The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(12)

“Germany,” he said, picking the thought out of my head. “Charlotte was right on that count. Their government asked me to uncover a forgery ring that may or may not be churning out work by a German painter from the thirties. I’ve been in rather deep cover, and for a long time. It’s a delicate business. You’re winning the trust of some dangerous people, and you need to know how to talk to skittish art students ripping off Rembrandts to make a living.” Unexpectedly, he grinned. “It’s quite fun, honestly. Like playing Whac-a-Mole, only with guns and a wig.”

Holmes tugged at the cuff of his shirt, exposing the bruise beneath. “Yes. Fun.”

“Eat your bacon, or I won’t explain.” He pushed her plate toward her. “Like I said, I’ve not been involved with the most genteel crowd these past few months. And honestly I didn’t really want to take this case to begin with. As interesting as it is, it involves so much legwork, and my legs are happiest on my ottoman. I like a pretty little puzzle as much as the next man, but this . . . well, and then I had lunch with your father, Jamie, and he persuaded me to take it. Like old times, he said, when we were sleuthing together in Edinburgh. He has a family now, so he’s less mobile than I am, but I’ve been sending him daily emails, and he’s helping me put it together from afar.”

“Really?” I asked, bemused. “He’s helpful?” My father was excitable, irresponsible, a little touched in the head. I had some trouble imagining him as an analytical genius.

Leander raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think I would involve him if he wasn’t?”

I raised my eyebrow right back. My father might be helpful, sure, or he might just be the audience for Leander’s magic show. With Holmeses, you never really knew where you stood.

Next to me, mine was ripping up her biscuit. “Yes, but the bruises. And the kissing.”

“Deep cover,” her uncle said in a dramatic voice. “Deep, deep cover.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Then why are you here, in England? Not that I’m not happy to see you.”

Leander stood and gathered our plates. “Because your father has contacts I can’t gain access to through my illegitimate means. And because I wanted to get a good look at Jamie, here, since the two of you are now attached at the hip. Morning and night, apparently.”

Holmes shrugged, her shoulders thin under her shirt, and she brought a sliver of biscuit to her mouth. I watched her, the line of her arm, how her lips still looked bee-stung from the night before. Or was I imagining that detail, coloring it in because I needed to make it a story, to see cause and effect where there wasn’t any?

She’d almost kissed me. I’d wanted her to. Everything was fine.

“If it matters at all,” Leander said from the sink, rolling up his sleeves, “I approve.”

Holmes smiled at him, and I smiled at him, because neither of us knew what to say.

It was like the night before existed in some other universe. A lone hour in a sea of awkwardness where we could talk to each other the way we used to, and now that it was over, we were adrift again.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS PASSED SLOWLY, AS MOST PUNISHMENTS do. During the day, I read the Faulkner novel I’d brought in a sunny alcove off the servants’ quarters. Those rooms stood mostly empty now, so I didn’t have to worry about being found. Which was a relief. I’d run out of things to say to Holmes’s parents fairly quickly. Even if I found her mother terrifying, I didn’t hate her. She was ill and worried about her daughter.

Then Alistair told us that Emma’s condition had begun to deteriorate. She stopped eating meals with us. One night before dinner, I found Leander giving directions to nursing staff as they hauled a hospital bed in through the front door.

“I thought she had fibromyalgia,” Holmes murmured over my shoulder. “Fibromyalgia doesn’t require a live-in team. I thought—I thought she was getting better.”

I managed not to jump. She’d taken to doing that, to ghosting at the edges of whatever room I was in, and then, as soon as I noticed her, giving an excuse and running away. So I didn’t say anything, didn’t try to comfort her, just watched Leander grimace as the orderly crashed the bed into the doorframe.

Upstairs, a man’s raised voice said, But the offshore accounts—no, I refuse. Was it Alistair’s? A door slammed.

It didn’t matter. By the time I turned to her, Holmes was already gone.

I found Leander later in the living room. “Living room” might have been too friendly a name for what it was—a black sofa; a low, expensive-looking table; a cowhide rug beneath them. I’d been prowling the halls, looking for my absent best friend, and found her uncle and mother instead.

I was surprised. A hospital bed had just come through the front door, and I’d expected that she’d be in it. But no—she was on her back on the sofa, the heels of her hands pressed against her forehead, while Leander loomed over her.

“This is the last favor I’ll do for you,” he was saying, in a low, furious voice. “For the rest of our lives. This is the last one. I want you to understand that. No school tuition. No bailouts. You could have asked me for anything, but this—”

She dragged her hands down her face. “I know what the word ‘last’ means, Leander,” she said, and in that moment, she sounded exactly like her daughter.