Free Rebel Fire by Andrew Lane Page A

feel quite as accepted as you would wish me to feel.”
    Anna looked away. Sherlock thought he could see the gleam of tears in her eyes. “We are where we are,” she said cryptically. “And we do what we do.”
    Mycroft stepped back. “I will take my leave of you,” he said, “with many thanks. Might I presume upon your good natures one last time, and ask that Sherlock accompany me to the station? The carriage can bring him back afterwards.”
    â€œOf course,” Sherrinford said, waving a hand airily.
    As the carriage took them out of the grounds of the manor and onto the road, Sherlock looked back. There were three figures on the steps now—his aunt, his uncle, and Mrs. Eglantine. And either by accident or design, Mrs. Eglantine was standing on the highest step, towering over her employers.
    â€œYou still want to talk about what happened today,” Sherlock guessed as the carriage bounced over potholes and stones.
    â€œOf course. We will be stopping at Mr. Crowe’s cottage. There is still much to discuss.”
    The carriage rattled through the landscape.
    Sherlock could still feel an ache in his scalp where the scarred lunatic had grabbed him by the hair and dragged him into the house. He reached up and surreptitiously tugged at a lock, just to check that it wasn’t going to come out. The sudden pain made tears spring out in his eyes, but the hair stayed where it was. Thank God.
    Within ten minutes the carriage was slowing down, and Sherlock could see the loaflike shape of a thatched roof rising above a clump of bushes.
    â€œCome,” said Mycroft as the carriage stopped outside a gate in a dry stone wall. “Mr. Crowe is expecting us.”
    The cottage door was open. Mycroft knocked and then entered without waiting for an answer.
    Amyus Crowe was sitting in a chair by the hearth, his massive form dwarfing the wooden frame. He was smoking a cigar. “Mr. Holmes,” he said equably, nodding.
    â€œMr. Crowe,” Mycroft responded. “Thank you for seeing us.”
    â€œPlease, sit yourselves down.”
    Mycroft chose the only other comfortable chair in the room. Sherlock sat on a stool near the cold, empty fireplace and looked around. Amyus Crowe’s cottage was as untidy as he remembered. A pile of letters was fastened to the wooden mantelpiece with a knife, and a lone slipper on the floor beside the fireplace contained a bunch of cigars, sticking upward in various directions. And there was a map of the local area attached to a wall with drawing pins. Circles and lines had been drawn on it in some apparently random pattern. Some of the lines continued off onto the plaster of the wall.
    Sherlock wondered where Crowe’s daughter, Virginia, was. There was no sign of her in the cottage, and given her headstrong attitude he wouldn’t expect her to stay in her room meekly while the men talked. Maybe she was out riding around the countryside, as she seemed to do a lot of the time. He hadn’t seen her horse, Sandia, outside the cottage.
    He smiled. Virginia hated being inside. In some ways she was more like an animal than a person.
    â€œMight I offer you a glass of sherry?” Crowe asked. “Can’t stand the stuff myself—tastes like something’s crawled into the barrel an’ died—but I keep a bottle for visitors.”
    â€œThank you, but no,” Mycroft replied smoothly. “Sherlock does not drink, and I prefer a brandy at this time of day.” He glanced over at Sherlock. “America has still not managed to develop a national drink,” he said. “The French have wine and brandy, the Italians grappa , the Germans wheat beer, the Scots whisky, and the English ale, but our transatlantic cousins are still in the process of working out their own identity.”
    It sounded to Sherlock as if Mycroft wasn’t really talking about drinks at all, but trying to make some other, much more subtle