If I Fall by Kate Noble Page A

giggle again!
    Finally, he couldn’t help it any longer. Perhaps some ruffian had sneaked in and was hiding until he could thieve everything out of this room in the dark of night. Which Jack could not allow.
    And so, he went over to the window, and drew back the curtain dramatically, his hand going automatically to his side, searching for his sword … which of course was not there, as he had no sword.
    Instead of a thief, however, Jack found two girls. One far littler than the other.
    When he drew back the curtain, the taller girl stumbled—she had been holding on to it for support, as the littler one was latched on to her leg. Jack caught her arm before she could fall, and was about to make some sort of exclamatory statement, such as an, “I say!” or even the practically-a-swear “My God!” but the smaller child beat him to it.
    “Hide-and-seek!” cried the littlest, who could not have been more than three, with dimples and curly blond hair that bounced when she shrieked with laughter.
    “Not yet, Mandy!” the elder girl said in a hushed voice, as she straightened herself, blushing up at him. She looked about nine or ten, and whereas her hair matched the youngster’s in shade, it was straight and plaited down her back. She looked up at Jack with the biggest green eyes, twinkling with mischief. “We’re hiding, don’t tell,” she whispered to Jack, as she gave him back his arm.
    “Hiding from what?” he asked.
    “Will you be quiet?” came a hushed whisper from the other side of the room—a brown, curly head popped up, freckles gone mad upon her nose and cheeks. “Papa will find us without any trouble when he hears you stumbling and making a racket. And Mandy, you’re supposed to hide somewhere by yourself!”
    But little Mandy just shook her head, and inched closer to her sister.
    “She couldn’t find any place to hide,” the elder girl whispered back.
    “Of course she can, Sarah. You just baby her. Mandy, you’re small enough to fit in the cabinet, go over there.”
    But Mandy simply shook her head and burrowed further.
    “Wait, are you playing some sort of game?” Jack asked, utterly bewildered.
    The eldest—Sarah—blinked back in surprise. “Of course we are. Haven’t you ever played hide-and-seek?”
    “Well, I…” Before Jack could appropriately answer that question, which would have been embarrassingly in the negative (A vicar’s child, he had been taught, did not play games where nothing was learned or made useful. Was it any wonder he sought the adventure of the sea?), footsteps were heard in the hallway beyond.
    “Come hide!” Sarah whispered. But when he hesitated, she sent him an exasperated look. “It will be an adventure!”
    But again he hesitated just a moment too long, and as the door handle on the far side of the room turned, all three girls went rigid with excitement, and popped back into their hiding places.
    Just then, a barrel of a man came thudding through the hall, his posture that of an ogre about to attack.
    “I know you’re in here!” he cried, a stern expression on hisbrow. When he saw Jack, however, his expression cleared and he straightened.
    “Oh! You must be Dickey’s boy!” he cried, his face no longer that of an ogre, but now with an easy smile. “Forrester. Very pleased to have you in my home.”
    “Er … yes, sir,” Jack said—straightening to attention and bowing at the same time, which ended up as merely awkward. “My father is Richard Fletcher. I am Cadet Jackson Fletcher, and … they told me to wait in the hall, but I—”
    “Happy to have you! How is the Naval College treating you?”
    “Good,” Jack said, unable to keep his voice from breaking embarrassingly. And then, when Lord Forrester made no re
ply … Jack couldn’t keep himself from rambling. “It’s different than I expected: I wanted to go to sea first, but my father didn’t want me on the ocean with no training and two wars going on—and it seems we would not have