Page 27 of The Hollow of Fear

Someone was whimpering,pitiful, wounded sounds.

Mrs. Watson. She clamped a hand over her mouth, her mind a battlefield of fear and chaos.

Miss Holmes stood by the secretary, sealing a note. “Ma’am, will you kindly hand this to the messenger?”

Her request pulled Mrs. Watson out of her paralysis. Yes, disaster had fallen. And no, it was not the time to hide in a dark corner, rocking herself.

“Of—of course.” She’d forgotten entirely that the messenger was waiting for a reply.

She did not forget to tip the boy. When he’d left, she rushed back to the sitting room, where Miss Holmes already had two fingers of whisky waiting for her.

“Oh, thank you, my dear.” She finished the entire glass in one continuous gulp, her eyes watering from the fiery eau-de-vie.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Please don’t worry about me. I am most awfully unhappy but I shall be fine. We must think only of Lord Ingram now. And goodness gracious, those poor children of his.”

It was a moment before Mrs. Watson could go on. “And you, Miss Holmes, are you all right?”

“As of yet, nothing has happened to Lord Ingram,” said Miss Holmes quietly. “I will be busy in the coming days. And I will require a great deal of help. May I count on you, ma’am?”

“Of course!” said Mrs. Watson, almost shouting.

Had Miss Holmes some floors to scrub, Mrs. Watson would have attacked them with religious fervor, if only to keep herself from sinking further into this pit of anxiety. A “great deal” of work to help her help Lord Ingram? Mrs. Watson would have climbed over a mountain of fire to pitch in.

“Excellent. You’ll need your notebook to write everything down.”

Mrs. Watson leaped up to retrieve her notebook. The more tasks, the better.

Miss Holmes dictated for the next forty minutes. Some of what she needed would have occurred to Mrs. Watson herself, others she couldn’t even guess the purposes of. Why, for instance, did they need to hire two houses in London, in two very different districts?

Miss Holmes gave no explanations and Mrs. Watson asked for none. When they finished, Miss Holmes rose. “Mrs. Watson, will you help me dress?”

It was only a while later, when Mrs. Watson was alone in the sitting room again, that she had the sense that something else was wrong. She paced for several minutes before her gaze fell on the tea tray: They had been about to have their afternoon tea when the messenger had arrived with Miss Livia’s note.

And in all that time since, Miss Holmes hadn’t touched anything that had been laid out: slices of butter cake, plum cake, and Madeira cake lay neglected on their respective plates.

Before the immensity of Lord Ingram’s misfortune, Miss Holmes, with her otherwise constant and unfailing adoration of baked goods, had lost her appetite.

The dread in Mrs. Watson’s heart froze into terror.

Lord Ingram gazedat his wife.

He had not believed Miss Olivia Holmes. Seeing her petrified bewilderment and feeling the tremor in her hand had not shaken him from the belief that it must all be an enormous misunderstanding.

Andonlyan enormous misunderstanding.

His wife’s dead eyes killed that particular belief.

Alexandra, her name came to him unbidden. He had not thought of her as such in a very long time. Had referred to her, even in the privacy of his mind, only as his wife. And not with the pride and possessive zeal of a new husband, who had held her and whispered,My wife.

My wife.

My wife.

My wife.

My heart, he had meant then,my sky,the center of my universe.