The Hollow of Fear Read online

  “Charlotte Holmes—I thought I might see you here.”

  The voice belonged to Lord Ingram, but slightly raspy, as if he were under the weather—or recovering from a night of hard drinking.

  She turned around slowly. “Hullo, Ash.”

  A complicated pleasure, this man. In fact, it was their sometimes fraught friendship that had taught her the meaning of complicated pleasure, a gladness pockmarked by not only irreversible choices but also staggering incompatibilities.

  All the same, such a sharp, sharp, almost painful pleasure.

  They shook hands. She couldn’t be sure whether he held her hand a fraction of a second too long, or she his. When they let go, abruptly and at the exact same moment, despite the glove she still wore, her fingertips tingled.

  “You are well?” he asked, as they walked toward the gardens.

  “Well enough.” Most of the time they were regular correspondents. But he had not written since they’d last met in person, months ago. And she, not sure whether he hadn’t wished to hear from her, or if he needed something that she didn’t know how to give, had also refrained. “You, on the other hand, look as if you haven’t slept properly for a few days.”

  He was in tweeds, and boots that had seen plenty of service—the very image of the quintessential English country squire. If the latter had stayed up late then got up at the crack of dawn, that is.

  “I met your sister at Mrs. Newell’s earlier today,” he said, making no comments on her observation.

  “How is she?”

  “Worried about you getting into trouble.”

  “I prefer to think of them as adventures. The adventures of Charlotte Holmes, consulting detective.”

  “What is this I hear about trouble and adventures?” said Mrs. Watson.

  She and Lord Ingram greeted each other warmly. The last time the three of them had been together in the same place, Mrs. Watson had been in disguise as Mrs. Hudson, a member of Sherlock Holmes’s household, and Lord Ingram had been full of disapproval over Charlotte’s choice to take up with a former actress.

  Today they were themselves, longtime friends and allies.

  Mrs. Watson praised the gardens. Lord Ingram related his head gardener’s struggle to secure epic quantities of Peruvian bat guano. Mrs. Watson laughed; even Charlotte’s lips twitched a little.

  In recent years their private interactions were often silent and tense; sometimes she forgot this other side of him. But he was a man who had no difficulty being charming and amiable in public, who could appear as outwardly perfect as his painstakingly maintained estate.

  As they exhausted the more inconsequential subjects, however, his expression turned sober. “Unfortunately, I do have some actual trouble to report.”

  “Most vexing!” Mrs. Watson exclaimed, after he had recounted the contents of Lady Avery’s letter and his reply.

  “Given that I have, on more than one occasion, consulted their encyclopedic knowledge and been glad of it, I can scarcely be outraged simply because their attention has turned to me,” replied Lord Ingram. “That said, most vexing.”

  Charlotte had not expected this particular wrinkle. The meeting in question had taken place months ago, well outside spheres frequented by members of Society. “Is my sister disturbed?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at her. “You, on the other hand, aren’t remotely discomfited by this news—not for yourself, in any case.”

  “That is the benefit of infamy,” she said with some semblance of modesty. “One of them, at least.”

  He shook his head, but his lips curved. “Well, ladies, now that you’ve heard the bad news, may I interest you in a conducted tour?”

  * * *

  The tour was of only the grounds. Given the minor scandal brewing, the last thing they wanted was for news to spread that Miss Holmes had also been seen in Lord Ingram’s manor.

  In truth, Mrs. Watson reflected ruefully, they ought not to have been anywhere near him at all. But since they were already on his property, they might as well enjoy themselves.

  Miss Holmes might sniff at Stern Hollow’s sheer perfection, but Mrs. Watson remained thoroughly charmed. The streams teeming with tiny silver fish, darting about in unison; the pretty swing dangling from a gnarly bough; and oh look, a secret alcove behind the waterfall they had seen earlier, accessed via a set of hidden stairs from the Greek folly itself.

  The conversation was just as pleasant. She recounted several of the cases Miss Holmes had handled in the weeks before they left London. She also relayed greetings from her niece Penelope, who had resumed her medical education in Paris. “She and her friends are planning to visit the catacombs very soon—the thought makes me shudder, but she declares herself in a state of fervent anticipation.”

  “For someone who has already partaken of dissections, a few million grinning skulls crammed together in dark underground tunnels might prove a disappointment,” said Lord Ingram dryly.

  “But the part of her letter that had Miss Holmes in a lather was the description of her daily breakfast. She has taken to the French manner and consumes only coffee and one croissant in the morning.”

  Lord Ingram glanced at Miss Holmes, a seemingly casual look that was nevertheless potent enough to raise the ambient temperature. “And Miss Holmes is no doubt vexed at Miss Redmayne’s restraint. Why only one croissant when she can have three instead?”

  “You know me too well, sir.”

  Miss Holmes appeared distracted, as if she were in fact picturing warm, flaky croissants. Oh, that girl. Mrs. Watson was giddy merely from being in the vicinity of the desire that smoldered beneath Lord Ingram’s tweed-clad decorum. Miss Holmes ought to feel a maelstrom of butterflies in her stomach, at the crosscurrent of so much physical attraction.

  “You should have married my brother, then,” said Lord Ingram, rather archly. “Bancroft has in his employ my late godfather’s pastry chef, who is said to be a prince among pâtissiers.”

  Having been turned down once by Miss Holmes while she was still eligible, Lord Bancroft had done the extraordinary deed of asking for her hand again, after her fall from grace. To Mrs. Watson’s relief, he had later withdrawn that proposal of marriage. Lord Bancroft had always made her uneasy, and she was a woman who, on the whole, enjoyed the company of men.

  “Rest assured my regret is as deep as the sea,” replied Miss Holmes, her tone breezy.

  A small silence fell. Mrs. Watson rather fancied that had they been alone—and had Lord Ingram been less in command of himself—Miss Holmes would have been set against the nearest tree and ravished with a kiss.

  “How are your children?” asked Miss Holmes. “Have they been well?”

  Much of the heated charge in the air dissipated.

  Mrs. Watson had avoided asking after his children. Pleasant as their chatter was, no one could be unaware of what had not been mentioned: Lady Ingram’s absence.

  Lord Ingram did not answer immediately. Ahead the house came back into view, so exquisite that, like the Taj Mahal, it seemed to float. Mrs. Watson’s heart pitter-pattered.

  “The children are well. Enjoying themselves with Remington,” he said at last. “When they return, I would be pleased to bring them to call on you—with your permission, of course.”

  “We would be delighted!” Mrs. Watson enthused.

  She had only ever met them at the park in London, during the Season, when Lord Ingram took them for their Sunday outings.

  “I’m not sure we will be here that long,” said Miss Holmes, pouring cold water on fervid plans in that measured way of hers. “The cottage is ours for only another fortnight.”

  The duration of Miss Livia Holmes’s stay at Mrs. Newell’s.

  Lord Ingram glanced again at Miss Holmes—a quick turn of his head. Then he looked to where they were going: his house, which a moment ago Mrs.
Watson had yearned to admire up close and in person.

  But now she saw it as he must, a wilderness of solitude. Miles of echoing corridors, acres of empty rooms, long, hushed days, and longer, even more hushed nights.

  “You should spend more time in the country,” he said quietly. “Nothing in London this time of the year but rain, fog, and the odors of industry.”

  “And Sherlock Holmes’s livelihood,” Miss Holmes pointed out, her logic cutting through his sentiments with the sharpness of surgical implements.

  “My oversight,” he acknowledged after a moment, clasping his hands behind his back. “That is, of course, an overriding consideration.”

  The silence that followed made Mrs. Watson squirm. She endured it for no more than a minute before blurting out a question about the condition of his trout stream.

  Conversation resumed.

  * * *

  Mrs. Watson asked to be introduced to the head gardener so that she might compliment him and in turn receive advice about her own future horticultural endeavors.

  Lord Ingram had known her since he was a child. In all those years, she had never evinced the slightest interest in the cultivation of anything with roots. As far as he could tell, her entire interest in botany began and ended with the arrangement of flower bouquets.

  He managed not to raise a brow at her sudden fascination with the composition of soil and the best way to divide bulbs. If Mrs. Watson was so naked in her desire to leave the young people alone, then they must not let her effort go to waste.

  “You were behind the house when I first saw you,” he said to Holmes. “I assume you were looking for the kitchen garden?”

  “I was indeed. May I have a tour?”

  He gestured. “This way.”

  Her abiding interest in what would end up on a dining table, hers or anyone else’s, for that matter, used to strike him as completely at odds with the cool ferocity of her mind. To his younger self it seemed that a person ought to be one or the other, a thinker or a gourmand, but not both.

  He had pointed that out to her once, as he removed encrusted dirt from the handles of an amphoriskos he had dug up. She, sitting a few paces away, had listened attentively, a book in one hand and a jam tart in the other—the fourth consecutive one she’d eaten from the small picnic basket she’d brought. When he’d finished speaking she’d looked at him for some time, then gone back to reading and eating, as if he’d never taken the trouble to voice his opinion aloud.

  It was the first time he’d told anyone how they ought to be. It also happened to be the last time: He had been beyond mortified that she’d treated his considered commentary as if it were an ant that had crawled onto her jam tart.

  Years later, in the early days of his marital courtship, when the future Lady Ingram had seemed sincerely interested in and impressed by his every last utterance, he had experienced what he’d believed to be a profound gratitude. But it had been less gratitude than smugness: At last he’d met a woman who knew how to be a woman; the hell with Charlotte Holmes and her insufferable self-sufficiency.

  He’d known nothing then.

  Alas, he knew nothing now—but at least now he was aware of it.

  The walled kitchen garden occupied a sizable lot and supplied all the fruits and vegetables the estate consumed, either fresh or preserved in jars, during an entire year. Her gaze immediately went to the fruit trees that had been espaliered against the inside of the stone walls: apples, pears, plums, peaches, and cherries, each a different variety.

  “Your kitchen must produce legendary quantities of jams and puddings,” she said, her voice wistful. “And there are fig trees, too. Does anyone here know how to make a fig tart? Did you ever replace the pastry chef Lord Bancroft poached from you?”

  Speaking of Bancroft . . . “What happened between you and my brother?”

  That courtship had been excruciating for Lord Ingram. Given her situation, he couldn’t possibly advise that she reject Bancroft’s offer. Had she accepted, however, it would have been a phantasmagoric horror.

  When she’d related that Bancroft had withdrawn the suit, it had been all he’d needed to hear. The train had stopped at the edge of the precipice, no further details necessary.

  Now he was no longer so sure.

  “Nothing,” she said with perfect equanimity. “A grand total of nil.”

  “He hasn’t been the same since you declined his second proposal.”

  They were walking down the central path of the garden, lined with ornamental flowers grown for the house’s many vases. She caressed a crimson chrysanthemum the size of a large pom-pom. “I didn’t decline—he rescinded his offer.”

  “Semantics.”

  “You give Lord Bancroft too little credit.”

  “And you give yourself too little credit for your ability to cause turmoil in a man.”

  This earned him a considering look—of course he’d given away too much of himself. “You say that because you are a romantic. You would be deeply disturbed to have your suit be unsuccessful twice in a row. Lord Bancroft is not remotely similar to you.”

  “I haven’t been a romantic in a very long time.”

  “Being disappointed in love does not change a man’s fundamental nature. You are more cautious, you wonder whether you can ever make a good choice, but you do not question the validity of romantic love in and of itself. And you still first assume that others, such as Lord Bancroft, love as you do, deeply and protectively”—she held up an index finger to forestall his objection—“before the voice of experience reminds you otherwise.”

  The woman was a holy terror: the sweetest face, the pillowiest bosom, and a perspicacity that stripped a man naked in seconds.

  Fortunately, today at least, she didn’t seem interested in further dissecting his fundamental nature. “And when did you see Lord Bancroft? Were you in London?”

  “Can’t you tell whether I’ve been in London at some point in the past three months?”

  She didn’t often turn her deductive powers on him. But ever since the day she’d taken one look at him and casually commented, I see you’ve lost your virginity, he’d been half convinced he couldn’t have a single thought without her knowing everything about it.

  “Well, from merely looking at you,” she said without looking at him, her gaze on a patch of cabbages, “I can tell only that you have been extremely preoccupied and that you do not wish for me to guess at this preoccupation. But I shall venture to say that no, you haven’t been in London, except perhaps to change trains when you brought the children back from the Devon coast at the end of summer. So Lord Bancroft visited you here—a rather unusual occurrence, wouldn’t you say?”

  To her statement on his virginity or lack thereof, he’d replied, with all the haughtiness he could summon, I will not deign to address that. The momentary satisfaction of embargoing the subject, however, had led to years of wondering how Holmes had fathomed what she couldn’t possibly have known.

  He chose to spare himself that futile speculation today. “Why would you think I’m more preoccupied than usual? My circumstances practically mandate a degree of preoccupation.”

  Now she inspected him, a head-to-toe sweep and back again. “Your valet was gone for a few days and returned day before yesterday, in the evening.”

  “Yes?”

  “You prefer to shave yourself when Cummings is away, rather than entrust the task to another manservant. And you’ve always been competent at the task. I saw you in Devon, less than two days after Lady Ingram’s departure. Cummings wasn’t there. You shaved that day and you didn’t nick yourself.

  “But looking at you now I can see at least three places where your shaving blade had broken skin. They are all at different stages of healing, which tells me that not only have you been preoccupied to a remarkable degree, it is a preoccupation that does not let up.

>   “The nicks stopped with the return of your valet. But you, upon meeting my sister and realizing that I myself was likely to be in the vicinity and might arrive unannounced upon your doorstep, what do you do? You came home and, instead of changing back into the clothes you’d been wearing before you called on Mrs. Newell, you put on a different set of tweeds, a suit you haven’t worn for a while—it still smells of the lavender sachets with which it had been stored. Not only that, but you also erred on the side of a fresh shirt and a pair of boots that haven’t been outside since they were last cleaned, brushed, and shined.

  “You have never dressed to impress me. And most likely you realized that I would notice your choice of attire. But you opted for it anyway: You’d rather that I guessed at the preoccupation than at the nature of it.”

  She did not look to him for confirmation—she knew she was right. He could only be thankful that she hadn’t pointed out that he could have remained inside the manor and avoided her altogether.

  He would rather be seen through, as uncomfortable and mortifying as that always was, than not see her at all.

  “You are right about London,” he said, exhaling. “I haven’t left Stern Hollow since I came back from Devon. It has been a parade of brothers this autumn—even Wycliffe came.”

  Her brow lifted an infinitesimal distance, which for her implied grand astonishment. “Wycliffe came here, instead of summoning you to Eastleigh Park?”

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. My steward almost had an attack of nerves.”

  The current Duke of Wycliffe, Lord Ingram’s eldest brother, had graced Stern Hollow only once before. A few days after Lord Ingram had inherited the estate, he’d arrived without notice, ordered Lord Ingram to accompany him on an inspection of house and grounds, and departed immediately afterward, saying only, A fine holding. Look after it.

  “Did they all come because Lady Ingram is ostensibly in Switzerland for her health? Surely Lord Bancroft didn’t tell the duke the truth?”

  Wycliffe’s duty was the continuation of his bloodline and the well-being of his dukedom. Unlike his three younger brothers, he had never sullied his hands with the work of the Crown.