Chapter Thirty-Eight
Livia found Charlotte on the veranda of Mrs. Watson’s house, clad in a dress of white-and-gold stripes, watching the Seine flow by.
Livia pulled her baby sister to her feet and hugged her fiercely. “Thank you! Thank you, Charlotte!”
“I enjoy being thanked,” said Charlotte after she was let go, “but what does this particular bout of gratitude concern?”
The enormous white-and-gold bow on her bodice had been crushed by the hug. Livia fluffed it up again. “I saw Mr. Marbleton at the jardin today.”
“How did he look?”
Livia thought for a moment. “Quite pretty. His dress was more fashionable than mine.”
This made her laugh. Charlotte smiled, looking at her.
Livia ambled around the veranda and prattled happily for a while about the all-too-brief encounter, and then said, “I can’t thank you enough, Charlotte. I know you didn’t do it for me—the Marbletons are important in the campaign against Moriarty and—”
Charlotte leaned against the balustrade. “You’re wrong.”
Livia was taken aback. The Marbletons weren’t important?
“The Marbletons are crucial allies, and I consider Mr. Marbleton a friend. But throughout the planning and the execution of our entire strategy, you were always foremost in my thoughts, Livia. So yes, I did do it for you.”
“But that is—that is—Mr. Marbleton and I might not have a future together.”
“No one knows about the future. His freedom has made you happier in the present, and that’s good enough for me.”
Livia could not speak.
Charlotte came forward and linked their arms together. “Madame Gascoigne reports that there is a little place nearby that does the most magnificent sole meunière. Miss Redmayne is keen to try it and we were only waiting for you to come back.”
“Oh, Charlotte!” Livia finally found her voice.
Her sister held her close. “You are the most consequential person in my life, Livia. I would have moved mountains for you. What was a few hundred cubic yards of clay?”
?Lord Ingram dutifully played the invalid at Stern Hollow for a few days. Then, with a great big plaster cast on his “fractured” limb, he traveled with his children and the Treadleses to the Isles of Scilly, and there played the invalid for another week but enjoyed himself much better.
When Holmes visited him in Bordeaux, at the vineyard he’d inherited from his godfather, another two weeks had passed and he had at last tossed aside all casts and crutches.
When he had collected her from the railway station and brought her to the estate, she surprised him by suggesting a ride around the property—in all the years he’d known her, he’d seen her atop a horse no more than three times. But then again, he had mentioned that he longed to ride, and Holmes remembered everything.
The harvest was in progress. Vendangeurs, crouched low, cut grapes from the vines row by row. He led her to a clearing atop a gentle slope, where a picnic had been laid out.
They ate bread and cheese, and drank the vineyard’s own wine. It was best known for a heady claret, but it also made a few bottles of crisp white wines that went well with the local cheese.
Afterward, they lay on the picnic blanket and watched clouds drift across a deep blue sky.
“I heard from Miss Longstead a few days ago,” declared Holmes. “She and her friend Miss Yates just returned from two weeks in the Highlands. I relayed your invitation to Bordeaux, and she has promised to lay waste to the vineyard’s cellar by summer of next year.”
“She is welcome to it.” He thought of the vineyard’s vast cellar, laughed, and set his hands under his head. “All the money has been wired, by the way.”
He had been in Bruges. Before Mrs. Claiborne left England, she passed on the key she’d received from Mr. Underwood the last time they had seen each other, the remaining key he had been safeguarding for Bancroft. Key in hand, Lord Ingram had claimed the contents of Bancroft’s safe-deposit box, the one containing the latter’s ill-begotten gains.
With Remington’s permission, Mrs. Claiborne and Mrs. Farr had each received decent compensation, and Holmes, a finder’s fee of three thousand pounds.
“Are you all right?” asked Holmes.
Lord Ingram sighed. “The moment he was shot, I felt as if a bullet struck me, too. But I can’t say I’ve missed him much in the days since, except to feel a certain sadness for the young man he had once been.”
She placed her hand over his, and they remained for some time without speaking.
“You know,” she murmured, “lately I have not been as busy and have started to dabble in erotic fiction again. Would you like to marvel at my latest output?”
He was hot and cold at once. He still grew consternated when he thought of those last three lines he’d added to the story, not only because they’d exposed a state of mind that he hadn’t been entirely aware of at the time of their writing, but also because they formed a query, a demand for an answer.
When he was content enough with things as they are.
“Give me a moment to prepare myself for stupefaction,” he said lightly.
They both sat up. She waited for him to take a draught of wine directly from the almost empty bottle before she took out a sheet of paper from her handbag and gave it to him. “To review, this is the installment you last added to the story.”
Her clothes lay discarded at the foot of the bed. Firelight caressed her smooth, supple skin. She made no attempt to cover herself, though occasionally she adjusted the pillows underneath her head.
He stared at her. His hands were busy, but his feet had been nailed in place since she had removed her garments and lain down on the rumpled bed. Light refracted from the folds of black satin sheets. Her lips were red, her calves shapely.
He swallowed.
His alarm clock clanged. He swore under his breath and silenced it. The woman rose, dressed quickly, came forward, and took her payment from him.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Will the painting be finished soon?”
“Yes, soon,” he mumbled.
“Ah, I’m almost sorry,” she said as she walked out the door. “Your studio is the only one that’s remotely warm in winter.”
The man stared at the closing door.
The painting was finished some time ago and he suspected that she knew it.
Where did that leave him then?
He scarcely needed the review—every word remained seared in his mind, especially those last three lines. He recorked the bottle and set it aside. “I didn’t realize you’d be building upon my little contribution.”
“Of course. This then”—she handed him another sheet of paper, her tone matter-of-fact—“is the addition I made.”
The inside of his head roared. He took a deep breath.
The door opened again. The woman walked back in.
“Is—is it cold outside?” asked the man hesitantly.
“Very. But I’m not afraid of cold and I have plenty of coal at home.”
“Then, have you forgotten something?”
“No. Well, yes. I forgot to tell you that if you’d like, I will be happy to come by even without the excuse of the painting.”
The roar subsided somewhat. This wasn’t too bad. Not too bad at all. He could live with this.
But maybe he was also a bit disappointed. Maybe the roar in his head hadn’t been only fear screeching but also hope bellowing at the top of its lungs.
“Why is this next section all scratched out?” he heard himself ask, his voice normal enough.
“Because she started to tell him that she was in fact a very young dowager duchess who enjoyed a large dower and was free to take him as a lover, but I decided that was irrelevant to the story.”
He chortled. “Still, I must say that the story has progressed in both a logical and satisfactory direction.”
“But that’s not all. Turn it over.”
He did as she asked. “There’s more?”
The couple at last tumbling into bed?
On the back of the sheet of paper, it was written, “I love you,” she said. “I have loved and admired you for a long time, and I thought you should know.”
The roar came back, loud enough to block out the chatter of vendangeurs down the slope and the grunts of porters who ferried buckets of grapes to waiting drays. “What is this, Holmes?”
“Looks like a declaration of love to me,” she said, sounding as if he’d asked her the name of an unfamiliar pastry. Looks like a profiterole to me.
Under her wide-brimmed hat, her expression was serene, almost blank. He had learned how to read the smallest flickers of reaction on her face, but it was as if he’d suddenly become illiterate again where she was concerned.
“Whose declaration of love?”
Did he force the words past his lips or did the question barrel through all his restraints and hurl itself out there?
“Hers.” She pointed at the paper. “And mine.”
Inside his mind it was suddenly quiet, so quiet. “You love me?”
She gazed at him, her eyes as deep as the sky. “Yes, I have loved and admired you for a long time. I used to think that you must know it but then I realized that you didn’t. You believe that although my friendship is genuine, I sleep with you for novelty and am liable to stop being your lover once that novelty fades.”
He raised a hand and cupped her soft cheek. “I don’t fear that so much anymore.”
“But you’re still not sure. I can live with a great deal of uncertainty, but you don’t enjoy it nearly as much. So I decided that if it is in my power to make you feel more secure, then I ought to at least try.” She placed her hand over his. “I will remain your friend and lover as surely as I will remain Livia’s sister.”
A whole orchestra dropped into his head, cymbals, strings, acres of brass and woodwind, all surging toward the crescendo of “Ode to Joy.” “My God! Do excuse my language—but Miss Olivia is the most consequential person in your life. You’re comparing me to her?”
“Yes. That is how important you are to me. I will direct the moving of hundreds of cubic yards of clay for you, too, if I must.”
All at once he could read her again. It was not blankness on that beloved face but bone-deep certainty. She was as sure and confident about this as she had ever been about anything in her entire life.
He laughed, his heart so full he could scarcely speak. “I just hope next time I will not need to be in the digging crew again.”
“No, for you, I will crawl in that tunnel and dig myself.” She looked into her reticule again. “And I have a little present for you, a Viking penannular brooch that—”
He took the reticule from her, tossed it onto the picnic blanket, and kissed her. Later, when they were apart again, he would gaze at the pin, study its every detail, and polish it with the finest, softest cloth. But now he needed no token of love.
Now he needed only her.