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“Voila! These sheets were tied with thief knots- they’d never bear the weight of a young girl.”
Jack leaned against his desk with his tie appropriated and shirt collar open. He’d barely felt her take it. His blue eyes followed her clever hands’ movements as they manipulated her scarf and his tie to demonstrate her assertion.
“Hm. I do know my knots, Miss Fisher, I’m curious as to how you do.”
His word choice was calculated; he wasn’t surprised, of course. He didn’t know if he had the capacity any longer to be surprised at her capability. She was an ongoing, infuriating marvel.
“There was this Portuguese sailor I once knew-” She drew out, voice light, leaving no doubt about the nature of their interlude. He should have known. Unbidden sensations assaulted his mind: those small, strong hands, smooth pale skin, the exact give of his tie pulled taut. He knew what he was risking, this time. The knowledge of the depth of his feelings for her had unmoored him when he’d thought her dead on the roadside. He’d precipitated that eventual grief, worried it in his hands like a favorite stone, then tried to drown it in whiskey. Finally, he tried to excise it like a surgeon after a malignancy. He pushed through the weeks following, closing up like a fist and cutting her out of his days. If he didn’t have to see her or hear her voice, it was just about liveable.
He could live without her; he would probably return to the equilibrium he’d forged during the decline of his marriage and continue on the same smooth, plodding path. What he’d come to accept was that he was entirely sure he didn’t want to.
He knew that the flush he felt beginning to creep from his bared neck up to his cheeks would make its way downward with each thump of his traitorous heart. He panicked.
“Don’t, erm, enough- so! Somebody prepared the rope to explain Bernadette’s escape, who would need to do that?” Moving along, back onto the matter at hand.
“Whoever let her out- one of the girls?”
“They’re hardly forthcoming--”
“Well, what do you expect?” She exclaimed. “They live in fear of the penitence room! My father used to lock me in a cupboard to try and break my spirit.” She leaned back, the child from Collingwood under her skin barrelling forward with a defiant tilt of the head.
“Clearly he didn’t leave you there long enough.” The moment the thought left his mouth he wanted to bite it back- he’d meant it as a compliment but felt the sour note between them as Phryne narrowed her sea-green eyes at him, flicking them to one side. He hurried to return to the subject, the murder, where he could depend on himself to know the steps to their increasingly complex dance. “What about Perpetua, or one of the nuns?”
“I can’t imagine them doing Bernadette a favor.” She was pulling herself inwards, he could see it in the shift of her posture. He focused on his tie, trying to restore himself to order.
“Ah, you’ve, you’ve creased it now.”
“Oh! Come here,” she huffed as she stepped across to him, snatching the tie. He stilled and bent his head as she looped it around his neck, his whole world narrowing to the mingling of their breath, her fingers running along his collar, the heat of her body surrounding him with the scent of her perfume. His stomach was at his feet and dropping. He felt ready to jump out of his skin and yet scared to move a muscle, to breathe too loudly, to raise his eyes like the faithful supplicant he resembled.
Her fingers slowed.
He raised his head.
She was waiting.
Oh.
He wasn’t alone in this.
The door opened, the world rushed in like a riptide, carrying them back out to sea.
“Jack, Miss Fisher. You do indeed keep close company these days.”