Dear Mr. Holmes,
I apologize for interrupting your day of rest, but I am in desperate need of help.
I beg you will receive me at four o’clock this afternoon.
Mrs. Finch
The handwriting on the note was not Lord Ingram’s. Nor was it one of the scripts that he, an accomplished calligrapher who had taught Charlotte everything she knew about the forging of penmanship, had developed.
Her spine tingled. There was someone else in Lord Ingram’s household who could have legitimately used the typewriter in his study and the envelopes that had been ordered from London’s best stationer.
His wife.
“Papa, have you ever danced all night?” asked Lucinda, Lord Ingram’s daughter.
Lord Ingram smiled, amused by her question. “No. I’ve danced half the night, but never all night.”
They were in the nursery, back from church, and about to have their Sunday dinner together. Carlisle, his younger child, was playing intently with a boxful of wooden blocks. Lucinda enjoyed theblocks as much as Carlisle did, but for the moment she was not yet done with her plants.
Small terra-cotta pots crowded the sills of the nursery’s three windows, holding a dozen different seedlings. Lucinda had been observing them for the past week, measuring their height, counting the number of leaves, and making drawings in her notebook to help her better recognize the plants at different stages of growth.
She wrote down the numbers of leaves for a sunflower seedling. “Why haven’t you danced all night?”
“Because dances and balls usually don’t last that long. By three o’clock in the morning most people want to be in bed, even those who love dancing.”
Lucinda counted leaves on another sunflower seedling, the last of her experimental subjects. “I want to try dancing all night. Miss Yarmouth said I could once I’m married—she said I could do anything I wanted once I’m married—but Mamma said it was all nonsense.”
It had been a long time since Lord Ingram asked his wife what she thought of marriage, either in general or in specific. “You’ll be able to do more of what you want when you are older, whether you are married or not.”
“Miss Yarmouth said I can be married at sixteen. Mamma said she won’t let me. She said she’ll have a word with Miss Yarmouth.” Lucinda looked up, worried. “Is she going to dismiss Miss Yarmouth?”
Lord Ingram watered the last seedling—that was his task as her “prime assistant,” as she’d dubbed him. “I shouldn’t think so. But Miss Yarmouth’s idea of marriage... I don’t know anyone else who thinks of marriage as unlimited freedom.”
“Mamma said I might hate it. And I won’t be able to unmarry.”
Who recoiled more from the state of their marriage, Lord or Lady Ingram? Until this moment, Lord Ingram had never been able to decide on an answer. Now he knew it was his wife, by a hair.
“It definitely isn’t easy to unmarry.”
An annulment would render his children illegitimate. And even if he’d had grounds for a divorce, it was a breathtakingly scandalous—and damaging—process.
Lucinda closed her notebook. “Why do Mamma and Miss Yarmouth think so differently about the same thing?”
“It’s like asparagus. You can’t get enough of it; Carlisle hardly ever touches his. Nothing is for everyone.”
“What about you? What do you think about it?”
He’d been expecting the question—this was where the conversation had been inexorably headed. Still he flinched inwardly.
He set aside the watering can, sank down to one knee, and placed his hands on his daughter’s shoulders. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
“Because it brought me you—and your brother.” He kissed her forehead. “Now let’s eat. I hear we’ll have asparagus again.”
“Something has come up,” said Miss Holmes as she served herself a generous portion from the trifle bowl at the center of the table.
They had been talking about Penelope’s friends from medical school who were shortly to arrive in London. Penelope was intent on organizing a tour of the Scottish Highlands. Mrs. Watson, in between listening to her ideas, pondered whether she ought not to make some changes to the house’s public rooms. They were so very somber, full of deep blues and joyless browns. Practical to be sure—the soot in London would turn everything dark and grimy in time. But perhaps a new wallpaper with leafy designs on a stone-hued background might serve as a compromise?
