If I Fall (45 page)

“Control?” Marcus asked.

“Over the Comte. You see, the letter did not incriminate
her
. In fact, none of us, even though she resided in the same house as the Comte, ever even suspected her. We thought she was the excuse he and Mr. Pha used to come to London, a poor victim of his influence. But this letter … if he ever got out of line again, and tried to sell another Holbein or talked of turning … well, she could say she had found it in his belongings, and suddenly he’d find himself hanging for the murder of Lord Fieldstone.” Sarah stared Georgina down, hate in her eyes. “It gave her back control of the Comte. And control … is everything.”

“Very good, Sarah,” Georgina replied, admirably. “I knew you would have made an excellent protégée.” Sarah couldn’t help but register some surprise—and the rest of her was decidedly appalled. “I thought about trying to recruit you once or twice,” Georgina continued. “After all, you were so very, very good at pretending to be someone else. But then you seemed to lose interest in make-believe.”

She meant that Sarah had lost some of her hard, angry edges when the Blue Raven—when Jack—had come into her life.

“Anyway, after I showed the letter to the Comte,” Georgina continued, “he was much more cooperative with my goals. He acquiesced when I agreed to your idea for a dinner party—I wanted to see who exactly was going to come after me, you
see—but he slipped away from me when you took him into your custody, Sir Marcus. And he was eager to do it. I knew Jean wouldn’t talk without some assurances and, therefore, had a little time to close up shop. But not much.”

“You wreak so much havoc…” Sarah said, shaking her head. “And yet you call it closing up shop.”

“I only do what I have to, Sarah, to survive. Much like you. Much like everyone else,” Georgina replied. Just then a certain amount of commotion began from outside the window, in the courtyard below. “And that must be the guard change. Well, I suppose it’s time. This has been fun, but I really must be going.”

As Georgina smiled at them, waving her gun back and forth between them like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, Sarah glanced at Marcus. Their time was up, it seemed. Sarah felt her body go numb, her knees weak. But Marcus—God bless Marcus—held her gaze, his kind eyes becoming steel.

Stay strong
, they seemed to say.
This is the moment
.

“Which of you shall come with me?” Georgina asked.

That was when Marcus leaped at her.

That was when the gun went off.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

J
ACK
was halfway up the wall when he heard the gunshot.

He had managed to sneak back to the building along the side, where the horses were kept. He moved along the back of the building, careful to avoid any of the guards who had tried to hold him earlier, careful to look as if he belonged as much as possible. As dirty as he was, he was still in his naval uniform. It was almost eleven o’clock, time for the ceremonial changing of the guards outside of the building. He would have to be quick, and quiet.

Luckily, the Horse Guards, built in the last century, had the ornateness of the Baroque style and the bulbous outcroppings on ledges, cornerstones, and cornices that made excellent footholds. He scrambled faster than he ever had in his life. Moved with speed and assurance that he didn’t know he possessed. But it was there. As certain as he was that Georgina Thompson was in the little room and, therefore, Sarah Forrester, thus was the certainty of his movements.

And when the gunshot rang out from that room—it confirmed all his suspicions and fears immediately.

Unfortunately, it also managed to draw the attention of the guards he had previously eluded below.

“Oy there! Stop!” came cries, and clattering of men—men who, Jack recalled as he heard the click and snick of readying weapons, were well armed.

He moved like the wind, gripping the walls like he was born to it, like ivy, scaling the building in record time. He levered himself up onto the roof just as the first ball was fired at him. The second and third came at his heels, but he was already running—running across slanted slate, running past the railings that lined the roof, to where he estimated the small, high window was on the other side of the building. Shots were coming from the other side now, but he was too high above them for their shots to bear fruit. Then, he reached the corner where he needed to be, got on his belly, and hung himself over the roof’s cornice, and caught a glimpse of what was going on in the window below him.

He spied the Comte, dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood. The drumming in his ears surged when he saw Marcus, seemingly lifeless, crumpled in a ball in the corner of the room. And Sarah, half naked, shakily stripping off her dress, while Georgina Thompson held a knife under her chin.

Sarah didn’t know what had happened. One minute, they had been standing there, and in a blink, Marcus had leaped for Georgina, knocking her gun hand skyward as he did so.

Georgina was shocked—shocked enough to pull the trigger, raining down upon them ceiling plaster and dust. But not shocked enough to not counterattack. While Marcus had her in strength and most especially in height, he did not immediately take the fight. Perhaps his natural chivalry made him hesitant to hurt a woman, maybe he thought to take her alive, either way, he was suddenly at a disadvantage. Using strength and balance that could only have been taught in the Far East, Georgina managed to flip him beneath her, and roll him across the floor.

The gun, having been fired and thus now worthless, skittered across the floor. And somehow in the ensuing tumult the keys skittered as well.

The keys
.

The sight of those silver and black keys on the floor brought fire back to Sarah’s brain, and movement back to her feet.

She dashed across the room to where the keys lay innocently on the wooden floor. Scooping them up, she dashed back to the door.

“Gold!” Marcus said, his voice squeezed by the fight. “Gold … key!”

Sarah flipped through the ring to the gold key, and fitted it into the lock. Just in time to hear a deep gasp from the fight in the corner. Sarah turned, unable to stop herself.

There, she saw Marcus and Georgina, both on their knees. Georgina held him steady by the knife she held in his gut. Slowly, he fell over on his side in a thud, clutching his wounded side. Georgina slid the knife out of him, and held it to his throat…

Sarah didn’t need to see anything more. Swiftly she turned back, turning the key in the lock with an audible click.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Georgina cried, stopping before delivering the coup de grace to Marcus’s throat, and instead leaping across the room and slamming her hand against the door, shutting it before Sarah could open it. With her other hand, she held the knife that dripped Marcus’s—and the Comte’s—blood, right underneath Sarah’s chin.

“You stop right there,” Georgina said, all politeness gone from her voice. Her face … she had not yet had enough blood spilled. She wanted more. Sarah could tell.

And then, Sarah heard it. A commotion from outside, a number of shots being fired from the back of the building. Strangely, Georgina didn’t seem to register it. She was too bloodthirsty, her breaths still coming in gulps from her exertions with Marcus. And then … Sarah heard footsteps. Across the roof.

Jack
.

It had to be. No one else climbed like that. It had to be Jack. Her heart soared, but her mind, blessedly, stayed in the present.

“D-Don’t,” Sarah managed, flinching back from the knife. “You … you’ll get blood on my dress.”

“I’m about to get a lot more,” Georgina replied, her eyes feral. “I’ve decided I can do without a hostage.”

“But you can’t do without a clean dress!” Sarah said in a rush. Georgina blinked once, and drew back, ever so slightly.
“You … you can’t walk through Whitehall in your gown. You’ll be caught.”

Georgina’s eyes flicked down. Her gown, once a soft blue- gray shade, with velvet spencer (a particularly nice creation of Madam LeTrois’, Sarah noted), was torn, and covered in blood. The majority of which came from when Georgina slit the Comte’s throat. But the tears of her sleeve and the blood matting her hair at the temple, that was all Marcus. While Georgina examined herself, Sarah chanced a glance to where Marcus lay unmoving.

Unmoving, that is, except for his eye. Which winked at her.

“You’re right,” Georgina replied, having taken stock of her ensemble and found it wanting. “I knew you would have made a good protégée.” Then, extending her arm so the blade of her knife nudged Sarah’s chin up, “Take it off.”

Sarah immediately, but slowly, methodically, began working the buttons of her spencer. When she removed it, she took a gentle step backward, ostensibly to give her arms room to maneuver. She dropped the spencer on the floor beside Georgina, clear of the bodies that littered the space.

Then she began to work on the buttons on the side of her dress. Just as she brought the dress up over her head, she saw a flash of movement at the window. A familiar head of sun-streaked hair.

The percussion of her heartbeat threatened to break through the walls of her chest, as she drew the dress over her head and tossed it next to the spencer.

“Go stand over there,” Georgina indicated the far corner of the room, away from the door and escape. Which was fine, the further from the deadly blade, the better in Sarah’s mind. All she had to do was lower that knife, just for a moment, just a spare second…

BAM!!!

Glass flew into the room just as Georgina lowered herself to pick up the dress and spencer. Jack swung himself through the window, feet first, sending shards flying, one or two nicking Sarah as she protected herself with her arms.

Georgina was up in an instant, her knife at the ready. But it was Jack,
Jack!
who stood in front of Sarah, protectively.

“Miss Thompson,” Jack said, surprisingly cordial, given the growl of his voice.

“Lieutenant Fletcher,” Georgina replied. “Fancy seeing you alive. I take it you tied up a loose end for me?”

“Give it up, Georgina,” Jack said, as they circled slowly. Sarah moved with Jack. “His Majesty’s entire army saw me break through that window. They will be mounting those stairs at any moment. In fact, Sarah,” Jack addressed her without turning, “why don’t you open that door for them?”

Sarah started for a moment, and then realized that Jack had walked them a complete one hundred and eighty degrees, and the door was right behind her, with the key still in the lock. She turned it, then levered the heavy iron door open.

“Sarah go right on down, I’ll be with you in a moment,” Jack said.

“Aren’t … aren’t you coming with me?” she asked.

“No, he’s not,” Georgina replied for him, as she lunged forward.

Jack threw Sarah to the side, as he ducked the swinging of the knife and caught the ferocity that was Georgina Thompson.

And the world became a blaze of light.

Sarah dazedly came to her feet. Something … something was wrong with her head. She must have hit it on the wall when Jack pushed her out of the way. Her vision was fuzzy; she could only see two figures joined in combat. Sarah staggered against a floor that moved of its own volition.

“Jack,” she said weakly, moving toward him.

She could see the red and silver of the knife pressed against Jack’s throat, and how hard he worked to keep it from slicing into his skin.

She could see when Marcus, having not been as incapacitated as she thought, mustered up the strength to reach out and pull Georgina by the leg, pulling her away from Jack’s neck, saving his life, before collapsing back down into a heap.

She could see, as she staggered along the wall, her vision double, her legs like pudding, that Jack and Georgina were standing now. But who had the advantage?

She … she had to get help. Jack needed her help.
Jack told her to leave
.

Down the stairs. There would be a soldier to help down the stairs.

She lurched for the door, but somehow miscalculated. She found herself grabbed by the arm. And the blade, the ever-present blade, stuck against her chin.

“Hurt her and I’ll kill you,” she heard Jack growl. She was being pulled, pulled toward the gaping maw of the door. Good, that’s where she wanted to go. But then, then she was there, and peering out through it, and she shook her head, trying to clear it. The stairs. The rickety, narrow wooden stairs, that ran up the lonely tower in a spiral.

“I won’t hurt her,” Georgina purred at her ear. “But the ground will.”

And suddenly, Sarah was being thrown. Whipped across the narrow landing, breaking through the thin handrail and hanging over the hard floor, four stories below. But when Georgina grabbed her, took her in her strong grip, she did not realize that Sarah had gripped back.

It was a miscalculation. When Georgina whipped Sarah down into the pit, Sarah’s grip stayed, and gravity brought Georgina down with her. Now Georgina was holding onto Sarah, and Sarah was holding onto…

Jack
.