A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

A trace of sadness shadowed his eyes. “No, you are right. It doesn’t matter now. Just go.”

Just go? Did he not know her at all? She pulled out the pistol she’d brought in her handbag. “If I leave, you’ll never let me see my children again. Better I kill you and carry on as a grieving widow.”

He seemed neither surprised nor discomfited at the sight of a firearm aimed at his forehead. “Nobody will believe you a grieving widow. Also, should a gunshot ring out, you’ll never leave this place except in custody. There are men stationed both on the street and on the other side of the door leading into the hotel. There are no other exits. You kill me, and our children lose both parents.”

She chewed the inside of her lip.

“Not to mention that Bancroft is on his way. You fall into his hands and there will be no public murder trial for you—you will only wish you had one. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste a moment.”

The pistol shook. Was this really the end? Had she worked so hard and endured so much for this? “I have despised you for a long time. Everybody else understands a Society marriage for what it is. But you, nothing less than true love would do for you, would it? Well, I’ve had enough of your ‘gentlemanly’ reproach. Long may you rot in hell.”

“The carriage outside is at your disposal,” he said, his tone as mild as ever. “I wouldn’t, however, try to go home and abduct the children. They are already elsewhere.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger, the last bit of metal resistance giving away.

He moved not a muscle. “Remember Bancroft. This is your only chance to flee. Once he has you, I will not be able to intercede on your behalf.”

Her entire arm trembled. It would be beautiful, the sight of a bullet shattering that thick skull. What wouldn’t she give to see it.

A scream left her lips.

He only stared at her.

She shoved the gun back into her handbag, grabbed the pouch of jewels, and ran out. She couldn’t allow herself to fall into Bancroft’s hands. She couldn’t. That would truly be the end of everything. As long as she still had her freedom, this would prove to be only a temporary setback.

A minor defeat before the major victory to come.



Lord Ingram slowly unclenched his hand from the revolver in his pocket.

He, too, was now shaking.

The children had been removed from the town house, that was true. But there were no men outside ready to leap to his assistance, and he would not inform Bancroft of her departure until twenty-four hours had passed.

He owed her this much, the mother of his children.





Twenty-two





FRIDAY

Charlotte sat before her vanity, pinning up her hair and counting her chins.

The doorbell rang. Charlotte had risen an hour earlier than usual, in anticipation of Lord Bancroft’s visit. It would appear she had underestimated his impatience.

“Please show him to the parlor at Upper Baker Street,” she instructed Mr. Mears, who came to announce their visitor. “Tell him I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.”

When she reached Sherlock Holmes’s parlor, Lord Bancroft stood before an open window, smoking a cigarette.

“I didn’t realize it has become permissible these days to smoke in a lady’s parlor,” she said.

“My apologies,” he said, defenestrating the cigarette and closing the window—though he didn’t sound particularly remorseful. “Tea? Your butler insisted on making it.”

“Very good of him to adhere to civilized behavior. I’m glad he insisted on some muffins, too, so I wouldn’t be dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour only to starve.”

Lord Bancroft pushed his fingers through his hair—and for the first time in her life Charlotte saw a smidgen of physical resemblance between the brothers. “Now that you have tea and muffins, will you please tell me what in the world is going on?”

“What did Lord Ingram tell you?”

“Only that you’ll explain everything.”

“He must have said more than that.”

“Very well. At this point, I can’t be telling you anything you haven’t already guessed.” Lord Bancroft sat down and drained a cup of the tea Mears insisted on serving. Charlotte had the sensation he wished it were whisky instead. “Recently we have lost good agents, two men and a woman. It appeared that there was a traitor in our midst, but we couldn’t be sure who it was. This morning my brother banged on my door at first light and told me that the traitor was not among our ranks but in his household. And that his wife disappeared the night of the ball, more than twenty-four hours ago.”

“That’s all he said?”

“And then he left. I have no idea where he is.”

With his children, of course. It was the day after they lost their mother.

Lord Bancroft regarded her expectantly. Charlotte, halfway through a muffin, had the feeling she wouldn’t get to eat the rest until she had told Lord Bancroft everything. But she supposed the man had been waiting long enough.

“Very well then. Not too long ago, Sherlock Holmes’s name was in the papers, in a rather condescending article that insinuated that now all he did was domestic investigations of no consequence whatsoever. In fact, it was the day you kindly proposed.”

“I see.”

“Within an hour of your departure, a letter arrived at this address, delivered by courier. I recognized the envelope and the typewriter as Lord Ingram’s—but as he had no need to write Sherlock Holmes for a meeting, the letter had to have come from his wife. Which told me she had a highly private problem—most likely to do with a man.”

“And you agreed to see her?”

“Yes, I did. Or rather, Miss Redmayne did. Lady Ingram gave a heartrending story about a pair of youthful lovers—of which she was one—forcefully torn asunder by greedy parents and the expectations placed on a lady of good birth. And now her sweetheart was missing.

“She told us that his name was Myron Finch and that he was a man of illegitimate birth working in the accountancy profession. I knew of such a man, my half brother, though we’d never met. I even had his address, from a letter he had written to my father earlier in the Season. It seemed a terribly easy case. All I had to do was to visit his place of residence and I would know whether he truly was missing or whether he had simply tired of seeing Lady Ingram only in public and only once a year.

“From the very beginning, however, something about the case struck me as not quite right. I wondered about Lady Ingram’s story, about what she wasn’t telling us. In fact, after my sister informed me that she had seen Mr. Finch—or the man we thought to be Mr. Finch—and Lady Ingram within easy viewing distance of each other and neither appeared to recognize the other, I did not consider it impossible that Lady Ingram’s story had been pure hogwash.