Page 70 of The Art of Theft
“No, yet I’m surer of that than I am of Mr. Finch being at Château Vaudrieu at all.” She studied him some more. “Who would risk his life to infiltrate the dungeons of Château Vaudrieu, if such a place exists, to rescue Mr. Finch? I take it you would consider it your obligation?”
He didn’t say anything. But yes, he would.
Her eyes bored into his. “Who taught you that your life was so cheap? And why did you allow yourself to be sent on missions where you had only your wits to keep you alive? You are not a tool to be deployed at the whim of some reckless master, and you don’t have to prove your worth by leaping at every task other people are too afraid to do.”
He flinched. “I don’t know.”
But perhaps he did know. His irregular parentage, his failed marriage, his opportunistic and cold-blooded brother—everything contributed. But they would all have been irrelevant if he hadn’t burned with the desire to be not only above reproach, but indispensable.
He needed to be needed.
Looking back, more than Lady Ingram’s beauty, it had been her seeming vulnerability that had drawn him to her. How he’d loved being her knight in shining armor. And when that had turned to dust, he’d become a willing instrument for Bancroft: Bancroft might have needed only a brave fool, and he’d often felt worse for letting himself be used, but still, he’d been needed.
Holmes sighed. “Keep Mrs. Watson in mind, will you? We can’t afford to divert resources to a different objective on the night of the ball. She needs all of us, including you, to stay on task.”
He studied her once-again smooth and composed countenance. Surely she knew that if she saidsheneeded him, he would...
Pledge his devotion the way a knight of yore would to his liege lady, ready to slay dragons. Alas that he should be born in the wrong age and his liege lady preferred to confine him to her bed and direct her own artillery unit, should firedrakes appear in the sky.
Not that she wouldn’t be the first to remind him that the ladies of yesteryear, whose fathers, husbands, and brothers were often away for years at the Crusades, had been they themselves as tough as dragon hide and accustomed to command.
He looked down for moment at his lap. “I’ll speak no more on Mr. Finch. And I’ll concentrate on the task at hand.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “We couldn’t possibly do this without you.”
And just like that, he was ready to build her a French bakery brick by brick with his own hands.
Mrs. Watson poked her head into the parlor. “Ah, there you two are. Shall we to dinner?”
?At dinner Lord Ingram learned that the ladies had been busy. In the day and a half since they had returned to London, not only had they cracked the cipher, they had also visited an art expert, a stage magician’singénieur, and not one but two stage costumers. In addition, Mrs. Watson and Miss Olivia had attended to various needlework and alterations and Holmes had spent time with Mr. Lawson, Mrs. Watson’s groom, from whom she learned lock picking this past autumn.
“You’ve done the bulk of the work,” he said in admiration and with a measure of self-reproach. “I’m afraid I’ve spent my time playing either a Roman legionnaire or Margaret of Anjou’s favorite adviser.”
“And that’s as it should be,” said Holmes. “You can’t—and shouldn’t—always do the bulk of the work.”
“But if this is Moriarty, then we can never prepare enough.”
“And since we can’t, whatever we can do will have to suffice.”
She was right. They could never do everything. He exhaled. “Does Mr. Marbleton know that we might be entering a Moriarty lair?”
Holmes glanced at her sister. “Not yet—that’s something better relayed in person. But I did cable him today and ask him to take another look at Château Vaudrieu. And our ally already paid a visit to Monsieur Sylvestre.”
Monsieur Sylvestre, the young scion and current owner of the Van Dyck piece they’d been tasked to steal, who might have put it up for sale most reluctantly.
“Did he get the response he wanted from Monsieur Sylvestre?”
“No, but he did tell Monsieur Sylvestre that we will wait until the day after the ball and not a minute longer.”
Lord Ingram looked toward Miss Olivia, who was eating her peas slowly, one by one, and said to Holmes, “I’m looking forward to that day, when this will be behind us.”
Now Miss Olivia was only moving the peas around her plate. No doubt she also longed to be done with their task, but that would also mark the day she must start for home.
“Mr. Marbleton, I believe, has plans for all of us to meet again, now that we know a forged letter from Mrs. ‘Openshaw’ works to extract Miss Olivia from home,” he went on. “He was speaking very enthusiastically about Andalusia in southern Spain.”
Some color came into Miss Livia’s pale cheeks. “Andalusia—is that where the Alhambra is?”
“Among many other beautiful sights, yes.”
