A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2)

“Which leaves two possibilities. Either you feel a certain apprehension with regard to your husband or you are here to see Sherlock about a man who is not your husband.”

Mrs. Watson’s fingers dug into the sides of her chair. Miss Holmes had already said earlier that it wouldn’t be about Lord Ingram, which meant . . .

Lady Ingram bit her lower lip. “I’m surprised Mr. Holmes did not name the exact reason I’m here.”

“Sherlock wishes only that you should have confidence in his ability, Mrs. Finch, not to tell you why you have come to see him.”

Had Mrs. Watson received Lady Ingram and uttered this exact sentence, she would not have been able to prevent her words from dripping with judgment. Penelope, who adored Lord Ingram just as much, somehow managed to sound only reassuring and matter-of-fact.

“Very well then,” said Lady Ingram, taking an audible breath. “I have come to consult Mr. Holmes about a man, and that man is not my husband.”

Beside Mrs. Watson, Miss Holmes picked up a slice of plum cake and took a bite. Mrs. Watson stared at her. Lady Ingram could potentially reveal information that would give Lord Ingram grounds for divorce. Were he a free man, he could marry Miss Holmes. Yet the latter seemed far more interested in cake.

“As Mr. Holmes inferred, I am advantageously married,” said Lady Ingram. “That is the consensus and you will find no disagreement from me on that point. Pedigree, wealth, and good form—my husband possesses them all in abundance.

“But . . . perhaps I should tell you something of my girlhood. Mr. Holmes is again correct here: My parents were in a perilous state of finance. We couldn’t afford anything. And yet because of our name, because we were offshoots of an illustrious family, appearances had to be kept at all times.

“I have two younger brothers. For as long as I can remember, it had been my duty to marry well, so that they would not go through life under the same yoke of penury. But I’d hoped for a miracle. That we would, out of the blue, find ourselves beneficiaries of a generous settlement by some distant relative we’d never heard of. Not because I was a romantic who disdained the idea of marrying for money, but because I was already in love.”

Mrs. Watson sucked in a breath. Miss Holmes continued to graze on her plum cake, as if in their parlor sat a little old lady who couldn’t find her favorite slippers.

“He was poor—not to mention illegitimate,” Lady Ingram went on, her voice turning softer, dreamier. “But he was kind, sweet and sunny in temperament, and appreciative of any drop of good fortune that fell his way. We met when he was an apprentice bookkeeper. His ambition was to be an accountant in London, to be successful enough to comfortably support a wife and a family.

“A simple life, that was all he wanted. And I found it impossibly appealing. Very little in my own life wasn’t about pretenses. To give a dinner meant that the rest of the month we subsisted on bread and thin soup. Another piece of my mother’s jewelry must become paste before my father can have a new coat. One year we were so short on funds that we hired out our house and lived in a hovel, while telling everyone that we’d taken off for a tour of southern France and Italy.

“I yearned for the honest, uncomplicated life he envisioned for himself. How wonderful it would be to live as ourselves, complete nobodies who wanted only the shelter we found in each other. But of course my parents were apoplectic. My father said he would never be able to hold up his head again if it was known his daughter had married a bastard. My mother was horrified that I would be so selfish as to let my brothers suffer, when I could ensure a far better future for them.

“I was bitter. My beloved was . . . He apologized. He said he’d always known it was a futile dream and he should never have let himself hope, however briefly.”

In spite of herself, Mrs. Watson felt a pang of sympathy. She, with her history on the stage, had been an irregular candidate for marriage. But her husband had been the last surviving member of his immediate family. What if his parents had still been living? Would they have been distressed about his choice? What if he’d had siblings who took offense that he would bring such a woman into the fold? It would have made their marriage an agonizing choice—and he had been a man with an independent income, not a young girl trained from birth to defer to the will of her family.

Lady Ingram was silent for some time. “In any case, six months later I was in London for my first Season. Another few months and I was married. Before my wedding, we agreed that after I became another man’s wife we would not meet or write to each other. I also told him I would not seek his news, as to do so would be . . . I did not believe my husband would have been pleased to learn that I kept a close eye on the doings of an erstwhile sweetheart.

“But we did settle on something. Each year, on the Sunday before his birthday, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we would both walk by the Albert Memorial. And that would be how we would know that the other person was still alive and still well enough to be up and about.”

So much for Mrs. Watson’s hope that Lady Ingram would give her husband grounds for a divorce. If this was all Lady Ingram had done, it would take a far more thunderous moralizer than Mrs. Watson to condemn her for her conduct—at least with regard to this “erstwhile sweetheart.”

“We followed our agreement strictly. Once a year we passed each other before the memorial, with nothing but a nod.” Lady Ingram laced her fingers together. The column of her throat moved. “This year he was not there.”

Mrs. Watson’s hand came up to her own throat. Miss Holmes nibbled some more at her cake.

“If for some reason one or both of us could not make it, the agreement called for us to put a notice in the Times. Every year, in the weeks leading up, I always scan the notices religiously and save the papers, in case I miss something. As soon as I went home that day, I looked through all the papers again. Nothing.

“I had no idea what to do. It has been more than six years since I last spoke to him. I don’t know where he lives or what he does for a living. I don’t know whether he’s still a bachelor or married with children. I’ve put notices in the papers but have heard nothing. I’m plagued with terrible thoughts, wondering if he is . . . no more, but I can’t bring myself to go to the General Register Office to search for a death certificate.

“Of course, the far more likely explanation is that he outgrew a youthful infatuation—in fact, every year I was surprised to see him. But it isn’t as if he would fear recriminations on my part, if he were to declare that he no longer wished to see me. In fact, it would be only natural, if he’d met someone else.”