The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(35)
The paintings were all appealing, forged or not, and I was disappointed when the screens shut off again.
August must’ve seen my face. “They’re lovely,” he said in that voice I hated, the one where he was pretending to be himself.
“Yes,” Holmes said, to my surprise. “The Last of August. Funny, it’s beautiful. They all are. And Leander was attempting to track down the supposed forger, examine their studio, find evidence that Langenberg’s renaissance is a fake one?”
“That was his specific operation, yes.” Milo nodded to Peterson, who began packing up the cart. “For his safety, I wasn’t told more than that. But Lottie, this ring runs the length and breadth of Europe. Berlin is a fair place to start, of course, but I know for a fact that he was exploring connections in other cities. Budapest. Vienna. Prague. Krakow. This is a massive undertaking, and he could quite literally be anywhere. Yes, he stopped sending emails to Jamie’s father, but he could be in deep enough that he doesn’t want to risk exposure. Sending lengthy daily reports to your best friend, last name Watson, isn’t exactly the height of subtlety.”
“He called me Lottie,” she said to him, a plea in her voice. “In his message. He never calls me Lottie. He didn’t leave me a present when he left.”
“Darling, everyone calls you Lottie.” He stood. “Don’t be a child. Leander could very well be in over his head. He could, in fact, be in danger. But he has been before, and he will be again. It’s his job. I won’t make it my business. Especially not when I’m in such a precarious position with Hadrian already. Do you think it was easy explaining to him that Leander had just suddenly decided on a sojourn outside the country of his own volition, and not because he was two seconds from stumbling on information that would uncover Hadrian Moriarty’s dirty dealings? No. I have a line to walk here.”
“This isn’t that missing giraffe fiasco in Dallas, or that piracy case in Wales. This—it feels different. He disappeared from our house.”
“And Father says he’s fine,” Milo said, as though that was an irrefutable argument. “I know you’re concerned, but I need to focus my extraprofessional efforts in a single direction. Honestly, Lucien is much more of a concern right now. If there’s any chance he was involved in Mother’s poisoning . . . and who knows? That threat could involve Leander as well. You can’t argue that it would hurt for me to double down on Lucien Moriarty and on our family’s security. Our mother is in danger, and while I know that she isn’t Lottie’s favorite person”—Holmes flinched—“I also know she doesn’t want her dead. My men on the ground are examining the security breach. I’m getting weekly reports. I’m nearly done weeding through our staff. My concern is that Lucien is in Thailand, getting through to his men somehow, and I need to find out how.”
“Which means?” August asked.
“Which means I’m headed to Thailand. Tonight. I need my own eyes on the situation.” He smiled thinly. “I’ll be back soon. I do have a war to run, you know.”
I remembered Alistair saying that. I was the architect of several wars. Clearly the impulse to take on the world ran through the Holmes family. But his sister didn’t have his same scope of his ambitions. Hers had a laser focus.
Milo was giving his sister a rundown of what agents she could turn to if she needed help, though I wasn’t sure if she was listening. For his part, August was preoccupied, his eyes fixed on the cart as Peterson rolled it out the door.
“We have that lunch with Phillipa, which I’m sure will be totally fine and not at all awful and insane. And then Holmes and I are going to the East Side Gallery tonight,” I told August, though she and I hadn’t discussed it. “That professor, Nathaniel, had a standing appointment with Leander. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when he doesn’t show up. Especially because—is he that dealer that Leander approached? Before he left?”
But August was hardly listening. “He trusts me,” he said. “He just . . . laid all of that information out, about my family, like it was nothing. He trusts me not to tell them what he knows or what he’s doing.”
I looked at him sharply. “Will you?”
“No,” he said, barking a laugh. “I never would. I told you I came here to make peace, and I meant it. He’s just never confided in me like that before. I don’t know what changed.”
Holmes was touching Milo’s shoulder, leaning forward to say something in his ear. He shook his head, and kissed her briefly on the cheek. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, and with a nod to us, he left.
“Congratulations, August. You’ve been given codeword clearance to the file on your own family.” She tugged at her CHEMISTRY IS FOR LOVERS shirt. “Can we please get on with our day? It’s already seven a.m., and I want to have this wrapped up by midnight.”
HOLMES ASKED AUGUST AND ME BACK TO THE ROOM TO “strategize” before our lunch with Phillipa, but August begged off, saying he needed to work.
“On what? You don’t exactly do anything.” Holmes raised her eyebrow at the look I shot her. “What? He talks constantly about how he does nothing. I don’t see how it’s impolite for me to acknowledge that fact.”
He put his hands firmly on her shoulders, like he was her tutor again. “Charlotte. I don’t have any work to do. I’m—very politely—trying to ditch you so I can get an hour to myself. Unlike the two of you, I start to feel ragged after too much of all this togetherness.”