The Female Charm (2 page)

With all the
folders dealt with, Mycroft sat back and closed his eyes, picturing
what Amelia might be up to. By now she should have spotted the
letter that would start her next task. She was going to have an
interesting week and would need to be alert for anything out of
place to pick up on everything she needed to.

Mycroft patted his
jacket pocket as it hung on the back of the chair to check the
phone Amelia communicated on was in there. He'd been carrying it
around for several weeks but it wasn't used a lot. She knew better
than to contact him without good reason after everything that had
happened in their past.

Sometime today
he'd have a message from her, however. All he had to do was
wait.

Before he could
summon the butler for a fresh pot of tea, the door swung open and
the very man walked in with the usual tray. Mycroft nodded his head
in acknowledgement to the butler's good timing, and felt a small
amount of smugness at having recommended him for the post. Nothing
made life better quite like a good butler.

As the butler set
the new teapot down and removed the other one, Mycroft noticed
another file sitting beside it.

“This came for you
two minutes ago, sir. The usual source.”

“Thank you,
Anderson.”

With a sigh,
Mycroft flicked open the file and got back to work. There was
always something in the world that needed his attention.

A giggle escaped
Amelia's lips as James snuck up on David and tickled his ear with
the feather he'd just found.

“Ger'off,” David
said and waved his hand. A cross expression flitted across his face
but they all knew he didn't mean it.

“Found it!”
Sophie's voice came from Amelia's right. She turned towards her
friend as David and James came hurrying over. Sophie held a small
plastic Tupperware box with the words 'official geocache' on it up
in the air and grinned. It was her first find of the day. Amelia
and David were on two, leaving only James without a find in the
circular route of nine that they'd planned for the afternoon.

James beat the
three over to the box and quickly took the log book from Sophie to
write their usernames and the date into it. Amelia gave her
attention to the box. She had made several cute origami figures in
case there was something she wanted to trade for in each cache. It
was rare she did, as the contents were mostly kids' toys, but
sometimes she found a pretty stone, shell or even something cool
like a nice pencil or pen.

It only took her
eyes a second to fix on the tiny envelope with the little wax seal
on it nestled amongst a kid's plastic yo-yo and a small figurine
from a kinder surprise. It was Myron's seal, and immediately her
heart rate increased, while she struggled to fight the smile
wanting to spread across her face.

She hadn't even
mentioned to Sebastian that she was out geocaching with her
friends. They'd only decided for sure that morning, when the day
had dawned bright and clear, if not a little on the cold side. It
could only mean he was paying attention to her.

Amelia bit down on
her lip as Sophie continued to look through the box, but if she
noticed the strangeness of an unmarked envelope she didn't say
anything.

“Done?” Sophie
asked James when she was bored of looking. He nodded and folded the
log book's top back over before holding it out.

“Where did you
find it?” Amelia asked as she held out her hand for the box. Just
as she'd hoped, Sophie absentmindedly handed her the container and
looked away to point at a gap between two large boulders. A small
rock and some disturbed twigs and leaves sat near the hole and had
evidently been used to hide it from anyone but the most eager of
hunters.

“I'll put it
back,” she said. “You guys can get a head start on the next one
since I'm ahead of you.” She took the log book from James and
shoved it into the box with one hand while she slipped the envelope
out with the other.

James and Sophie
ran off but David lingered, making it harder for her to slip the
envelope into her pocket without anyone noticing. Eventually, the
geocache was back in its hiding place, the letter was in her
pocket, and she was walking along the path after James and
Sophie.

“Is everything all
right, Amelia?” David asked, taking up position beside her on the
path.

“Yes, why wouldn't
it be?”

“Well, it's just
that you've been a little... different, lately. More focused.
You've laughed less and you keep going to London. And you seem to
keep getting hurt.” David kept his eyes on the path ahead and she
noticed James glance back at them before taking Sophie's arm and
hurrying her up. She fought to keep the surprise from her face.
They must have all been talking about her. She self-consciously
shrugged her sleeves over the fading scabs on her wrists, the last
remnants of her most recent ordeal.

“It's been a tough
few months for me. With the stalker, things got a little crazy, and
I've been learning some new things and doing some research on some
topics that keep taking me to London,” she said, rambling as she
tried to put their minds at ease.

“James thought you
might have a crush on this Sebastian guy.”

“Oh... no, not
him.”

“So there is
someone in London then?”

Amelia blushed at
the question. There was someone, but it was far too complicated to
explain. She couldn't look at David as she tried to think of a way
out of the conversation.

“Make sure he
deserves you, Amelia. He should be willing to move heaven and earth
to keep you safe.”

“There's nothing
official. I just like the guy, and I'm not sure if he even feels
the same yet.” She bit down on her words, knowing she'd never be
able to fully explain, but wondering if David was right. Could she
be happy with anything less than someone fully devoted to her?

She couldn't
imagine Myron ever wanting to put himself out just to protect her,
especially if he felt it was her fault she was in trouble. He'd
turned her away when she'd been scared of her stalker, although he
had dressed as a rubbish collector to keep an eye on her once she
had been hurt. That had always struck her as an act of guilt,
however.

“You were so happy
when Craig was around. We'd like to see you that happy again.
Please don't settle for anyone that isn't at his level.”

Amelia smiled at
this. She didn't talk about her late husband much but she knew they
meant well.

“I promise I won't
accept anyone in my life who isn't at least the man Craig was.”

“Good. Now let's
see if we can keep our lead in finding geocaches.”

David put his arm
through Amelia's, giving her no choice but to be hurried along by
him to catch up with the others. She desperately wanted to read her
letter but she also really wanted to show her friends that there
was nothing to be worried about. The changes in her life weren't
bad. If anything, she was living more than she ever had before. It
just kept her far busier.

For the next three
hours she pushed the letter from her mind and continued to hunt for
little boxes in the English countryside. By the time they were
done, she had found four, David had found three and James and
Sophie had finished with a sole find each.

“Let's go to the
pub,” James said, linking his arm through Sophie's and leading the
group towards the cars.

“I can't,” Amelia
replied without hesitating. “I've got some work I need to do this
evening.”

“You're a writer,
you can work any time.”

Sophie gave her a
pleading look, matching the tone James had used.

“It's research,
and someone else is helping me out with this bit. I'm really sorry,
guys, I can't keep them waiting. I'll have drinks with you another
night.” Before any of them could object any further Amelia hugged
James and David and hurried towards Sophie's car. She knew her
friend would drop her off before heading to the pub. She'd berate
Amelia the whole way, but the hard part was over.

As the front door
clicked shut behind her, Amelia sighed with relief. Sophie was a
good friend but incessant about Amelia needing to socialise more,
and they were never going to agree. An afternoon geocaching with
her closest friends was more than enough chatter for the week. The
effort had left her drained and eager to return to having her own
thoughts and characters for company.

Now she felt like
she could hole up and refocus on her books, or whatever task Myron
had planned for her next. Assuming he really was called Myron.
She'd tried not to think about her discovery of him possibly being
Mycroft Holmes and over one hundred and fifty years old, but
occasionally her mind revisited the notion, even if it wasn't
something her mind could quite grasp as a possibility. If the
science existed to make people live that long now, she might just
believe it, but if all the signs were right, then it had existed
for far longer than that.

She hurried to
remove her boots and push the thoughts from her mind. It wouldn't
do to dwell on them. Once her soft slippers were on her aching
feet, she padded over to the sofa, removed the letter from her
jacket pocket and sat down. It didn't take her long to prise off
the seal and open the small envelope. Inside was a small length of
paper folded in half twice. She read the words and frowned.

A: The art of a
number is made up of observed facts, and this is the important
cache.

As the lines
deepened on Amelia's face, a small sigh escaped her lips. Myron
never made her tasks easy, but then she was meant to be learning
from one of the brightest men on the planet. The sentence made
little sense to her, so she put it down and removed the rest of her
outdoor clothing. When she still had no idea where to begin, she
filled the kettle and flicked the switch to start it boiling. Even
he would approve of her having tea while she tried to solve the
problem.

The first object
of confusion to her was the letter A. It implied this was the
answer to a question, but she had no idea what the question was. If
it didn't mean that, then the sentence had an answer that had A as
part of something else, perhaps. She did suspect Myron might start
to bring several different answers together to provide information
for one final task. It was more natural to have to learn and notice
things before you might need them. The art of seeing possible key
pieces of information before you knew you needed them was something
hard to teach.

The answer being
related to some future event would also fit with the last few
lessons she'd had with Tom. He'd momentarily paused their martial
arts lessons to teach her techniques in moving stealthily, as well
as spent several hours heightening her memory recall. For several
days she'd suspected something else was coming, even if it was
sooner after the last set of lessons than normal.

With a cup of tea
in hand, she settled into the leather sofa and held Myron's letter
in front of her, studying it for some kind of clue.

Several minutes
passed by and she found herself growing frustrated. Neither Holmes
brother would take this long to work out what it meant, and she
needed to get as close to their level of skill as she could. It
wounded her emotions that no matter how hard she tried she couldn't
be as good as they were.

In an attempt to
calm down, Amelia placed the letter on the coffee table, closed her
eyes and took several deep breaths. She then finished her tea and
picked up the letter again. Instantly the answer clicked. She'd
been thinking about the message as a whole when it was probably a
sentence within a sentence.

Amelia grabbed her
pencil and quickly went through possible words to skip and what was
formed if she followed any sort of pattern. After several minutes
of underlining and rubbing out, she had one possibility that looked
feasible. Every fourth word.

The number of
this cache.

A grin spread
across her face as she retrieved her laptop from her computer area
and booted it up. She then went to the main geocaching website and
looked up the day's finds. The geocache itself was the sixth one of
the circle they'd picked out, although it was their fifth of the
day because they'd started slightly farther around the route and
ended with the first. While Amelia was wondering which of these it
could be, she also realised there was the total number she'd found,
as well. Working backwards from the current total, she noticed it
was her fifty-first geocache find. The answer to Myron's question
could be any of the three possibilities.

Hoping to get a
little more information out of the man himself, she rummaged in her
handbag for the phone he'd given her. It didn't take her long to
tap out a message.

Got your
letter. Unique delivery system. Any time frame on my answer?

When she was done,
she read over the message several times, feeling her stomach flip
at thoughts of him being well over a hundred and under a false
identity. It wasn't the first time that she'd wondered if she
wanted to be involved with the man. She really didn't know very
much about him, and immortality was a complication.

Pushing aside her
fear, she pressed the send button. It was too late for regrets. She
was already in deep with the Holmes brothers. All she could do now
was learn to swim.

While she waited
for a response, she pulled up the latest file for her novel and
threw herself into the second draft. It was a little earlier than
she would normally like to take a second look at a book, but it was
better than sitting, doing nothing, and her publisher would be
pleased if the book was finished early. Something she'd never yet
managed.