If I Fall (20 page)

“I know better than to try and convince you to purchase a new mount for me, Father—at least until I graduate university.”

“With a First.”

“With a First,” Reggie repeated, with nary a roll of the eye. Then he bade his father a good night and whistled his way upstairs, where he would likely regale his younger siblings of the triumph of finally besting his father at chess.

He’s growing up
. The thought came unbidden, as Lord Fieldstone watched his son’s form retreating from the doorway of the sitting room. It was amazing how quickly life passed—the son overtaking the parent, in less than the blink of Father Time’s eye. And Reggie was quickly turning from happy child to a pleasant, upstanding young man. It was little more than the tick of a clock.

The thought drew his eyes to the mantle, and the clock that rested there. Good Lord, was that really the time? He still had a packet of information to get through before the briefing in the morning. While slumber sounded blissful, his soft, round wife’s gentle snores pushing him like waves on the shore into restful oblivion, Fieldstone had no choice but to go up to his library and attend to business.

He headed up the stairs to the second floor, where he found a lone candlestick providing light for the hallway. Strange. Usually the wall sconces were lit until his valet had informed the household that he had gone to bed. It would have made Lord Fieldstone suspicious, but then he remembered that he had given his valet the evening off to attend the fireworks in Vauxhall, and the house must have acted accordingly, and thought nothing more of it. Picking up the candlestick, he made his way down the hall, to the large double doors with the sticky latch, and entered his library.

It was long since that Lady Fieldstone mandated Lord Fieldstone keep his hobbies confined to one room, and so, he picked the room with the most shelf space and the benefit of a double-height ceiling. After all, one never knew when they might acquire an Egyptian obelisk to round out their antiquities collection, did they?

He loved this room, with its jumble of cool marble statues—his favorite being the voluptuous Venuses, most of which didn’t reach higher than his knee, in varying qualities. The paintings and bas-relief tiles that lined the walls and took up any available space made the room feel as close to a Grecian temple as one could get this side of the British Museum. Just a few more acquisitions, and he was sure to be made a fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries, he kept telling his wife, whenever she saw another crate being delivered to the house.

Sadly, he had yet to acquire an obelisk—his wife once deftly pointed out that it would be difficult to get one up the stairs and through the door, in any case—so his pièce de résistance remained the sarcophagus, which sat in the center of the room. He would never part with it. He may well decide to be buried in it—if he would fit—as he had told Phillippa Worth when that lady offered to purchase it from him, shortly after her marriage to Marcus Worth.

At the thought of Sir Marcus Worth, Lord Fieldstone’s brow came down, and he sought out the pile of papers his secretary had left for him on his desk. Worth had been in Calais far too long, waiting for his contact to emerge from the shadows and feed him a scrap of information. His wife, Phillippa, had given him an alibi, removing herself and the children for
a country sojourn for a week or so, while he sneaked off to the French coast. But the Security Section of the War Department ground to a halt when Marcus took it upon himself to complete a mission. And if Lord Fieldstone was piecing together the information in front of him correctly, the head of the security section could not be jotting off to Calais, reliving his espionage-filled youth. He was going to be needed here, in London.

Added to that, he was worried about the boy, although it was difficult to call anyone who had gray coming in at his temples and two sons of his own a boy. But, over the past few years, Lord Fieldstone—in his capacity as head of the War Department, naturally—had come to think of Marcus as something of a son, someone he could teach, and mold.

Someone who would someday best him at chess, and take over his position.

That was a few years off, of course, but for that to happen, Marcus had to stay politically positioned, administratively inclined, and most importantly, alive.

If he wasn’t back in a day or two, Lord Fieldstone would send his brother Byrne after him. Byrne Worth’s ability to locate anything and anyone had served them all very well during the wars. Or worse yet, he would put a word in Phillippa’s ear, and Marcus would be back in London in a heartbeat.

The man needed to be back in London. Lord Fieldstone was eager to hear what he had discovered, and whether or not the letter he was halfway through writing needed to be sent.

Instead of contemplating that letter, Fieldstone settled into his desk and picked up the packet of papers in front of him, bearing the official seal of the War Department. His brow furrowed as he leafed through the communiqués. This was not his expected correspondence. He almost rang for his secretary, before remembering that man had every other half Saturday off.

Fieldstone dug into the pages. They were reports of enemy troop movements in the Far East, counter to Bengali and British interests. There were other reports on the sharp rise in sales of gunpowder in that region. Skyrocketing prices of Indian silk—an indicator that it would soon be difficult to come by. Witness accounts of brutality against British forces.

A suspiciously sharp escalation of tensions in the region from the previous weeks.

These papers made it seem as if war was about to break out immediately.

But stranger still, that he had no note from the Governor of India about such matters.

Half Saturday be damned, Fieldstone thought. He wanted his secretary here
now.

And Marcus Worth would get one more day in Calais, no more, Lord Fieldstone decided firmly.

When Marcus came back, he would use his keener-than-most insight and get to the bottom of this strange aberration in reports. They couldn’t be right. And yet … hadn’t there been odd rumors floating in the air of late, the word “Burma” constantly in the papers? It struck those off-key notes in his mind that sounded a warning.

Perhaps he should send Phillippa a note tonight, the sooner the better—together they would manage the latest intrigues that threatened their great Empire.

He laid down the papers and rubbed his eyes in the low candlelight and leaned back, letting himself have five spare seconds of contemplation before jumping into action.

Those five seconds would cost Lord Fieldstone dearly. For, as he felt a slight pinch, a sudden jolt of pain to his throat, he looked down, wildly finding a flash a metal, then a spill of darkness spreading down from his neck across his white shirtfront.

Blood. His blood
.

His mind, rather than fighting to preserve rationality, fell into fear. Fear, because he could not cry out—just a desperate gurgle that no one would hear. Fear for his wife, sleeping upstairs. Fear for his children: Reggie, becoming a man but not there yet—not ready for this. Fear, because he had missed the signs—the lack of light in the second floor corridor, the shadows of his Grecian temple that so hid the person whose knife had slid into this flesh.

He held on long enough to turn in his seat. Just a little, just a hair. But enough to see his attacker.

It was a face he did not know.

That scared him most of all.

T
HE
morning after his adventure as the Blue Raven, Jackson Fletcher should have been crowing with delight. Had he been the crowing kind. And had he been delighted.

The night before had been as thrilling and terrifying as going to battle in his first year onboard the
Amorata
. He hadn’t known what he was doing the entire time, but by God, he would bluff his way through it. And so, once he had reseated himself with the Devlins, and the curtain rose on act three, his heart was near to bursting out of his chest. His eyes would not focus on the story, nor would he let them stray to the box across the room, where he knew Sarah sat, her mind likely racing over and over the same events that his did (minus falling and landing on some local ruffians, of course).

The rest of the opera was interminable, although he was certain it was performed very well. But Jack’s body and mind would not calm down. He had
so
much energy. From the exhilaration of pulling off his scheme? From foiling a robbery?

From the guilt?

If he spoke to Sarah at that moment, he would either burst out into nervous laughter, or he would tell her immediately and confess his sins. And sins they were.

That was the only calming gravity his body would allow to break through the rush of excitement he still felt, and it only lasted until the next wave of astonishment drove him back up to giddy heights.

The fact that he was able to remove himself from the Devlins after the last curtain finally fell without giving himself away in any measure was remarkable, but he knew he could not pull the same feat off twice. Therefore, he considered it lucky that the Forresters (lead, it seemed, by Sarah) decided to call it an early evening and head directly home.

He, on the other hand, needed to walk. Needed to burn off this feeling of elation mixed with strange dread. And so he did, pacing the streets of London briskly until he knew the Forrester house would be asleep.

Thus he had seen no one in the Forrester family until that morning at the breakfast table. Where, since he had been the last one to go to bed, he was also the last one to rise. And, therefore, was greeted by the entirety of the Forrester family upon entering the room.

“Jack, my boy,” Lord Forrester said, “where did you get off to last night? I didn’t see you after the second act.”

“I was in the Devlins’ box for the rest of the performance,” he replied, trying very consciously to not stare at Sarah while he filled his plate with potatoes and ham. “And then after, I decided to meet up with Whigby and spent the rest of the evening with him.” The lie he practiced all night rolled neatly off his tongue.

“Did you?” Bridget asked, her head coming up from her plate. She tilted her head to the side quizzically. “We ran into Mr. Whigby and his aunt on the way out of the theatre, he did not mention that he was meeting you.”

Unready for this, Jack hemmed and hawed for a moment, certain that he would be unmasked by this one tiny lie and they would all be able to read it on his face. His fortune, however, was that Sarah was paying him only the smallest amount of attention.

“Mr. Whigby has yet to say even the barest of coherent sentences in my presence,” Sarah said calmly, her eyes never even flicking to where Jack now seated himself. “Requiring him to impart important information to us might be a bridge too far.”

With that, Bridget narrowed her eyes, shot her sister a look, and returned to her meal.

And with that, Jack decided that all his scheming and worry had been for naught. He shook himself imperceptibly, wanting to laugh. Why did he think that one encounter with the Blue Raven would return the Sarah Forrester of old into the welcoming arms of her family? Why did he think it would make her take interest in something other than herself? That she would fall into old patterns, forgoing the new ones?

He sighed, and glanced at Lord and Lady Forrester. Sarah’s cool quip to her sister seemed to have set off another silent conversation between her parents. One that, with a sigh and a shrug, Lord Forrester again lost.

“Would you care for the paper, Jack?” Lord Forrester asked him, flustered and covering, when he saw that Jack was observing them.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the proffered
Times
and promptly burying his head in it.

No, nothing would change. Bridget would continue to snipe, and Lord and Lady Forrester would continue to silently challenge each other on Sarah’s behavior, because Sarah would continue to fly higher and higher, until she was so far above them all—far above who she used to be—that she couldn’t see them anymore.

Even now, Bridget and Sarah were arguing over something, Jack mused, as he flipped through the pages, caught briefly on an article about reported skirmishes in the Far East, letting the noise filter over him like the meaningless squawk of seagulls.

“But theoretically, if you weren’t doing anything…” Sarah asked, her voice peeved.

“But theoretically I am, so I am unable to assist you in … what is it you need help with?” Bridget replied, her tone moving from hostile to vaguely curious.

“It’s just a … a puzzle of sorts. You have no plans for this afternoon correct?”

“You’re asking me to ‘help’ with your puzzle because I did not receive an invitation to whatever tea or salon or boring thing you think is fun that you are attending this afternoon, correct?”

“No, I’m asking because you’re better than I am at maths, and always have been,” Sarah countered.

If Jack had been paying attention at that moment, he would have seen the room go still with the admission that Bridget was better at something than Sarah. He would have seen when Bridget blinked, nonplussed, and then awkwardly replied that she might be able to assist Sarah in her puzzle problem that afternoon. He might have also seen a surprised and highly approving look pass from husband to wife, and the wife’s relieved expression. He might have seen those things, had his attention not been caught by a snippet of an article in front of him. The theatre review.