Chapter 3
Mrs. Watson approved wholeheartedly of Lord Ingram’s estate.
To be sure, she was inclined to approve wholeheartedly of his every deed and utterance. But when it came to Stern Hollow, she couldn’t help but believe that her opinion must be shared by everyone who had ever laid eyes on this blessed expanse.
The entrance was unassuming, the scenery at first no different from that of the surrounding countryside: verdant pasture, groves of beech and poplar, crofter’s cottages surrounded by well-tended land.
But as the drive meandered, Mrs. Watson caught glimpses of delightful vistas.
Here, a pair of swans framed in the arch of a small stone bridge; there, a statue of Artemis next to a footpath, her hand on her bow; and in the distance, a white, slender Greek folly, perched above a waterfall that splashed into a sunlit stream.
They crested a ridge. In the shallow, sheltered valley below rose an immaculately proportioned Palladian house, nestled in acres of gardens and fronted by a spectacular reflecting pool that shone in the afternoon light.
Mrs. Watson placed her hand over her heart and sighed.
Miss Holmes, however, displayed no sign that she was feeling remotely similar to Miss Elizabeth Bennet at Pemberley: superbly impressed and duly regretful that she had let go of this man instead of fighting for him tooth and nail when she’d had the chance.
But Mrs. Watson did not fail to notice that Miss Holmes’s blue-and-heather-gray promenade dress sported an enormous and entirely superfluous bow in the back, a downright flirtatious feature, in Mrs. Watson’s judgment.
Presently Miss Holmes glanced at the map of the estate they had been given at the gatehouse.
Mrs. Watson stopped talking and allowed her young friend to concentrate on driving.
But as they came down into the valley and skirted the first herbaceous borders, she couldn’t help exclaim, “Are the gardens not marvelous?”
Any halfway decent gardener could make his plot flower riotously in spring—it was the nature of the season.
But to present an autumnal tableau worthy of a sonnet, that took talent, planning, and meticulous execution.
Here, Japanese maples formed a backdrop of rich golds and vibrant reds, against which a profusion of dahlias and chrysanthemums still bloomed.
“It is pleasing to view, but a marvel it isn’t. With the amount of money, expertise, and manpower that must have been expended, Lord Ingram ought to be dissatisfied with anything less.”
Trust Miss Holmes to strip the romance from any scenario and see only the brute, barebones facts underneath.
“Well, he can’t possibly be dissatisfied with this—with perfection.”
Miss Holmes glanced about. “Yes, I suppose this is perfection.”
The reluctant compliment gratified Mrs. Watson, until she realized that it was no compliment at all, but an indictment.
While Mrs. Watson wandered in the gardens, Charlotte made her way to the back of the house.
A proper country house did not reign in isolation.
Behind the formal grandeur of the manor existed a collection of lesser buildings: the kitchen, of course, a complex of its own; the stables, usually some distance away; miscellanies such as the dovecote, the hen house, and the kennel; not to mention a number of greenhouses, the precise number depending on whether the master of the house required his own supply of strawberries at Christmas and pineapples in January.
Lord Ingram’s godfather had been one of the wealthiest men in the realm. And one of the shrewdest: In correctly forecasting that the difficulty of keeping young people in service would only increase, he had chosen not to acquire for himself too extravagant a country property.
But that he had not bought the equivalent of a Blenheim Palace or a Chatsworth House didn’t mean his seat was modest. Mrs. Watson no doubt yearned to see the inside of the house. But Charlotte was far more interested in the ancillary structures, where the work of the estate went on.
“Charlotte Holmes—I thought I might see you here.”
The voice belonged to Lord Ingram, but slightly raspy, as if he were under the weather—or recovering from a night of hard drinking.
She turned around slowly. “Hullo, Ash.”
A complicated pleasure, this man. In fact, it was their sometimes fraught friendship that had taught her the meaning of complicated pleasure, a gladness pockmarked by not only irreversible choices but also staggering incompatibilities.
All the same, such a sharp, sharp, almost painful pleasure.
They shook hands. She couldn’t be sure whether he held her hand a fraction of a second too long, or she his. When they let go, abruptly and at the exact same moment, despite the glove she still wore, her fingertips tingled.
“You are well?” he asked, as they walked toward the gardens.
“Well enough.” Most of the time they were regular correspondents.
But he had not written since they’d last met in person, months ago.
And she, not sure whether he hadn’t wished to hear from her, or if he needed something that she didn’t know how to give, had also refrained.
“You, on the other hand, look as if you haven’t slept properly for a few days. ”
He was in tweeds, and boots that had seen plenty of service—the very image of the quintessential English country squire. If the latter had stayed up late then got up at the crack of dawn, that is.
“I met your sister at Mrs. Newell’s earlier today,” he said, making no comments on her observation.
“How is she?”
“Worried about you getting into trouble.”
“I prefer to think of them as adventures. The adventures of Charlotte Holmes, consulting detective.”
“What is this I hear about trouble and adventures?” said Mrs. Watson.
She and Lord Ingram greeted each other warmly.
The last time the three of them had been together in the same place, Mrs. Watson had been in disguise as Mrs. Hudson, a member of Sherlock Holmes’s household, and Lord Ingram had been full of disapproval over Charlotte’s choice to take up with a former actress.
Today they were themselves, longtime friends and allies.
Mrs. Watson praised the gardens. Lord Ingram related his head gardener’s struggle to secure epic quantities of Peruvian bat guano. Mrs. Watson laughed; even Charlotte’s lips twitched a little.
In recent years their private interactions were often silent and tense; sometimes she forgot this other side of him. But he was a man who had no difficulty being charming and amiable in public, who could appear as outwardly perfect as his painstakingly maintained estate.
As they exhausted the more inconsequential subjects, however, his expression turned sober. “Unfortunately, I do have some actual trouble to report.”
“Most vexing!” Mrs. Watson exclaimed, after he had recounted the contents of Lady Avery’s letter and his reply.
“Given that I have, on more than one occasion, consulted their encyclopedic knowledge and been glad of it, I can scarcely be outraged simply because their attention has turned to me,” replied Lord Ingram. “That said, most vexing.”
Charlotte had not expected this particular wrinkle. The meeting in question had taken place months ago, well outside spheres frequented by members of Society. “Is my sister disturbed?”
“Yes.” He glanced at her. “You, on the other hand, aren’t remotely discomfited by this news—not for yourself, in any case.”
“That is the benefit of infamy,” she said with some semblance of modesty. “One of them, at least.”
He shook his head, but his lips curved. “Well, ladies, now that you’ve heard the bad news, may I interest you in a conducted tour?”
The tour was of only the grounds. Given the minor scandal brewing, the last thing they wanted was for news to spread that Miss Holmes had also been seen in Lord Ingram’s manor.
In truth, Mrs. Watson reflected ruefully, they ought not to have been anywhere near him at all. But since they were already on his property, they might as well enjoy themselves.
Miss Holmes might sniff at Stern Hollow’s sheer perfection, but Mrs. Watson remained thoroughly charmed.
The streams teeming with tiny silver fish, darting about in unison; the pretty swing dangling from a gnarly bough; and oh look, a secret alcove behind the waterfall they had seen earlier, accessed via a set of hidden stairs from the Greek folly itself.
The conversation was just as pleasant. She recounted several of the cases Miss Holmes had handled in the weeks before they left London.
She also relayed greetings from her niece Penelope, who had resumed her medical education in Paris.
“She and her friends are planning to visit the catacombs very soon—the thought makes me shudder, but she declares herself in a state of fervent anticipation.”
“For someone who has already partaken of dissections, a few million grinning skulls crammed together in dark underground tunnels might prove a disappointment,” said Lord Ingram dryly.
“But the part of her letter that had Miss Holmes in a lather was the description of her daily breakfast. She has taken to the French manner and consumes only coffee and one croissant in the morning.”
Lord Ingram glanced at Miss Holmes, a seemingly casual look that was nevertheless potent enough to raise the ambient temperature. “And Miss Holmes is no doubt vexed at Miss Redmayne’s restraint. Why only one croissant when she can have three instead?”
“You know me too well, sir.”
Miss Holmes appeared distracted, as if she were in fact picturing warm, flaky croissants.
Oh, that girl. Mrs. Watson was giddy merely from being in the vicinity of the desire that smoldered beneath Lord Ingram’s tweed-clad decorum.
Miss Holmes ought to feel a maelstrom of butterflies in her stomach, at the crosscurrent of so much physical attraction.
“You should have married my brother, then,” said Lord Ingram, rather archly. “Bancroft has in his employ my late godfather’s pastry chef, who is said to be a prince among patissiers.”