Page 75 of Miss Moriarty, I Presume?
Lord Ingram shook his head. Mrs. Watson, feeling a chill between her shoulder blades, slowly shook her head too.
“So we agree that he also has a purpose with regard to us. Do you suppose he has accomplished his purpose?”
The chill between Mrs. Watson’s shoulder blades crept downward and wrapped itself around her spine. “No,” she made herself say.
Miss Charlotte took a sip of water from her canteen. “Then no matter what we hope for, and no matter how logical our hopes appear, Moriarty isn’t done with us yet.”
The morningafter his second night at 18 Upper Baker Street, Lord Ingram woke up with Holmes’s hand draped over his chest.
He turned his head.
Their first night in this bedroom, they’d stayed up far too late and in the morning had been jolted upright at the same time by the insistent drilling of the alarm clock. So this would be the first time he saw her asleep.
It was still early, and she had most of her face buried in her pillow. He could just make out the shape of one ear amidst her tousled hair, barely long enough to hold a curl.
He placed his hand upon hers. She had him in a very loose hold, her body not quite touching his. But he was happy. When he was younger, he did not know how to love except to hold on tightly, so very, very tightly. But with Holmes, he was beginning to see that perhaps space did not always translate into distance.
That her hand upon his chest might convey as much attachment as someone else with all her limbs wrapped around him.
Of course, this might be wishful thinking on his part. Holmes’s heart remained ever mysterious, like those parts of the ocean too fathomless even for the fictionalNautilus.
Or the great depths of her heart could simply be filled with longing for cake.
He smiled, kissed her on her exposed ear, and got up, untangling one fuchsia stocking from around himself. He had better not recall the sight of those stockings on her...
Reaching down to the nightstand for his watch, he instead picked up a ring-like object. Holmes, better prepared last night, had brought not only the stockings, but a small silk bag full contraceptive devices. As they’d lain panting, about to drift off to sleep, she’d reached into the bag, took out the ring, and said, “Oh, I forgot to have you try this on.”
In his drowsiness, it had taken him two seconds to recognize the object for what it was. He might very well have mistaken it for a ring that fell off a set of harness, were it not for her words and the circumstances under which it had been presented.
“Oh, it’s too small,” he said.
“Is it?” Her words were slowing, but still conveyed her surprise.
“Probably not,” he answered, grinning sleepily. “But I just wanted to say that.”
He grinned again at the recollection, put the prurient object back in the small silk bag, finished dressing, and left the room.
They had arrived in London to two notes, one from Miss Olivia, needing to see Holmes, the other a message from Ellen Bailey, the maid who had worked at the Snowham inn where Mr. Marbleton had stayed, and whom they had not been able to speak to earlier because she had followed her new mistress to London. But now Ellen Bailey had returned to Snowham, as her mistress had concluded her business in town.
Holmes would remain in London to meet with Moriarty’s representative and Miss Olivia; Lord Ingram would head out once more to Snowham, this time accompanied by Mrs. Watson.
On his way to the domestic offices in the basement of 18 Upper Baker Street, where a darkroom had been set up, he saw that various letters and circulars had come through the mail slot and landed inside the front door. Among them was a letter that did not have a stamp—it had been hand-delivered.
From A. de Lacey.
He checked on the negatives that had developed overnight in the basement darkroom and went back upstairs with de Lacey’s missive. With her eyes closed, Holmes opened the envelope, and then, with one eye half open, scanned the note, handed it to him, and burrowed under the blanket again. He read the note and saw that she could indeed sleep some more. With a small laugh, he set the alarm clock for her, placed the note under the alarm clock, kissed her one more time, and left.
Over breakfast at Mrs. Watson’s, the dear lady kept winking at him. He could be shameless with Holmes, but couldn’t be as brazen before Mrs. Watson. So he kept his face lowered, his gaze on his plate—and ate with an unusually robust appetite.
It wasn’t until they were in the carriage, where servants could not stumble upon private conversation, that she said, “I know we spoke of potential pitfalls, my dear. Still, I must say being in love agrees with you.”
“I rather like it myself.”
It made him shy to have his emotional state commented upon. But what wouldn’t he give for the biggest topic on this day to be his heated affair with Holmes.
Mrs. Watson teased him some more, but eventually fell quiet. She watched the streets pass by outside—shops were opening, greengrocers inspected vegetables that had just arrived from the countryside, cooks and kitchen maids darted in and out of bakeries, butchers’, and cheesemongers’.
Then she looked at him and sighed, a heavy sound. “I will not lie. Last night I lay in bed and wondered whether Miss Charlotte and I shouldn’t have gone directly to Southampton and booked a passage overseas.”
