Page 96 of The Art of Theft
Her nails dug into the center of her palm.Is laughter something of no value? Is being seen and heard something of no value? What of the comfort I feel in my own skin when I am with you?
“You don’t need to explain,” she said. “I understand. I do.”
“Do you? Were my circumstances anything other than what they are, nothing and no one would have dragged me away from you. But there are some things I cannot change, however much I wish and pray otherwise.”
Her ears rang. Was this to be the end for them? So abrupt and so... final, when last night they had been speaking fervently of a future. A future of stolen moments and fraudulent pretenses, yes, but surely a future that included sunny, fragrant Andalusia was worth fighting for, by whatever means necessary.
“Please look after yourself,” she said, her voice barely audible.
“I will,” he said, a bit of the old fervency to his tone. “And I will look for the further adventures of Sherlock Holmes from every last corner in the world.”
He rose and bowed. “Forgive me for not writing. It will hurt too much to be reminded that I cannot be near you.”
With another bow, he left the breakfast parlor.
?Ten minutes after the carriage left, taking Livia and Mrs. Watson to the railway station, Mr. Marbleton was still standing by the window in the dining room, looking out at the direction in which they’d disappeared.
Charlotte watched him for another minute. “I take it something unwelcome happened.”
He did not look at her. “There was a message in the papers for me this morning. Moriarty has my parents.”
The fall of Madame Desrosiers always portended ill for the Marbletons. But Charlotte had not expected such a rapid development. “How?”
“I don’t know, exactly. If Madame Desrosiers didn’t have time to take all her secrets with her when she fled Château Vaudrieu, and if she’d left behind something concerning us...”
“How do you know it’s not a ruse?”
He still stared out the window, his hand on the window frame. “Only the four of us know this particular code. Only the four of us and no one else.”
Charlotte left the breakfast parlor. When she returned with a glass of whisky, he was sitting on the floor, his hands covering his face.
Overnight, he had lost everything.
She set down the glass on the table. “What does Moriarty want?”
He expelled a shaky breath. “Me.”
“Because you are his son?”
He shuddered. “Because I’m his son.”
“Why didn’t you tell my sister the truth? I thought you always tell the truth to those who matter.”
He laughed bitterly and at last looked up, his eyes bleak. “Nobody can be that honest, Miss Charlotte, especially to those who matter. My parents hid the truth of my parentage. I was the one who found out and confronted them. And then of course I wished I’d never done either. That I’d had the good sense to not question the comforting lies they had told for my sake.”
He struggled up from the floor. She remembered his grace and agility, scaling the fence at Château Vaudrieu. Now he moved as if weighted down by shackles.
He picked up the glass of whisky and drained its contents. Staring at the empty glass, he said, as if to himself, “I don’t want Miss Livia to know that I’m going to Moriarty. Let her believe that I remain at large, spending my days in little hilltop villages in the Alpes-Maritimes, overlooking the Mediterranean. Let her believe... let her believe anything she wants, as long as it’s not the truth.”
Livia and Mrs. Watson would not have reached the train station yet. Would Livia be weeping in the carriage right now, with Mrs. Watson trying to console her? Or would she clamp down hard and not say anything, not even to Mrs. Watson?
“My sister is a very intelligent woman,” said Charlotte, her voice ever so slightly hoarse. “You think she cannot guess the truth?”
Mr. Marbleton wiped the heel of his hand across his eyes. “Then let her guess, but still be able to fool herself. Let her have that one last gift from me.”
Epilogue
Holmes’s letter reached Lord Ingram the next morning just as he was about to leave his brother’s estate with his children in tow. For the first time in a long time, she wrote in her own version of shorthand, telling him of Mr. Marbleton’s departure.
