Page 92 of A Conspiracy in Belgravia
“Y-yes.”
“Excellent. But do understand that I’m not giving you this money out of the goodness of my heart. I’ll want something in return.”
Sir Henry wiped a hand across his forehead. “What? What will you want?”
“You’ll see. But don’t worry, it won’t be anything you’ll miss.” She smiled, widely this time. “Now, gentlemen, I came to ask a question of Mr. Parsons and I’d like to get on with that. As I said, it will be a busy day for me and there is no time to waste.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Charlotte said to Lord Ingram, once he had helped her into a hackney.
He shook his head, laughed, and shook his head some more. “At times I have wanted to punch your father, but I’m not sure I’d have shot him.”
“Only in the foot,” she pointed out, “and only if he refused to show any sense.”
“And the poor solicitor?”
“The poor solicitor was a willing party to an attempted abduction.” She sighed. Mr. Gillespie’s participation was hardly unexpected, but the whole affair still sent a chill down her spine. “The problem is that he believed he was doing something good. Thatforcing a grown woman to be locked up for the rest of her life figured as part of his duty to her father.”
Lord Ingram leaned forward and squeezed her hand. “You know I wouldn’t have stood by and let you rot in the country.”
The contact of their gloved hands lasted a fraction of a second—and the jolt shot all the way to her shoulder. “I know. I’m all too glad to have you for a friend.”
But would he still be her friend, after he had heard what she had to say?
The old silence threatened to descend. On any other day she would have let it. But today she spoke. She asked him about his children. She asked him about the archaeological sites he planned to revisit, now that the Season was coming to an end. She even asked him about the ball he and his wife would be hosting, in honor of her birthday, considered the last major function of the Season. And in turn she told him about her recent cases—as well as Mrs. Watson’s attempt to turn her into London’s foremost swordswoman, which made him laugh.
The hackney was approaching 18 Upper Baker Street when she said, “I’m glad Bancroft sent you today, since I need to speak with you anyway. Will you come for a cup of tea?”
He regarded her warily but only said, “Of course.”
They settled themselves in Sherlock Holmes’s parlor. She made tea and served a plate of macarons, Madame Gascoigne’s latest triumphs, light-as-air meringue biscuits sandwiched together with a delicious filling of buttercream.
And now, the moment of truth.
“I asked for your forgiveness earlier. You are about to learn why I did so.”
He had been stirring his tea without drinking. Now he pushed it aside, abandoning any pretense of interest in refreshments. “I almost don’t want to hear it.”
But he had no choice.Shealso had no choice.
“Little more than two weeks ago, Lady Ingram came to me. She was upset. She told me that she had loved someone before she married you and that they had a pact to walk past each other once a year at the Albert Memorial, on the Sunday before his birthday.”
His face turned expressionless.
“This year the man missed the appointment. She didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know how to find him. When she saw the article in the papers about Sherlock Holmes, she decided to consult him. Once I learned that the person she was looking for was Mr. Myron Finch, my illegitimate half brother, I had to carry on until I had some notion of his fate.”
He gazed at her. “Did you know who she was before you agreed to see her?”
She exhaled. “Yes.”
“I thought so,” he said softly, almost inaudibly. Amazing how such quietly uttered syllables could contain so much condemnation. “Go on.”
And from there, he did not say another word for the next hour.
When he did speak again, after a silence that lasted twice the duration of the Hundred Years’ War, it was only to tell her, “I never thought I’d say this, Charlotte Holmes—or even think it. But I wish to God I’d never met you.”
Charlotte hadn’t lied about it being a busy day. After Lord Ingram had gone, she traveled by rail to Oxford and called on Mr. Finch’s old boarding school, an establishment with no national renown but a modicum of local prestige.
Since her visit to the Glossops’ the previous week, she had been corresponding with Mr. Finch’s old boarding school. As pretext, she concocted a ladies’ charitable society where several of the mostadmired matrons had sons who attended the school and had been on the cricket team together. The society wished to publish an article about the team’s accomplishments in its newsletter, as a surprise to the matrons. Could she, the one responsible for writing the piece, come and see what photographs the school might have?
