Murder on Cold Street (Lady Sherlock #5) - Sherry Thomas Page 0,37

way I typically do,” he said softly.

She was silent.

“You’ve been able to count on my restraint—or rather, my cowardice—for so long, its absence must feel unsettling. It occurs to you that now there is no reason that I wouldn’t want more and more of you, so much so that you wouldn’t be able to hold me back, not without injuring my feelings or damaging our friendship.”

Would it not be so?

As if hearing her thought, he sighed. “You are assuming infinite time and infinite opportunities, but I have a less optimistic view of the future. Mr. Marbleton isn’t the only one over whom Moriarty has leverage. The mother of my children has now taken up with those sworn to oppose him—I don’t know when I will find myself drawn into his orbit again, if I am not already.”

He gazed at her, a steady, calm contemplation. “We live in a precarious present, Holmes.”

As the lead instigator of a large theft from Moriarty’s stronghold, she could not disagree with his assessment, but she remained silent.

He set down his plate and turned it a few degrees on the occasional table. “Do you remember the first time you and Mrs. Watson came to visit Stern Hollow?”

She did recall the occasion. They hadn’t seen each other for several months before that. He had shown her and Mrs. Watson the grounds and then he and Holmes had toured the kitchen garden, the part of his estate that most intrigued her.

“On that day, for the first time in a very long time, I felt something like happiness.”

All at once she had a startlingly clear recollection in her head. The two of them had been walking side by side, under a golden, unseasonably warm sun, past a row of lovely espaliered fruit trees that promised to yield legendary jams and puddings. She had been cajoling him to call on her at the cottage she and Mrs. Watson had hired nearby, during Mrs. Watson’s afternoon naps—in other words, investigating whether, with his wife out of the picture, he had become more receptive to the idea of sleeping with her.

You did not write for three months and you think I would be amenable to perform such services at your beck and call? he had answered in mock severity.

You did not write for three months, she had retorted. And you think I would be mollified with anything less than such services at my beck and call?

He had smiled at that. And she, who had not seen a true smile from him in years, had been transfixed by the luminosity in his eyes.

Was that when he first realized that he was no longer imprisoned by his marriage and could allow himself to be happy again?

“For too long I was fearful of getting too close to you,” said the man in front of her. “But I wish to cast aside that fear. I don’t want to look back and regret not being happier because I lacked courage.”

He leaned forward, and took her hands in his. His hands were rougher than those of most gentlemen, the hands of someone who never hesitated to pick up a shovel and dig for artifacts. Who had intensified his self-defense training because he lived in a precarious present, its veneer of normalcy liable to shatter at any moment.

Without realizing it, she rubbed her thumb across a row of calluses and felt a tremor beneath his skin.

Lifting one hand, he traced the shell of her ear with a fingertip. She bit the inside of her cheek as heat careened through her. His eyes met hers, his gaze gentle yet resolute.

“Ages ago, in one of your letters, you said that you did not understand why people resisted change, as everything in life must invariably change. Perhaps you understand that resistance better now—it isn’t change that we fear, but loss.

“Our friendship has never been a static entity. We have changed over the years and so has it. And it will continue to change in the coming days and years.”

He kissed her on her forehead, her lips, and then, her eyelids, which she didn’t realize she had closed. “But whatever happens, I will always be your friend.”

Eight

In the stark and starkly lit room, the dead looked stony, heavy.

The living, or one of them, at least, was scandalized.

The pathologist, a Dr. Caulfield, was whispering to Sergeant MacDonald, obviously about the prospect of letting a woman see two naked men without the latter’s prior consent. His breaths vapored, a fog of offended masculinity. Sergeant MacDonald,