Title: Jessa Called Jay
Author: Elliott Silver
Chapter 2: Phryne Of A Thousand Days
Summary: "Come after me, Jack Robinson," she'd said, but when he tries, she doesn't answer. Three years later, Phryne Fisher returns to Melbourne.
Rating: R, for this chapter
Note: Thank you to all you wonderful readers.
/ - / - / - / - / September 1932 / - / - / - / - /
"Ready?"
Her voice is low and sure by his side, as it always has been. The murmur in his heart subsides as Jack Robinson breathes and takes her hand in his.
"I am now."
The woman smiles as they walk forward together.
He hates these things, but as Deputy Chief Commissioner he is required to attend the annual Policeman's Ball, that yearly gathering of the city's brightest and finest.
The room goes silent when they walk in, but it's a different kind of silence now, one of respect and even admiration. If he'd tried this two years ago, after the disaster that was his penance, everyone would have looked up and just as quickly looked away. Someone might even have thrown a fist his direction, perhaps more than one, perhaps more than a fist. Now he is greeted as he goes, commended even.
It's funny how things change.
Of course, he knows it's not all for him, not even out of respect, but also for the woman at his side.
Jessamine Tayler positively glows.
She is wearing a long silk dress the color of her name, white gloves to her elbows, her blonde hair rippled back in twin abalone combs so she looks like she's wearing a crown or a halo. Queen or angel, he can't decide.
She's radiant, it's electric, and he feels it.
He isn't alone.
So here they are, hailed, greeted, included. Jessa greets them all back, enveloped and embraced, asking all the right questions, quick with all the right answers. This was never his strong suit, so Jack kisses her gently on the cheek, careful not to smudge the light powder on her face, and inches toward the edge of the room where he can sit rather than stand. His knee aches; he winces and he's certain it's going to rain soon.
He seats himself gratefully and watches the room move around him, the bolts of the universe come undone. The Lord Mayor is here, and all the men from Parliament House, mixing with the starched and uniformed ranks of the Victoria police. Wives float on the arms of their husbands, bringing a hint of color to the sparse hues of their spouses. There's a flash of violet, a dash of emerald, a trace of cobalt.
But no one brings more color than Jessamine.
He looks at her, and marvels.
This blonde woman has a fluidity about her he can't describe. It's the way she moves, the way she holds herself. It's not grace exactly, not structured or superficial. He didn't know how to understand it until she told him about her childhood, about exile to her grandfather's cattle station, about the horses and learning to ride. That explained everything, the twist of her fingers as if on reins, the curve of her thigh as she moves, the unconscious way she's always looking forward.
Even from across the room he feels her, and knows she feels him.
She raises her head and out of the melee, she comes to him.
She always does.
Gently she settles to the seat next to him on the edge of the room, the fringe where people are talking rather than dancing. She doesn't say anything – doesn't have to – but takes his hand as another woman comes in.
His heart stops.
It's just like her, Jack thinks, to disappear for a thousand days and then show up when he least expects it.
Phryne Fisher wears a black dress lashed with iridescent sequins like feathers. Except the plumes – the glittering ones stitched into the heavy satin of her bodice and the ombré cascade of real ostrich feathers that form a skirt that drifts to her knees – are not the blue and green of a peacock, but the red of a phoenix, a miracle risen again from the ashes of the past. Around her neck is another feather, this one crafted of white gold, heavy with diamonds for the curving quill, the feather barbs set with rubies, the center eye in golden citrine.
Phryne Fisher literally glitters wherever she goes.
Jack has imagined her return in so many ways, but none like now, none when she looks like this, when he can't remember all the things he had to say to her. Her black hair is loose and longer, almost curling to her shoulders, her restless hands encased in black gloves, her eyes darkened, her mouth still vibrantly red.
He wants to say that he thought she would never come back, but in his heart Jack knew that someday Phryne Fisher would come waltzing back into his life, as sleek and sassy as always.
The year she left – 1929 – had been one for the record books. It had started with magic, with the cavalcade show, with him in Phryne's bed, and somehow it had only gone downhill from there. Every time he moved forward, she moved away; every time he moved away, she came back. He tried to be one of her liberal-minded men, but he simply wasn't on par with Captain "Courageous" Compton or Rinaldo the Rodeo Rider, all her other dashing heroes.
Phryne's eyes were always turned skyward, while his were always directed earthward, where he sees her bare feet, toenails red against the dirt. She dances to everyone's tune but his, but he plays along because he doesn't know what else to do. Love is a game to Phryne, just like tennis or cards. He can waltz with her, protect her from spiders, and make her a Special Constable, but he can't win.
In the end, he'd always known that another man would sweep her away from him (though he'd never imagined it would be her father). He'd kissed her, hard, and she'd swooned against him as if she meant it, as if she really did want him to come after her.
Then – not even a wobble of her wings – and she was gone.
He was alone.
He felt it keenly, working cases in stillness and silence unbroken by the roar of the Hispano-Suiza's engine or the swish of her skirt through doorways. He'd counted up his leave, knew the schedule to Southampton by heart, had tallied up his savings to cash in at the Peninsular & Oriental office.
Yet he never did.
As Phryne had said herself, there was a whole world out there, and the men in her life were the least of his worries.
Depression hit Melbourne hard, and he was no exception. It's not the crash that hurts, but the hard landing at the end. Crime skyrockets and murder abounds in those black days, but he – he just misses her.
And then –
Well, no sense thinking about that now.
The hard road of the past is the only way you get the present.
Across the room, Phryne notices him and walks forward.
He counts down the paces until she is there, until she stands above him, just out of his reach, as perhaps she always has been.
"Hello Jack."
"Miss Fisher."
He nods his head so curtly he's afraid it might snap his neck. He called her Phryne in the park yesterday afternoon, and he watches her test his formality.
She stands at attention, waiting for him, and reluctantly he pushes himself to his feet. She's always made him feel like he's lacking, behind when it comes to doing his job or following leads, or simply at beginning.
"May I introduce – "
Beside him Jessa stands and reaches out her hand.
" – the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher," she finishes.
The dark-haired woman seems startled at the brazen uncovering of her identity, though she hides it well. She takes and shakes Jessa's hand, black kid glove against white silk.
"Jessamine Tayler," the blonde says. "But call me Jay."
Something shakes loose in Phryne's head.
"Jay Tayler?" she questions, "The crime reporter from the Melbourne Times?"
"Yes," Jessa smiles.
"Such an odd profession for a woman."
"No more than a lady detective."
"Touché."
Across the space they share a look, sizing each other up in a way that makes him immediately uncomfortable. Battle lines are being drawn, and he isn't sure where he stands among them.
"But you're engaged," Phryne notices, seeing the silver ring and diamond chip on Jessa's finger over the silk of her glove. "Who's the lucky man?"
For a moment time stands still. Then Jack takes Jessa's hand without breaking Phryne's gaze.
"I am."
He watches Phryne's face stay exactly the same, and that's how he knows how hard the blow hits her. Not at skin or bone, but deeper, through muscle, through sinew, to heart.
Before he can say anything further, a booming voice interrupts them like thunder.
"Jack!"
Chief Commissioner Callum O'Callaghan engulfs Jack's hand in his own, his calluses still rough enough to sand skin off his palm. "So good to see you here."
He's huge and he's Irish, temperamental and abrasive to a fault, but he's also fair, which is why Jack likes working for him. He prizes loyalty and honesty and the truth, even when it hurts.
Callum's spiky green eyes miss nothing as they sweep over the assembled group.
"You know Miss Tayler, and this is Miss Fisher," Jack introduces, pulling together the threads of his manners.
Callum narrows his eyes.
"Not that same Miss Fisher that caused such problems with Commissioner Sanderson so many years ago?"
His brogue catches on their past history and snags.
Phryne smiles dazzlingly as she holds out her hand.
"One and the same."
"So it is."
His face doesn't change, but it wouldn't. Callum does not take her hand; instead, he turns to Jack.
"If you don't mind, I'll ask this beautiful woman to dance."
Jack sees Phryne ready to accept, but it's Jessa that Callum means, taking her hand as if she is some small fragile thing that needs to be sheltered and cosseted from so much as an unkind word.
Jessa takes his hand as if nothing could break her, not steel rods or iron chains, or even Phryne's terrible dark look.
Jack watches them walk away, and if Phryne thinks it odd how easily he lets Jessa go, she says nothing. After all, she's made him learn how to do just that, and he's had years to perfect doing it.
Without waiting Phryne moves into the seat that Jessa left, pushing it closer to him so that their thighs are touching, so that he feels her warmth even through the fabric and feathers between them.
Beside him she is as opulent and lush as the rare bird whose phoenix-feathers are embroidered on her gown. Beside him, she is as warm and alive as if she had never left.
He wonders where she will begin.
"Odd name, isn't it?" she asks. "Jessamine."
"It's a flower."
"I didn't take you for someone who liked floral women."
"No, you took me for someone who liked women mis-named for courtesans."
Has she spent her whole life fighting between Psyche and Phryne, goddess and courtesan? Sometimes Jack wonders if she was destined to live up to her name from the beginning, if she was cursed that way.
Beside him Phryne goes for the path of least resistance. She rests her hand on his arm.
"Jack, are you upset?"
He understands Phryne, understands her with a clarity so sharp it makes him bleed. Now he can pinpoint her every move, knows where she will go before she does, knows what she will say before she opens her mouth. It is infuriating; it's debilitating.
"Upset?" he queries. "Am I upset?"
"Well, are you?"
"You left for three years – "
"Only – "
"Three years!" he explodes and people sitting nearby stare.
Phryne's face freezes.
"I told you to come after me."
"And I tried," he responds. "I tried."
"Jack, I'm sorry – "
"Don't apologize, it only confuses me."
He realizes too late that's a line from their past, so he continues.
"Besides, you don't mean it."
Phryne turns away. She doesn't deny it, but he feels like a beast all the same. That's the thing with Phryne, he always feels like he should apologize without quite knowing why. He has come to think she's always right, even when she's not. She turns the world upside down for him.
In silence they watch the melee of dancers. In the midst of the greens and blues there is a single flash of gold that stands out. Even the ruby sparkles of Phryne's dress and necklace can't compare.
Across the room, Jessa looks over at him, and he feels the world turn right-side up again.
If Phryne is Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the wild, then Jessa is Athena, the grey-eyed goddess of wisdom. He remembers too well the fate of Actaeon. Enraged when at last seen naked, vengeful and volatile Artemis transformed the hunter into a stag to be torn apart and killed by his own hounds, the hunter become the hunted, a sacrifice based on a woman's whim.
"We used to dance too," Phryne says, breaking the silence as she has his past.
"Yes, we did," he answers, thinking of the twilight waltz they shared and all the times they did so without musical accompaniment.
"We could again."
The feathers of her dress catch on his knee; they stick. He can feel it through to his bones as if she might force him into flight with her.
"No," he answers. "Not anymore."
He taps his knee.
"Hurt it?" she wonders.
He gives her a look, one that is both pitying and agonized all at once.
"You could say that."
She waits a moment.
"What happened?"
"You left," he answers.
Her face is unreadable, and he wonders if that is her pride. Does she imagine that people cannot live without her? If she does, he knows she is mistaken. He is proof of that, not that he ever wanted to be.
But now her thigh is pressed against his, knee to knee, and it's only such a little distance to put his hand over hers, or turn her shoulder so she's facing him, so that they are only a breath apart, a heartbeat – that way he always remembers them, that way they could be again.
Phryne moves, but Jessa is already there, yellow as the morning sun burning away darkness. She reaches out and Jack takes her hand so she pulls him upright, slowly, gently, as if she's done it a million times before because she has.
He moves to leave, but Phryne takes his arm and stops him. For a moment he is hung there, stretched between two women.
"But I'm here now," she says.
/ - / - / - / - /
"What are you thinking?"
He's been waiting for her questions all night.
They have left and come here, come home to his bungalow in Elwood. It's late but they, he and Jessa, haven't bothered with the lights so she stands before the mirror in darkness, etched in shadow against its cool reflection as she unpins her earrings and drops them to a dish on the bureau where they dazzle against the dull glow of his cufflinks and shirt studs and tie bars.
All he can see of her is the line of her back and a sliver of her cheekbones, the part of her hair reflected back in the silver surface. In the darkness she is only a blur of pale skin, a flash of eyes, the catch of her breath.
The truth is that right now he doesn't know what to think of Phryne Fisher but he does know what to think about Jessa Tayler.
He knows that there is nothing she could do not to be a light in all his dark places.
He reaches for her, bridging the distance between them, his fingers settling on her skin, his palms over the ball of her shoulders. He slides his hands from arm to elbow to wrist until their hands meet.
"I was thinking of you."
It's a lie – if only a small one – and she knows it, but she says nothing.
Jack steps closer, so that his chest comes against her back, so that they are skin to skin, his warm, hers cool. He can smell the trace of perfume on her neck as she leans back into him and he kisses the edge of her forehead.
Jessa exhales as he lets go of her hands, his fingers sliding over thin silk to undo the closures of her dress. The yellow-gold fabric slips off her shoulders and cascades to the floor.
She stands like Athena, bare in bone and spine, missing only her Corinthian helmet and shield. She is not unblemished, though she is more beautiful for it. Her body shows the marks of war, of another time and place, or perhaps of all the lifetimes of the world.
Jack too knows how life leaves marks on our skin, and how sometimes how the worst wounds are the ones that don't show. It is knowledge that comes at such a great price, and they have, both of them, paid dearly.
His fingers trace these lines on her skin, the ghostly brands where her body has been blemished by violence. He skims the scar down her hairline, barely visible through her short hair, to the welts down her back, jagged and white as lightning on the horizon, these marks of the world that have brought them together.
She turns in his hold, and her mouth meets his without waiting. She tastes sweet, like champagne, like stars in a glass, against the salt and savor of his whisky. He tangles his hands in the ends of her hair, kissing the line of her cheekbone, the shell of her ear, the tip of her chin until she pulls him back to her, her tongue sliding along his lower lip so that the weakness in his knees has nothing to do with pain.
To be honest, he once imagined this with Phryne, their two bodies coming together, and it drove him nearly to madness (because imagination can do that). In his mind it was always the same, the merciless way of it, how she would eat him alive and he would endure it. She'd had so many men, and in all his life he'd only been with four women – Rosie, the one he'd married; Kadira, in Gallipoli who made him forget the war; Evilyn, when he was seventeen and sure he'd found the woman he would be with forever; and then the dark-haired woman whose name he doesn't know when he drank too much and willingly paid for an hour of solace.
He doesn't have to imagine with Jessa.
"What are you thinking?" she asks again.
"I was thinking of you," he answers once more, truthfully, as he slips his hands low so that he finds the swirl of her hipbones, the swell and curve of them. He cherishes the way her body fits into his palm before he slides between them, until she gasps and he feels the edges of her teeth on his skin.
"When I can tease you and you'll give me that look."
"What look?" she asks, arching against him, indignant for his touch.
"That look!"
They both laugh, they can't help it, and the sound rumbles against their skins as it always does. It tickles but he isn't laughing as she pulls him with her as their bodies tangle and collapse to the bed.
She is impatient tonight, they both are. Her hips roll into him and without waiting he pushes deep, bringing himself home. Her eyes are steady with his as he moves, she follows, and they rock together.
It isn't long before he feels the tension building low in her beautiful body, the tensile coil of her muscles and tendons sprung tight against him, the dew of sweat on her skin so he tastes salt on his tongue.
She shivers against him, close.
"I was thinking of this moment," Jack whispers, kissing her between breaths, "when you're so close and all I have to do is move – " he does, one long deep slide, " – and say, come with me – " he does, breathing into her ear, " – and you will."
She does, body breaking up into his, so that the cage of her ribs comes against his as if trying to merge their two hearts. Without waiting, she pulls him with her so that he feels the beat of her heart as his body strains, as now his hold on the world now loosens under her hands.
"I was thinking of this moment," she whispers to him, as her tongue traces the rim of his ear, her teeth on his lobe. He gasps and is quite certain he sees stars behind his closed eyes. "When I say your name and that's all it takes."
She moves beneath him, shifting so that he slides to his hilt.
"Jack."
And that is all it takes, his name in her voice.
It takes a moment (or so) for the world to come back to him, but when it does she is there and he twines against her. Beside him she is warm and soft and real. He holds her hand in his and twists the ring around her finger.
"What are you thinking?" he asks into their sleepy darkness.
"I was thinking that I love you," she answers simply, because it is.
/ - / - / - / - /
The knocking is vociferous, or at least it seems that way in the small hours of the morning when all else is quiet in the leafy arbors of Elwood.
Jessa is warm and languid next to him and Jack curses freely under his breath as the knocking begins anew. He swings out of bed, yanking on pajama bottoms and quite willing to happily shoot whichever constable is standing on his doorstep on sight.
"Yes, yes yes," he whispers down the darkened hallway, managing not to trip over the carpet or his shoes as he crosses the room, though he does catch the edge of the table with his shin and unlocks the door with a mouthful of expletives that would make sailors blush.
Phryne Fisher stands before him, hand raised to knock again. She drops it to her side.
He stands staring at her, unbelieving.
"Jack – " she begins but there a noise behind him and she freezes.
"Jack?" Jessa comes from bedroom, wearing only the top of his pajamas, thighs pale and feet bare. She holds his service revolver in her hands and he hears the click of the cylinder as she snaps it into place. "Who is it?"
Bloody hell.
He throws the door open wide and the two women stare at each other.
He's not sure who's the more surprised.
/ - / - / - / - /
.