“I’m sure she will,” said Lord Ingram. “When you meet her, do convey my regard.”
“Have you, by any chance, confessed your more tender sentiments to Miss Holmes, my lord? Or have you any plans to do so in the near future?”
“No. And no.”
Treadles winced.
“In which case, I must apologize,” said Fowler, sounding not at all sorry. “It is unlikely that we will be able to keep it a secret, as we will be speaking to her on that very subject.”
“I dare say she already knows,” answered Lord Ingram. Then, more softly, “I dare say she’s known it for years. For longer than I have, if anything.”
Charlotte,free of all disguises, regarded herself in the mirror.
“Oh, your skin is red from the glue.” Miss Redmayne tsked, fussing over her. “Here, I have some rose water. Pat it over your face. That should calm it down. Some chamomile tea also wouldn’t hurt.”
Charlotte puffed up her cheeks and moved her jaw left and right. The worst wasn’t the glue, but the modified orthodontia she’d worn for most of the day. If she never put them in her mouth again, she would consider herself blessed.
“I haven’t had the chance to thank you yet, Miss Redmayne, for coming so swiftly.”
After Charlotte had some time to think the day before—had it been only a little more than twenty-four hours since they’d received Livia’s distraught note?—it had been easy to predict that several things would happen.
One, Lord Ingram would be forced to tell as much of the truth as possible, most likely relying on the surface version of Lady Ingram’s search for her lost lover, in order to avoid touching on the fact that her perfidy had cost the lives of three agents of the Crown.
Two, the account of her search would lead to a call on Sherlock Holmes, the one who had undertaken the endeavor for her.
Three, the police would wish to speak to Charlotte Holmes, whose rapport with Lord Ingram would become a central line of inquiry in a case that gave them little else to go on.
Charlotte didn’t mind speaking to the police, but Sherlock Holmes was a different matter. They would need to see a man. She could not meet them both as Sherlock Holmes’s sister and later as herself. And Mrs. Watson, needed for other things, couldn’t be expended on this occasion.
So among the tasks she had entrusted to Mrs. Watson to accomplish had been a cable to Miss Redmayne, begging the latter to make haste and return to England. Mrs. Watson, confident, capable Mrs. Watson, had of course executed everything perfectly.
“Don’t thank me for coming,” said Miss Redmayne. “I would have been upset if you hadn’t informed me right away. And I would have caught the first train to Calais even if you’d told me I wouldn’t be of any use here.”
She sighed. “I wish I’d been able to speak more to Ash. Poor thing, he looked—I mean, he looked fine but he seemed... heavyhearted.”
There was the weight of his wife’s murder—and the uncertainty of his own future. But was part of the heaviness there because he had been forced to speak truthfully of his sentiments to Charlotte, a woman he wasn’t sure understood “the full spectrum of human emotions”?
“It will be all right, won’t it, Miss Holmes?” asked Miss Redmayne.
Charlotte understood enough of human emotions to know that the girl wished for reassurance, from someone she trusted to get to the bottom of the matter. But if they’d learned anything from the debacle with Lady Ingram, it was that truth was sometimes no one’s friend.
That getting to the bottom of the matter could shatter bonds and upend lives.
“Brace yourself,” she said. “It will not be good. This is an ugly case that can lead only to an uglier end.”
In the mirror Miss Redmayne’s reflection was aghast.
Charlotte sighed inwardly. The problem was not that she didn’t always understand the full spectrum of human emotions. It was that even when she did, she still gave those close to her the opposite of what they wished for.
Lord Ingram wokeup to fog-obscured windows. His watch marked a quarter past nine o’clock, almost three hours later than when he usually started his day.
Was he already becoming less starchy by first becoming lazy?
He got up, dressed, and went up to Holmes’s rooms. She wasn’t there, of course, though he wished she were.
Pleasurable pain. Painful pleasure. He couldn’t get enough of either. It would never be simple or easy between them. So he let himself luxuriate in all the gladness and all the complications.
While he still could.
