If I Fall (42 page)

Interestingly, it was the rumor of the Comte’s thievery of the Holbein that had most people agape. Unfortunately, the appearance of the new riding habit on Georgina seemed to indict her more than anything else.

Madame LeTrois’s gowns were notorious for being the most talked-of ensembles—but usually, it was a bit different.

And so, unable to solve her own life, Sarah decided to do what she could to help Georgina, and decided to call on her that morning.

She had told her mother she was going with Phillippa. And her mother was so busy planning a going-away dinner for Jack (Sarah’s heart constricted every time she heard that phrase!) that she gave it little mind. As well, Jack was out of the house—he’d gone to the naval offices at Somerset House to officially accept his commission. Therefore, he wouldn’t rightly point out the danger of her entering the Duke of Parford’s home. After all, while Mr. Ashin Pha was likely halfway back to India by now, it was not a known fact.

But Sarah was determined. She wanted to see Georgina alone. She would give her the same speech that Phillippa had given her, tell her that she had done nothing wrong, and therefore she should stop acting like it. To find a way to change the story, and make society envy her instead of pitying her. And to survive it.

She trotted up to the Duke of Parford’s door, practicing her speech in her mind, and raised her hand to lift the heavy knocker.

And instead found the door unlocked. Not to mention unlatched. It creaked open, setting the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck in little spikes.

“Hello?” she ventured. The mansion’s foyer was as quiet as death, her voice echoing across the expanse in chilling fashion.
None of the curtains were open, so not only was the space quiet, but Sarah could hardly see.

“Hello? She tried again, stepping in all the way. She kept one toe in the light from the doorway, every instinct in her body telling her to flee. Until she heard it.

“… ’ello?” It was the barest whisper. A female voice, so quiet, Sarah might have mistaken it for the last echo of her own tentative greeting, except for the words that followed. “Who’s there?”

Sarah stepped in further to the great hallway.

“Georgina?” she asked the air.

“Sarah?” the voice came. Then a relieved cry. “We’re in here! We’re in here!”

Blindly, Sarah followed the voice to a door on the side of the foyer that she knew to be the door to the study. Her heart raced, her palms became slick. Her body prepared for flight. She knew,
knew
, that something was wrong. But she was not prepared for what she saw.

A heavy curtain billowed open from a breeze. The broken window—through which Jack had made his grand escape three days ago—was boarded up with cheap planks of wood. So cheap, in fact, that somehow it had been broken open again, and glass and splinters littered the floor of the study. And there, amongst the splinters, lay the lifeless body of one Mr. Ashin Pha, a red line stretching across his throat, spilling his blood out onto the carpet.

Sarah screamed. Screamed madly, screamed without any idea that she was going to be heard. But before her brain could command her feet to move, to get the hell out of there, another voice penetrated her brain.

“Sarah!” Georgina’s voice came from seemingly nowhere. “Sarah is that you? Are you alright?”

“G—Georgina!” Sarah cried, unable to tear her gaze from the body—his glassy eyes told her he was dead, and his pallor suggested it had been quite a while. “Where are you?”

“We … we’re stuck in here. Behind the wall.”

Sarah turned wildly, her eyes finally landing on the false Holbein. Georgina rapped on the wall, confirming that her voice came from there.

“Georgina, you’re behind the painting?” Sarah asked
wildly, running over to the painting … which was coincidentally the very furthest point from the form of Mr. Ashin Pha.

“Yes, Mrs. Hill and I,” Georgina explained. Now that someone had arrived, her voice began to give into the hysterics she had obviously been holding onto this entire time. “It’s very cramped in here, and dark, and I … we locked ourselves in here when we heard the men break in, and I don’t know what happened, you have to get us out, you just have to, Sarah!”

Georgina’s cries became further muffled. Sarah guessed she was now pressed into Mrs. Hill’s shoulder, as that woman’s voice came through the wall now. “There, there,” it soothed. “Help is here now; we are saved.” Then a little louder. “Quickly if you please, Miss Forrester?”

“Right … how did Jack open this lock?” she asked herself, panic making her mind sharp. The frame, he had said. It was attached to the wall. She quickly began running her fingers over its edges, looking for the scroll that Jack said decompressed and…

With a snick and a catch, the hidden door released. Sarah gently pushed it inward, revealing two very pale and dusty female figures standing in the small space available, clutching each other in hope and terror.

“Thank heavens!” Georgina cried, removing herself from Mrs. Hill’s embrace and throwing herself into Sarah’s. “We’ve been in there for hours. I didn’t know if we’d ever get out!”

“Georgina, what happened? Where are all the servants?” Sarah asked. Indeed, the house had the feel of one abandoned, only wanting for dust cloths over furniture to make it feel truly empty.

“They … they left,” Georgina replied, in between gulps of air and tears. “Yesterday! I went out to the park and came home and the entire house was empty!”

Sarah shot a glance to the steadier, but no less dusty and shaken Mrs. Hill. That usually stoic lady was pale with shock. “We don’t know what happened, but it seems the abandonment by Mr. Ashin Pha and the Comte—as well as some rumors about Miss Georgina’s solvency—convinced them to leave.” Mrs. Hill grimaced. “With all the silver.”

As shocked as Sarah was by such rash treatment by a
household staff—albeit a foreign one—she was still a little bit more concerned by the dead body of Mr. Ashin Pha on the floor, a mere dozen feet away.

“But what happened with Mr. Pha?” Sarah asked, her heart beating like a hummingbird’s wing.

It was Georgina who answered, her face as pale as a ghost. “He … they. … We were in here, trying to find my brother’s bills and things, to see if we really were out of money. And someone started clawing at the boarded up window. I knew about the little room behind the painting—I was exploring in here one day and found it—and so we hid in there.” She took a breath, steadied herself, held herself upright through sheer will and the support of Mrs. Hill’s shoulder. “I knew it was Mr. Pha by his voice, but there was another one. They were looking for something, but I have no idea what. And the other man—he was speaking in Burmese as well—he kept yelling at Mr. Pha. And then…” Georgina’s face crumpled as her eyes flicked to where Mr. Pha had fallen. She sobbed into Mrs. Hill’s shoulder.

“I think it best if we remove ourselves from this room, don’t you?” Mrs. Hill said pointedly.

“Yes, of course,” Sarah replied, her reeling mind snapping back to the present. But the same refrain was going on over and over in her head:
There was another man. She had to tell Marcus. She had to tell Jack.

“Who is Jack?” Georgina asked, once they were in the great foyer.

“Beg pardon?”

“You … when you were opening the door, you said Jack had told you how to do it.” Georgina replied vaguely, as if talking of such a small oddity was somehow soothing, different from the horror of her last few hours.

“Jack! Of course.” Sarah cried. “He should know about this. Marcus, too. We need to tell them.”

“Sarah—please,” Georgina grabbed her hand, with a shocking force, pressing Sarah’s flesh white. “I have to talk to my brother. Do you know where he is? I have to find him … tell him … I don’t know a lot of the language, but I do know they mentioned my brother’s name, and I’m afraid that the man will go find him next.”

“Yes, of course,” Sarah replied. “We need to get Jack, too. He’ll need to know this. We shall pick him up on the way.”

“No,” Mrs. Hill interjected sternly. “I doubt there is time for that. I will fetch your Jack to you, but please, take Miss Georgina to the Comte. I too fear the consequences if we do not reach him in time.”

“You’ve been through so much,” Sarah began to protest, but was cut off by a hand from Mrs. Hill.

“I am made of stronger stuff than that.”

“She is,” Georgina added, with a meek smile.

“All right,” Sarah conceded. “Go to the naval offices at Somerset House, ask for Lieutenant Jackson Fletcher. And then meet us at Sir Marcus Worth’s offices at the Horse Guards.”

A quick look was shared between Georgina and Mrs. Hill, ended by a curt nod from Georgina. Mrs. Hill rose quickly and headed out of the house, hailing a hack as she went.

“Come,” Sarah said finally, half lifting Georgina from her seat. “Hopefully the Comte can shed some light on this.”

“M
ARCUS
, we need to see the Comte immediately!” Sarah cried, unable to hold it in any longer. They had driven across town in silence, Georgina pale and wild-eyed, Sarah holding onto her arm, trying to be soothing, fearing that she was instead gripping her friend’s arm into numbness. Finally they had arrived at the Horse Guards, and then had to wait whole minutes while the guards contacted Sir Marcus to see if he was available to meet with them. Apparently, the word “emergency” meant very little to their ears.

Finally a guard took them back to the security section, where Sarah blurted out their intentions before the door to his office barely had time to close.

“Miss Forrester, good God, what is wrong? What has happened to the two of you?” Marcus exclaimed, offering them both seats, but neither took them. The need to move was too urgent, too desperate.

“What happened is Mr. Ashin Pha has been killed, and we were locked in a room, and if you don’t let me see my brother right now, I’m going to scream!” Georgina piped up, her voice shaking.

Marcus could only blink at the two of them. “Perhaps it is better if you start at the beginning.”

And so they told him, in alternating sentences, about what had happened just this morning. They were not halfway through their speech when Marcus jumped up from his spot on the edge of the desk, grabbed a set of keys, and ran to the door. The girls followed him.

“Guard,” he called to a guard posted at a doorway down the hall. “I’m taking these ladies up to see the prisoner. Let no one in or out after us, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the guard saluted. And with that, they entered the door the man guarded.

It was a rickety, narrow staircase, circling the walls. Seemingly going up into a belfry. A wide mouth in the center made Sarah dizzy as they approached the top. The stairs were too steep and narrow to position a guard on, which is why they remained outside of the hallway doors. Sir Marcus flipped through the keys on the ring in his hand while he talked.

“Your stepbrother, Miss Thompson, I am sorry to say, is not the best of men. He has become involved in a conspiracy with international implications.”

“A conspiracy?” Georgina asked, bewildered, as they climbed.

“Yes,” Marcus replied. “At first he would admit to nothing. But slowly he has been confessing to small amounts of con artistry. As of this very morning, he mentioned a third person in on the gambit, and I think it is this man who murdered your Mr. Pha. We have to get him to tell us who is he and where to find him.”

They reached a door, four stories up. It was heavy, built of iron, with massive locks and only the smallest slit where food could be passed through. Marcus unlocked the door with an oversized key, swinging the door open, to reveal the Comte de Le Bon, a shackle around one ankle, connecting to the thick stone walls. But the Comte himself was sitting quietly on an overstuffed chair, reading a lurid novel, for all the world comfortable and content.

“Sir Worth, this novel,” the Comte said without looking up, “I do not know if the plot is worthy of any information I might
have. You should talk to the people who see to my comfort—it requires better literature.”

“Jean,” Georgina cried, rushing to his side. He looked up startled, then happily taking her into his arms. Behind them, Marcus securely closed and locked the door.

“Georgie!” the Comte said, flustered. He caught her when she rushed into his arms. “How did you find me?”

“Miss Thompson, please step away from him,” Marcus commanded. But Georgina, in all her flushed worry, paid him no heed.

“Jean, the worst has happened, Mr. Pha is dead!”

“What? No! Pha was supposed to flee via ship?” the Comte looked wildly from Marcus to Sarah, as if searching for confirmation from them.

“Someone killed him in our house, Jean!” Georgina said, harshly, drawing the Comte’s attention back to her. Sarah watched as he focused on his sister’s face, his expression inscrutable. “Sir Marcus said you mentioned a third conspirator.” Then, harsher, “Did you mention a third conspirator, Jean?”

The Comte’s inscrutable expression quickly paled. Sarah was surprised to recognize the fear on his features.

“Georgina, no, I didn’t tell them anything, I swear.”

“Not yet, at least,” Georgina’s normally fluttery, soft countenance was gone, replaced by a voice as hard as the steel blade that appeared in her hand from its hiding place up her sleeve.

Steel that slid into the Comte’s belly with practiced ease.

Sarah wanted to scream, but she stood rooted to the spot, watching as Georgina Thompson sliced open her stepbrother’s belly, then neck, and let him fall to the floor.

It had happened in less than a second.

“Sarah, run!” Marcus whispered in her ear.

They were at the door in a heartbeat, but as Marcus fumbled with the keys, Georgina’s clear voice cut through their panic.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said simply. They turned to see that she was holding a pocket pistol. Pointed easily, coolly, directly at them.