A Letter of Mary - Laurie R. King [48]
As if to underscore the point my thoughts had reached as I lay back in the chair with my eyes closed, half-drowsing, I felt my left hand taken up. In the silence of our breathing, he began to explore my hand with his, in a slow, almost impersonal manner that left me unaware of anything else in the universe. He ran his smooth, cool fingertips along each of my fingers, exploring the swell of the knuckles and the shape of my nails, teasing the tiny hairs, probing the soft webs between the fingers and the joint of the thumb and the tendons and the large vein up to the wrist, arousing the skin and the hand itself to a most extraordinary pitch of awareness. He ended, at the point when the exquisite sensations threatened to become unbearable, by raising my hand almost formally to his lips, lingering there for an instant, and then restoring it to me.
I sat for a long moment, eyes closed as before, but glowing now and no longer in the least drowsy, and said what was foremost in my mind.
"What is troubling you, husband?"
I thought he would not answer me. Eventually, he disentangled himself and reached forward to knock his pipe out with unnecessary violence into the pristine fireplace.
"Data," he said, sounding like a man pleading for water in a desert place. "I cannot form so much as an hypothesis without raw material."
I waited, but no more was forthcoming. He sucked at the empty pipe stem and squinted at the mantelpiece as if there were words to be deciphered in the grain of the wood. I finally broke the silence.
"Yes, we need more information. Neither Lestrade's information nor Mycroft's has changed that. Assuming that I followed your train of thought this evening, this means that you will have to go to Mrs Rogers, while I ingratiate myself to Colonel Edwards. I ask you again, why does this trouble you?"
"I don't—" He stopped, then continued more quietly. "I do not know why, and I realise it is unreasonable, but I find that the idea of your being in the colonel's house makes me profoundly uneasy. It brings to mind the day we returned from Palestine all those years ago, when I stood on the boat and watched you walk away, completely exposed, while I knew full well that the trap we were setting might catch you instead. It was, I think, the hardest thing I have ever done."
"Holmes," I said, startled into speech, "are you going all sentimental on me?"
"No, you're right, that would never do. What I am trying to say in my feeble male way is that I cannot think why the idea troubles me. I cannot see any signs of a trap, I could detect no threat in his manner when I met him, and I cannot put my finger on any one piece of data that makes me mistrust him. It is a totally irrational reaction on my part, but nonetheless, the thought of placing you within his reach disturbs me greatly."
I sat speechless. In a minute, he went on, his voice muffled by my hair. "My dear Russell. Many years ago, in my foolish youth, I thought I should never marry. I was quite convinced that strong emotion interfered with rational thought, like grit in a sensitive instrument. I believed the heart to be a treacherous organ which served only to cloud the mind, and now ... now I find myself in the disturbing position of having my mind at odds with— with the rest of me. Once I would have automatically followed the dictates of the reasoning mind. However." I could feel his breath warm on my scalp. "I begin to suspect that— I shall say this quietly— that I was wrong, that there may be times when the heart sees something