“Sarah, I can explain—” the Blue Raven—Jack!—began, his voice returning from its grumble to his normal tenor. But he wouldn’t be given the chance to explain, because their falling to the floor had caused enough noise to bring footsteps to the study’s door.
“You have to go,” Marcus ordered Jack. Jack was stone-faced, pale as a ghost. “I know. I’ll take care of it.” He said to Jack’s unasked question. “But you have to go
now
.”
Jack’s eyes flicked to window. He stood, moving with a grace and fluidity that Sarah could not believe came from the frame of the gawky boy she had known, and swiftly, silently, swung himself out the window.
And he was gone.
Sarah was still frozen in her position on the floor, when Marcus grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “I will tell you everything. But right now, you’ve had more to drink with dinner than you thought. Understood?”
Marcus’s usually kind eyes bore into her with an intensity she did not know the mild-mannered man had possessed. She nodded quickly, just as the door to the study opened, revealing their host himself.
“My word—” the Comte exclaimed as he surveyed the room. His intense expression momentarily frightened Sarah, unused as she was to such fury coming from the man. But it was gone in a moment, once his eyes fell on Sarah. “Miss Forrester! How on earth did you get in here?” Then they narrowed again when he saw Sir Marcus’s hand upon her arm.
As confused as she was, as raw and exposed as she had been mere seconds before, she did not need to look at Sir Marcus again to know the part she was meant to play. The Golden Lady.
A tipsy Golden Lady, that is.
“There you are!” She smiled wide, and let herself stumble toward the Comte. “Oops!” she laughed, when the train of her skirt snagged on her foot. She finally reached the Comte, and leaned heavily enough on his arm that he was taken aback—but not displeased. “I got lost.”
“Indeed,” Marcus replied. “I was sent to look for Miss Forrester by my wife, and found her here.”
“It’s very nice in here,” she said, sillily, going so far as to place her head on his shoulder. “The chairs are so cozy. And it’s cool in here.”
The Comte’s brow went up. His gaze locked in on the heavy brocade curtains, pushing out in the breeze. “Who opened that window?”
“Er, I did.” Marcus supplied. Then, pointedly, “I thought Miss Forrester might benefit from some air.”
The Comte’s entire body relaxed. “Well, we shall get you some tea, and hopefully that will make you feel better, eh, my sweet?”
Her head was still on his shoulder, so he couldn’t see her face. Or how much it burned with embarrassment at having to
play this part. But she schooled herself into her role, and nodded, and as they exited the room, Sarah shot one quick, meaningful glance back at Sir Marcus.
He nodded, acknowledging what went unsaid.
She deserved answers. And she meant to have them.
S
HE
sat alone in her room. Molly had long since left her to her own devices. She had been silent as the maid pulled her out of her gown, as she pulled the brush through her long hair, making it shine like a river of gold in the candlelight. She sat alone, at her silly little dressing table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. And could only wonder who it was that stared back at her.
Was she the gullible child? The hard-hearted crone? The one-and-twenty-year-old Golden Lady?
What age was she now?
That answer, she knew, would be determined by what he had to say.
So she sat, waiting for her answers. Because she knew he would come, and offer them.
What she didn’t know was just how he would arrive.
“I expected you to come through the window.” She hadn’t moved from her seat. But then again, he hadn’t knocked on her door. He just let himself in, slipping in as quietly as death. If she hadn’t been expecting him, she would have thought Jack simply materialized behind her in the mirror.
“It’s easier this way,” he replied, his voice calm but clear.
“Yes, it must be pleasant to allow the pretense to fall away.”
He had not been home when they returned from the dinner party. She had been worried that he had been captured by one of the overgrown guards that lurked around the Duke of Parford’s mansion, but no, he arrived back at the Forrester residence, an hour or so after they did, singing a silly song, acting as if he’d been imbibing all evening with Whigby.
Her
tipsy act had been much more convincing, Sarah thought, slightly miffed.
When she, the Comte, and Marcus had stepped back into the drawing room, the entire party was assembled. She toned down her affected silliness a touch, blending in perfectly with the rest of the more social partygoers. She took a cup of tea in hand and waited, patiently, with a smile painted on her face and a happy laugh for anyone that turned her way.
Waited for her answers.
But when his eyes met hers in the mirror, he seemed reluctant to speak.
“All right, then,” she said, more to herself than anyone, “I’ll start. When did Sir Marcus approach you?”
She waited, her back to him, but holding his gaze. He hesitated, his mouth opening to speak, but no sound emerging.
“It’s a very important question. Really, the only one that matters,” Sarah stated baldly. “Shall I tell you why?” When he didn’t make any sound, again standing as still as a statue, she finally felt fire in her veins, and turned around to look him directly in the face. “From what I’ve managed to get out of Sir Marcus in the few seconds between leaving the party and being thrown into my carriage, he recruited you into his scheme, because he needed to be able to get to me, as apparently I’m the only one who could convince the Comte to open the Duke of Parford’s doors to the world. Now, I wonder, when were you recruited? Was it before or after you decided to disguise yourself as someone heroic?”
Her words had bite, she knew, and by the way he flinched back when she said them, that her hit had landed. But she was owed these words. They belonged to her, and his feelings about them be damned.
“You see, if it was
before,
and you decided to become the Blue Raven as a means to Sir Marcus’s end”—she stood from
her chair, and began to walk around him, in a slow, wide circle, her hands behind her back—“it means you used what you knew about my childhood adorations for your own purposes, uncaring that your actions thrust me headlong into dangerous situations. But, if it was
after
,” she continued, her voice becoming harder, colder. “Then you dressed up as the Blue Raven simply to make a fool out of me, and Sir Marcus somehow found out—likely through Phillippa, come to think of it—and he used it against you.
“Neither option reflects particularly well, but I would like the truth, if you don’t mind,” she concluded, coming to a stop directly in front of him, her gaze a challenge.
A challenge that he met, and held. “After,” he replied simply.
“So … when I met …
him
… in the theatre cupboard, it had absolutely nothing to do with helping catch a murderer?”
“Correct,” he affirmed. “That bit came later.”
“I see,” she said nodding, her voice halfway to breaking. There really seemed nothing else to say.
If only Jack felt the same way. “May I have a chance to explain?” he asked, taking a half step closer to her.
“There’s no need,” she replied, holding up a hand, to stop him in his movements. Then, “Actually, yes, there is something I would like to know. What did I do?”
He cocked up a brow.
“What did I do to deserve such a trick?” her voice cracked, but she forced it down. “I was snobbier than you liked? I was invited to too many parties? I said something pert? I fought with my sister? What on earth did I do that made you so crazed that nothing less than tricking me into falling in love with a phantom would make you feel better?”
“Nothing!” he cried, some fire finally breaking through that stern demeanor. “Damn it, Sarah, you didn’t do anything that deserved it. I discovered that almost immediately, but I was too stuck in my own willful idea, in my own stupidity to see it.” This time, his voice broke, not in pain, but in desperate laughter. “And then when I finally did, it was too late! After the cupboard … I was never going to see you again as the Blue Raven. But somehow Marcus knew, and blackmailed me … and I could hardly be in the same room with you without jumping out of my skin at the time—”
“Why? Afraid you wouldn’t be able to help crowing with triumph?”
“No, I was afraid I would take you into my arms and make love to you on the breakfast room floor!”
That made her stop in her tracks. She stood stock-still, her breath coming in odd jerks, her eyes unable to stray from his face. He seemed to have the same reaction to his unexpected words.
Her cheeks burned with remembrance. The press of his lips against hers, unexpected, in a theatre cupboard. The way he had held her—just over there, on her dressing table!—pressing against her in the most intimate manner … Heat wrapped her body, and it was all she could do to stop from melting in embarrassment … in
want
…
He must have felt the heat coming from her, because he came to her as a moth does to a flame, seeking that warmth, wanting to be nearer. He stopped inches from her, tentatively raising a hand to her face, gently letting his fingers dance over her jaw.
“Damn it, Sarah, you got under my skin,” he exhaled slowly, his breath as ragged as hers. “From the very beginning. I don’t know how. It was a look, or a word, but something that convinced me that the cutting Golden Lady that stood so beautiful and stylish only hid the Sarah Forrester I knew. You got under my skin. And I wanted—needed—to get under yours.”
Her eyes caught his then. Jack’s eyes. It was Jack’s arm that was coming around her back, and holding her steady. It was Jack’s mouth that descended toward hers.
Not
his
.
Not the man that she had been dreaming about. Not the man who populated her fantasies, allowing her to escape from the silly intrigues of a society existence. Not the man who had made her think about life beyond the ton, beyond the Golden Lady. Beyond all this.
A simple hand to his chest stopped him, a fraction of a second before his lips touched hers. She broke the spell.
She pushed him back.
“You
needed
to get under my skin? You needed to humiliate me, you mean. You needed to make me look foolish, for your own secret glee.”
She pushed him again, this time forcing him to step back.
“Not only to you, but to my friends, you needed me to reject them and go back to paying attention only to you—as if you were still the godlike boy in his cadet uniform who lit up Portsmouth.”
Push
—another step back. He didn’t fight her, instead looked astonished at her vehemence. “You keep saying I changed, but you’ve changed more. That boy would have never set out to play me for a fool. That boy would have
never
used me for his own amusement. He was so much better than that.”
Push—
another step. “You, on the other hand, are nothing but a bitter, washed-up lieutenant with too much time on his hands.”
Push
—another step. “One who decided to teach me a lesson, but not before he had his fun with me—and with my body.”
Push—
but this time he caught her hand, and held steady.
“No, I didn’t,” he rasped. “I told you, you would hate me someday, but I wouldn’t be the worst kind of thief.” She was too angry to blush this time, instead just held his gaze defiantly. “If I recall correctly, you were the one very eager to have fun, and offered up your body to me for the occasion.”
She wrestled her hands free of where he had them pinned to his chest.
“Not to you,” she said darkly. “I didn’t offer it up to
you
.”
This time using all of her strength, she shoved, one last time. His feet passed the open balcony doors and he was out on her small terrace.
“Well, you can consider your lesson well taught, Lieutenant.” She said very calmly. “In fact, I will be very suspect of whom I associate with in the future. Now, if you don’t mind, I think it best if you show yourself out the way you came in.”
And with that, she pushed him over the railing.
As he flailed his arms and eventually lost his balance, the only regret she had was that she wished the shrubbery that lined the house below her window hadn’t been quite so voluminous and cushioning.
One last glimpse over the railing to make certain he had landed properly (he had, and was struggling to remove himself from the roses, allaying the more well-bred guilt that could not be quashed) and she turned and shut her balcony doors behind her with decided finality.
The hateful man deserved every bump and bruise that he got.
“H
AVE
you lost your mind?!” Phillippa Worth’s voice carried as she screamed at her husband from behind closed doors. Jack shared a look with the seemingly unflappable butler of Worth House, who looked, likely for the first time in his life, rather flapped.
“My love, I had to involve Jack, you know that—” Marcus argued with his wife.
“But you did NOT have to involve my friend Miss Forrester! You did not have to throw her very much in harm’s way, without giving her any idea of the consequences!”
Jack found himself rather agreeing with Lady Worth. Of course, she had the ability to stand up to the very powerful head of the War Department. Unfortunately, she was doing so a little bit too late.
“They’ll be just another moment, sir,” the butler said, the tips of his ears red with embarrassment. “Are you certain you do not wish for some refreshment?”
Jack stood by the mantle in a fantastically pink sitting room—the heavy double doors from behind which the argument came Jack knew concealed Marcus’s study, having spent many an hour there in the past week. In the past week, Phillippa Worth
had been nothing but kind and accommodating to him. Of course, in the past week, apparently Phillippa Worth had been kept very much in the dark from certain things.