corner. Given the commotion that occurred in the following minutes after the note was successfully delivered—horses being ordered, and missives being sent—Jack could rightfully conclude that the message had reached Sir Marcus’s ears.

“So the Comte is now in the War Department’s custody,” Jack surmised. “Finally. At best the Comte was duped by Mr. Pha like the rest of us, at worst he orchestrated the entire affair.” He looked down at her then, his eyes following the line of her arms to where her hand hesitated, at the large gash on his shoulder.

“I managed to get all the glass out, I think,” he said, in a way that was likely meant to reassure.

“This may hurt a little bit,” she warned, as she sucked in a
deep breath, and finally applied her attentions to the large gash on his shoulder.

He swore briefly, silently.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her entire body tensing with his exclamation. “I’m rather new to this nursemaid business. The last time I had to tend to a scraped knee I was ten, and we were a mile and a half out in the woods—”

“And Bridget tripped over that rock,” Jack finished for her.

“It was Mandy, not Bridget. If Bridget scraped her knees, she would have been too proud to let anyone tend to them.”

“That’s right.” He laughed, just slightly, but enough to make Sarah relax back into cleaning the wound. Carefully, tenderly, she dragged the wet cloth over his flesh, wiping away anything that hid him from her. When her job was done, she took the dry bit of cloth and wound it tight around the gash. Then she inspected her work.

“Well, it’s far from professional—”

“I’d prefer to avoid a professional right now, and their questions. If Marcus can arrange it, I’ll see someone he trusts tomorrow.”

“Good. Good. Your arm should stay on until then.” She nodded, like a ninny.
Stop being an idiot
, she admonished herself.
It’s only Jack
.

But she knew she was fooling herself. Jack had long since stopped being only Jack.

“But what was behind the painting?” she said suddenly. “Surely you must go to Marcus tonight, and let him know what you discovered.”

“I already have. That was the second bit of information in the note.”

“You did find something,” Sarah’s eyes went wide. Was it the proof they sought? Was the Comte as duplicitous as they suspected? But Jack simply nodded over to where his shredded coat rested on the chair.

“In the front pocket,” he said. Curious, she took the jacket and rummaged in the pockets, pulling out an old piece of paper. At his nod she opened it.

“It’s … a love letter.” Some poor young woman pouring her misspelled heart out onto paper.

“To the Duke of Parford—likely when he was a lad.” Jack
leaned forward. “It’s Parford’s most precious possession, judging by the way he kept it safe.” And then with finality, “And nothing to do with the Comte.”

Sarah couldn’t help reading the letter. As terribly written and plaintive as it was, she couldn’t help but feel that she was being terribly rude stepping into these people’s lives, into their pasts, wherever they happened to be now. Also, another part of her, a smaller but stronger piece of her soul, recognized the bravery it took to confess one’s feelings. And in contrast, her own cowardice.

“So … if there was nothing behind the wall,” she began, folding the letter back carefully, “and the Comte has been taken in for questioning—whether he knows it or not—” She finally turned her body, and met his gaze. “What do we do next?”

Jack shrugged, his eyes never leaving hers. “Nothing.” Then a great sigh left his body. “I think our part in this farce of heavy consequences is over.”

“Over,” she repeated dully. “So no more … spying? No more of … this?”

“No more Blue Raven,” Jack said evenly, his tone betraying no feeling one way or the other on the matter.