Page 12 of The Vanished Sister

She explained the situation to Mrs. Newell, leaving out the part about Moriarty, saying only that Mrs. Watson felt extremely conflicted about attending a function at the home of her estranged sister, and that Livia wished to be on hand to act as her moral support.

Mrs. Newell, the Holmes sisters’ stalwart friend since they’d been little girls, had immediately invited Livia to come along.

A carriage dispatched from High Burrow picked them up from the Ilfracombe railway station. They passed little harbors with pleasure boats bobbing in the water. The road swerved about sharp hills and steep bluffs. As it descended into Combe Martin, Livia pointed out the entrance to Sans Souci and beheld the gabled roof and redbrick walls beyond with a terrible homesickness, longing for her companions inside.

They veered around the narrow bay of Combe Martin—the entire town was clustered around one long street that ran the length of the tapering combe—and climbed up the headlands again. When the vista opened up once more, High Burrow was there, a much larger structure than it had appeared from the vantage point of Sans Souci’s terrace across the bay.

The plaque on the gatepost declared that High Burrow was built in 1561. Perhaps it had once been a humble farmhouse, or the home of a minor squire. But now it was a proper Gothic manse, with crenellated roof and spired turrets.

Indeed, all the bells and whistles one could tack onto such an edifice were there: tracery windows, gargoyles functioning as waterspouts, weathered brass finials that had turned blue green long ago with verdigris.

Despite Livia’s wariness, she failed to perceive High Burrow as outright sinister. She found Gothic revival houses ridiculous in their attempt at historical mimicry. Yet there was also something in their spiky unfriendliness that appealed to her, that desire to give the impression, however spurious, that they were armed to the teeth and invulnerable.

The same aura that she had tried—and failed—to impart for most of her life.

The house’s front door was flanked on either side by an undeniably charming procession of chess topiaries from pawn to king. The grand entry continued the theme with a black-and-white marble floor laid out in the pattern of a chessboard. There was a shiny suit of armor to the side, but the entry itself did not otherwise look medieval: no dark paneling, exposed beams, or fraying tapestries.

Instead it remembered that its current purpose was a holiday house. The choice of colors made Livia think of blooming gardens, and she wished she didn’t find High Burrow as pleasing as she did.

To her surprise, two handsome, sharply dressed men came down the staircase as she and Mrs. Newell approached. During Livia’s eight seasons in a matrimonial marketplace actively hostile to women who were not beautiful, wealthy, or sparkling, she had become accustomed to being invisible to men such as the Carstairses.

But the senior Mr. Carstairs, refusing to be pigeonholed, greeted her with no less courtesy or attention than he gave to Mrs. Newell. He was tall and imposing, with bright, alert eyes and a still luxuriant head of hair. Livia could detect no middle-aged bulge beneath his expertly tailored jacket, nor the sort of fatigue she often saw on her father’s face as the day wore on.

He inquired after their trip, reiterated his pleasure at their company, and explained that just about everyone else, who had arrived earlier that day, had gone for a walk to the top of Great Hangman and would return shortly.

“After you have settled in, I’ll have Charlie give you a tour of the house and you can inspect him at your leisure,” he said to Mrs. Newell.

The plan met with Mrs. Newell’s approval. Charles Carstairs, her grandson-in-law-to-be, was no doubt the person she was the most curious about, besides Mrs. Carstairs, who had turned out to be Mrs. Watson’s sister.

“And Miss Holmes.” Mr. Carstairs turned toward Livia. “I understand you enjoy reading? The house has a library. I hope you’ll find something worthy of your time on those shelves.”

Livia tried to be objective. She tried to remind herself that this man voluntarily espoused the former Justina Redmayne, that he was at least incapable of astute character judgment when presented with a beautiful face. All the same, the lifelong neglect she’d suffered at the hands of the masculine species made it impossible for her not to thrill, at least a little, to Everett Carstairs’s solicitude. Not in a romantic manner, but simply to be acknowledged as someone worthy of that solicitude—the reason that she’d never felt anything less than a profound gratitude toward Lord Ingram.

Everett Carstairs turned toward his heir, his son from his first marriage. Reginald Carstairs was a slighter man than his father, a couple of inches shorter in height, and not so broad-shouldered or athletic looking. But his features were exquisite and made Livia think of a bust of Antinous, the young man deified by a Roman emperor for his beauty.

After a moment, Reginald Carstairs said with a slight bow, “Both my wife and my sister—my stepsister, that is—will greatly appreciate the presence of another young lady.”

His words were as welcoming as his father’s, but his tone was more perfunctory, more distracted. Livia barely minded—the children of outstanding men seldom lived up to the standard set by those sires.

They parted ways, promising to speak more at dinner. As Livia mounted the steps and reviewed the encounter, still rather impressed by the master of Noble House, Mrs. Newell remarked, “I wonder if Mr. Carstairs and his firstborn aren’t all that close.”

A long moment passed before Livia recalled that, as they descended the stairs, the Carstairs men had been rather far apart, each at one balustrade. They’d drawn together, closing ranks, so to speak, only after they saw Mrs. Newell and Livia.

Interesting, but hardly noteworthy. Even Mrs. Newell wasn’t terribly close to her son, the father of the bride-to-be, deeming him to have too few thoughts of his own, a man easily influenced by others.

“I guess we’ll find out soon,” said Livia.

Dear Charlotte,

I met Mrs. Carstairs at dinner tonight.

You know I have loved Mrs. Watson from our first meeting: I never feel as seen and understood as when I am in her company—and Mr. Marbleton’s, of course.

Mrs. Carstairs has a different but comparable effect on me.

She does not make me feel embraced, but she is exceptionally regal without being overbearing, and her smiles convey warmth and sincerity. If I were ignorant of the letter she wrote to Sherlock Holmes, I would have believed myself favored, almost blessed, to be in her presence. Even forearmed with that knowledge, I feel drawn toward her, like a dinghy about to be siphoned into a whirlpool.

As for her husband, do you remember the spectacular Mr. Gregory from the RMS Provence? Mr. Carstairs is almost as good-looking and far better situated in life. (Mrs. Newell’s daughter-in-law informed me in hushed awe that the Carstairs family had twice been offered a letter of patent in the past century and twice turned it down; otherwise today Mr. Carstairs would be at least an earl, if not a marquess.)