Holmes studied him and almost smiled. “Since that was the case, I left Mrs. Treadles in her sister-in-law’s care. But Mrs. Cousins’s presence—and Mrs. Treadles’s apparent reliance on her—surprised me: I was under the impression that Inspector Treadles had been less than fond of both Barnaby Cousins and his wife. But the two women did not appear to repulse each other at all.”
He pushed off the settee and poured himself half a glass of cognac before coming back. “Now that you mention it, remember that I invited Inspector and Mrs. Treadles to the house party at Stern Hollow after Christmas?”
He’d invited her, too, to come in the guise of Sherrinford Holmes, but she had declined.
“Just before we left for our French adventure,” he went on. “I received a letter from Inspector Treadles, asking me if it would be all right for him to bring Mrs. Cousins and put her up nearby. She was still in mourning and not moving in society but they thought a change of scenery would be good for her.”
Holmes nodded, sliding the fern frond between her fingers.
“You are—interested in Mrs. Cousins,” he said on a hunch.
He could not read anyone’s mind. But he had been observing her for nearly half of his life, sometimes surreptitiously, often incredulously, but always keenly, especially when his attention was drawn to her in spite of himself. And as a longtime student of Charlotte Holmes, he had noticed that she was not frustrated about not having achieved what she’d hoped to accomplish this evening.
Which could only mean that she did learn something worthwhile.
“Good guess. Mrs. Cousins had a decidedly negative opinion of Mr. Sullivan. I plan to find out how she came about it.” She finally let go of the fern and looked squarely at him. “And now you know exactly how things stand at the moment, as far as this case is concerned.”
* * *
Wind roared outside. Sporadic drops of rain thudded against the windows. The man who shared Charlotte’s seat nodded at her words and took a sip of his cognac. He leaned against his corner of the settee, one arm settled along its back, his long legs comfortably stretched out.
He was not going anywhere in a hurry.
This . . . was not like him.
This was not like them.
Their pattern had been set early, from their first encounter, when she saw him coming up the grand staircase of his uncle’s house, a dark-haired, dark-gazed boy of fifteen.
Charlotte, then thirteen and on the premises to attend a children’s party she was too old for, had been thinking of her tea. The previous afternoon’s spread had included an array of little iced cakes, soft as pillows, with crumbs that stuck scrumptiously to the backs of her teeth.
As he ascended, taking two steps at a time, this unsmiling, sharp-featured boy with just a little too much dirt at the edges of his boots, she forgot about the possibly best cake she’d ever consumed in her life. Yes, it was how he looked and how he advanced, his physicality, the lupine dominance of his motion. But he also possessed an inner ferocity that she could not articulate, except to understand that it provoked in her a response almost analogous to what she felt for cake.
When he went past her without acknowledgment—not exactly unforgivable as they hadn’t been introduced—she stopped where she was, turned, and watched the rest of his progress up the grand staircase.
At the top he sensed her attention and turned back. She continued to study him—it would take her years to stop openly scrutinizing those who piqued her interest. They stared at each other, he frowning, she with that near-cake-equivalent absorption.
He scowled and continued on his way.
In the years since, they had never truly deviated from that pattern. She was the aggressor. She wanted things: his company, his letters, and later, his body. He kept his distance and withheld his body as if he were the city of Vienna and she the Mongol Horde just outside the gate.
She wouldn’t say that it had been a good pattern, but it had become a familiar one. And had they continued to conduct themselves according to this pattern, right now, with everything that needed saying having already been said, he would be taking his leave.
To avoid handing her the sort of opening she could seize upon.
Tonight he continued to remain where he was—and even served himself a slice of Madame Gascoigne’s holiday cake, from a plate Mr. Mears had brought and left on the occasional table near the settee.
She was astounded into speech. “I thought you didn’t care for cake.”
“I don’t love it as you do and I don’t seek it out, but I don’t mind an occasional nibble. It’s rather good, this one.”
He ate without any hurry, as if entirely engrossed by the cake’s taste and texture.
As always, she was aware of the coiled energy within him, the leashed sexuality—the very same quality that had left her utterly riveted on that staircase long ago, experiencing a different hunger than any she’d ever known.
“Are you planning to kiss me again?”
To her own ears, she sounded both a little angry and a little impatient.
He looked up. “Would you like me to?”
Yes.
No.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought so.”
She blinked. “You did? Why?”
“I know what you are feeling.”
How? She could barely make sense of what she was feeling.
“You are disoriented because I am not behaving the way I typically do,” he said softly.
She was silent.
“You’ve been able to count on my restraint—or rather, my cowardice—for so long, its absence must feel unsettling. It occurs to you that now there is no reason that I wouldn’t want more and more of you, so much so that you wouldn’t be able to hold me back, not without injuring my feelings or damaging our friendship.”
Would it not be so?
As if hearing her thought, he sighed. “You are assuming infinite time and infinite opportunities, but I have a less optimistic view of the future. Mr. Marbleton isn’t the only one over whom Moriarty has leverage. The mother of my children has now taken up with those sworn to oppose him—I don’t know when I will find myself drawn into his orbit again, if I am not already.”
He gazed at her, a steady, calm contemplation. “We live in a precarious present, Holmes.”
As the lead instigator of a large theft from Moriarty’s stronghold, she could not disagree with his assessment, but she remained silent.
He set down his plate and turned it a few degrees on the occasional table. “Do you remember the first time you and Mrs. Watson came to visit Stern Hollow?”