The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(16)

When Leander found me, I’d taken a hatchet from the toolshed and started looking for something else to do.

“Jamie,” he said. He was smart to say it from a distance.

“Leander,” I said. “Not now.” There was enough deadfall under the trees to do the job. I started kicking it into a pile, looking for the biggest, thickest branches, the ones that would put up a fight.

“What are you doing?”

I stole a glance at him. He’d stuffed his hands in his pockets, and his roguish smile was nowhere to be seen. “I’m expressing my anger in a healthy way,” I said to him, the air quotes visible. “So leave me the hell alone.”

He didn’t. He took a step closer. “I can get you a sawbuck from the shed.”

“No.”

“Or a coat.”

“Fuck off.”

Another step. “I could get you a bigger ax?”

At that, I stopped. “Yeah, okay.”

We worked in silence, cutting the brush off the thicker branches, weeding out the pieces with knots. There wasn’t a stand anywhere near the house, so I braced my first piece on the ground, piling up rocks to keep it upright. Then I lifted the ax above my head and brought it down, hard.

I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face, couldn’t hear anything but the blood in my head. Leander set the next piece up, and I split that, too, and the next, and the next, feeling the hot pull in my shoulders build until it broke down into incredible, brain-numbing exhaustion. I stopped to catch my breath. I had bleeding blisters on both hands. I felt, for the first time in days, like myself, and I let that feeling wash over me for a minute before it too disappeared.

“Well,” Leander said, brushing off his clothes, “it’s too bad they only have gas fireplaces in that house, or you’d be quite the hero.”

I sat down on the woodpile. “I don’t need to be a hero.”

“I know,” he said. “Sometimes, though, it’s easier to be one than to be a person.”

Together, we looked up to the looming house on the hill.

“I thought Sherlock Holmes kept bees,” I said. I could open all the apiary doors. I could funnel them into that massive, awful dining room and let them build honeycombs down the walls. “I don’t see any bees.”

“His cottage is my sister Araminta’s now. It’s down the lane,” he said. “I don’t go all that often. She doesn’t much like visitors.”

I lifted an arm experimentally, then stretched it. “I guess you got all the friendly genes in the family.”

“Alistair has his small share, along with the family home.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice. “But yes, you’re right. I have friends. I throw parties. I, shockingly, leave my house on occasion. And, if my deductions are correct, I’m the only Holmes in recent memory to fall in love.”

I opened my mouth to ask about Charlotte Holmes’s parents, then thought better of it. If the two of them were in love, it seemed like it was beside the point.

“Are you still with him?” I paused. “It was a him, right?”

Leander sighed, and sat down next to me. The woodpile shifted under our combined weight. “What is it that you want from Charlotte?”

“I—”

He held up a finger. “Don’t give me ‘boyfriend’ or ‘best friend’ or any of those other vagaries. Those terms are too loosely defined. Be specific.”

I wasn’t going to say either of those things; I was about to tell him to stay out of our business. But it wasn’t our business, anymore.

“She makes me better. I make her better. But right now we’re making each other worse. I want to go back to how it was before.” It sounded simple when I said it like that.

“Can I give you some advice?” Leander asked, and his voice was like the night around us, cloaked and sad. “A girl like her wasn’t ever a girl—and still, she is one. And you? You’re going to get yourself hurt either way.”

Speaking of vagaries. “What do you mean?”

“Jamie,” he said, “the only way out is through.”

I was too exhausted to talk it through further, so I changed the subject. “Have you been learning anything? From your contacts, I mean. Anything useful to take back to Germany?”

His eyes narrowed. “Of a sort. I learned that I need to have a word with Hadrian Moriarty. But then, I imagine I’m not alone in that.”

Hadrian Moriarty was an art collector, a high-class swindler, and, as I’d learned this fall, a frequent and valued guest on European morning talk shows. I wasn’t surprised to hear he was involved in an art scandal.

“And everything’s okay? I heard someone yelling about leaving.” I looked down. “I know it’s not my business.”

“It’s not,” Leander said, but he patted me on the shoulder. “After all that hard work, you’ll sleep well tonight. Though I suggest you do it alone, and that you lock your door. And then put a chair against it.”

“Wait.” I paused. “You and that guy. Are you two still together? You never said.”

“No.” He touched my shoulder briefly and stood to go. “We never were. He didn’t—he’s married, now. Or was. And is again.”