Free If I Fall by Kate Noble Page B

she willed them to truth. “Why, she has transformed herself!”
    Indeed, he did see. But how much had she changed? Not only from the enjoyable, precocious child she had been, but from the bright, hopeful, open young woman he knew intuitively that she had grown up to be? Because that person—the one he read about in the letters he received from Lady Forrester, the one who had enough poise and confidence at nine years old to talk him into playing pirates in a meadow, the one with an inner light of optimism and mischief—was nowhere to be found on Upper Grosvenor Street.
    He decided to find out the next morning over breakfast.
    He’d seated himself at the table, at what he considered a terribly luxurious hour—half past nine—and waited. And waited.
    He read the paper cover to cover while waiting for any of the Forresters to arrive, but it seemed they had adjusted themselves very definitely to town hours. It was eleven o’clock before anyone made an appearance.
    And surprisingly, it was Sarah.
    “Oh!” she gave a surprised little sound. Then her brow came down, calculating. “Everyone thought you had gone.”
    “Gone? Where would I go?” Jack replied quizzically.
    “To the naval offices?” she shrugged. “You do have a ship to check up on, do you not?” She smiled at him when he looked nonplussed.
    Before disembarking, he had been taxed by Captain Healy—as Healy was headed to his daughter’s home in Kent—to stay informed about anything related to the
Amorata
. Jack knew this meant checking in daily on the proceedings.
    “The naval offices are right next to the Historical Society at Somerset House,” Sarah continued, very polite, very correct. “Father would be more than happy to take you there after breakfast.”
    His eyes followed her as she filled a plate. “I know. He made such an offer last night. What do you mean, ‘everyone’ thought I left?”
    Again she shrugged. “I suppose I just meant me. After all, why would you hang around here all morning? Surely you have better things to do.”
    “I intend to ‘check up on my ship,’ as you so eloquently put it. Other than that, I have few obligations.” Then, deciding the niceties were enough, he began his first test. He slid the newspaper across the table to where she was seated. She slid it back.
    “Since when do you not read the paper?” Jack asked, startled. “Did your mother’s scolding finally take effect?”
    When they were younger, Lady Forrester used to admonish Lord Forrester for letting the girls read the paper—it bordered on bluestocking behavior, and lead to bad eyesight. But Lord Forrester would always sneak Sarah the paper anyway. Sarah—the real Sarah—would have jumped at the chance to read the day’s events.
    But instead, Sarah threw her head back in laughter. “Goodness no! My mother never managed to break us of that.” She smiled at him. And it was the first time since he’d arrived that he felt he’d seen the Sarah of old. But the new, cool Sarah came back before the clock could tick once. “I decided a few months ago that there was simply nothing worth reading in there.”
    His eyebrow went up, and she continued. “It’s always something about British India, followed by something about parliament, and then you get to the society pages, and its ever so dull reading your name over and over again, recountingwhat you did yesterday. Especially when one has far too much to do today.”
    She looked at him then. He remained silent. And then he saw it. The moment that she realized she had lost control of the conversation, and had to get it back again.
    Because that’s what she’d had ever since he’d first seen her admiring herself in the hallway. Control.
    “Have you any friends in town that you can call on?” she asked politely, turning the conversation back to an interview of him, instead of the other way around.
    “I have a few friends … but having been on board a ship for as long as I have…” he replied,