A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(24)

Watson stepped up behind me. “We can go to mine,” he said, his breath hot against my ear.

Anwen, Rupert, Theo. The case. I couldn’t let anyone see me this vulnerable. I had to stay here—this night, this self, this boy. Even now he had moved his lips down to my neck, his arm keeping me fitted against him. As I fumbled my keys from my bag, I felt too hot, too tight in my body, and when I finally had the door open we spilled into the stairwell like a thunderstorm.

“Quiet,” I said, and he whispered hoarsely, “There’s no way we weren’t heard,” and still it didn’t matter, how could it—I pushed him up against the wallpaper and he was laughing, bright-eyed, as I pushed his jacket down his shoulders and began undoing the buttons of his shirt. He hissed at my fingers, cold against his chest.

“Hi,” he said, stilling my hands against him.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Hi,” I said again. I was a bit unsure why we were greeting each other.

“God.” He ducked down to kiss me, then pressed his lips against one temple, the other, the top of my head. “I—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He laughed again, in disbelief. “We can’t go in, not like this. We can’t go back outside, it’s pouring. And I don’t want to leave you. Not yet.”

I took a steadying breath. “Let’s sit and wait a moment. We can . . . straighten ourselves out, and then go in and to my room and he won’t suspect anything.” Of course, we both knew I was lying. My uncle, the private detective, would suspect everything, but he would at least wait until morning to make fun of me.

We settled ourselves on the top carpeted stair. Watson buttoned his shirt, blushing a little, murmuring something I couldn’t quite hear. I asked him to repeat himself.

“Maybe you should finish telling me your story,” he said. “About your elderly aunt. And the things you did as a child.”

“Do you want me to also pour a bucket of cold water over your lap?”

He grinned. “If you have one handy.”

“I don’t remember,” I said, running a hand over my hair to smooth it. “Oh. The theater.”

“The theater.”

“How she used to leave me and Milo, and go alone.” I took a steadying breath; I was still so distracted. “I wondered about it for years, you know. Once, late at night, she came back to our hotel room when my brother was already asleep. And she was weeping.”

Watson studied me. “Do you know why?”

“I asked her what was wrong,” I said, remembering that night. The heavy curtains. The polished sconces on either side of the out-of-date television. The twin beds the hotel had given us, and my aunt, who had insisted on sleeping on a rickety cot by the radiator. “She said she had been someone else for a time, and now she wasn’t. I think she might have been a bit drunk.”

Watson sighed, adjusting his collar. “I imagine that’s metaphorical,” he said.

“I put it out of mind, until that day I was telling you about. She’d asked me to see her before I left for Sherringford. More specifically, she asked me to see her ‘hives.’ I thought she meant that we would look at them and talk—someone might ask you down to see a café, for instance, but they mean to have a conversation. This wasn’t like that. She wanted me to work.”

“She put you in a suit,” Watson said. I could tell he liked the idea: the heavy white garment, the netted headdress, the gloves that grew your hands into a giant’s.

“She did. She led me out into the apiary. I was to help her transfer a hive. We had it stacked up, ready to be moved on a dolly . . .” I studied my boots, the toes pushing into the carpet two steps below me. “I’m usually very precise. I imagine I would be an obvious choice to help with a delicate operation.

“But it was odd. She didn’t offer help, just gave instruction. Load the hives. Move them slowly. She watched me, and all was going well until the wheels of the dolly I was pulling hit a rock. Two of the hives fell. Burst open. The bees began rioting. I panicked and pulled off my headgear and I was stung, and I hadn’t ever been stung before, and though I’m not the sort of allergic that needs to go to hospital, I’m allergic enough that I swelled.

“I wasn’t weeping. I was fascinated, in the middle of all that . . . destruction. And my aunt Araminta stood and watched me. After a minute or two, she brought me inside, gave me some tea. Pulled out the stingers with tweezers, washed my face with soap and water. Wished me luck at school, and off I went. I kept feeling as though I’d failed a test.

“We haven’t spoken much since then. Birthdays. Christmastime.” I dropped my head against his shoulder, and his arm went around me, an instinct. “Is that enough cold water for you?”

He squeezed my arm. “Why tell that story?”

“Leander says she’s planning a visit,” I said, “to meet with some shops here to sell her honey. Maybe she’s wanting to expand her business? I’m not sure. But she’ll be in the flat for a few days, sometime soon.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

“You’re into any Holmes you meet,” I said. “You want to add us to your anthropological study.”

“That’s not nice.”