In her first rehearsals the next morning, she watched the violinist's shoulders. He did not turn from the music at all, but when she sang, one of fifteen voices, his head tilted a little, searching.
She did not speak to him: he deserved, she thought, as much chance to escape as he had given her. But he was waiting for her when she came out of the stage door that evening, standing lean and straight beyond the waiting gaggle of boys who had brought flowers for the chorus girls. He was just out of the circle of lamplight, the brim of his top hat casting his face into shadow. She paused on the stairs, ignoring the handful of small bouquets offered to her consequence by those who, lacking some other object of affections, were considering whether to settle themselves upon her.
She smiled down at them and said in her full voice, undisguised, "Gentlemen, you are in my way." They let her through, not without a few looks after her, some a little surprised. But they were all boys, and the lovely young Mademoiselle Parnaud was directly behind her, so there were no eyes following by the time Irene reached him. She studied his face, curiously, as she had not had the opportunity to do before: he had handsome eyes, large and clear and grey, and his mouth was narrow but expressive.
"I have been insufficiently cautious, I find," he said, and offered her his arm. It was well-muscled, if lean. They walked away together towards the Rue de Richelieu.
"I hope you do not have much cause for concern," she said. "If your nemesis indeed ended at the bottom of the Falls?"
"Yes," he said. "After I shot him, of course."
They had dinner in another of the small anonymous cafés, sitting on the sidewalk with the noise of conversation and carriages around them. "Some of his lieutenants have escaped the net," he said, waving an impatient hand, long-fingered and pale, "but they are not of his caliber. They are all watching Watson, in any case."
"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, "that you will find that an excellent excuse to give him."
He looked at her sharply.
"It is not always easy to be adored," she said.
"No," he said. Then his mouth twisted a little, in wry amusement. "The only thing worse, of course-"
She nodded, and looked down into her coffee cup.
Her prince had taught her that lesson, with his jewels and his exclamations of surprise. He had never imagined she would take his engagement so badly. He had thought she was a woman of the world. He had thought she understood-and so indeed she had understood, after the fact: she had been loved only as a flower, set upon the mantel in a vase, inevitably to be discarded with the cloudy water.
Even in that first moment of harsh pain, she had not regretted him in his person, not even on the rawest level-his broad shoulders, his strong mouth. All her anger was to have been so cheaply held, so easily cast off. She might have dismissed it as his weakness, not hers; but she had chosen him, after all.
She had taught him to regret her, though, and then she had forgiven herself the mistake: she had been only a girl then, not yet twenty, and after all she had learned quickly. Only to be adored was, in the end, nothing; to be adored by someone worthy, everything.
And oh, Godfrey was worthy, and she loved him, even if something wild and errant in her still fought and struggled against the necessary sacrifice of liberty and always would; but she could not have him without it.
"How did you learn?" she asked, abruptly. "What taught you-?"
"He married," Holmes said.
No need to ask who he meant, of course. "I encouraged it," he added. "I wished that he were not necessary to me, and so I convinced myself he was not; that I would do better for solitude." He smiled, that wry look again. "I have had more than enough leisure since to contemplate the irony of having successfully deceived myself, who could scarcely be led astray by the most dedicated attempts of all the criminals in London."
She did not ask him, of course, but there was a weary regret in his face that made her quite certain the two of them had never been lovers. He had thought of it, and rejected it, likely in defense of that same independence. Watson would have crossed that Rubicon for him, but he would never have left, afterwards. A line from the story recalled itself to her: He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer-some bitterness there, in Watson's words; he knew he had been refused, whether consciously or not. The marriage, Irene thought, had been some part revenge, and one startlingly complete, to have driven the man across the table into flight.
Irene had never before had the least cause to be grateful to that injustice which had made the sacrifice of her own virtue her own easiest road to independence, but at least she had never been tempted, afterwards, to think herself above such needs. "Will you go back?" she asked.
"Not while she lives," he said.
His room would have been untidy, but for the lack of possessions; no letters, no photographs, only a scattering of sheets of music on the windowsill and the dresser, and pieces of rosin for his bow left on the writing desk.
He was inexpert enough to confirm her suspicions, and taken aback by his own responses: a strange wrenched look on his face afterwards. She laughed at him softly, a greater kindness than pity, because he shook off the expression and came back into her almost fiercely.
Reputation had given her a dozen lovers, but in truth he was only the third to pass her bedroom door, and so very different from the others: thin and restless, and once he grew a little more sure of his ground, wholly without hesitation. It was splendid to feel she did not need to comfort or reassure, or indeed make any pretense whatsoever; she could interest herself only in her own pleasure, and in the freshness of the experience. She liked the hard planes of him, and the skillfulness of his hands, and his intensity: something almost of a fever running beneath his skin, which left a flush beneath the sharp-edged cheekbones.
In the morning she rose early and wrote Godfrey a letter from the writing desk, while Holmes slept on in the wreckage of the bed behind her, pale light through the window on his skin and the tangled white sheets; it was raining.
Paris is wet and beautiful in the spring as always, she wrote, and I am glad that I came, but my darling, what is best is to know I have you to come home to, when I like the city have been watered at my roots. I feel myself again as I have not since last year. I am ready to be incautious again.
The Adventure of the Pirates of Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers
Rob Rogers is the author of the novel Devil's Cape, a superhero thriller set in Louisiana. Rob lives in Richardson, Texas, where he is working on a sequel. This story, which is original to this volume, takes place in the same milieu as Devil's Cape, but is set in the Victorian era, taking Holmes and Watson from the familiarity of London to the dark and dangerous city of Devil 's Cape, which Holmes describes as "a city that swallows law."
Pirates have always been popular, whether it's in novels-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers-or in video games-Sid Meier's Pirates! and Ron Gilbert's The Secret of Monkey Island. But pirate popularity soared to new heights with the release of Disney's film Pirates of the Caribbean, featuring a memorable performance by Johnny Depp as spacey rock-star pirate Jack Sparrow. Suddenly it seemed like pirates were everywhere… even in Somalia. Yes, real-life pirates are suddenly a major concern again, prompting Daily Show correspondent John Oliver to quip, "Apparently Barack Obama won't just be fighting the challenges of the twenty-first century, but also of the eighteenth." Pirates now even have their own holiday, September 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. But what's been missing in all the hoopla over pirates is, of course, Sherlock Holmes. We aim to rectify that with our next story, a tale of adventure that takes our heroes far from their usual haunts in Baker Street and off into the strange, pirate-haunted bayous of Louisiana. So grab a talking parrot and pour yourself some grog. This one's a treasure.