Chapter Six
Six
MONDAY
Livia didn’t mind music. But she would enjoy a soiree musicale much better if she could dance—or read.
Dancing, however, was not to be had, and reading would be profoundly frowned upon.
So she had no choice but to listen, bored, irritated, and worried—her usual state of mind—as the soprano warbled on.
When the broad Italian woman hit another glass-scratching high note, Livia simply had to get out.
She had taken care to sit in the back of the drawing room, at the edge of a row of chairs.
Her mother glared at her as she rose. Livia headed toward the cloakroom—she didn’t need to use it, but Lady Holmes would be less likely to follow if she believed Livia had gone to answer a call of nature.
When she was far enough from the drawing room, she leaned against a half pillar in the passage. Whose house was she in? Oh, what did it matter? The Season was drawing to a close. Soon London would empty, and Livia would take part in the exodus.
Usually, by this point in July, despite the disappointment of having once again failed to secure a husband, she would be more than ready to return to the country, so as not to be obliged to constantly smile, nod, and make pleasant conversation, in a futile quest to prove herself worthy of that holy grail, matrimony.
But this time Charlotte would not be coming with her. This time she would truly be all alone.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, she straightened hastily.
A woman turned the corner from the direction of the cloakroom.
Lady Ingram. She had arrived late to the soiree, after the first piano recital had already begun.
But the hostess had been overjoyed to see her and had hovered about her for an indecent length of time.
Lady Ingram appeared equally startled to run into Livia. “Miss Holmes.”
“Lady Ingram.”
They had rarely spoken to each other before.
Lady Ingram surrounded herself with women who were as cool and sophisticated as she.
And the power of their combined beauty and influence was such that Livia was afraid to go near.
She was invisible enough as it was without placing herself in the shadows cast by such luminosity.
And she was also proud enough not to want to be seen as a hanger-on, someone who would never be accepted into the group but was allowed to exist at its periphery, a barnacle on an otherwise sleek ocean liner.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Lady Ingram said, with a small smile, “I don’t know about you, Miss Holmes, but I, too, prefer singing that doesn’t threaten to pierce my eardrums.”
Livia was astonished. This woman was almost . . . approachable. Who was she? “And here I thought I gave a convincing impression of someone who needed to visit the cloakroom.”
Lady Ingram laughed softly, not with ridicule but with understanding. For some reason Livia couldn’t shake the impression that there was something else to her expression. A weariness, perhaps.
Fatigue.
“Are you well, Miss Holmes?”
The question arrived so unexpectedly; Livia felt almost . . . ambushed. “Ah, I am—tolerably well. You, my lady?”
“Also tolerably well, I suppose.” Was that an ironic curve to Lady Ingram’s lips? “And Miss Charlotte, have you any news of her?”
Since Charlotte had run away, other than ladies Avery and Somersby, Society’s leading gossips, no one had brought her up in front of Livia.
Her parents might argue about Charlotte with each other, but they didn’t involve Livia in those discussions.
Even Lord Ingram, Charlotte’s most trusted friend, had refrained from speaking her name, the one time he had called on Livia, shortly after Charlotte had made her escape.
Livia had been the one to do so, feeling as if she’d broken a cardinal law.
But now Lady Ingram asked about Charlotte. Without malice. And conversationally, as if Charlotte had gone on a trip to Amazonia, rather than fallen through the floor of ignominy.
Lady Ingram, of all people.
Charlotte, being Charlotte, had no particular feelings toward Lady Ingram.
Lady Ingram, on the other hand, had always been less than friendly to Charlotte.
It was Livia’s belief that in the days of antiquity, Lord Ingram had rather relished those displays of frostiness on the part of his future wife.
But Lady Ingram had never warmed up to Charlotte, not after she had secured Lord Ingram’s hand in marriage, not even after their estrangement.
In fact, her coolness toward Charlotte had become even more pronounced after everyone learned that she had married her husband solely for his inheritance.
This Livia had never understood: Why this antagonism toward his friend when she didn’t even want his love?
Perhaps Lady Ingram had at last realized that Charlotte had never been a threat to her position.
Perhaps that Charlotte had been ruined by a different man gave her a better sense of Lord Ingram’s propriety of conduct all these years.
Or perhaps Charlotte’s downfall had been so extreme, her fate so unknown—at least to the general public—that even Lady Ingram was moved to a measure of pity and concern.
“I’m—I’m afraid not,” said Livia, belatedly realizing she still hadn’t answered. “We’ve had no news of her.”
“And that’s the worst, isn’t it, the waiting?”
Livia was taken aback to see Lady Ingram’s throat move, as if she weren’t merely being polite, but was recalling—or even experiencing—her own agony at the disappearance of a loved one. At being left behind to drown in uncertainty and despair.
“You are right about that, ma’am.”
Lady Ingram smiled. “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Holmes, I believe I’m needed at home.”
Long after they had parted company, Livia still saw Lady Ingram in her mind’s eye, her smile full of regret and desolation.
TUESDAY
Charlotte rubbed her eyes.
Livia was the night owl in the family, able to stay up for forty-eight hours at a stretch and need only a brief nap before she was good as new again.
She also skipped meals without feeling the effects of an empty stomach.
Charlotte, on the other hand, adhered to a rigorous schedule: She needed to be fed ’round the clock and enjoyed her sleep almost as much as she enjoyed her food.
Therefore, Charlotte was not accustomed to scraping along on four hours of sleep. But that was all she’d had the past two nights thanks to the onerous Vigenère cipher from Lord Bancroft’s dossier.
But better that than lying in bed thinking about Lord Ingram, Lady Ingram, and Mr. Finch. Not to mention Lord Bancroft’s proposal.
She rubbed her eyes again. She must look lively. Sherlock Holmes’s next client was already here. The parlor door opened and Mrs. Watson ushered in Mrs. Morris.
Mrs. Morris, according to her letter, was married to a naval captain currently at sea. In his absence she had decamped to London to look after her aging father.
The aging father had been a physician in his prime: The handbag Mrs. Morris carried was larger and sturdier than the usual ladies’ accessory and would have served capably as a doctor’s bag in its former life.
In fact, it must have been a doctor’s bag very recently—it was new enough to have been acquired within the past year.
So the good doctor had retired not long ago—and since he wouldn’t have invested in a new bag knowing he was quitting the practice, the retirement must have been a somewhat abrupt decision.
As Mrs. Morris set down the rain-flecked bag, Charlotte noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Nor did her ring finger show the telltale mark left by a ring that had recently been taken off for cleaning.
“Mrs. Morris to see you, miss,” said Mrs. Watson.
Charlotte shook hands with the woman, who was in her midthirties, pretty in an anemic fashion, her demeanor eager but brittle.
The usual pantomime ensued. Tea was offered.
Mrs. Watson left to sit with “Sherlock Holmes.” This was usually the point at which Charlotte asked her clients whether they needed proof of Sherlock’s deductive powers.
But to Mrs. Morris she wasn’t sure whether she ought to mention anything she had observed.
Regulations to the contrary, for as long as there had been a navy, the wives of naval officers—not all of them, but the more intrepid ones—had gone on tours of duty with their husbands.
And if Mrs. Morris didn’t care for life as one of a handful of women sharing cramped quarters with an overwhelmingly male population, she could always travel to ports of call where her husband would be spending considerable amounts of time ashore.
But Charlotte wasn’t convinced that Captain Morris was in fact at sea.
Or that Mrs. Morris was staying with her father solely because she wished to look after the latter.
She had arrived on foot. But the debris clinging to the soles and edges of her boots made it clear that she hadn’t been slogging through the streets of London.
Rather, she had taken a walk in Regent’s Park.
A vigorous one, too, judging by the grimy streaks on the inside of her boots, which could only have been made by herself.
It was not pouring outside—that had happened during the small hours of the night, while Charlotte was still bent over the Vigenère cipher.
But it was drizzling and had been for a while.
Would a woman who thought this a good day for a brisk walk in the park shy away from traveling the world with her husband?
More importantly, she was wearing her second-best pair of Wellington boots.
If one didn’t count the pair Henrietta had left behind when she got married, Charlotte didn’t have galoshes—not even in the country, as she preferred to enjoy rainy days from inside a firmly shut window, with a cup of hot cocoa by her side.