Page 68 of A Ruse of Shadows
I don’t believe that anything anyone says can alleviate your concerns, Ash, because yours are issues for which there are no perfect or even neat solutions. Miss Lucinda and Master Carlisle are children of divorced parents, and at some point, they will face prevailing attitudes.
But it is worth pointing out that they are extremely fortunate children. They are healthy, comfortably off, and cherished. No one can guarantee anyone’s happiness or success in life, but the effort everyone around them has put into that endeavor—what Livia wouldn’t have given to have been raised by you and Miss Potter. (Or even Lady Ingram, for that matter. I think Livia would not have minded a lioness of a mother who swooped in once in a while.)
Holmes did not excel at consoling people. But it was precisely due to this minor characteristic of hers that he found so much encouragement in her words. If she called his children extremely fortunate, then they must be, in some way.
He took a bite of a plum that he’d bought off a costermonger, and was just about to take a sip from his canteen when a short squat man marched past him, not from the alley but on the street. And in his hand was a mourning envelope.
Lord Ingram had used a mourning envelope, with a distinctive black border, in the hope that he might better see the note change hands from outside the chemist’s. But he would also gladly accept being lucky in ways he had not anticipated.
He slowly stood up, waited another second, then stepped into the street himself.
?It was past four o’clock in the afternoon when Charlotte arrived at the bookbinder’s shop, looking for Mumble.
She was met by the bookbinder himself, Mr. Rosenblatt, a slightly stooped, gentle-looking man. After she introduced herself and stated her purpose, he said, “Young Waters left early today, Mr. Herrinmore. Someone in his family isn’t well.”
She raised a brow. “I thought Mr. Waters was an orphan.”
Johnny had said that Mumble and Jessie had grown up as foster siblings, not that either’s parents had fostered the other.
Mr. Rosenblatt ran a wheeled embosser down the side of an already-bound leather volume, completing a rectangular frame on the cover. “Orphans can form families, Mr. Herrinmore. Young Waters and his foster sister are as much siblings as any two people born of the same parents.”
“It’s not Miss Ferguson who is unwell, is it?”
“Oh no. She’s fine. Strong as an ox, that one.”
The spine of the book he was working on showed a sharp crisscross pattern underneath—Charlotte recalled the vellum strips Mumble had been cutting the other day.
“You wouldn’t happen to have Mumble’s address, would you, Mr. Rosenblatt?”
The bookbinder, now rolling a different embossing wheel, shook his head. “I do not.”
Charlotte did not believe him, but she could hardly tell him that she suspected him of dishonesty. “Do you expect him back tomorrow?”
“I am not sure,” he said rather sadly. His embossing wheel traveled with the swift alignment of a beam of light, leaving behind a trail of delicately intertwined vines on the brown leather. “The patient he would be looking after is suffering from something serious.”
Charlotte’s eyebrow shot up again. “You have very liberal policies, Mr. Rosenblatt, to permit your apprentice to come and go at his convenience.”
“My son is no more, and my grandson is too young. Young Waters works here as a favor to me, not the other way around,” said the bookbinder rather cryptically.
Charlotte hesitated a moment. “In that case, would you tell him that I would like to see him, soon as could be. Here’s my address, and there’s a half sovereign in it for Mr. Waters should he come to see me.”
She would have preferred to speak to Mumble without giving him her current address, but needs must.
After she secured the bookbinder’s promise that he would pass on the message, Charlotte remained in the shop another quarter hour and bargained over a slender penannular silver brooch. It was likely Viking in origin, close to a thousand years old and nearly unscratched, with tiny but exquisite brambled terminals on its incomplete ring.
A nice little present for her lover.
“You have an excellent eye, Mr. Herrinmore,” said Mr. Rosenblatt as he wrapped her purchase.
Lord Ingram was the expert; Charlotte merely benefited from her proximity to him.
“Thank you,” she said.
As she slipped the package into the inside pocket of her day coat, her fingertips touched the envelope that held Mrs. Claiborne’s locket, which she had planned to show to Mumble.
She extracted the locket, opened it, and handed it to Mr. Rosenblatt. “By the way, sir, have you ever seen this woman?”
Mr. Rosenblatt put on his glasses and squinted at the small photograph. “Why, yes. She came into the shop about a month ago, not once but twice. We don’t receive much patronage from young ladies, or from young people at all. A beautiful young woman stood out.”
