Page 79 of Murder on Cold Street
She shook her head. It was just a dream. He was fine—of course he must be.
She made her way over another stile. Now she was on a lane not too far from the Holmes house—and her mother trampled toward her!
Livia had left the house when she’d heard her mother stirring, for the express purpose of avoiding Lady Holmes as long as possible. Experience had taught her that, deprived of a target for her ire yesterday, Lady Holmes would not let Livia escape so easily today.
Panic swamped her. Her steps faltered. She wished she couldturn around and flee in the opposite direction—at least she would have no problem outpacing her mother.
And then where would she go, in her old coat and muddy boots, without even a coin in her pocket for buying a cup of tea at the village pub?
Lady Holmes stomped nearer, her face screwed in displeasure. Livia stood paralyzed.
“Where have you been, Olivia Holmes?” shouted Lady Holmes. “Is it not enough that I am stuck here in this godforsaken village. Now I have to go outside on a cold day to see my own daughter?”
This was but the overture to the operatic diatribe to come. No, not even that, this was the orchestra barely warming up.
Of the three Holmes girls Lady Holmes deigned to speak to, Henrietta, the eldest, had been clever enough to flatter her—and had escaped home via marriage more than a dozen years ago. Charlotte, the youngest, had possessed the fortitude and detachment not to let Lady Holmes’s tirades bother her.
Livia, however, had always been both too proud to get along with her mother and too sensitive not to be hurt.
“Mamma, I’m terribly sorry for your ordeal,” she blurted out. “I really am.”
Her mother stopped mid-step, blinking.
A confounded Lady Holmes was better than an angry one.
“I mean, I can see how dull it is for you here,” Livia hastened to add. “And there are so many unpleasant memories. Why wouldn’t you wish to be somewhere else, anywhere else? And I’m sorry that I’m still here, a burden to you, an albatross around your neck.”
A trace of real sorrow wended through her words. She did, in fact, understand her mother’s plight. She did understand what it was like to live with a man who thought so contemptuously of his womenfolk. They could all have been allies together, Lady Holmes, Livia, Charlotte—and what a formidable ally Charlotte would have been. But Lady Holmes had valued her daughters as little as SirHenry had, had demeaned them to make herself feel more powerful, and had ended up as unloved as her husband.
Lady Holmes was still blinking, her brows drawn together.
It abruptly occurred to Livia why Charlotte had sent fifty pounds to Lady Holmes the day after Sir Henry, having received his one hundred pounds, had flounced off. It was not only to be fair to their mother, but to create an opportunity forLivia.
One that was not yet too late for Livia to exploit.
She walked forward to Lady Holmes. “But youdon’tneed to stay here, Mamma, afflicted and joyless. Youcango wherever you like—provided you take me with you.”
Her mother scowled, unimpressed by the idea of holidaying with her.
With a deep breath, Livia took Lady Holmes by the arm, turned her in the direction of home, and started walking, half pulling Lady Holmes along. “If you take me with you, then nobody can question your fitness as a mother. Mothers and daughters travel together all the time; it is the perfectly done thing. And you don’t even need to pay for me: I have some money saved up and should be able to sponsor my own railway ticket, as well as my own food and lodging.
“And once we are away, I won’t ask you to take me out anywhere, or to buy me anything. You won’t even have to see me if you don’t want to—I’ll stay in my room and read and have my meals there, too.”
Livia glanced at her mother. Lady Holmes trudged on, her breaths already a little heavy. But she didn’t look galled. In fact, her expression was... speculative. She wastempted.
Livia’s heart trilled. “Think about it, Mamma. Between being unable to go at all, and doing almost exactly as you wish, what would you choose?”
Goodness gracious, who knew she had it in her to be so convincing? In front of her mother, no less.
Lady Holmes frowned again, as if sensing that there was something too good to be true about Livia’s proposal.
Livia did not allow time for her misgivings to gather. “There are very reputable places in London that cater exclusively to lady travelers. I have a list of them in a magazine in my room.” Bless Charlotte for having collected a wealth of such information when she’d still hoped to go to school and become headmistress at a girls’ school. “If you want to leave soon, say, on the morrow—and why would you want to stay here any longer than necessary?—then you can cable a few of those establishments and we’ll have their responses by the end of the day, or at the latest with the first post in the morning.”
“London?” Lady Holmes spoke for the first time since Livia had begun weaving her web of persuasion.
She sounded doubtful. But then again, she often sounded that way when it came to ideas that weren’t her own.
“I know London isn’t a new destination for you—or a particularly lovely one. But London is a perfect place for diversion. And shopping, of course—imagine everything that would be on hand on Bond Street. Not to mention, from London you can go anywhere in the blink of an eye. Overnight to Paris. Overnight to Edinburgh. The possibilities are myriad. And you don’t need to take me on any ofthosetrips. If you leave me behind here, everyone will know you got on a train by yourself and they will talk. But if you leave me behind in London, who will know?”
