Page 93 of The Hollow of Fear
“No doubt it will be difficult for you to understand, but my fall from grace has opened an entire new world for me. I enjoy my life far more than I ever have. I have the freedom to do as I wish. And I do not suffer from a lack of funds, thanks to dear Mrs. Watson here. Indeed, by my own estimation, I am a woman in an enviable position.”
Fowler gave his tea a stir. “Very well, then. But would your position not become even more favorable, were you to marry Lord Ingram?”
“How so? I do not care for Society. I have little interest in household management and even less in childbearing. I am my own mistress right now; why should I take on a lord and master in the form of a husband?”
“Does Lord Ingram himself not present any attraction for you?”
“He does, most assuredly. I have propositioned him three times.”
Even Fowler’s jaw dropped. “Not proposed, butpropositioned?”
“Correct. I thought then and I think now that it would be a fine idea if he were to become my lover.”
“But you will not marry him, the surest way to turn him into your lover?”
“No. I want him for one thing and one thing only. That is no reason to marry a man.”
“And Lord Ingram knows that?”
Lord Ingram knew it emphatically, but Treadles was breathless to hear howshewould answer that.
“He knows it better than anyone else. But it’s a moot point, whether I will marry him. He will not marry me.”
“Because you have propositioned him three times?”
Miss Holmes smiled slightly, as if she found Fowler’s question risible. “Because he does not trust that I will love him. And he is correct in that regard. I find romantic love a difficult concept to grasp—at least with regard to marriage. Men and women change. Sentiments change. Yet we are expected to make lifelong contracts based on fleeting emotions.”
“That isn’t what marriage is about,” Treadles found himself saying. “One goes into a marriage knowing that changes are always afoot. The point is to weather the vicissitudes of life together.”
“Is that so, Inspector? Or does one go into a marriage expecting everything to remain as it is on the wedding day? Most of the marriages I have seen close up do not inspire confidence, because always, at least one spouse rues the changes that have been brought on by the passage of time.”
She looked squarely at him, as if she already knew about the fragile new bond between him and Alice. As if she already perceived his fear that he would not be able to nourish this new bond as he ought to. And that it, too, will someday fray and snap.
He looked away, ashamed that he couldn’t say more to defend either his own marriage or the idea of wedded bliss as a whole.
Her gaze returned to Fowler. “No, Chief Inspector, Lord Ingram will not offer for my hand—not even for love.”
She paused and considered a moment. “Especially not for love.”
“Three times?Threetimes?”Mrs. Watson exclaimed, once they were inside her carriage.
Charlotte shook out her skirts. “Two and a half times, strictly speaking. The second time I needed only an instrument for the riddance of my maidenhead. He wouldn’t oblige.”
Roger Shrewsbury had obliged instead, in his largely incompetent manner.
Mrs. Watson let out a breath, as if she couldn’t quite believe what they were talking about, even as she herself drove the conversation. “If you’ll pardon my incurable nosiness, what about the other two times?”
A murder investigation was truly a unique phenomenon. Now there were two policemen in London with intimate knowledge of the amorous history—or the longtime lack thereof—between Charlotte and Lord Ingram. And here was Mrs. Watson, quite justified in wanting to know a bit more about her friend and protégée than did a pair of coppers.
“The third time was at 18 Upper Baker Street—before you had your brilliant idea to monetize Sherlock Holmes’s gifts. He proposed to sponsor me to emigrate to America, where no one knew me, and where I could go to school and find respectable employment. I told him I would agree to those terms if he would take me as his mistress. He refused.”
Even though at that point he no longer needed to worry about compromising her, since she was already hopelessly compromised. The man could be needlessly stubborn.
“And the first time?” Mrs. Watson sounded a little breathless.
“Shortly before I turned seventeen. We’d known each other for a while by then, and I decided that he would make for a good—or at least interesting—lover.”
“But you were so young, practically children!”
