Jack awakens alone to a distinct feeling of déjà vu. He's not in his own bed but his surroundings are familiar, from the modern spiral wallpaper—and the nudes—on the walls to the cream satin quilted bedspread and matching pillowslips. Outside the window, a magpie starts up its morning song. That's familiar, too.
There's a knock at the door and Mr Butler enters the room, carrying Jack's suit on a hanger.
"Good morning, Inspector. I've pressed your suit," Mr Butler says.
Jack is beginning to think that this is not so much déjà vu as time travel.
"Thank you, Mr Butler," he croaks.
"No trouble at all, sir," Mr Butler says, with a small, professional smile, as he hangs the suit on the wardrobe door.
Once Mr Butler is gone again, Jack sinks back against the (large and extremely soft and comfortable) pillow. His head aches, and his mouth feels dry as sandpaper. That's the same as last time, too.
What did they drink last night? They started with the bottle of wine that Concetta had pressed on him. It was a rough red, really too young to be at its best, but he and Miss Fisher had finished it off and then moved on to… Cognac?
Jack groans, and pulls the covers over his head. This also feels like a repeat of last time, except for one small detail.
One large detail, says an echo of Miss Fisher's voice in his head.
He's not wearing a pyjama shirt this time. He slides a hand down under the covers and what he feels there leaves no room for no doubt: there's nothing beneath the covers but his own bare skin. He groans again, and wonders if maybe everything will magically right itself if he closes his eyes and just stays under here in the warm, enveloping darkness for a while.
He pressed a kiss against her pale, bare shoulder. Her skin was warm and real and a thousand times better than any dream. Maybe he said the thought out loud, because Miss Fisher's voice whispered right back, "Did you dream of me, Jack? I dreamed of you."
Jack's eyes fly open and he pulls the covers off his head again—but only down as far as his chin. He lies back against the pillows, feeling memory crowd in against him. He supposes he should welcome it. At least this time he knows exactly how he got here, even if some of the details are hazy.
He closes his eyes again and lets it happen.
They were both feeling fairly relaxed after the third cognac, sprawled in their chairs and conversing lazily about everything and nothing. Or at least everything but the subject they both most needed to talk about. They spoke about that with their eyes, though, as they'd so often done before. They were also getting a trifle clumsy. Jack almost missed the rim of the brandy snifter as he poured out the fourth glassful, which would have been a terrible waste of fine old cognac. Miss Fisher grinned mischievously as she waved a reproving finger at him. At least, it would have been reproving if her lacy black sleeve hadn't snagged on one of her long, glittering earrings on the way.
Jack jumped up from his chair to help her, and his cognac sloshed in the snifter, coming dangerously close to spilling right over the sides.
"I'll get it for you," he offered, setting his glass carefully on the coffee table.
For a wonder, for once Miss Fisher did as he asked and remained still while he bent over her, blinking owlishly as he tried to focus on the task of extricating her from her own folly. That part, at least, was quite familiar to him, even if the finer points of removing diamond earrings from anything were not something that usually fell within his ken.
It took him longer than it probably should have, but at last earring and sleeve parted company without any harm coming to either of them, and Jack was left holding Miss Fisher's elegant, long-fingered hand in his. It would be so easy to lean down, hardly any distance at all, and kiss the back of her hand in something approximating old-fashioned courtesy. Or he could press a kiss into the inside of her wrist or the centre of her palm. Or…
Miss Fisher got to her feet, and suddenly he was contemplating more of her than just her hand. She was looking up at him, her face glowing in the soft, yellow light from the lamp, and standing so close that he could put his arms around her without either of them shifting even a fraction of an inch.
It would be so easy to lean down...
"Concetta wouldn't have me," he said. He felt Miss Fisher go still against him.
"But you would have had her?" she asked. The light hadn't changed but somehow the glow seemed to have faded from her features.
"She said… She told me I was taken, that my heart already belonged to… someone else." He paused for a moment, but he didn't look away. "She was right."
"Oh, Jack." Miss Fisher looked up at him, her eyes glistening, and he could see everything she was feeling, spelled out plainly on her face. She was worried and scared, and hopeful too, but not attempting to hide any of it from him. Her bravery was always something he'd admired about her. Something he had loved, and did love.
"I don't think I can give you what you want, Jack. I'm not cut out to be a… " She paused, and Jack wondered what word it was that she'd thought better of saying. He had a feeling that he knew. "…to be a conventional woman," she finished. She bit her lip, clearly steeling herself for an outcome she didn't want. Steeling herself for the possibility of loss and regret.
"If I wanted a conventional woman, I wouldn't be here now."
She gave a little laugh and blinked back a tear. "I suppose not." Her smile faded but she didn't take her eyes off his face. "What do you want, Jack?"
He shrugged, and answered with the simple truth. "You. I want you."
They moved at the same moment, his arms coming around her as she took his face in her hands and leaned up to kiss him. It was a tentative kiss, gentle and careful, right up until the moment that it ceased to be any of those things.
They ended up on the chaise longue. By the time Jack drew back, gasping for breath, he'd lost his coat and tie, and the top button of his shirt and half the buttons of his waistcoat were undone. He knew he must look like he'd been doing… exactly what he'd been doing. Miss Fisher… Phryne—they must be on first name terms by now—looked equally dishevelled, but somehow the sight of her smeared lipstick, untidy hair and the straps of her gown pushed down over her shoulders only served to add to her beauty. Or perhaps it was just the knowledge that this time she looked like that because of him and no one else.
She was lying half on top of him, and now she leaned forward across his chest with a smile on her lips and intent in her eyes.
"No," he said, holding up a hand to stop her. If Mr Butler, or, a thousand times worse, Miss Williams, were to come through that door right now...
Phryne raised her eyebrows. "No?" Her thigh was lying between both of his, close against the undeniable proof of how badly he wanted her.
"I don't mean 'no'," Jack said, shaking his head and trying to remember how to form a coherent sentence. "I just mean 'not here'. I've stopped saying no, God help me."
"There's no need to ask for God's help, Jack. Not when you have mine," Phryne said, the serious, achingly open look in her eyes belying the lightness of her words. And then she leaned forward and took the kiss she wanted from him anyway.
When at last she drew back, Jack closed his eyes and shook his head at her, but he smiled while he did it. "So, if not here, where?" he asked, when he opened his eyes again.
Phryne smiled, all wicked promise, and took his hand. "Come with me," she said, getting to her feet and pulling him up off the chaise longue after her.
Jack came.
He opens his eyes now, and lets out a long sigh. His memories of the rest of the night are a kaleidoscope of sensation, flashes of touch and sight and sound all mixed together. The only linking thread that makes sense of it all is Phryne, the feel of her soft, bare skin against his, the sound of her hot, breathy little moans against his neck, the sight of her face completely abandoned to pleasure—but now Jack's alone.
Is this morning going to be like the other morning he woke here, alone and left to wonder what it all meant? At least he remembers what happened—more or less—this time.
The bedroom door opens, and Phryne enters the room. She's wearing a brightly embroidered midnight blue Chinese dressing gown, which looks perfectly in keeping with the sartorial flair of the Miss Fisher that Jack has always known, but her face is scrubbed free of make-up. She looks pensive, and even a little uncertain. It's possibly the first time Jack's properly seen the real woman who's always been there beneath the artifice of cosmetics and dashing outfits and the unflagging self-confidence. Something tells him that for all he's hardly the first man to spend the night in this bedroom, he's the first to see her looking quite like this. He feels… honoured to be entrusted with that.
"Good morning," she says, grinning at him like the cat that fell in the cream pot and looking altogether much more like her usual self.
"Good morning," Jack says, sitting up in bed and letting the edge of the covers fall down to his chest.
"Did you sleep well?" Phryne asks, still grinning as she sits down on the side of the bed, so close that Jack can feel the warmth of her through the covers.
"I did sleep well," Jack says. "Eventually." He leans in to kiss her, not caring that the bedclothes fall down even further, so that he's sitting there, naked to the waist. "So… what happens now?" he asks when at last the kiss has ended. It has to be her choice now. He's made his own position clear. She has his heart, and she can break it if she so chooses.
"We get up and go out and face the day and see what it brings, just like any other day," Phryne says, sounding as breezy as ever, but there's a hint of that uncertain look again, creasing her usually flawless brow. And then she adds, more quietly, "And you come here for dinner tonight. We'll do it properly this time. No interruptions."
"No interruptions," Jack agrees.
Phryne is the one to kiss him this time, and more than kiss him. Her hand strokes a sinuous path down Jack's bare chest, and then disappears under the covers.
Jack gasps, and then swallows hard. "Mr Butler brought my suit in earlier," he points out. "Speaking of potential interruptions."
Wordlessly, Phryne gets up and goes to the door. She takes a key from the pocket of her dressing gown and turns it in the lock.
"What were you saying about interruptions?" she asks, throwing herself down on the bed beside him.
"Nothing. Nothing at all," Jack says, and puts an end to further conversation in the best way he knows how.