“May I?” the woman asked, pointing at the chair. She had a voice like bonfire smoke, rich and earthy, tinged with ember.
And she was, interestingly, an American.
I nodded, gave her space, watched as she sank down with grace. For a dangerous few moments, we simply stared at each other, barely a foot apart, and the full force of her astonishing beauty engulfed me. She was young, certainly younger than me, long-limbed, and full-lipped, and her hair was rich, black satin.
Her red mouth gave up its teasing curve, became a full smile with white teeth. Her throaty laugh incited a primal urge deep in my body.
Not a queen. This strange woman was too brutally captivating. More like an ancient goddess legions of people would drop to their knees and pray to. A powerful deity who blessed your crops and gave you rain and inspired love and lust for the heartbroken and lonely.
Or the sleep-deprived workaholics who can no longer have fun.
The raven-haired goddess was the first to break our stare-down, turning toward Eudora with an enigmatic expression. I flexed my fingers, dragged myself back from the delirious vision I’d been thrust into. Eudora’s speech reached me as if through miles of water.
“… It really is breaking news, and we all know how much he’d want us to…”
The older I got, the more tedious I found casual dating to be. The endless pursuit of a sexual partner was exhausting when the work hours were long and my job felt much too important to waste precious free time. Freya had been right about my dry spell. It had been more than a year since I’d indulged in sex, and that event had left me unsatisfied and frustrated. Probably because it’d been a long time since I’d met a woman who inspired real lust—wild and uncontrolled. The more tightly I restrained myself, the less I felt like I deserved finding that in another person. Aloofness was my preferred armor. An unfortunate trait I’d inherited from my father.
“… Of course we’re coming up with a plan. Of course, Robert, let me finish…”
The woman shifted in her seat next to me, and I caught her scent—warm, intoxicating, sunshine through a dense forest, leaves and wildflowers. Why was I sitting here surrounded by deerstalker hats? Why wasn’t I taking this woman on a date at an elegant restaurant in this gorgeous fucking city?
“Bernard will be told,” Eudora said. I blinked, trance-like. Blinked again, re-focusing on Eudora with real effort. What was she saying? Did she say—
“Bernard Allerton, of all people, would want to know what was happening, yes of course.”
I snapped to full attention—although not before noticing that the woman, too, seemed to perk up next to me, a slight lean forward like she’d spotted a rare bird in the sky. Eudora was attempting to quiet an agitated crowd.
“Let me begin again,” Eudora said sweetly. “Ten years ago, there was a great debacle when Doyle’s last living child died at the glorious age of 100. His son’s will did not mandate that the private papers in his possession needed to stay within the family. Bernard was our president at that time, and he fought valiantly to gain control of those papers, rightly claiming that the Society had a responsibility to steward his works for both private and public admiration.”
Without realizing it, I was leaning forward in my seat.
The woman did as well, upper body tilting more dramatically now.
“We did not win that fight,” Eudora said. “And they are now in the care of The British Museum.”
I made a mental note of that outcome. Bernard wasn’t the kind of man who took losses lightly.
“However,” she said as the chattering intensified. “Right before coming here, I received a call from James Patrick, the president of the Kensley Auction House in London. Doyle’s great-niece has discovered an extremely large collection of her great-uncle’s private papers beneath a trap door in her attic—and is moving ahead with auctioning them to a private owner. These are never-before-seen and a complete mystery to Doyle scholars.”
There are rare moments during an investigation when a genuine clue drops in your lap as if from the fucking sky. A solid clue, heavy with implication, with edges you can grip.
This felt like that clue.
“The auction will happen one week from today,” Eudora said. Hands rose like a college classroom filled with eager students. “Yes, I will try and get a message to Bernard. The problem being that his sabbatical is