The Hollow of Fear

by Sherry Thomas

  “Because you have propositioned him three times?”

  Miss Holmes smiled slightly, as if she found Fowler’s question risible. “Because he does not trust that I will love him. And he is correct in that regard. I find romantic love a difficult concept to grasp—at least with regard to marriage. Men and women change. Sentiments change. Yet we are expected to make lifelong contracts based on fleeting emotions.”

  “That isn’t what marriage is about,” Treadles found himself saying. “One goes into a marriage knowing that changes are always afoot. The point is to weather the vicissitudes of life together.”

  “Is that so, Inspector? Or does one go into a marriage expecting everything to remain as it is on the wedding day? Most of the marriages I have seen close up do not inspire confidence, because always, at least one spouse rues the changes that have been brought on by the passage of time.”

  She looked squarely at him, as if she already knew about the fragile new bond between him and Alice. As if she already perceived his fear that he would not be able to nourish this new bond as he ought to. And that it, too, will someday fray and snap.

  He looked away, ashamed that he couldn’t say more to defend either his own marriage or the idea of wedded bliss as a whole.

  Her gaze returned to Fowler. “No, Chief Inspector, Lord Ingram will not offer for my hand—not even for love.”

  She paused and considered a moment. “Especially not for love.”

  * * *

  “Three times? Three times?” Mrs. Watson exclaimed, once they were inside her carriage.

  Charlotte shook out her skirts. “Two and a half times, strictly speaking. The second time I needed only an instrument for the riddance of my maidenhead. He wouldn’t oblige.”

  Roger Shrewsbury had obliged instead, in his largely incompetent manner.

  Mrs. Watson let out a breath, as if she couldn’t quite believe what they were talking about, even as she herself drove the conversation. “If you’ll pardon my incurable nosiness, what about the other two times?”

  A murder investigation was truly a unique phenomenon. Now there were two policemen in London with intimate knowledge of the amorous history—or the longtime lack thereof—between Charlotte and Lord Ingram. And here was Mrs. Watson, quite justified in wanting to know a bit more about her friend and protégée than did a pair of coppers.

  “The third time was at 18 Upper Baker Street—before you had your brilliant idea to monetize Sherlock Holmes’s gifts. He proposed to sponsor me to emigrate to America, where no one knew me, and where I could go to school and find respectable employment. I told him I would agree to those terms if he would take me as his mistress. He refused.”

  Even though at that point he no longer needed to worry about compromising her, since she was already hopelessly compromised. The man could be needlessly stubborn.

  “And the first time?” Mrs. Watson sounded a little breathless.

  “Shortly before I turned seventeen. We’d known each other for a while by then, and I decided that he would make for a good—or at least interesting—lover.”

  “But you were so young, practically children!”

  For someone who had led a rather scandalous life, Charlotte reflected, Mrs. Watson was rather easily scandalized. At least by Charlotte.

  “It’s hardly unheard of for girls to be married at sixteen. And he had already lost his virginity, so it wasn’t as if I threatened him with imminent deflowering.”

  Mrs. Watson giggled. “And he said no to this nonthreat.”

  “After I wooed him with a beautifully wrapped French letter, no less.”

  Mrs. Watson covered her mouth with both hands, scandalized anew. “Where did you even find such a thing?”

  “I believe I have told you that my sister and I snooped in our father’s study whenever the opportunity presented itself?”

  Mrs. Watson nodded.

  Sir Henry and Lady Holmes had never told their children anything of true importance, such as the family’s near bankruptcy. Their two youngest daughters, who had always been each other’s greatest allies, had formed the habit of finding out everything on their own.

  “I always read my father’s diary. Once he recorded the name and address of a store where he had been sold a condom. I wrote to the shop and asked whether they conducted any business by post. They were happy to assist. So I sent in a postal order and picked up my purchase at our local post office.”

  “You did this when you were all of sixteen?”

  “No, the year before. I was fifteen.”

  “I’m surprised—and relieved—that you didn’t proposition his lordship then.”

  “I thought about it. But decided I wasn’t yet curious enough.”

  “Even though you’d already purchased a condom?”

  “A condom, a sponge, and a syringe for flushing out any semen that hasn’t been blocked by the condom and the sponge—if you want the itemized list. For my expenditure, the shop sent me a copy of Fanny Hill, gratis.”

  Mrs. Watson gasped. “And what did you do with that?”

  “I read it. Then I sold it to Roger Shrewsbury, for twice what it would have cost him to buy.”

  Mrs. Watson’s lips moved, but no words emerged.

  “I know,” said Charlotte, shaking her head. “Mr. Shrewsbury was never the most enterprising of fellows.”

  “Did Lord Ingram know that?” Mrs. Watson sounded slightly choked.

  “He brokered the deal—and took a cut of the profit.” Charlotte smiled. “He wasn’t always as stuffy as he later became.”

  She wasn’t sentimental about some mythical past version of him—he might have been more adventurous, but he’d also been naïve and arrogant. Adversity didn’t improve everyone—or the world would be filled with men and women of flawless character and sublime insight. Lord Ingram, however, had endured his misfortunes with grace and forbearance and had chosen to become a better man.

  When Charlotte commented on his stuffiness, it was never about returning him to his former self—she liked him as he was—but from a deep-seated wish that he would let himself be happy.

  Or at least less burdened.

  And she had no idea if that would ever be the case.

  “Does it really not make any difference that he loves you?” came Mrs. Watson’s soft yet fervent question.

  Charlotte sighed. “It isn’t that love makes no difference; it’s that what he and I want out of life are diametrically opposite. It’s far easier for people who want the same things to fall in love than for people who want different things to remain in love.”

  Mrs. Watson’s breath caught. “Are you—are you saying, Miss Holmes, that you are in love with him?”

  Charlotte made no reply.

  She’d already given answer enough.

  * * *

  Livia was proud of herself. Downright, heart-poundingly proud.

  She had taken advantage of Mrs. Newell’s general distress about the bomb to refuse the offer of her maid for the way home. “You need her more than I do. I have traveled this route more times than I can count. There has never been any trouble in the ladies’ compartments. Don’t worry. My parents won’t know a thing.”

  And she had prevailed, for once.

  But as her hired trap drew abreast of Moreton Close, her warm self-confidence began to turn into something less sustaining. The garden had faded since her previous visit and little resembled the sunny, trim place she remembered. All the windows were shuttered—in the middle of the day! And not a bit of light seeped out from around the edges of the shutters, the way it would have if candles and lamps had been lit, as they must have been on this cold, gray day, if anyone at all were inside.

  No one answered her summons. She pulled the bell cord again and again and made enough of a ruckus to rouse even Sleeping Beauty.

  `Still
no one came.

  Remembering the path that led to the wrought iron gate, she ran down that way, pushed open the gate, and knocked on the door of a cottage. At last someone answered, a woman with flour-covered hands.

  “Afternoon, miss,” she said tentatively.

  “Good afternoon. Can you tell me where all the people in the house went, Missus . . . ?”

  “Garnet. Everyone went to the south of France for the winter.”

  The south of France, which Livia had always wished to visit. For a moment she was terribly envious of Bernadine, until she asked herself how likely was it that for the pittance her parents paid, Bernadine would receive trips abroad, above and beyond the already miraculous bargain of Moreton Close.

  “All the ladies who can’t look after themselves went to the south of France?”

  Mrs. Garnet looked confused. “There’s only one lady in the house and she looks after herself just fine.”

  “Only one lady?”

  “There are her husband and her sons, but she’s the only lady.”

  Livia’s ears rang. “But I was here last week and I saw with my own eyes a houseful of ladies.”

  “Last week the mister and I went to see our grandbaby. Maybe miss went to a different house?”

  Mrs. Garnet’s tone was sympathetic, but that only made Livia’s voice rise faster. “It was this house!”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Garnet apologetically, “the family went two weeks ago. I don’t know how the house could have been full of ladies last week. I really don’t know.”

  * * *

  Charlotte alit in front of the bijou house in St. John’s Wood where she’d met Mrs. Farr the evening before and stayed the night. She waved good-bye to Mrs. Watson, now headed to her own destination.

  Inside the house she took off both her hat and her wig—a woman’s wig, this time—and sat down in front of the vanity table to massage her scalp. In the mirror she seemed thinner. Was she already down to only one point two chins?

  Another face appeared in the mirror. “Counting your chins?”

  “Me? How dare you accuse me of such rampant self-absorption!”

  Lord Ingram smiled. “How was your meeting with the police?”

  “It went as you would expect.” She turned around. He was very close to her, her favorite place for him to be. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know.”

  She exhaled. “Tell me what has happened since I left—I assume you didn’t come just to sleep with me.”

  He stepped even closer. “And you would be wrong about that.”

  * * *

  “I’m still unsettled to find myself in bed with you,” said Lord Ingram.

  “I just find it strange that I’m abed in the middle of the day,” answered Holmes. “But I don’t mind.”

  She was looking at him rather fondly—and that made his heart beat fast. They lay a few inches apart, he propped up on an elbow, she with her head on a pillow, a hand under her cheek. He brushed a strand of her hair back from her forehead, taking care not to touch her elsewhere.

  “Is it true, what I once heard your sister say, that you don’t like to be embraced?”

  She took some time to think. “Sometimes Livia needs to hold someone, and I’m the only suitable person nearby. When I was little, I used to wriggle out of her arms and escape to a corner of our room. But it wasn’t so much that I couldn’t stand being held as that I didn’t want to be held indefinitely. Later I taught myself to count to three hundred to mark five minutes—which helped me to realize that she needed only about half that time. I can take two to three minutes of being held. But Livia remains hesitant to this day—she’s still scarred by my bolting away from her embrace.”

  He would be, too.

  In fact, sometimes he felt scarred by her, even though she had never done anything except be an excellent friend.

  She lifted her hand and hesitated for a moment—as if she expected to be brushed aside—before she reached across and touched the back of her hand to his jawline. “I know I’ve said this, but you shouldn’t have come.”

  “I know. I’ve lost my mind.”

  She tsked. “But I guess I can’t be entirely displeased, especially given that . . . What do you call that thing you did?”

  “Madam, I did more than one thing to you.”

  “You know the one I mean. I don’t think they did that even in Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  “You should give Sodom and Gomorrah more credit: After living there, Lot’s daughters thought nothing of incest.”

  She laughed—and giggled again after a moment. “My, you are a wittier man in the vicinity of a bed.”

  Now it was he who grinned. “Maybe I’m just more relaxed after a good roll in the hay.”

  “Which reminds me . . .” She climbed above him. “Is there time to do it again?”

  * * *

  “I did not,” protested Charlotte.

  “Yes, you did,” insisted Lord Ingram, half-laughing. “You told me I was odd-looking. Said Roger Shrewsbury had the perfect face but mine was just odd.”

  “No, I wrote that everyone’s face was odd to me. And Roger’s was odd, too, because it possessed near-perfect symmetry, which is highly unusual.”

  “And how is that different from saying that he has the perfect face?”

  She studied his face with pleasure, because it was so much more arresting and magnetic than Roger Shrewsbury’s. “Have I told you lately, my lord, that, compared to you, Mr. Shrewsbury is a sadly inadequate lover?”

  A beatific smile spread slowly across his face. “I apologize, but a thousand gardens just bloomed in my soul.”

  She returned the smile. “I’m not sure why, but I’m beginning to wallow in this particular pettiness of yours.”

  She wasn’t sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions—everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly, mutual delight, this she wouldn’t mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.

  Alas, they could not cocoon themselves off for much longer from the realities they faced. Soon her lover honored her request from earlier and recounted what had happened at Stern Hollow, culminating with his departure.

  “Things have progressed faster than I thought,” she murmured.

  “If I hadn’t left when I did, the next time you saw me would have been in jail.”

  She traced a finger along his brow. “Chief Inspector Fowler is convinced that you would have killed a wife who came to you carrying another man’s child. But what would you have done if Lady Ingram had indeed returned in such a state?”

  “The thought alone gives me nightmares.”

  “But you would have taken in the child, in the end.”

  He expelled a breath. “Of course. I was such a child.”

  It was hardly analogous. His parents had had that tacit understanding Chief Inspector Fowler had referred to, with none of the acrimony that had characterized his own marriage. But he would never have blamed the child. Would have done his best to make sure that it was treated with kindness and generosity.

  She settled a hand on his arm. “Let me tell you something. I met Roger Shrewsbury a year before I met you—and idly thought that perhaps someday I’d kiss him to see what it was like. But then I saw you and immediately knew that it would be you and never him.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. I didn’t permit him to kiss me at any point in our acquaintance. But that’s not all I’m going to tell you.”

  He kissed her slowly. “Frankly, Holmes, I don’t know how you can possibly improve on what you have already told me.”

  “Have some faith, Ash,” she admonished. “Now, when I said someday, at the time I thought that meant when I reached twenty, or some similar ripe old age. And then, do yo
u remember the ink incident at your uncle’s estate?”

  “What ink incident?”

  “Two boys rigged up a device that could squirt ink a fair distance. They decided to try it on a girl. But things went awry, and they splattered ink all over themselves instead.”

  “Oh, that ink incident. Yes, I remember.”

  “I’d observed ink stains on the boys’ hands, in quantities too large to be attributable to any normal writing. And then, just before the ink incident, you, on whose hands I’d only seen traces of dirt from working on the Roman villa, also sported visible ink stains. And when the incident happened, when the boys were flailing about in shock and confusion, you were the only one, other than me, who didn’t laugh.”

  “You didn’t admire my restraint?”

  She had been rather lost for a moment, riveted by his aloof silhouette, of the gathering yet very much apart. “I was busy studying the device to see which girl they had targeted. Did you know it would have been Livia?”

  “Had it been you, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble—re-engineering their device ruined my shirt.” He sighed. “I didn’t think Miss Olivia would have cared for the experience.”

  “No, she would have been humiliated and traumatized. In any case, when I woke up the next morning, I found myself in an unholy hurry to kiss you. I couldn’t wait another week, let alone another seven years.”

  He gazed at her for a while. And, with a murmured “Thank you,” wrapped his arms around her.

  For precisely two minutes and not a second more.

  * * *

  “Stay awhile longer,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere yet.”

  Lord Ingram wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Holmes speaking in such a tone. She sounded almost . . . anxious. He snapped his braces in place and reached for his waistcoat. “I came with a citron tart and the shirt on my back. Somehow I don’t think Sherrinford Holmes’s clothes would fit me.”