Chapter 8 #3
“But Chief Inspector Fowler is the Bloodhound of the Yard. They are not sending him out if they think the butler did it.”
The handkerchief in his other hand he shoved into his pocket, only to realize it was the same extra handkerchief from earlier.
She took it from him—and wrapped her fingers around his hand. “Robert, are you all right?”
No. I’m afraid for Lord Ingram and I don’t know what to do.
He gave Alice a perfunctory kiss and left before he could betray the depth of his fear.
Lord Ingram shot out of his chair. He paced in the room, a caged animal barred in every direction. Dimly he was aware that Holmes watched him, her otherwise blankly limpid eyes not without a measure of compassion.
He braced his hands on the mantel. A fire roared in the grate and he couldn’t feel the heat at all. The chill of the icehouse had crept inside his spine, its arctic dominion spilling vertebra by vertebra.
She came to stand next to him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said, barely able to hear his own voice. “But what am I to do?”
The forces arrayed against him were legion. The cold had spread to his lungs. A little more and his courage would fail altogether.
She spoke and he tried to listen. But her words rode over him like an advancing glacier, annihilating and endlessly cold.
When she finished speaking, she slipped away. He was bereft—and afraid in a different way. With Holmes there was always the possibility that she would leave him alone to pick up the pieces.
But she came back—and wrapped an arm about his middle. This was unlike her. She had kissed him twice, more than ten years apart, and propositioned him from time to time; yet he maintained a distinct impression that she found touching to be an odd and sometimes discomfiting experience.
Charlotte doesn’t like to be hugged, Miss Olivia Holmes had once said, rather sadly, in his hearing.
But Holmes did not disengage. In fact, she placed both arms around him, and rested her cheek against his back.
It had been a very, very long time since a woman had embraced him. As his astonishment receded, her warmth seeped into his rigid frame.
He felt less chilled.
Less isolated.
Every day he moved among people, dozens, sometimes hundreds of people: family, friends, neighbors, classmates, archaeological colleagues, fellow agents of the Crown, and this was not accounting for his staff and ranks upon ranks of acquaintances.
But he had been alone for a long time—and had reinforced that loneliness even as he had despaired of ever being anything but alone.
Her touch, however, unleashed a monstrous need, so immense and chaotic he couldn’t be sure what he hungered for, or even whether he wished to take—or to give.
He held still, terrified of this need, and just as terrified that she had already taken its measure, she who saw too much and gleaned everything.
But as her warmth poured into him, as she remained where she was, not leaving him to cope on his own, his hand lifted to rest against the back of hers, his fingertips brushing against the cuff of her sleeve.
It dawned on him that she was no longer wearing her jacket, waistcoat, and paddings.
A man’s shirt was far more modest than the bodice of a ball gown—and he had seen her in plenty of those.
But underneath the shirt she wore no corset, and through the layers of his own clothes he discerned the shape of her, pressed into his back.
Twenty-four hours ago he would have considered this impossible, that he and Holmes would be in each other’s arms—and that he wouldn’t immediately pull away.
He had not written her since summer because even though Lady Ingram was never coming back, he remained a married man with nothing of value—at least in his own view—to offer her.
But everything had changed in a single day. He was no longer a married man. And at any moment he could lose his freedom—and possibly his life.
He did not move again. Not because he might startle her—she had ever been imperturbable in these matters. But because he was startled. He had thought he knew everything there was to know about his desire. Had considered it, so long fettered and trammeled, as tame, or at least manageable.
When it had always been feral. Primal.
Her lips touched his nape, just above the rim of his collar. He spun around, cupped her face, and kissed her on the mouth, a kiss that he might never be able to stop.
She was the one who eased them apart—and combed her fingers through his hair. “You are welcome to stay.”
He rested his forehead against hers. He wanted to. Badly. But not with his wife’s body still in the icehouse. “Tomorrow.”
“Then get some sleep. You must be exhausted.”
He’d taken a nap in the afternoon—and had slept like the dead until he was awakened to meet a frantic Miss Olivia Holmes. Still, he found himself swaying on his feet.
“Good night,” he murmured, kissing her on the cheek. “Scotland Yard arrives in the morning.”
Her lips curved, a barely-there smile. “Let them come,” she said. “And let them do their worst.”