But no, he allowed her no pause on the way down, helped her into her coat with unnecessary efficiency, and then they were out of the back door, wending around the mews toward Upper Baker Street.
It was a bit difficult to bring up those licentious stockings when she felt as if she were being rushed after a departing train.
“Miss Lucinda and Master Carlisle aren’t in London,” she said in the end.
He had not gone to his town house to see them at bedtime, which meant he hadn’t brought them. But she also didn’t think he had left them behind in Derbyshire.
He looked ahead. “No. I’ve taken them somewhere out of the way.”
Upper Baker Street was deserted at this hour. A slight drizzle fell. Rust-colored light from streetlamps pooled in faintly glistening circles on the pavement. Her gaze flicked to the flat that housed Moriarty’s minions. Its windows were as dark all the others; no curtains fluttered, no shadows slithered.
But this did not mean that no one was observing.
“Miss Potter is with the children?” she continued with her questions.
“Yes.”
Miss Potter had been his governess, once upon a time, and had agreed to come out of retirement to look after Miss Lucinda and Master Carlisle.
“And Miss Yarmouth?”
Miss Yarmouth, the children’s previous governess, had, much to Charlotte’s amusement, proposed a marriage of convenience to her employer.
“Miss Yarmouth left for Australia weeks ago,” he said rather archly, “to join her cousin for a delightful future filled with wealthy suitors.”
“Let us wish her good hunting,” she murmured.
He hadn’t said where his children were, but now she wondered . . . “Lord Bancroft had a few properties here and there, didn’t he?”
Lord Bancroft was Lord Ingram’s disgraced brother, but his disgrace was known only to a few. For fear of alerting the general populace that something was amiss with Lord Bancroft’s retirement from public life, the Crown had not confiscated his properties.
“Correct. Bancroft’s holdings were entrusted to Remington and with his permission, I’ve put the children up at one of them.”
Lord Remington, another one of Lord Ingram’s elder brothers, was abroad most of the time, in charge of the queen’s clandestine services on the Subcontinent.
“Are you sure Moriarty doesn’t know about the place?”
Lady Ingram had spied for Moriarty.
Charlotte opened the door of number 18, and turned a little to look at her not-quite-lover.
Light from the nearest streetlamp threw his profile into sharp relief. He snorted. “Bancroft kept his own secrets better than he kept the Crown’s secrets. Lady Ingram didn’t know about this place, I didn’t, and not even Bancroft’s solicitors did.”
At number 18, on the floor above the parlor and “Sherlock” Holmes’s bedroom, there was another bedroom. Mrs. Watson had outfitted it in silks and florals, befitting Sherlock Holmes’s sister who had done so much for him. Charlotte had never stayed there but Mr. Marbleton had, on occasion. And it would be where Lord Ingram would spend the night.
He did not, however, head there directly, but came with her to the parlor. “I need to disassemble the Maxim gun. It wouldn’t be much use here.”
“Show me first how to load the cartridge belt.”
The Maxim gun had become almost unrecognizable. Not only had a large canister—the cooling jacket—been fitted to the barrel, steel plates, too—shields—were fastened to the top and the sides of the assembly, giving it an oddly leonine appearance.
The long cartridge belt came neatly folded in a box. He fed the first round into the barrel, made sure it was held firmly in place, and said, “That’s it. The rest will load by recoil.”
He demonstrated the process one more time, then stepped aside for her to try.
Shouldn’t he remain right behind her, his hands over hers, so that the two of them were practically in an embrace? Years ago, she had seen a gentleman instruct a lady in archery in such a manner. They had married other people but subsequently came together in a torrid affair.
Alas the operation was simple enough that she managed on the first try and was able to perform the feat three consecutive times without any mistakes, obviating any need for him to give hands-on demonstrations.
“Go ahead and take the gun apart,” he said, handing her a spanner. “Then you’ll be able to put it together next time.”
Charlotte was raised in the country and had done her share of shooting. She knew how to take apart ordinary firearms for cleaning and maintenance. The Maxim gun was different, but not so different as to render her experience useless.
The joints had been properly oiled and separated with only moderate effort. She handed each component to Lord Ingram. The trunk the disassembled Maxim gun had come in had been specially built with padded trays to accommodate all the parts. She kept track of how the parts fit together, and also where everything went in the trays.
They worked largely without speaking. Having been correspondents for almost as long as they’d known each other, their exchanges were easier and more relaxed in writing. But in person, especially after a lengthy absence, they tended to revert back to silence.
Some silences felt like a cool shade under summer foliage, others like dark, foggy nights. This silence made her think of reading in the branches of a tree and lifting her head because a breeze had brought with it the scent of a rich yeast dough rising nearby.
A silence filled with anticipation.
But was the anticipation mutual, or only on her part?
She calculated the weight of everything, the Maxim gun itself, the shields, the ammunition, and the water required in the cooling jacket to keep the barrel from overheating. “Would you have been able to move this thing, fully assembled, to where you could provide a burst of fire for me to escape out the back into Mrs. Watson’s town coach?”
Or had he really prepared for the bleakest outcome, a last stand right here in Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom?
“Of course,” he said lightly, packing the box of cartridge into a different case. “You can go wash your hands now, Holmes. I’ll do the rest.”
She regarded him a moment, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the alignment of his torso at once perfectly straight and perfectly loose, before she rose to leave. When she came back from the basement, Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom was spotless and he was no longer there.
She returned to the parlor. She had just picked up the book on Hermetic teaching from Moriarty—she had not lied about that—when he entered with a black umbrella and held it out toward her.
She was about to tell him that she already had a weighted umbrella that doubled as a rapier when she took this umbrella in hand. The bulbous handle felt different. She turned it around and spotted a hidden firing mechanism. She opened the umbrella. Aha, halfway up the stalk was a chamber which—she peered inside—looked like . . .
“It takes two rounds?”
“Two rounds. However, sometimes the fabric of the umbrella catches on fire,” said he, his eyes crinkling a little. “I assume you won’t care too much about that if you choose to use it as a firearm.”
“Oh, rest assured I will care. It would be mortifying to carry a burnt umbrella afterward,” she said airily, even as her stomach tightened.