If I Fall (35 page)

“She is very shy,” Sarah agreed. “Even when she was the hostess of the party, she was terribly nervous, and felt not up to her guests’ sparkle.”

“Well, do we have to worry about her?” Phillippa asked. “If she is so shy and retiring, what are the chances that she will notice someone skulking about the study?”

“The chances are good,” Jack replied. “I sat in the desk chair of the study last night. It was a very high, somewhat delicate seat. Not built for a man.
She
sits at the desk, worrying over her brother’s spending habits.”

Marcus took in this information with a raise of the brow. “In any case, if we remove her, she takes a servant or two with her, and the house will be slightly emptier.”

“That only leaves the rather oversized servant staff.” Sarah asked. “How do we remove them?”

“Some will attend the Comte. But the rest … it’s far too tricky. The best I can do is buy a window of time with distraction. But if the Comte comes home and puts together that the entire house was out, he will become highly suspicious,” Marcus said, turning his attention to Jack. “So you will have to be very, very quiet.”

And so he was. Since he was breaking in during daylight, Jack could not use the shadows as effectively as he did at night. But he could still use the rooftops. And since it was a breezy day, his footsteps did not echo across the slate tiles like they had at night.

He also forwent the dark costume he was becoming accustomed to, with the cloak and half mask. Nothing more suspicious than a man in a mask in the day. Instead, he wore the dusty, raggedy clothes of a chimney sweep. His hair darkened and dusty with charcoal powder. His face blackened into unrecognizability with coal—actually greasepaint, but it gave the same effect.

Luckily the wind was such that it carried the entire conversation Sarah had with Georgina up to his ears. The women were removed. The Comte and Mr. Pha would be occupied at Tattersall’s and then, if Sarah had her way, at the dressmaker’s
for many an hour. Still, he would prefer to get in and out as quickly as possible.

It meant that, even in daylight, he needed no eyes to fall on him.

Which is where Marcus’s distraction came in.

Jack waited until he saw the signal from the suspiciously tall and spectacle-wearing fruit-cart driver. A quick tip of his hat before he set out to take the turn around the square, driving a mite too fast for safety.

“Never fear,” Marcus had said, with a decided twinkle in his eye. “I’m adept enough at causing trouble when I have to.” To which his wife was enthusiastic in her agreement.

There was a swerve, a yell, a screech from a startled horse, and then the street was paved in orange. Er, that is, oranges. They spilled out from the back of the suspiciously poorly latched cart, rolling this way and that all over the street, causing no small amount of turmoil as the cart somehow managed to lose a wheel—directly in front of the Duke of Parford’s home.

Everyone pulled back their curtains, some people spilled out of their houses to view the catastrophe that would likely be the talk of London for a few days. A number of Indian servants, incongruous in their neat British clothes, came flying out of the front door, picking up oranges and yelling curses at the poor, inept, and yet somehow missing orange cart driver.

This was his only chance. No one would notice a chimney sweep moving between houses at that moment.

The guards that patrolled the house on the night of the dinner party were gone—or at the very least, severely reduced. Strange, considering at some point that night the guard Jack had rendered unconscious would have been discovered. Jack had expected a heavier patrol, not a smaller one. Perhaps the Comte was careless. Perhaps he did not have the funds for the extra wages. Either way, Jack counted it as luck that he could count the guards on one hand this time. And for the moment, they were distracted by fruit.

He again prepared to jump from the roof of the home next door—but this time, instead of jumping
into
the safety of the back gardens, he had to land
on
the high wall.

Barely a foot wide, solid brick. And he had to land perfectly.

“Nothing to do but leap, Mr. Fletcher,” he breathed to himself. And so he did.

His feet hit brick, one sliding off the side for the barest moment, before he circled his arms and managed to recover.

He couldn’t take the time to marvel—it was only a matter of time before the oranges at the front of the house lost their appeal. He ran nimbly across the top of the wall until he came up against the house itself. Then he leveraged himself up via the decorative masonry that ran along the rear corner of the building. Climbing higher and higher, as fast as he could, until he was safely on the roof. From there, it was a hop, skip, and a few small jumps to the attic window.

“The attic.” He had told the pink room definitively, pointing to a spot on the architectural drawings of the Duke of Parford’s home. “The attics are empty, and the windows face the back of the house. It could be days before someone notices one has been broken.”

And so, Jack—feeling blessed by the noise of the wind—used the handle of a chimney sweep, and shattered a small pane of glass. Then, with his hand as shrouded as possible, he reached in and unlatched the window.

He stepped into the too familiar empty space, leaving his chimney sweep in a corner of the room.

Now for the difficult bit.

“But if you use the attic window, you’ll have to walk past almost the entire house to get to the study,” Marcus had mused.

“I’ll just have to do so very, very quietly,” Jack replied.

Over the past few weeks of playing this part, Jack had learned definitively the necessity for grace in movement. And so, he tiptoed like a ballet dancer—all strength and control—through every hallway, every room of the house, along the route he had memorized, always keeping in mind his alternates, if they proved necessary. Coming to the door of the study without any complications (as during the dinner party, it was locked, but much simpler to open this time, considering the practice he’d had two nights ago). Jack relaxed ever so slightly for the first time since yesterday.

But when he slipped inside, his stomach dropped to his knees.

The room was spotless. No bills lying about. No papers sticking out between pages of books.

Whoever had gone through the room, they had been thorough. Which made the hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stand up.

Had a maid simply been doing her job, cleaning up a mess? Or had someone itemized everything—making sure nothing was amiss? Had they raised suspicions?

Had that someone removed whatever was behind the painting?

He turned his attention to the wall with the Holbein on it—or the fake Holbein, as Sarah had claimed it to be, and as Jack had confirmed, having taken a tour of the Historical Society with Lord Forrester yesterday afternoon. The Holbein painting of this woman, with her noble dress and haughty demeanor, had been hanging in the middle of the Historical Society’s great rooms, for all to see.

In the daylight, it was much easier to see the seams in the wall behind the painting, and see that it was, indeed, a hidden panel. Getting behind it, however, still remained a challenge.

“Look for a latch, or a hinge,” Phillippa had said. When she received strange stares from her husband, she simply shrugged. “There’s always a latch or a hinge.”

And, of course, Phillippa Worth was correct.

Jack made sure to move with caution, as he ran his fingers along the seam near the left side of the painting, where there was a divot, a sinking into the wall. The hinges were on the other side, meaning the wall would swing
in
, not
out
. The other night they had spent so much time pulling, perhaps all it needed was an easy push.

After some minutes of trying, he had to admit that was not the case. Well, his logical mind told him, if hinges were on the left side, that meant the latch was likely on the right. Jack took a step back, to get a better look at the wall he was trying to penetrate, and the painting that adorned it.

It was identical to the one in the Historical Society. Identical in size, shape, expression. Jack was not educated enough in the world of art to tell if the blue of the dress was the exact same hue as the other one. In fact, the only thing he could tell was different at all was the frame.

The frame
.

Jack wanted to smack his palm to his forehead. The frame of the painting in the Historical Society had been plain, “a temporary replacement,” Lord Forrester had mentioned. But the frame on this painting was gilded, ornate. And stuck so well to the wall it was almost as if it was a permanent part of it.

Access to whatever was behind the wall would be found on the frame. Quickly, he ran his fingers over every rise, every bump and divot of the swirling rococo frame, looking for the spot that would respond to pressure.

Finally, he found it.

The latch released with a rush of air, a heavy click of relief. And the painting on the wall swung in. Jack held his breath.

The inside was quite dusty. Nothing like the newly cleaned exterior of the study. In fact it was a very small space behind the painting, perhaps enough room for one small person to fit. And Jack was not small. However, the hidden cupboard was only occupied by a small wooden box on the floor.

He lifted it out, gingerly. Covered in dust, too, it was obviously old, and had long since gone untouched. However, he rationalized to himself, it was so dusty in that space, a box placed there in the past few weeks could have easily taken on the same ghosts as had lived there.

He gently placed the box on the desk, careful to displace as little dust as possible. Opening it, his heart soared when he saw what was inside.

Letters.

Three, no four letters. “Let one of these be what Marcus needs,” Jack whispered the prayer into the still room.

He picked up the first. It’s wax seal was too broken and brittle to decipher. Opening it, however, he knew in the first few lines exactly who it was to, and from.

My Dearest Willy, it began …

He opened up the second letter, and the third. All written in this same feminine, untrained hand. All badly spelled. All addressed to a young Willy, who had, by the look of it, fallen madly for a young woman of lesser means, and she for him. And, he knew, the Duke of Parford’s given name was William.

These were not evidence of treachery. They were instead, evidence that a man was once a boy and capable of a defiant love. Even if that man was now in his sixties, and living in the East Indies, he had held on to these letters and kept them safe, and hidden.

This was the Duke of Parford’s greatest secret. Not the Comte de Le Bon’s.

Jack gently placed the letters in his pocket—Marcus wanted to see what was behind the wall, he would want to make sure that they were not some encoded communiqué. But Jack was human enough to recognize the emotion on the pages, and their honesty, and he vowed to return them to their place as soon as possible. And the least he could do, he thought, was make certain the box he had found them in remained undisturbed.

Which turned out to be a bit of a mistake.

For, as he was bending to place the box exactly where he found it, and coming to the realization that they had broken into this house—twice—for nothing, the proof that he had been looking for came up and opened the study door.

He had to be quicker. He had to listen better. Because when Mr. Ashin Pha poked his head around the corner of the study door and yelled a terrific, “Oy!” Jack was more than taken by surprise.

Mr. Pha did not allow him time to think about how to get himself out of this situation. Nor did he allow Jack time to get out of his low position and face him man-to-man. Instead, Mr. Pha set on him with a fury that promised to break all the bones in his body, if not all the furniture in the room.

Maybe it was the way they fought. Maybe it was the exclamation “Oy!” that had announced his entry to the room. But suddenly, Jack realized why no one had ever heard Mr. Ashin Pha speak in public, and if they did, it was whispered in the ear of the Comte who spoke for him. Why his bedchamber looked like that of a drunken lout on a gambling binge.

This man was not an aristocrat from the Far East.

By the way he fought, he was a thug.

It was these spare thoughts that ran through his head as he fought back, his punches landing with precision. Across the jaw, to the gut. He knew the faster he got out of there, the better. Besides, he thought, as he picked up a spindly chair. The racket they were making was going to have people come running.

“Sorry, Mr. Pha, can’t stay long,” Jack said, as he broke the spindly chair across the back of the non-aristocrat. His only luck was that Mr. Pha was not an outsized thug, like the guards that paroled the house in the guise of servants. Of course, he certainly had the ability to
call
for the guards…

Which he did. In English. With a decided cockney accent.

“You’re not even Burmese, are you?” Jack stated in wonder, unable to stop himself. His opponent paled in shock—Jack knew it was now or never. He seized the split second that he had caught Mr. Pha unaware, enough time to pick up a second straight-backed chair.

Mr. Pha ducked as he made to hurl it at him. Instead, Jack released on the backswing, and it flew through the window behind him.

If
that
noise didn’t bring the household running, nothing would.

But while the not-Burmese Mr. Pha ducked, startled by the flying glass, Jack braved the cuts and scrapes and dove through the window.

Searing pain lanced through his arm as he landed and rolled. It was only a half story off the ground of the back gardens, but the glass had landed before him, and now, he was fairly certain a large chunk of it was embedded in his side. But it didn’t matter—he had to run. He had to get out of there.