If I Fall (16 page)

After that, there was little point in playing pirates until he was properly educated about who the hero of the game would be. But as Bridget and Sarah talked over each other, and Mandy escaped her captor’s grasp and went in search of one of her dolls in the picnic basket, Miss Pritchett decided it was a proper time to suspend the game and go and look at some dragonflies.

Thus the subject of pirates—and the Blue Raven—was suspended. Until after they had gotten back to the house that afternoon.

“Come here,” Sarah whispered, grabbing his hand in the upstairs hallway. “Quickly! There’s something I want to show you.”

He was dragged into the nursery, and then beyond it—into the inner sanctum of girlhood, the Forrester sisters’ bedroom.

Which was no place a thirteen-year-old boy wanted to be.

But as he stood uncomfortably surrounded by lacy canopies and a staggering amount of dolls, keeping an eye out to make sure no one saw him in here, Sarah scrambled under her bed, her legs sticking out at awkward angles, as she struggled to reach something.

“There, I’ve got it!” she exhaled, wiggling her way out from under the bed. She pulled out a number of dust bunnies and a large, leather-bound album. “This,” she declared, “is everything you will ever need to know about the Blue Raven.”

He took the volume from her hands, opening the first page. Inside was pasted an article cut out from the
London Times,
which was titled, “The Blue Raven Saves Regiment from Ambush!
”

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” Sarah admonished. “Mama doesn’t like us girls to read the paper, so Papa sneaks it to us after he’s done with it in the morning.”

Jack nodded solemnly, knowing he was being bestowed with a great gift. “But, who is he? The Blue Raven.”

“That’s the mystery!” Sarah replied, her eyes as bright as emeralds. “He’s a man who runs around Europe, helping General Wellington take down Napoleon, but no one knows who he is, because if anyone ever found out, they might tell the French, and then he would be captured and killed, and it would be horrible! He only leaves raven feathers to let people know he’s been there!”

She flipped a few pages in. “This one is my favorite.” She sighed, pointing to the article pasted there. The header was
“
Blue Raven Lures Enemy to Capture, Lures Enemy’s Wife to Ruin.”

“He’s the most romantic hero in the world,” Sarah sighed. “And I’m mad about him.” Then she turned to Jack, serious. “And if anyone will be able to save you if you are captured by French pirates when you are fighting on a ship, it will be the Blue Raven, so you’d best study up.”

And so he read. He learned about how the Blue Raven was working covertly in Europe, sending refugees to safe haven, and cutting down those that would harm them. He learned about how the Blue Raven would often pose as an enemy officer to intercept intelligence communiqués.

And he learned, more than anything, about Sarah Forrester.

And that was that. From the moment he thought of it, Jack could not get the idea of the Blue Raven out of his head. Every single rational argument that could be made against this germ of an idea—and there were hundreds—fell prone against his conviction. Somehow this secret that Sarah had shared so long ago—the depth of her girlish adoration—would be the key to her undoing. If he could remind her … convince her to get swept up in her admiration for a childhood hero—a
real
hero, not some sod who didn’t know Rangoon from Bombay—it would mean that
he
was right, and
she
was wrong.

That somewhere deep inside her, that light still existed. That she hadn’t changed as much as she thought.

Of course, that would mean that she could be wrong about other things, too, couldn’t it, Jack thought with relish. If she could be so deeply wrong about herself, then surely she could be wrong about him, couldn’t she? About his future prospects, about the
Amorata
, about everything.

The
how
of getting Sarah to fall in love with the Blue Raven again would be the problem. He couldn’t simply sit across from her at the breakfast table and say, “Oh, I found a number of old newspaper articles about the Blue Raven, how interesting. Sarah, would you like to see them?”

She’d likely bite his head off for even addressing her before noon, Jack thought grimly, before rolling her eyes at his idiocy.

One idea was to seed a story to the newspapers that the Blue Raven was back in action, but it was quickly dismissed. Even if he’d had the ability and connections to do so (which he decidedly did not), Jack was of the opinion that any newspaper story, new or old, would be dismissed by Sarah as folly. The young Sarah would have fallen for it, but skepticism was the brand of age, and the new Sarah—the Golden Lady—would be much tougher to convince. A few stories in the paper would be dismissed by her adult mind as folly. This Sarah would require convincing before she got caught up in youthful rapture. She would require … proof.

And that’s when Jack realized Sarah Forrester would have to
meet
the Blue Raven.

This one moment of clarity was followed by a tumult of others—the chief among them, that as this was a private matter, and a … er, covert operation, he would have to limit the number of people involved to just himself. Not only would Sarah have to meet the Blue Raven, but Jack would have to pose as the man.

One might think that Jack would have had second thoughts about going this far, about playing such a strong trick on his once friend. But surprisingly, Jack had no qualms about the matter.

No, he was
relishing
the opportunity.

This way,
he
would be the one to see the light in her eyes
the moment she turned back into the old Sarah, and she would be unable to deny that it had happened after. And
he
would be the one to make her see…

Make her see what, again?

Oh, it didn’t matter. He shook any of the more ethical thoughts off. After all, he had far too many things to attend to, to fall prey to a fit of conscious.

The logistics of posing as the Blue Raven should have been easier. After all, no one knew what the man looked like. He could very easily be of Jack’s height and physique, not to mention coloring. The difficulty was, to fool Sarah, the Blue Raven could look nothing like Jack.

Therefore, the meeting would have to be brief and somewhere dark. And in public. No darting into her bedchamber. No, a public forum would be just the place to discombobulate the senses.

Luckily, the Forresters’ had taken a box at the theatre for the Season, and Sarah had promised to attend a staging of
The Marriage of Figaro
a week hence. And since her mother had invited a number of friends she deemed important, Sarah was forbidden to cry off.

Luckier still, Jack had already been to the theatre, to see that romantic play that Sarah had scoffed at him for (which she was apparently right to do, as it had turned out to be terrible), and as such, he knew the layout of the place, the nooks that existed behind curtains. And even once, he had stepped through a wrong door and ended up in an unused cupboard, with a window to the outside.

That unused cupboard was where he stood now, trying to paste on a false moustache in the dark.

Jack knew that timing was also going to be a factor. He was unfamiliar with the opera
The Marriage of Figaro
itself, but luckily, he knew someone who was far more versed.

“And then the Count seduces the Countess who he thinks is Susanna, and Susanna gets mad at Figaro for declaring his love to her while she’s disguised as the Countess, but he knew it was Susanna all along, and in the end the Count falls back in love with the Countess and Susanna and Figaro
finally
get married,” Bridget had waxed rhapsodic over supper, just the night before. Sarah of course, was dining elsewhere, with
Lady Forrester as chaperone. So it was just Jack and Lord Forrester and the two younger girls, which actually made for a pleasant, if somewhat muted evening.

Even when she was as cold as ice to him, Jack had discovered that there was nothing that made him more awake than the presence of Sarah Forrester.

An uncomfortable realization, that.

“For heaven’s sake, that’s a great deal to happen in one sitting. The audience doesn’t get bored?” Jack asked nonchalantly, earning a grunt of admission from Lord Forrester.

“It’s divided into acts, silly,” Bridget giggled—
Bridget.
It seemed that if one gave the girl a topic of conversation that she was passionate about, any facade of glum cynicism fell away. Which was a nice change of pace, actually. “Four of them. With intermissions in between. They change the sets while everyone is talking and gossiping and in general not paying attention to the opera.”

“Oh,” Jack replied, his interest piqued. “And which set is the most spectacular?”

Bridget mulled the question. “The third act. The set is a great hall prepared for a wedding. I have to guess it would be the most spectacular.”

The third act had the most spectacular set. Which means that the break between the second and third acts would be the longest. Which was when he would have to arrange for Sarah to meet the Blue Raven.

The first problem: He had to make sure Sarah would leave the box at the intermission.

The second problem: He had to make it known to Sarah that he was somewhere else at the time when she met the Blue Raven.

So, halfway through the second act, he accomplished both of these objectives with one simple sentence.

Sarah was seated in the front row, next to the Comte de Le Bon, who had somehow gotten himself invited to stay in their box between acts one and two. Mr. Ashin Pha stood behind them, stoic as ever. In fact, it was Mr. Pha they had to thank for the Comte’s presence in the box. For when the Comte had explained to Lady Forrester, ever watchful of the foreign man in her box, that “Ashin” was not his friend’s given name, but
instead his title, any worries Lady Forrester seemed to have about the man dissipated with the Comte’s ready smile.

“His title?” Lady Forrester had asked, bringing down her opera glasses, squinting at him.

“Indeed,” the Comte replied, as Mr. Ashin Pha bent over Lady Forrester’s hand. “It is the Burmese equivalent of ‘Lord.’ Little did I know I had rescued a Burmese aristocrat from certain death!”

“No wonder he is so indebted to you,” Lady Forrester fluttered under the attention. “Isn’t that interesting? Sarah, my love, don’t you find that interesting? You must forgive my precaution, Comte, but one hears such things today about the uncivilized Burmese. Now, Mr. Pha, I mean, my lord, you must sit with me, and Comte, you take that seat next to Sarah…”

And just like that, Mr. Ashin Pha was seated next to Lady Forrester. She spoke no Burmese and he, not at all, but they seemed to communicate well enough through hand gestures—apparently they had somehow gotten onto the topic of Arabian horses, although how and what they were saying was anyone’s guess … although Mr. Pha was enthusiastic about them—leaving the Comte free to lean far too close to Sarah during act two, and letting the world ogle them.

His own box now only contained his stepsister and Mrs. Hill, and was less advantageously placed for seeing and being seen, Jack noted cynically.

“Tell me, Miss Forrester,” Jack leaned down from the row behind and whispered in her ear as Figaro was singing about someone named Marcellina, which was terribly confusing since he was supposed to be marrying Susanna, near the end of act two.

Sarah’s face remained impassive as she kept her eyes on the opera’s proceedings, but he could feel her attention pull to him as he continued. “Which young lady is Juliana Devlin? Or Cynthia Donovan?”

Her eyes flicked to him. “Why do you ask?” she replied, keeping her voice painfully neutral.

“I mean to take your advice.” He replied, equally neutral.

“Do you?” Sarah asked archly. “I had thought my advice repulsive to you.”

“Tough to swallow, more like,” Jack countered. Then
watched, curiously, as Sarah herself swallowed, as if taking this new information in gulps.

“Miss Donovan is not in attendance tonight. But Miss Devlin’s box is on the other side of the theatre.”

Which Jack had already known, of course, and luckily, the path between their box and the Devlin’s went directly past the small, unused cupboard, that he intended to put to good use. The cupboard that he had already visited once that evening before they settled into their seats, wherein he stored a cloak, a domino, and a false moustache, as well as a spare, dark pair of trousers (while his coat was dark and would be hidden under the cloak, nothing would give him away faster than his uniform’s glaringly white pantaloons).

“Excellent, I shall introduce myself at the next intermission,” Jack declared in a whisper.

“You will do no such thing,” Sarah finally turned to look at him, shocked and surprised, anger in her voice. She smoothed her dress as she readjusted herself. “You must have a mutual acquaintance introduce you.”