Boneseeker (22 page)

###

Next morn

Henry

Arabella’s tiny form shakes despite the layers of coverlets. She collapsed the moment we made it to shore. Father reassures me it is mere exhaustion from the chaos of the past few days.

Who could blame her?

An attack on her life, my supposed infidelity and then the body in the river? Which she assumed to be mine?

I resist the urge to hold her and force myself to stay put beside her bed, my vigil for the past few hours. I snap open my watch; father will be re-appearing at any moment, making his rounds to check on her.

I fold my hands, struggling and detesting the feeling of helplessness. A newspaper lies on the table, along with my untouched breakfast of eggs.

The headline reads, ‘Body found in Hudson.’

‘A decaying corpse was found in the Hudson yesterday under a dubious set of circumstances.

The corpse’s foot, chained to a cement block, had kept the body submerged for an indeterminate amount of time.

It is currently undergoing autopsy before the name of the deceased will be released.’

Our names have mercifully been left out due to the very helpful chief inspector.

Arabella stirs and I drop the paper.

I sit at her side and slide her cold hand into mine.

Her eyes flutter open. “Henry?”

“I’m here love, it’s over. We’re all safe.”

She quickly sits; her eyes wide and wild.

“The body? Do we know which of the four it was?”

“It was badly decomposed, but from the size of the skeleton, we believe it to be Marston.”

“And John, where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

“The old sawbones is fine, too. He should be along any moment. He’s been more surly than usual. I expect his anxiety is getting the better of him. He’s off plotting with the chief inspector.”

Arabella stares plainly at my face. There’s something different in her eyes, as if a barrier has lifted.

Her face contracts; fear, relief, joy and then desire flit so fast I can scarcely keep up. Her bottom lip trembles as she fights for control, but no tears come.

She pulls me close, touching her lips to mine.

I pull back, “Please, you’ve been through such a shock. I don’t even know if you’re well—”

Her lips devour mine, and I surrender.

Arabella’s leg lifts to wrap around my waist, and I slide my shaking hand up her thigh. My fingertips trail upward, savoring the smoothness of her skin.

I’ve waited so long to touch her.

My breath is rattling in and out, hard and fast, my heart pounding in my ears.

My hands stroke higher onto her thigh. And then, in my fervor, ram into…something very hard.

Alarm kills my lust. I break the kiss.

“What is this?”

I don’t want to ask, to break this tentative breech in her protective bubble. But it feels like—

“A knife-holder? What else Henry? You really think I would leave myself unprotected?”

I silence her by covering her mouth with mine. Her lips part, opening wider for my entry.

A shudder courses down my back. I caress her lips, the top, the bottom; years of suppressed want pour out, saturating every touch.

My tongue explores her mouth, and she gives a quiet whimper.

Not a fearful sound. A sound releasing the glut of raw emotion and passion—subdued and tethered for far too long.

Her breath rises. Her panting matches my own, her hand on my chest, rising and falling with the sharp intakes of my breath.

She breaks the kiss. I trail down her neck, her collarbone.

“Henry, I don’t think humans are capable of fidelity.”

I laugh. “Utter nonsense. I assure you John Watson never strayed—neither on my mother, nor on Violet.”

I want her to stop talking. To reclaim her previous state of recklessness.

“We are just animals, Henry. Trying to continue our species. Trained to have more than one mate.”

My hands wind in her thick hair. “Anseranaie Cygnini.”

She stops, staring. “What?”

“Swans. Swan’s mate for life, Bella.”

Tears fill her eyes again and she smiles. The second time in two weeks. Miracles. Do. Occur.

I squeeze her hand. “I shall never stray, Bella. I’ve never wanted anyone or anything the way I want you. I cannot get you out of my head. Your smell. Your touch—please, Bella. Just say you’ll be mine. I don’t care if you marry me right now. I don’t care if it’s ten years.”

Her eyes change, lit with a new, acute fervor. Her lips trail to my ear. I vaguely register the moan, barely realizing it is mine. I whisper between breaths, “Well, please not ten years.”

She laughs quietly.

The door bursts open—slamming off the wall.

Father’s eyes widen in revelation. “Henry. I can’t leave the two of you alone for a moment.” His head hangs in disapproval, his foot tapping. “For goodness sake, make her decent.”

I right Arabella’s skirt, and help her to stand beside me.

“Father, I’m sorry. I know Arabella is not your choice. But it’s
not your
choice. I love her. It can’t be helped and isn’t something to be undone.”

Bella’s breathe sucks in with my confession.

Father’s eyes leap back and forth between us, and he sighs. “Holmes and I, have a most peculiar relationship. I…
we
…just…see the potential for problems between you.” His hands turn palm up, almost pleading.

“You hypocrite! How can you say that? You worked alongside him for years, foregoing marriage—”

“You are as close as a brother to him!” I insist. “Closer than his brother,” Bella murmurs.

He nods. “Yes, I am. And trying to imagine our inner workings, our struggles…molded into a male, female relationship….” He shakes his head. “It just seems impossible.”

Arabella steps away from me. Heat floods my face. She always obeys my father’s wishes more so than I.

Arabella whispers, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Father’s head jerks up. His mouth opens and closes. He bites his lip and nods, in ascension. He stares at her, unmoving.

“John.” Their eyes lock and hold, almost an embrace.

They stare with more familiarity than I’ve ever recognized.

He, with an empathy I didn’t think possible. Her, with a longing? Perhaps for his approval?

“John, please.” Arabella’s voice breaks. “I love him. I know I have the Holmes disposition ... stubborn. Rigid.”

“Immovable,” my father corrects. “Like trying to re-route gravity.”

She smiles and nods, her lips now trembling like her voice. “I want Henry more than any experiment, or calculation. Do you believe me?”

Father’s eyes shoot around her room. To the black powder, her microscope, her inks and pens. The black stains on her delicate fingers.

“He makes me better than I am. Better than I ever thought I could be and I ... I love him.”

Anger darkens his features. “Blast it. I told Holmes it was unnatural. To have him raise you. You belonged with other girls, in school. And not another female in the house, save a housekeeper.”

Arabella pleads, “John, please…listen to me.”

Pain shoots through my nose, followed by a detonation of anger. I clench my hands and pray for willpower.

Do not intervene. This is about more than you.

A singular tear slides down her cheek.

I shuffle, trying, trying not to touch her.

“I-I did my best to fit in at school. You know I did. I just ... couldn’t. I have nothing in common with those girls. You know that. Uncle did the best he could.”

“Uncle?” I interject.

“
Don’t
call him that. You only say that when you’re angry, Arabella.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Shh!” They both hiss in tandem.

She is Mycroft’s daughter?

Images of Holmes’s more brilliant, more stoic, even more self-absorbed brother blast in my head.

I feel as if I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, and nothing in my world is as I thought.

My heart suddenly beats with unexpected warmth towards Sherlock Holmes.

A new appreciation of him; that he, who was once compared to Babbage’s adding machine, was capable of selflessness after all.

“Arabella—he’s made indelible marks on your personality. I don’t know if they are compatible with matrimony. It surely wasn’t for him.”

Arabella’s eyes harden. “Fine. I wanted your approval, but do not need it.” She strides backward and firmly grasps my hand. “I am with Henry. You cannot stop us.”

A vein pulses on father’s forehead, and I tense, ready to step between them. I rise on the balls of my feet.

I nod, stepping closer to Bella. “I don’t want to disappoint you either, but I’m not leaving her.”

Father rolls his eyes, exhaling through his gritted teeth.

Bella’s voice is bitter. “What would you have had him do? When both my father
and
mother abandoned me? Send me to the orphanage or perhaps the workhouse? How very noble, Dr. Watson.”

I stare at father’s face; my stomach plummets to my boots. My father’s eyes glisten.

“No. I told him…to give you to
me
.”

Vanished

Abner Farmhouse

Bella

Cymbals crash beside my head.

I shoot to sitting, my nightdress clinging to my skin from the sweat that bathes my heaving chest. I blink and shake my head as the strobe blinks through my open window.

“Thunder. It’s a storm you fool.” I rub the bleary from my eyes and slide to the window, stripping off the shift. I stare out across the barnyard toward the woods.

Toward the dig.

Something shifts near the barn—my heart thunders against my chest as if the storm has shifted from the sky to my soul.

I blink. “It cannot be,” I whisper to the dark.

The giant lumbers from the barn into the woods.

I spin, flying to the armoire, wrestling on my only pair of riding trousers. A blaze of intuition sparks as the magnifying monocle, across the room, fairly screams to be picked up.

I walk to the mantle and jam it into my pocket.

I grab my pack and a lantern and in moments I’m darting down the steps, out into the vertical wind.

My rational mind cautions,
You should wake Henry
.

“I shall never catch him then.” I run faster, breaking the tree-line.

I see the outline of his large back lumbering steadily toward the dig. He picks up the pace.

My boots slip in the mud and I stumble, snapping a fallen tree limb. The crack echoes through the wood.

He turns. He sees me.

“Blast it.”

The giant bolts, veering course, heading into an open pasture. I change direction, leaping fallen logs to give chase.

I am gaining on him.

He limps slightly.
Rheumatism? Possibly caused by his—

My hair gusts up, my stomach plummets as I fall. The ground rushes up to meet my—

Pain
. Darkness. My mind-pictures flicker and dim, flicker and dim, as I fight to pry my eyes open. Anger at my stupidity tries to surge but I wince as it escalates the pain in the back of my head.

I am in a pit. Surrounded by…something. The light of my lantern gutters.

Through the hole above, tiny bits of starlight twinkle through.

A face appears to block the light.

The stars disappear, and a blackness as dark as death surrounds me as the panic begins.

###

Henry

A knock on the door rouses me and I squint at the weak fingers of sunlight crawling up my bed. I rub my eyes with the heel of my hand and stumble to the door.

Abner’s housekeeper glares, brandishing a small envelope. “This came for you yesterday, Mr. Watson.”

“Thank you, ever so much.”

Kill her with kindness, I will.

Her scowl deepens and I shut the door before I laugh.

I walk across the room to stare out the farmhouse window and begin pulling on my boots, my head full of Arabella. Dawn’s weak light filters through the window, chasing away night’s shadows.

I hurriedly throw on my shirt, I’ve overslept.

The trip back from the ship to the dig was uneventful and quiet, with she and I lost in our own thoughts. It was a similarly quiet eve for once, our goal being to rise at dawn and head back to the excavation site.

Father remained at the ship. He was keen to view the autopsy and promised to come when all was stable.

She said she loved me. Not to me, of course, to father. But it’s a start.

I’m filled with hope. Surely, the past few days’ events have solidified my devotion in her mind?

It may be years till she’ll marry me.

I take deep breaths as my eyes flit across the woods.

I find I don’t care. No one else will do.

Hoof-beats cut through the early morning stillness, and I stride across the room to the opposite window overlooking the turnaround in front of the farmhouse.

Father.

My heart lurches and crawls into my throat.

Something is terribly wrong.

There is so much to hold my father at the steamer; only a desperate turn would bring him here.

I hear fortune’s breathy chortle in my mind. It murmurs happiness is not my destiny.

I shake my head, beating back the dread and fly out into the hallway and grit my teeth as I pass Bella’s open door and hurtle down the stairs, two at a time to the kitchen.

I don’t hear her downstairs. Only the murmuring, anxious voices of a half-dozen men.

Father halts in the doorway. His blue eyes bore into me from beneath two grave brows.

Stygian stiffens and turns to face me. “Mr. Watson, Miss Holmes is missing.”

“What? How?”

My hands ball, as rage courses through my veins.

My father gives an almost imperceptible, cautioning nod.

My thoughts clear and return, curtailing the rage. This could mean her life. I must not let on I suspect him.

I address Stygian. “When was it discovered she was gone?”

“About one hour prior. Mr. Montgomery went up to rouse her, to avoid a repeat of her previous hysterics at being left behind. He found her bed empty.”