Mrs. Watson took some convincing. But in the end she agreed to reply to de Lacey. I asked for a plate of cake, consumed all the slices, and doubted myself with every bite. Even now I am not sure whether I haven’t placed everyone in greater jeopardy by not fleeing immediately.
But my choice has been made and I will meet with Moriarty’s lieutenant.
Yours,
Holmes
2
“Ma’am, miss, Lord Ingram called while you were out,” said Mr. Mears, the butler, as he welcomed Mrs. Watson and Charlotte back into the house.
It was tea time the next day and the ladies had returned from another successful small case. For the services rendered, Mrs. Watson had collected two pounds and twelve and a half shillings. The amount was no pittance: During Charlotte’s time as a runaway, that much money would have lasted her a month, if she didn’t eat very much. But she estimated that Mrs. Watson could have demanded another half crown and the grateful client would still have considered their fees eminently reasonable.
Mrs. Watson had been badly distracted.
“Lord Ingram is in town? Thank goodness!” Mrs. Watson closed her eyes and exhaled.
His lordship’s arrival came as no surprise to Charlotte. If he hadn’t rushed to London after receiving her letter, she would have been astonished—and perplexed. But now that he was here, she exhaled, too, a great tension leaving the muscles of her neck and shoulders, making her realize that all day she’d held herself stiffly.
“When he heard that you were out, his lordship asked for the key to number 18,” said Mr. Mears.
18 Upper Baker Street served as Charlotte’s office. It was where she met those who came seeking her “brother” Sherlock Holmes’s help, and informed them that the consulting detective was unwell and needed his sister to serve as both his eyes and ears and the oracle via whom he dispensed his great insight.
Mrs. Watson settled her black velvet toque back on her head. “Thank you, Mr. Mears. Let’s go see him, Miss Charlotte.”
Mr. Mears, always prepared, held out a covered rattan basket. “For your tea, ladies.”
Charlotte inclined her head. She had not eaten much this day and looked forward to an extravagant tea. She hooked the basket over one arm, Mrs. Watson took her other arm, and they exited the house.
According to the calendar, March was less than a week away. But there was no hint of spring in the wind that cut Charlotte’s cheeks, the cold that seeped in beneath her clothes, or the sky above that remained a resolute grey.
“Did you write Lord Ingram, my dear?” asked Mrs. Watson in a low voice. “I wanted to ask you to write him—oh, how I wanted to. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Because he has children to think of?” murmured Charlotte. “True, but he would have been extremely upset if we’d kept him out of the matter.”
She sounded unhesitating, but before writing him she had wavered for twenty minutes, a long time for an otherwise decisive woman. She was not inclined to withhold the truth from those to whom it mattered. But if she could predict how someone would react upon receiving a particular piece of information, then in relaying that information was she letting a grown man make his own choice, or had she already taken away every choice except one?
He did have his children to think of. With their mother in exile, his safety was of paramount importance to their well-being. And De Lacey’s impending visit was no ordinary peril.
In the end, she had arrived at her decision as she had arrived at the decision to meet Moriarty’s representative: by relying on both the coldest logic and a rather shocking amount of intuition. It was the same problem, and needed precisely the same calculation of how much danger they faced at this specific moment in time.
And now, the fate of those who mattered the most to her rested on the accuracy of her assessment.
“It will be all right,” she said as they stopped before their destination.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Watson a little too fast, almost as if she’d been holding her breath, waiting for this exact reassurance.
The stucco exterior of 18 Upper Baker Street had been mended and cleaned, the front door given a new coat of black lacquer. The renovation had been Mrs. Watson’s idea: If the ladies were seen outside directing masons and painters, then they must not be thinking of running away from Moriarty.
Charlotte had no way of knowing whether their act of feathering the nest convinced anyone of anything, but the door itself, freshly lacquered, certainly gleamed. The lunette window above the door was lit, as were the parlor on the next floor where Charlotte and Mrs. Watson received their clients and the adjacent room that served as Sherlock Holmes’s “convalescent” chamber.
Her heart beat a little faster. Ash. They hadn’t seen each other since Christmas. She wished she had worn something better. Her grey jacket-and-skirt set was perfectly serviceable, but hardly had the impact of the velvet day dress she’d had made recently, in a similarly overpowering pink as her tea gown.
The next moment she had her hand on Mrs. Watson’s sleeve. “Don’t look anymore, ma’am.”
She’d never prohibited Mrs. Watson from paying attention to either of the flats taken by Moriarty’s minions, but she did not want the dear lady to betray too much agitation. Their attitude toward this “unearned” surveillance should be one of bemusement and disapproval, not trembling fear.
Mrs. Watson barely took her eyes off the Upper Baker Street flat today, and just now she was again about to turn around and look.
“Right, right,” muttered her partner, her key scratching the lock a few times before she managed to open the front door.
“Is that you, Holmes?” came the question immediately—from the direction of the basement.
“Yes, and Mrs. Watson, too,” answered Charlotte.
Footsteps. Soon Lord Ingram, in his shirtsleeves and gold-flecked waistcoat, emerged from the door that led to the domestic offices belowstairs.
He looked . . . healthy. He looked like exactly who he was, a country squire who rode and walked daily, rain or shine. She could almost smell the fresh Derbyshire air still clinging to his skin and hair, this lithe, strapping young man striding toward her, the lupine grace of his gait made more lethal by the fact that he was still rolling down his sleeves over his shapely forearms.
Mrs. Watson threw herself at him. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here!”
He stilled in surprise before wrapping his arms around her, too, enfolding her in his embrace. “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”
He spoke to Mrs. Watson, but looked at Charlotte. The letter from de Lacey must have struck him hard; the concern in his eyes, however, was not for himself, but for her.
She inclined her head. She was not fearful by nature and the threat of Moriarty was not a new one. Moreover, short of fleeing, they had already made every preparation. Mrs. Watson still agonized over all the dire possibilities that they had not anticipated, but Charlotte’s mind was focused on the upcoming meeting.
De Lacey might be sent to interrogate her, but in speaking to him Charlotte would also gain valuable intelligence to guide her next step.
She said to Lord Ingram only, “What were you doing in the basement, my lord?”
“Washing my hands.”