If I Fall (22 page)

“Sarah!” Phillippa exclaimed, steadying Sarah’s arms at her sides. Apparently she had been gesticulating rather wildly. “I am half an inch from slapping some sense into you. Should I call for some wine?”

“Yes … no … I don’t know anymore. All I know is that the Blue Raven handed me a packet of items in a cupboard at the theatre, then kissed me senseless, and I have not been able to think of anything since.”

Phillippa’s hands froze on her arms. “Did you say Blue Raven?”

Sarah nodded sadly. “Which is why I couldn’t tell anyone. Not only must I protect him, no one would believe me.” She looked up into Phillippa’s wide, unblinking eyes. Shocked into silence. “And you do not believe me, either.”

“No,” Phillippa replied carefully. “I believe you. But I think you should start over. From the beginning. Tell me exactly how you met and what happened. Er, slowly.”

And so she did. Sarah told her everything, from finding the feathers in the hall of the opera, to being pulled into the cupboard. To the little packet of clues, and how she had tried to solve the clues that were laid out before her. To staying in, because she knew that she would have to be in a place where she could be found. To … well, to be honest she stopped short from telling Phillippa how it felt to be kissed like that.

Really, truly kissed. Hard and panicked and thrilling all at once. She’d been kissed before, of course. She had been affianced to Jason, certain things had been permitted. A peck here, a sweet caress there. But he was always so careful with her.

The Blue Raven had not been careful. Why should he? After all, he was the Blue Raven; he had more important things to do that worry about bruising some poor girl’s mouth.

It was incredible.

But the mottled blush across her cheek and the awkwardly high pitch her voice reached must have been all the further explanation needed, as Phillippa had begun to turn an alarming shade of white.

“It’s completely unbelievable,” Sarah finished miserably, seeing her friend’s pallor.

“No!” Phillippa cried, quick to assure Sarah by clasping her hand. “Not unbelievable, just a little … curious. Yes, curious is the correct word, I should think.”

“I just … I feel like there has to be a reason, something fated, that brought me to that cupboard that night. There has to be a reason he trusted me enough with his little bundle of secrets. But I don’t know who he is or if he’s married—good God, what if he’s married?—and he said he was going to come and retrieve his items, but I haven’t seen him in over a week, and now I despair that he’ll never—”

“Dear, you’re rambling again,” Phillippa calmed her. Then, a serious, shrewd look overtook her features. “Over a week you say?”

“Yes, we went to
Figaro
on … Saturday last, I believe, and then he disappeared.”

“Last Saturday,” Phillippa murmured to herself. Then shaking her head free of any musings, refocused her gaze on Sarah. She looked for a moment as if she were about to say
something of grave import, of absolute necessity, but such desperate words would never find their way from her lips, because at that moment, a cursory knock sounded on the door, and Sir Marcus Worth let himself in.

“There you are darling,” he said, his eyes drawn naturally to his wife, like a lark to sunshine. But his face did not reflect any such light—in fact there was only grim determination. “I’m afraid we have to go, with what Braeburn just told me it’s worse than I—” At his wife’s conspicuous cough, Sir Worth came out of his own head, and seemed to realize he and his wife were not alone.

“Ah. Miss Forrester,” he began, quickly turning into the charming and affable gentleman that Sarah knew him to be. “Lovely to see you again. I hope you’ve been well without my Phillippa to keep you company.”

“Quite well, thank you,” Sarah demurred.

“Indeed,” Phillippa replied, with a sparkle to her eyes. “She’s been quite well.”

Sir Worth tilted his head, far more able to decipher his wife’s tones than anyone else. “You’ve just been bringing my wife up to speed on all the London gossip, I hope, and that is why she looks like she is about to burst from a secret?”

Sarah looked desperately between her friend and her friend’s husband.
Please
, she pleaded with her eyes,
please don’t tell him what I’ve just told you. Please keep my secret
.

“Now, Marcus, you know we don’t sully ourselves with gossip.” Phillippa replied, nodding coolly at Sarah.

And with that, Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. Of course Phillippa wouldn’t spread tales about the Blue Raven and the cupboard and the packet of clues. Her secrets were all safe.

And as Sarah was content, she bid adieu to the quickly departing Worths, and lent herself to the task of warming up enough before braving the rest of Mrs. Braeburn’s garden party. And so, turned to the library fire, she missed the serious exchanged glances between husband and wife as they waved good-bye from the door; the looks that said in absolutely no words at all:

We need to talk. Now.

W
ELL
, it could have been worse, Jack told himself as he stalked out of the Royal Navy offices at Somerset House, almost oversetting a gentleman hunched over his cane. But he couldn’t be brought out of his head enough to notice—indeed, his body was somewhat numb. Yes, indeed, it could have been worse.

How could it have been worse, one might ask?

Well … it could have been worse if they had placed him on half pay immediately. Yes, that would have definitely been worse, seeing as his current five pounds a month was barely sustaining him, and he was living in London on the charity of the Forresters. But kindly, they had allowed his salary—and all the rest of the crew—to extend another month complete.

It could have been worse if they stripped him of his uniform then and there—especially as Jack had no desire to walk home naked.

It could have been worse if the
Amorata
had been blown to pieces in combat all those years ago, like her sisters, and Jack had never lived past the age of sixteen. The fact that she made it this far, and that he did with her, was a miracle.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding, he thought, his brow
coming down as he wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, shielding himself from the unseasonable cold that had settled over London in the last few days. Although, it could have been all warmth and sunshine out and Jack would have still felt like wrapping the cloak around himself, protecting his body against further slights and blows.

Because the worst had happened.

It was official. Word had come down from the Admiralty of the Navy.

The
Amorata
, his home for nine years, was to be fully decommissioned—her hull and flanks, her cannons and boards, broken up for scrap, anything worth keeping to be reused by the armory in outfitting newer, faster ships. Although the Royal Navy wasn’t much in the business of building those these days.

His beautiful lady wasn’t even to be kept in ordinary, held ready in case Britain required more support at sea. No, she was past salvation.

And all hope was gone.

What am I going to do now?

Interestingly, even as that question echoed through his head, Jack felt a strange sense of calm. Maybe his mind, even though he willed the opposite outcome, had been preparing him for this eventuality over the past few weeks. Maybe, he had made peace with it. Or maybe he had been too preoccupied with his Blue Raven farce of late to give his and the
Amorata
’s future much thought.

Indeed, while Sarah had spent the past week trying to solve an insolvable puzzle, Jack had been faced with a large puzzle—namely that of Sarah herself.

Jack’s state of being rocketed wildly between amazement and guilt at his actions as the Blue Raven. So much so that he found it almost impossible to be around her.

Because he shouldn’t have done it—the meanness of the prank outpaced the problem it was meant to solve.

Because it worked—for the past week, Sarah found herself far too preoccupied to spend much effort on being the Golden Lady.

Because of that kiss.

Bruising, rough, and thrilling, it was a kiss that sent lightning
through his body. A kiss that came out of nowhere … except when he did it, Jack’s brain caught up to the rest of his body, and he realized that it was not impromptu. That he had been thinking about kissing Sarah since…

Well, suffice to say, he found it difficult to be around her.

The irony of which was that for the past week, Sarah had never been so difficult to avoid!

She
stayed home
. She
refused invitations
. How the hell was he supposed to avoid someone who was always underfoot?

Even though she had not forgiven him for their fight and, when they were in the same room, their conversation was as strained as ever, Jack knew his reasons for curtness were not the same as hers.

So what else could a man do, but go out? He walked; he wandered. Hell, he even paid a call or two on Juliana Devlin, just to keep up appearances. He brought Whigby with him, as Jack himself was not up to conversation, and Whigby always was.

But mostly, he spent most of his days haunting the naval offices at Somerset House, awaiting word of the
Amorata
. And while he waited, chatting amiably with other officers, making certain that all of the
Amorata’
s reports and logs were filled properly, sometimes popping over to the Historical Society to visit with Lord Forrester, his mind would drift. Drift into a cape, a half mask, a false moustache … a close little room held still in the moonlight, and a warm body, trembling beneath his touch, in fear, in fury, in wonder…

But today, word of the
Amorata
’s fate came.

And his own.

But for whatever reason—possibly the one his mind tended to drift to—while the blow stung, it did not destroy him. All it left him with was possibility.

What do I do now?
He asked himself again, as he walked along the banks of the Thames, walked without purpose but, thanks to the river’s lines, with direction. He was headed toward the shipyards.

He had nearly a decade of on-ship experience. He was a gentleman. Perhaps he could find work upon a merchant vessel. He would have to give up his position in the navy to do so—foregoing even the measly income of an officer on half
pay—but it would be a living. Of course, the purpose of transporting goods was hardly the same as protecting the Empire.

He let his feet carry him west, until his eyes began to burn from the sun moving from midday to setting. He ambled in pursuit of purpose until he came within view of the London docks.

Blearily, he blinked in the sun, realizing he’d walked all the way from Somerset House to Wapping.

The London docks were new additions to the Thames River—finished sometime in the last decade, they dug in canals, inlets, to allow ships to dock without the fear of being set upon by river thieves—not to mention that room had gotten a bit tight in recent years, with the onslaught of shipping from the many corners of the British Empire. He watched for some minutes as a clipper vessel was unloaded, barrels upon barrels of wine, as well as pallets and huge crates labeled Spices and Coffee moved from their place in the holds by an elaborate pulley system onto the docks by experience crewmen.

It was as if his feet knew where to take him. His own despair only extended to his conscious brain, not his body. Because his body, his feet, knew exactly what he should and would do.

He located the Custom Office, a neat box of a building with two stories, that housed all the comings and goings of some of England’s most prominent merchants. Surely, if he applied within, he would find that some ship, going somewhere, would have need of an officer with his years of experience.

But he hesitated in taking those steps. Because while he argued with himself about the prejudice against men in business versus the more gentlemanly pursuit of defending his country on ship (honestly, he was the son of a vicar no longer living, his claim to the life of a gentleman was never that great), his great wonder was…

Would he find a purpose there? And would it be enough?

Somewhere in his core, he knew the answer to both questions.

And so, he hesitated. And because of that hesitation, Jackson Fletcher’s life would become a great deal more complicated.

Since he hesitated, Jack’s eyes strayed from the Custom
Office to the movements of the people that made their way around the docks. His gaze fell upon a familiar shape.

Falling out of an opera house window is a decidedly rare occurrence. Thus, one is bound to remember the face of the person they landed on.

The large gentleman who had kindly broken his fall—whom the other, smaller thugs had called Big Ned—leaned just outside the door of a nearby building. By the jubilant noise within, and the happy stagger of some of the gentlemen who exited, Jack guessed it was a pub. It was, after all, the docks at sunset, and the businesses that lined the docks tended to cater to the men that worked them.

As one such hopefully off-duty seaman tripped merrily out the door, he was accompanied by a comely looking young woman, the color of her dress and the prominent display of her breast marking her … well, something other than a gently bred lady. Jack watched as she launched the man on her arm out the door, waving him off as he shook his shoulders and tried to walk straightaway down the backstreets into the maze of London’s East End.

She turned to go back into the pub, but seemed startled to find Big Ned waiting by the door. Words were exchanged. And up until this point, the goings-on at the door of the unnamed pub may have been none of his business, but then he saw as Big Ned roughly grabbed the young lady’s arm and dragged her around the corner into an alley.

And suddenly, it very much became his business.

Jack moved quickly and lithely toward the pub, making sure to remain out of view from the alley. He sidled up alongside the building and edged himself to the mouth of the alley, peeking in.

“You have to pay for your protection, Alice,” Big Ned growled, his hand at Alice’s throat, her back up against a wall.