“The end of a marriage is just as solemn a pact. A petition for divorce has to be filed and then granted by the court. Very soon, that is what will happen to Mamma and Papa’s marriage. The court will grant us a divorce and we will no longer be married to each other.”
For months, Lord Ingram had been preparing an explanation for his children, one that grew longer and more ornate with each new mental draft, until he estimated that if he began his oration at their bedtime, they would be an hour asleep by the time he finally reached his point.
Lady Ingram’s version, on the other hand, wasted no words.
After Christmas, he had put a notice in the papers for her, offering her a safe place to stay. To his surprise, she had responded and accepted his offer—she had escaped Château Vaudrieu alongside Madame Desrosiers a fortnight before, and hadn’t wanted to be a burden on the other woman for much longer.
He gave her a range of choices and she opted for the West Berkshire estate that had once belonged to Bancroft. When he’d needed to stow the children somewhere safe, the place became the obvious choice, so that they could spend some time with their mother.
But now, with him away from Cornwall due to his children’s “high fevers” and with Holmes soon to “perish,” he could not be sure that the next time he left the Cornish coast, he wouldn’t be followed.
Nor would he want to shake the potential follower loose, when the time came. To the contrary, for a period of time, until Moriarty’s minions were withdrawn, those closest to Holmes would make their comings and goings fully visible, to further bolster the impression of her permanent disappearance from their lives.
So it would be better for Lady Ingram to leave this estate now—for a different hiding place he had arranged—before he came to shepherd the children home, in the wake of Holmes’s “demise”.
He had not expected that she would take it upon herself to explain the imminent dissolution of their marriage to Lucinda and Carlisle, nor that she would do so in front of him. He was grateful. What she said might be brutal, but so was the reality the children needed to understand.
“Why was it a mistake?” asked Carlisle timidly. He would not turn five until later in the year and probably felt the somberness of the occasion more than he understood his mother’s exact words.
Lady Ingram, down on one knee, caressed his cheek. “Sometimes some people are not meant to live together. That’s all.”
“Remember when you secretly brought Bunny inside? You wanted her to live with us, but Bunny tore everything up,” added Lucinda, who would soon be six and had been an independent thinker since she was three days old.
“Oh,” said Carlisle, understanding dawning.
Bunny was not a bunny but a puppy that had wreaked havoc in the nursery at Stern Hollow, Lord Ingram’s country seat. The memories of her destructiveness were still fresh.
The analogy, however . . .
Lady Ingram did not possess the most robust sense of humor. Lord Ingram glanced at her, wondering whether she would take offense.
After a moment of seeming incomprehension, however, she smiled ruefully. “Yes, something like that. But I will still try to come and see you as often as I can. And I will think of you, as always, every minute of every day.”
* * *
“It could have gone horribly wrong!” complained Holmes. “The umbrella gun you gave me burst into flames. When we got back to safety Miss Baxter laughed so hard she was in tears.”
Lord Ingram had nearly gone into cardiac arrest when he’d retired for the night and found Holmes on his bed, arrayed in the most beautifully appalling pink tea gown in existence and looking absolutely splendid. They were at his brother’s ducal estate, where he had brought his children to visit their cousins for Easter, and it was the first time he had laid eyes on her since Cornwall.
As it turned out, she had hired his brother’s hunting lodge—Their Graces, like most other owners of large stately homes, were under pressure to generate greater income and the letting of smaller edifices on the estate was one such means. In masculine attire, she had moved about the estate freely and even explored nearby countryside.
Once he recovered from his shock, Lord Ingram wasted no time in removing his jacket and waistcoat. “You dare grouse about that umbrella bursting into flames, Holmes? After what you did to me?”
She was already giggling, not a sight one saw every day. “What did I do to you?”
“The thing you left behind in the Garden as a memento for me to recognize you by—” He sputtered. “You—”
“Oh, you mean the circular metallic object intended to go on your unmentionable parts? The one I showed you one time but we were too sleepy to use?”
He climbed into bed and pulled her into his arms. “Yes, that. Once I saw that, how was I supposed to act bereaved? I nearly choked trying not to laugh—I sounded like a hyena with bronchitis.”
“I wish I could have seen it!” she said, her eyes shining.
“Huh. I was going to do the manly thing, shake my fist at Moriarty, and threaten all kinds of retribution. Instead I had to sprint out of the Garden before I gave myself away.”
“But you did well. We all did well,” she murmured. And pulled him in for a kiss.
And no one thought of Moriarty again, for a while.
* * *
Read on for an excerpt of another exciting Sherry Thomas adventure.
The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan—An Excerpt
CHINA, 484 A.D.
A Warrior in Disguise
* * *
All her life, Mulan has trained for one purpose: to win the duel that every generation in her family must fight. If she prevails, she can reunite a pair of priceless heirloom swords separated decades earlier, and avenge her father, who was paralyzed in his own duel.
* * *
Then a messenger from the Emperor arrives, demanding that all families send one soldier to fight the Rouran invaders in the north. Mulan’s father cannot go. Her brother is just a child. So she ties up her hair, takes up her sword, and joins the army as a man.
* * *
A War for a Dynasty
* * *
Thanks to her martial arts skills, Mulan is chosen for an elite team under the command of the princeling—the royal duke’s son, who is also the handsomest man she’s ever seen. But the princeling has secrets of his own, which explode into Mulan’s life and shake up everything she knows. As they cross the Great Wall to face the enemy beyond, Mulan and the princeling must find a way to unwind their past, unmask a traitor, and uncover the plans for the Rouran invasion…before it’s too late.
* * *
Inspired by wuxia martial-arts dramas as well as the centuries-old ballad of Mulan, The Magnolia Sword is a thrilling, romantic, and sharp-edged novel that lives up to its beloved heroine.
Chapter 1
“Hua xiong-di, it has been a while,” my opponent murmurs. In the feeble light, his shadow is long, menacing.
It has been nearly two years since we last crossed swords.