Page 46 of The Art of Theft
He didn’t know how to tell her that he’d been thinking of Holmes instead. “Nothing happened to either Mr. Marbleton or myself. As you can see, I’m fit as a fiddle.”
She pulled back to have a better look at him. “Youarelooking very well.”
He offered her a seat on the chaise longue. “You had a pleasant outing, I hope?”
“The maharani is in town—Miss Holmes and I called on her just now.” Mrs. Watson hesitated. “I learned, much to my shock, what the maharani wishes to keep hidden. But I also learned that Miss Holmes made her own deductions concerning the matter and spoke with you about it.”
“She did.”
“She assured me that the nature of the maharani’s secret did not bother you. Are you sure about that?”
Ten years ago, he would have given a very different answer. But now he’d grown wary of the empire. “If an Indian queen reigned as the empress of Britain, and the Subcontinent was in charge of the general direction and development of our country, would you be surprised that our nobles pondered, while among ourselves, on how we might be rid of our colonizers?”
“Pondering is one thing. But what if there were concrete plans?”
So she was still conflicted herself, even though she had thrown in her lot with the maharani.
“Remington’s office keeps track of just that,” he assured her. “It might be one of the reasons that the maharani—or was it her son? Holmes thought her son was more likely.”
“Her son.”
“That might be the reason the young maharaja felt more comfortable writing to someone who appeared to represent a rivalEuropean power, because he knew that at his own court there would be someone ready to report on him to the British.”
Mrs. Watson needed a moment to digest his words. Her brow furrowed in distress. “I knew nothing of her life. Nothing.”
He sat down next to her on the chaise longue and took her hands. “Ma’am, we can none of us know the entire truth of someone else’s life.”
“I know that,” she said sadly, leaning her head on his shoulder. “What I regret is that while I knew nothing of her life, I thought I knew everything.”
?Charlotte was warming up.
Hôtel Papillon had a ballroom—of course it did—which she decided to appropriate for hercanne de combatexercises. Mrs. Watson had taught her a series of movements that the older woman had developed during her theater days, to keep herself loose and limber while waiting to go on. Charlotte circled the room, performing shuffling steps, knee lifts, and lunges. Coming to a stop, she rolled her neck and shoulders. Next, she bent over and set her palms flat on the parquetry floor.
“Holmes—”
The speaker sounded as if he had forgotten whatever else he’d been about to say.
She straightened and turned around. “Hullo, Ash.”
She wore a gentleman’s sporting suit. This was not the first time she’d dressed as a man before him. But on previous occasions, her goal had been verisimilitude. Which meant that she’d had to glue on a beard and a mustache, use an orthodontic device to change the shape of her face, and don a great deal of padding so that her stomach protruded more than her bosom.
But this suit, and the attendant waistcoat and shirt, had been made for her body. Underneath she wore a half-corset, a merino wool combination, and not much else. The ensemble was intended strictlyfor swordsmanship practice and not public consumption. She was covered, of course—every inch beneath her chin—and men’s trousers did not cling. Still, no feminine garments delineated the shape of a woman’s lower body with such blatant clarity, and she might have caused a riot on the street.
Lord Ingram did not appear as if he were about to riot. In fact, he seemed to have wiped his countenance of all expression in the time it took for her to turn around. Dressed in a Harris Tweed sporting suit similar to hers, he looked lithe and remarkably fit.
He picked up one of the Malacca sticks she’d set out. “Shall we begin?”
“Did Mrs. Watson send you in her stead?”
Mrs. Watson had meant to be here to practicecanne de combatwith her.
“I volunteered. Mycanne de combatis a bit rusty.”
She raised a brow. He was one of those people who believed modesty to be an actual virtue. For him to consider his grasp of a particular combat technique rusty probably meant that at the moment he could only flatten ten of her, rather than twenty.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s begin.”
She was a far better fighter than she had been in summer, but he proved a far more underhanded opponent than Mrs. Watson. As soon as their weapons met and he slid past her, he swung his cane around to attack her from the back of her arm to the back of her head.
