“That would be an exaggeration. We’ve had many uneventful weeks.”
And the rest? Charlotte thought but didn’t ask.
“Frances means well, but she can be overbearing at times.” He shook his head. “But Miss Olivia need not worry about Frances. Now that she’s left the country, chances are slim that they will see each other again, let alone—”
He shrugged.
Let alone become related?
She changed the subject. This was something Livia had taught her. When you don’t know what to say, or if you aren’t sure you won’t say something wrong, start a different topic. “When did you and your family call on mine to take your leave?”
“Yesterday evening.” He seemed glad to move away from the impossibility of any real future with Livia.
“In that case it wouldn’t seem overly hasty for a letter purportedly from Mrs. Openshaw to reach my parents tomorrow, on the evening post.”
As if Mrs. Openshaw, waking up on her second morning in London, had the idea drop into her head and decided to give in to her impulse.
“Excellent!” enthused Mr. Marbleton. “Will you perform the forgery yourself?”
The front bell rang. They both looked up, Mr. Marbleton with a trace of alarm in his eyes. Charlotte rose and moved to the parlor’s door and listened as Mr. Mears spoke to the caller below.
Then she returned to her seat, took a deep breath, and said, “No, Mr. Marbleton, I will not forge the letter myself.”
* * *
Even before Mr. Mears announced him, Lord Ingram’s gaze already fell on Holmes.
She looked up, and Lord Ingram could almost swear that she smiled at him with her eyes. His heart skipped a beat. But the next moment her expression assumed the same slight aloofness she had worn years ago as she regarded the artifacts he had unearthed from the ruins of a Roman villa on his uncle’s property—as if they were mere curiosities, and not precious keys to a long-lost era.
She rose. “My lord, how do you do?”
“Miss Charlotte.”
The man in the blue padded chair across from hers also rose. Lord Ingram regarded him for a moment. “Ah. Mr. Marbleton, is it not?”
They had never met, but Lord Ingram had seen Stephen Marbleton, both in person, if rather briefly, and in a number of photographs. In his current disguise Mr. Marbleton didn’t look very much like himself, but Lord Ingram couldn’t think of that many men who would call on Holmes not at 18 Upper Baker Street, but at Mrs. Watson’s house.
The two men shook hands. Lord Ingram thanked Mr. Marbleton for the help he had given Holmes, when she was working to clear Lord Ingram’s name.
“You are most welcome. But as Miss Charlotte would tell you, my motives were somewhat impure.”
“I have learned not to disdain impure motives,” said Lord Ingram. “Impure motives can still be excellent and admirable.”
Mr. Marbleton laughed. “Thank you, my lord. I came to give a message to Miss Charlotte. Having done so, I will see myself out.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Marbleton,” said Mrs. Watson, walking in. “Nobody leaves my house without a good chat with me.”
Mr. Marbleton exclaimed with pleasure. “My dear Mrs. Watson! Of course I shall not leave now that you are here.”
Mrs. Watson radiated such warmth and goodwill, it was difficult not to exclaim with pleasure in her company: One felt seen and understood. Whereas in Holmes’s company, one felt seen through and analyzed.
More tea was brought in, along with a plate of French mignardises, for which Mr. Marbleton happily found room in his stomach. Holmes, who abstained, gave him a look of wistful envy.
Mr. Marbleton, alternating between bites of a mille-feuille and an even prettier confection Lord Ingram couldn’t name, told Mrs. Watson of the reason for his visit.
The last time Lord Ingram had met Holmes, before she, Mrs. Watson, and Miss Bernadine had quit the cottage near his estate in Derbyshire, she’d told him about the hesitant courtship between her sister and the man who was very possibly Moriarty’s son. But it astonished him no less to hear that there had been a formal visit—albeit under false pretenses—from the Marbletons to the Holmeses.
Presently Mr. Marbleton came to the conclusion to his recital. “Miss Charlotte said she wouldn’t be doing the forgery herself. And then you came, my lord.”
“Lord Ingram is a far superior counterfeiter of handwriting,” said Holmes. “When he is here, I need not expose my mediocrity.”
“No wonder you were delighted to see me,” said Lord Ingram, hoping he didn’t sound openly disappointed. In anyone else, such a subtle smile might mean nothing. But on Holmes, that almost qualified for a surge of happiness.
All because she needed a forger and he happened to walk in?
“Miss Holmes, do please show Lord Ingram to the study, so that he may start on the letter,” said Mrs. Watson. “And you, Mr. Marbleton, let’s hear all about your visits to Miss Olivia Holmes in far greater detail.”
Mr. Marbleton, given the opportunity to expound upon his courtship, looked like a child about to go on his first journey to the seaside. The look Holmes cast him was half-sympathy, half-resignation.
She rose and led Lord Ingram to a room in the house that he’d never visited—the late Dr. Watson’s study, judging by the presence on the shelves of Gray’s Anatomy, British Pharmacopoeia, treatises on tropical diseases, and at least a dozen years’ worth of The Lancet in bound volumes.
She lit the wall sconces. The light made her hair a richer gold. That hair, shorn for her role as Sherrinford Holmes when she’d investigated the case at Stern Hollow, was still short, barely reaching her nape and just beginning to curl. “Would you mind if I stayed here? Mr. Marbleton might enjoy the recitation of his courtship more without my dampening presence.”
His heart skidded. She could wait anywhere in the house, if her goal was merely not to be in the afternoon parlor while Mr. Marbleton waxed poetic about his beloved. So . . . she was happy to see him then?
“By all means,” he said.
A large desk had been set against a wall. Next to the desk, a chair stood facing away from the wall. She sat down in this chair. He took the chair before the desk, several feet of diagonal distance separating them.
He spread open the handwriting sample.
What were the height and width of the individual letters? Were the words packed together or strung long and loose? Did they have the bearing of proud soldiers, or were they hunched over like beggars trying to escape the attention of patrolling bobbies?
These were the questions he should be asking himself. Instead, all his attention was on Holmes. She had set one arm on the periphery of the desk, the camel-and-red plaid fabric of her dress a burst of colors at the edge of his vision. He stared harder at the handwriting sample, trying not to recall the warmth and pliancy of her skin.