Jack exited the naval offices at Somerset House, in much the same mood he was in the last time he found himself standing on these steps. That is, he was in a mood to walk. To brood. To feel the length and width of London under his feet, and to come to terms with what he had just done.
But he didn’t have the time.
As he stepped out into the courtyard, much like the last time, Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. His eyes scanned the other men, talking in small clusters or standing near the central fountain, most without a heavy overcoat on that warm day. He saw nothing amiss, no Byrne Worth lurking in disguise, nothing that justified the strange feeling in his gut.
Come now
, his mind rationalized.
You know the cause of this queer feeling.
What he had just done, of course, in the naval offices. Marched right up to the officer on duty, signed the paperwork, and set his life on its new course. Nerve-wracking, in its finality. Heart-stopping, in that he still had not squared his life away here, with Sarah.
Bridget’s cool rationalization helped, of course, as he held out hope that Sarah would come to her senses and realize through her fears that his naval career was no impediment to how he felt about her. But as one day and then another ticked by, both of which she spent studiously ignoring him, he couldn’t help but wonder if giving her time was exactly the wrong thing to do. It certainly wasn’t doing him any good at present. He should have gone to her rooms at night, and claimed her in a way his body and soul ached to. Lying awake, tangled in his bed sheets, too restless to sleep. Because now he knew. He knew what Sarah’s Forrester’s skin felt like resting next to his. He knew what her snores (light snores, but snores nonetheless) sounded like. Half a dozen times he almost went to her door. Another half dozen he almost went to her window.
There it was again! That frisson of feeling, running up his spine. Jack glanced to his left and his right, careful not to give himself away by moving his head too much. He was out of the courtyard now, moving down to the Strand. Stopping at the side of the road to let a carriage pass before he crossed, Jack casually glanced over his shoulder.
There was no one behind him, except for a stout woman who bent down to pick up a dropped reticule. Jack turned back.
Every instinct in his body told him he was being hunted. And if a few weeks of playing the Blue Raven had taught Jack anything, it was to never ignore his instincts.
When the street was clear, Jack crossed it, but then, instead of following the route that would take him back to Upper Grosvenor Street, he made a sharp, unexpected turn.
He could hear footsteps behind him making the same sharp turn. His eyes narrowed; his shoulders tensed. There was no doubt now, and his body readied for what was to come.
He cut through the streets of London, zigging and zagging his way through traffic, certain his unseen friend was keeping up with him. Suddenly, he found what he was looking for: an alleyway, with enough debris and juts—and privacy—to suit his purposes.
He only had seconds, at most. He turned sharply into the alley and then ran for its back wall, where empty flour sacks, boxes, and crates—used to hold chickens, likely long since cooked in the pub’s kitchen next door—assisted him in gaining the upper ground. Then he swung himself onto a ledge that ran along the second-story back windows of the pub. Then, he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Barely a moment after he positioned himself on the ledge, he watched as the woman, who he recognized as the one who had been bent over at the road crossing, entered the alley, assessing, assured. Her right hand tucked behind her back.
When she looked up, and the spare bit of light that the alley afforded hit her face, Jack was taken by surprise.
“Mrs. Hill?” he whispered. It was her. The stout, proper companion of Miss Georgina carefully surveyed the terrain of the alleyway, looking for him.
Hunting him.
But why…
His hesitation cost him. He should have leaped down immediately upon her entry to the alley. But instead she had enough time to survey the scene, and look up above, and find him, looming there.
“Oh thank goodness. Lieutenant Fletcher,” she said, her voice eerily calm. “I’ve been sent to fetch you. There’s been a terrible accident.”
“An accident?” he replied, still not moving from his place. The entire situation felt wrong. Everything about her being there seemed to click a truth into place for him, but he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The only thing he could decipher—as someone who had recently been living a double life—was that she was not all that she seemed, either.
“Yes. It’s terrible. Miss Forrester. You must come at once,” she tilted her head to one side. “What are you doing up there, Lieutenant?”
Sarah’s name sent fire through his blood, and almost had him scurrying down to Mrs. Hill’s side. But he held himself still.
“What do you have behind your back, Mrs. Hill?” he asked instead. The question hung in the air, as Mrs. Hill slowly dropped her proper demeanor, and smiled, like the devil herself had taken hold of her.
“Oh, I do enjoy a lack of pretense,” she replied coolly, as she brought her hand out from behind her back. “Almost as much as I enjoy target practice.”
She fired the little silver pistol at him, the sound echoing through the alley. Jack scrambled. But the ledge held little in the way of room to maneuver, and so, he ended up tumbling to the chicken crates below, crashing through the hay and wood and feathers.
“Oh my,” came Mrs. Hill’s voice. Her methodical footsteps approached. “Did I hit you? I do hope so.” She tossed her pistol aside, its one shot used. Then she withdrew a second pistol from her pocket.
She thought she had hit him. The thought ran blindly through his head. Falling had cost him any advantage—but this might get a slice of it back.
He let the wreckage cover him. Above him, she began to pull back pieces of wood. He wrapped his hand around the most solid plank he could find.
“Lieutenant?” Mrs. Hill sing-songed, as if they were playing hide-and-seek. Well, he’d been taught to play hide-and-seek by the best of them.
When she pulled back the last bit of canvas that covered him, he swung as hard as he could, catching her completely by surprise, knocking the pistol out of her hand. Her face went from shock at his not being dead, to livid at losing her gun, to complete rage as she set upon him. All in a fraction of a second.
She was stronger than he suspected. Stronger than he ever thought a woman could be. Her stoutness was apparently all muscle, and quickly he lost any reserve at battling with a woman—since she was, after all, intent on killing him.
He managed to pin her. He took fists to her face, hoping to knock her into unconsciousness. But either the rage or her training kept her from passing into black oblivion. In fact, after a punch went wild, his balance went off center slightly. And Mrs. Hill, perhaps trained in fighting better than he could ever hope to be, took advantage of that.
She reared up, and rolled, pinning him beneath her. Her meaty hands closed around his neck, squeezing, pressing the life out of him.
She was killing him. Jack couldn’t think. All he could do was act. Blindly reaching into the chaos of debris that was spilled beneath him, his fingers landed on something metal, and cool to the touch, just beyond his reach.
The second pistol
.
Loaded, and ready to fire.
As the edged of his vision began to go dark … as his eyes felt like they were going to pop out of his skull … as Mrs. Hill foamed at the mouth in concentration and mad triumph … Jack managed that extra inch and grabbed the pistol, brought it against her gut, and fired.
The hands on his throat froze, then loosened and fell away. Surprise registered across Mrs. Hill’s face, just as she collapsed on top of him.
His vision returned with every gulp of air. He struggled out from under her, flipping her onto her back as he went. While his breathing was deep, restoring, every ragged breath she took was panicked and shallow, blood spreading across the front of her dark dress rapidly, making the dark material sticky and black.
“Where are they, Mrs. Hill?” Jack asked, roughly, his voice gravel.
“You’re too late,” she gurgled. He must have nicked a lung. “They’ll all be dead by now.”
“
Where!
” Jack yelled, menacing over her. Which only made her cackle.
“My mistress, she’s smarter than all of them. Sir Worth, the Comte. All of them. And Miss Forrester…”
“What about Sarah?” His blood pumped raw and angry. But his urgency only made her laugh.
“She’ll be dead by now, too. They all will.” And with a spasm of coughing, Mrs. Hill fell back against the broken crates, and joined the Comte in death.
Jack stood, stunned, for the time it took to process her words.
Sarah
.
The Comte
.
My mistress
. If Georgina was going after the Comte and Sir Worth, there was only one place to find them.
Jack turned to the mouth of the alley. A few people had begun to gather, stick their heads in. It had been little more than a minute since the first pistol shot rang out. The timid crowds were now just beginning to see what the commotion was all about. Jack had no time to answer to them. He lit out of there like he was on fire.
“You, sir!” he called out to a gentleman sitting atop a fine mare. “I need your horse. An emergency!”
He must have looked mad. Covered in dirt, flour, feathers, and blood, and wild-eyed to boot. Not that looking normal would have made any difference.
“I say—how dare you accost me sir!” the gentleman cried. “You can’t simply take a man’s horse.”
Jack held up the pistol that was still in his hand, still warm from firing, and pointed it at the gentleman. “I beg to differ, sir.”
The gentleman—who thankfully didn’t realize that the gun in Jack’s hand was one that had just been fired—quickly alit from his horse.
“You can collect it from the Horse Guards later,” Jack yelled behind him, as he kicked the horse into a gallop, weaving in and out of the London crowds as he rode hell-bent for leather, right into the mouth of madness.
“W
ELL
, Miss Georgina,” Sir Marcus drawled, his hands held up but relaxed, “what do you intend to do now?”
Georgina leveled him with a look, the gun remaining steady in her hand. “First of all, I would like you to toss me those keys in your hand. Thank you,” she said graciously, as he complied. “As for the rest, you’ll have to forgive me, but as you can likely tell, I am now improvising. I did not expect Jean to be held at the Horse Guards, you understand. I had expected somewhere much more secluded.”
Sarah found herself rooted to the spot, her eyes flitting from the body on the floor to Sir Marcus’s easy nonchalance, to the woman who, just that morning, Sarah had been feeling so sorry for that she headed out to bravely offer her support. Slowly, sharply, pieces started putting themselves together in Sarah’s head.
Georgina
mentioned more than once Mr. Pha speaking Burmese—but Jack said he spoke English like an Englishman.
Georgina
headed home early from the theatre, right after Lord Fieldstone left. And
Georgina
insisted on writing the Comte that they were at Madame LeTrois, foiling Jack’s search of the house.
It was so odd, so maddening, Sarah found herself laughing.
It was just a giggle at first, something that she tried to stifle. But smothering it only brought it out in greater force. And soon, tears of laughter were streaming down her cheeks.
“Oh dear, do you think you can make her stop?” Georgina sighed as if Sarah were a toddler to be rounded up. Marcus, with infinite care, took Sarah by the shoulders and whispered in her ear.
“You must keep your head,” he told her, too low for Georgina to hear properly. “We will get through this.”
“How?” Sarah asked loudly between laughs that died with each breath. “How do we get through this? Georgina—I never guessed you were as nefarious as your brother. We walked right into this; how do we get out of it?”
“Because Miss Georgina knows she will be able to walk out of here much easier with a living hostage or two,” Marcus replied, thinking faster on his feet than Sarah could manage, and she was grateful for it.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll need two,” Georgina replied. “It’s only a matter of deciding which of you is more controllable, and more desirable as a shield should someone try to stop me.”
Sarah felt like she had stepped from her world—where life was solid, and her biggest problem was that the man she would marry had a career that would take him away from her for two years at a time—and fallen into a place that was as fluid as water, constantly shifting, and one had to work with the current to stay afloat.
She would marry Jack. She knew that now. A two-year separation would hurt, but it seemed so little when staring down the barrel of a gun. It brought her silliness into startling clarity.
“I’m glad things have ceased to be funny for you, Sarah,” Georgina said, and Sarah realized her laughs had died away completely. “Think of how much better your chances are of becoming my hostage if you can keep calm under the circumstances.”
“No,” Sarah replied quietly. “I was simply thinking of how silly I had been of late.” Georgina shot her a hard look, but Sarah refused to elaborate. Let her think what she will of that, she thought with a teaspoon of triumph.
But instead of acting on the annoyance that flashed across her face, Georgina, keeping the gun trained on them from the other side of the room, took the chair that her stepbrother had been sitting on moments ago and dragged it to the high window. Standing on it, she peered out of the window, which Sarah guessed looked down on the Horse Guards’ courtyard.
“Sir Worth, what time is the guard change?”
“Noon,” Marcus answered readily.
“Really, I could have sworn it was at eleven,” Georgina replied, peevishly. Hopping down from the chair, she crossed the room, stepping over her brother’s lifeless body as she came up to Marcus and grabbed Sarah by the arm and pressed the barrel of the gun into her temple. “I do not appreciate being lied to. Are you certain it is at noon?”