The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(17)

I was beginning to put together a puzzle of my own.

Because history ran in circles, and my own life especially so, if Leander had been in love with my father. I thought of that list he’d made. #74. Whatever happens between you and Holmes, remember it is not your fault and likely could not have been prevented, no matter your efforts. I watched Leander Holmes walk up the hill to the house, and then I buried my head in my hands.

I LOCKED MY DOOR. I PUT A CHAIR AGAINST IT. I WENT TO bed alone, and woke up to find Charlotte Holmes curled up in a small, dark ball on my floor.

“Watson,” she said sleepily, lifting her head from the carpet. “You kept getting texts. So I tossed your phone out the window.”

The window in question was still open. A cold wind was driving through it. To my credit—to my everlasting credit—I didn’t wrap her in blankets, or scream, or demand answers, or douse the room in gasoline.

At least we were on the ground floor.

As coolly as I could, I got up, stepped over her, and pulled my phone from a rosebush. “Eight texts,” I said. “From my father. About Leander.”

“Oh.” Holmes sat up, rubbing her arms. “Can you close that? It’s freezing.”

I shut the window with a snap. “Apparently your uncle wasn’t in touch yesterday. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, except my father’s gotten an email from him every night for the last four months. He wants us to check in, make sure he’s okay.”

I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep myself from remembering Leander’s forlorn voice. My father. My father, who was perpetually rumpled, pleased with himself. My father who bumbled through two countries, a dead-end job, a number of awful mystery stories he wrote out longhand and then read to me, dramatically, on the phone, doing all the voices. How anyone could love him that way was the real mystery.

Holmes’s gaze flicked over me, assessing. “You saw him last.”

“I did?”

“Leander. He wasn’t at dinner. Neither were you.”

I’d taken two pieces of bread from the kitchen and gone to my room, unable to face a room full of scrutinizing eyes. “I guess I wasn’t.”

“No, the two of you were—” She peered at my hands. “Chopping wood? Really, Watson?”

“It was an outlet,” I said. She was shivering, so I pulled the duvet from the bed to put around her shoulders.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she snapped, tossing it off. “I forgot that if we don’t talk about your feelings every few hours, you devolve into a hipster lumberjack. Never mind how I’m feeling.”

“Yes, in fact, never mind how you’re feeling. Because it’s so easy to talk to you while you’re hiding from me all day, playing your violin in invisible closets, barricading your door and pretending you’re not there. I’m a marvel of sensitivity compared to you. You’re the one who picks a lock and kicks out a chair to sleep on my floor.”

“I did not,” she said. “I climbed in through that window.”

The chair was, in fact, still under the doorknob. “Why? Can you even tell me why you came in here last night?”

“I wanted to see you. I didn’t want to talk to you. So I waited until you were sleeping.” She said it like I was a moron. “How is that hard to understand?”

“Come on, weirdo,” I said, but my voice came out strained. Despite her blithe words, her eyes were full of something that looked too much like pain, and I hated that I had caused it. I was causing it now, just standing here. “Let’s go find your uncle. He’s probably sweet-talking the gardener, or teaching the neighborhood squirrels to sing.”

He wasn’t in the garden. He wasn’t in the kitchen, or the parlor, or the room with the pool table that everyone, horribly, referred to as the “billiards room.” The marble floors were cold under my feet, and so I walked quickly after Holmes, who had wrapped herself in a long, trailing robe the color of dust.

“He might’ve gone to run errands in Eastbourne,” I said as we approached the front hall.

With a sigh, she gestured to the window overlooking the grounds. “Of course he hasn’t. It rained last night, and there aren’t any fresh tire tracks in the drive. We might as well ask my father. There’s more than one way to leave the house, and Leander might’ve been in a hurry. We don’t know everything he’s found out while he’s been here.” She took off again, this time up the stairs to her father’s study.

“Everything? You’ve been listening in?” I asked, hurrying to catch up.

“Of course I’ve been listening. What else is there to do in this miserable house?”

“You weren’t avoiding me? You were eavesdropping?”

She thought about that one. “I might have been doing both.”

“Whatever. Keep going.”

“From what I can tell, Leander’s been gathering information to bolster the persona he’s adopted in Germany. Which cartels have which connections, which low-rent artists are known to forge on the side, who has connections to other cities and which ones. He’s tracking two forgers in particular, a Gretchen, and someone named Nathaniel.” She frowned. “Though maybe that’s his current boyfriend. Or both? That would be fascinating.”

“Holmes. Leander? Disappearing?”