Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,22

because he’d been married, albeit unhappily so and no longer intimate with his wife.

That had been the stated reason: His honor forbade it.

She believed in his sense of honor—the man was practically a wellspring of honor. But she also knew it hadn’t been the only reason.

He’d been . . . Well, not afraid, exactly, but wary of her, despite their long-standing friendship.

Unlike Inspector Treadles, who needed to think of society as just and justifiable, Lord Ingram had always been deeply ambivalent about the world in which they lived. But he’d yearned to belong, to find a place for himself. For this acceptance, he became not only acceptable, but the very embodiment of gentlemanly virtues.

She had been, in a way, the mirror image of him. As he’d left his rebellious days behind, she, too, had learned to speak and act in ways that were socially acceptable. But unlike his transformation, hers was only superficial. And she’d regarded his profound changes not with awe or gladness, but with skepticism.

Is this really what you want? Is this really who you are?

She’d never posed those questions in the open, but over the years he must have heard them resoundingly. Had he approached a different woman, greater physical proximity might signify just that. But getting closer to her would force him to face his doubts, otherwise ruthlessly locked away, on whether there wasn’t another way to live, one that didn’t clap his soul in irons.

And now this man who had not wanted to examine his misgivings and who had therefore carefully kept his distance, had kissed her three times in a row.

What choice had he made? The choice to overturn all the other choices he had made in his entire life?

* * *

Miss Olivia Holmes groaned as she flexed her right hand. Her fingers were stiff and cold, which they often were in winter, but today every muscle in that hand hurt from having been made to labor since early morning.

On the desk before her lay ten more pages of her manuscript. She made sure the newest page was properly blotted. Then she rolled her wrist, rotated her shoulders, rose to her feet with another groan, and carried the pages across the room she’d once shared with Charlotte to hide them in a trunk.

Transferring her Sherlock Holmes story from the bundle of notebooks in which it had been drafted onto proper manuscript pages had seemed a monumental task. Yet in little more than eighteen hours of work, split between two days, she’d managed to reach the two fifths point in the . . . novel.

My novel, she tried to make herself say. I’ve written a novel.

A story seemed a small thing, but a novel had heft. If nothing else it testified to its creator’s persistence, that she was stubborn enough to string tens of thousands of words together in the fervent hope that they would form a cohesive whole that not only made sense, but entertained.

Enthralled.

She caressed the edges of the pages already concealed beneath Charlotte’s winter dresses. The stack was reassuringly thick, crisp and dense against its nest of silk and wool. She didn’t know why she’d thrown herself headlong into duplicating her work by hand; after all, she wasn’t in any great hurry to submit it—and have it come back rejected.

No, she was lying to herself here. She did know why she copied for hours on end, hunched over her desk, the sandwich that should have been her lunch still largely untouched. After a glorious, if also terrifying adventure in France in the company of Charlotte and a number of their friends, Livia was back home, where she least wished to be.

And yesterday morning, just before she departed London, Mr. Stephen Marbleton, the young man she loved, and whom she believed to love her equally in return, had told her that they were too hopeless a case. That he would no longer keep in touch with her.

Livia had been instantly heartbroken, and yet . . . strangely calm. She’d told Mrs. Watson, who accompanied her home disguised as a lady’s companion, that she believed it very wise of Mr. Marbleton to act as he had. Instead of living on false hope and eventually being hurt and disappointed anyway, now their courtship had ended and she need no longer dread its eventual demise.

Mrs. Watson had comforted Livia as best as she could. And then, Livia had arrived home and no one had cared particularly that she was back or that she wanted to cry