Chapter 13 #2
“Please, Professor.” It was her turn to look indignant.
“Do you think a man who works the steel mills would let his wife and mother of his three children come spend an afternoon listening to you speak? Do you think she wouldn’t sport a black eye for a week for simply suggesting the idea of bettering herself to him? ”
He paused. Then bowed his head. “You make a fair point.”
Good. He wasn’t arrogant. Well, not entirely. Not arrogant enough that he wouldn’t listen to her. “Where shall we go?”
“I believe I know somewhere private enough to avoid…too much public attention for either of us.” The way his words dropped low at the end made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. And not in an entirely unpleasant way.
What the actual fuck was wrong with her?
She was talking to Moriarty. The Moriarty. And she was Irene Adler. It was tempting to sink into the fantasy of it all. But she had to remember what was really at stake.
Holding her clutch, she kept her head high as she walked from the college halls and outside. The sun was just starting to set, and the lamplighters were out—real lamplighters!
It was hard not to smile in excitement, watching the horse-drawn carriages clomp down the sidewalk, the wheels clattering over the cobblestones.
London looked fairly similar architecturally, to when she had visited as a college kid.
But everything around the buildings was different.
The streets, the sidewalks, the railings, the people.
It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. She knew the rest of England wasn’t so lucky, she’d read her fair share on the Industrial Revolution.
She knew the price that the rest of society was paying for the upper class to have their cake and to be able to eat it off clean, non-coal-soot-covered plates and silverware.
But damn it if it still wasn’t amazing to be able to see and experience.
They walked in silence for a stretch as they passed through the crowds of the campus to an area of the road that had fewer people on it.
“I should have asked if you preferred to take a carriage.” Moriarty let out a quiet grunt, the kind of sound a person makes when they suddenly remember they left the stove on. “I do not often walk with women, forgive me.”
“I would have spoken up if it was a problem, I am enjoying the walk. And I should have asked if your wife would be upset to hear of you dining with another woman.” She knew Moriarty wasn’t married—at least, not in the fiction she’d read.
But this was a new story, with new wildcards.
She’d apparently made up a murderous generator-crocodile. Who knew what she’d already done here?
And her feet might be angry with her later, what with the shitty shoes she was wearing—but whatever. She was enjoying the scenery.
Moriarty was quiet for a beat. “I have no time for relationships.”
Glancing at him, his expression was empty of anything at all.
It wasn’t even cold, it was just…blank. When they had been in Neverland, Vile had always been split halfway with Hook—always in the driver's seat. But as Moriarty? She would never have guessed it was him in there, if she hadn’t known better.
It made her very tempted to poke the beehive.
“I have an uncle who says the same thing.” She smiled, a bit wryly.
“He lives with a likeminded man. I am glad they found a way to split the rent. I wonder, Professor, about your connections to a Mr. Sherlock Holmes—another man with a very busy schedule…you two are acquainted, if I’m not mistaken? ”
Moriarty—who had dark eyes like the clouds of a storm just before rain breaks—flicked his gaze to hers from the sidewalk in front of her. And for just the briefest moment, he smiled back.
Not as the Professor.
But as the Mastermind.
There he was.
There was Moriarty.
“If you can call someone who comes to question you regarding what seems to be every crime in London an acquaintance, yes, I suppose we are.” There was a new life in his expression. There was engagement. It was as though he was seeing her for the first time. “And what do you know of Mr. Holmes?”
“Enough.” Enough to know to read through my own personal belongings to figure it out first. “But perhaps we are also…acquainted.”
“I see.” He straightened his shoulders. Good god. She hadn’t realized he was slouching. It was like watching Dr. Jekyll transform into Mr. Hyde. He wasn’t just over six feet, he was easily just as tall as Vile, and with the broadness of him, the air he carried instantly changed.
She couldn’t help but stare. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Yep. That was Moriarty all right.
Oh, she’d done a very bad thing by picking Sherlock as their next stop on their unwilling game of death-match-through-fiction.
Namely because Moriarty was one of the most handsome things she had ever seen. And there was a dark fire in those eyes of his that made her want to follow him into the void and never look back.
Sidney’s right. I really, really needed to get laid more.
Moriarty snapped her thoughts back to the moment.
“I was impressed when I heard you outplayed him.” He turned his attention back to the road ahead of them as they walked.
She did the same to keep from tripping over a brick in the walkway.
And to keep from gawking. He kept talking.
“Though I admit I wonder how much of that was due to his eagerness to dismiss the ability of a woman to have an equal measure of intelligence to his usual foes.”
“It’s hard to say.” She shrugged. “I find it’s often difficult to distinguish between a person’s natural predisposition to believe that everyone is lesser than they are, and a tendency to think that all women are inherently fools. And believe me, the two are not mutually exclusive.”
With a laugh, he reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a small leather notebook. Taking it out, he jotted something down before tucking it back away. “I resemble that remark, I suppose.”
“You and he are a lot alike in many ways, Professor.”
“As you insinuated.”
“I was insinuating far more than that.”
“I am aware.” His smirk was just as wry as hers had been earlier. “And as amusing and scandalous as the thought may be, I hate to disappoint. I do not enjoy the company of men in such a way, though I do not fault those who do.”
“How very forward-thinking of you.” All those poor fan-fiction writers. I felt a great disturbance in the F— Wait. Was she on that list of fan-fiction writers now? Unwillingly, maybe. But yes, she supposed she was.
Wait.
Could she—
She was in control of the fiction around her, right?
Could she make them—
No. No. She was not going there.
Moriarty snapped her train of thought again, thank god. “The small-mindedness of humanity will never cease to amaze me. No. I say, let those whose idleness allows for such flights of fancy to amuse themselves in any manner in which they deem fit. They are harming no one.”
Fascinating. “Do you not believe in the existence of love, Professor?”
“No.” It was a statement of fact.
Whoa. That was a whole-ass can of worms to unpack. She stared straight ahead. “That would explain the lack of a wife.”
He laughed. Hard. As if she’d actually said something that struck him as funny. “I believe I enjoy your company, Miss Adler.”
That felt like…an honest compliment. And not one he threw around often. “Do call me Irene.”
“And you may call me James.” Another honest compliment. They approached what looked like a Parisian restaurant, and she was honestly a little excited. Fancy French food in Victorian England as Irene Adler sitting across from Professor James Moriarty.
Yeah, she was probably going to die horribly.
And she still wanted to stab Vile in the leg for the kiss debacle.
But this was fun.