14
" And it was worse, so much worse, beyond the anteroom. By the time they reached the drawing room, which featured enough tassels, fringes, and flounces to outfit every bordello in London, Livia was slack-jawed with dismay. “Charlotte, this is a brothel and a circus.”
“And I am both a woman of ill repute and a conjurer of tricks,” said Charlotte. “My tastes are commensurate with my stature.”
“You had the exact same tastes before you arrived at your current stature,” said Lord Ingram, walking in.
“Ha!” cried Livia.
Mrs. Watson chuckled. Even Charlotte smiled slightly. "
― Sherry Thomas , The Art of Theft (Lady Sherlock, #4)
19
" He woke up to the sight of Holmes sitting in a chair, her head bent. He didn’t get too many opportunities to study her closely. Even when they found themselves in physical proximity, there was still the matter of her unnerving, sometimes all-seeing gaze.
With something of a shock he realized that after the near misadventure the night before, what he wanted was for her to raise her face and settle thatexact unnerving, sometimes all-seeing gaze upon him.
He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He’d almost asked her what she was reading, but she wasn’t reading. She was knitting. He sat up to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“What are you knitting?”
The question he really wanted to ask was You knit? But that would probably net him only a blank stare, the thought of which made him smile on the inside.
She looked up, wearing her usual expression of utter serenity. “A cozy for a hot water bottle.”
A what?
He laughed. All at once he could see her as a plump, white-haired old woman with a half-finished muffler on her lap, her grandmotherly demeanor fooling all those who didn’t know her. Maybe he’d suffered too much last night and gone a little cracked, but he felt an extraordinary glee at the image in his head. "
― Sherry Thomas , The Art of Theft (Lady Sherlock, #4)