If I Fall Read Online Free

kitchens.”
    It was true. Her mother’s laugh did carry—especially when it was forced.
    “I suppose your definition of success differs from mine.” Sarah sighed.
    “It might at that”—Molly shrugged—“but don’t think we didn’t see you standing up to dance with that Lord Seton. He seemed a jolly sort.”
    He seemed the sort to report back the answers to any and all of his probing questions to the nearest gossip columnist, Sarah thought wearily, recalling his pointed queries and his short breath, due to too-tight stays. Worse still, he was the only one to have asked her to dance. Maybe she no longer looked the type to wish for a dance.
    Maybe that was one of the times the ancient woman who lived beneath her skin had slipped through the surface.
    “Now, would you like to dress for bed, miss?” Molly asked, taking the pearl-headed pins and placing them precisely in the case, next to the matching jewelry. “Your parents are still in the drawing room, having a bit of cold cheese before retiring. Perhaps you’d wish to join them first?”
    Sarah saw herself blanche in the mirror. But while thethought of rehashing the evening with her parents was bad, the idea of lying in bed with nothing to do but rehash the evening to herself was even worse. She needed a distraction.
    A warm glass of milk. A lurid novel. Anything that could remove her from herself.
    From what they called her in whispers.
    “Thank you, Molly, I can see to my dress. The kitchens must need an extra hand this evening.”
    “You have the right of it, miss.” Molly smiled kindly as she curtsied. “Good evening, miss.”
    “Good night, Molly,” Sarah replied distractedly.
    A novel. From the library. She could slip down the servants’ staircase, and avoid the possibility of her parents hearing her on the main stairs. On the way back up, she could retrieve a glass of warm milk from the kitchens while enjoying the distracting comfort of their bustle and hum.
    A novel. That should do the trick.

    Unfortunately, while one could in theory avoid the drawing room doors if one were, say, leaving the house, it was impossible to cross to the library without passing said doors.
    It was luck that had them closed.
    It was bad luck that they were thin enough to hear through.
    “It could have gone worse.” Sarah heard her father’s gruff voice as she tiptoed across the foyer. His usual booming jubilance was countered by a certain reserve. As if he were asking a question instead of knowing his own opinion.
    “Not much worse,” Sarah heard in a feminine grumble of reply. She would have continued on past the drawing room doors; she would have nodded and smiled curtly to the servants bent over pails to clean as she headed briskly to the library, shutting the door behind her.
    She would have done so—except for one thing. The voice that responded to her father had not belonged to her mother. It instead belonged to her sister, Bridget.
    “Come now, my dear,” Lady Forrester replied this time, the weariness apparent in her voice. “I thought the evening went … as smoothly as we could expect.”
    “Smoothly?” her sister scoffed. Sarah, via some previouslyunknown gift for subterfuge, silently went to the door and knelt at the jamb, half concealing herself behind a potted plant. She briefly locked eyes with a footman, who was busy dusting footprints from the marble tiles in the foyer. He looked back down again and quickly resumed his work.
    “
Smoothly
would have been if Sarah hadn’t looked like she was about to faint the entire time,” her sister replied in that lecturing tone she took on when she thought she knew better than everyone else. “
Smoothly
would have been if Rayne’s wedding announcement hadn’t been printed just yesterday.”
    Sarah could feel the blood rising to her face. It was silent beyond the doors, Bridget’s pronouncement simply hanging in midair for the barest, longest of seconds.
    The announcement. God, what horrific