"Tell me where you grew up," I asked instead.
Holmes looked up at me questioningly. "Why? You could find that out in a public records office."
"I don't want the address," I said. "I want you to tell me about it."
He thought for a moment, then shrugged, apparently conceding the point. "I've told you that my people were country squires."
I nodded.
"I suppose the ancestral home, technically, would have been Huntington Hall near York. But, my family hasn't owned it since the sixteenth century. The lands which have remained in their possession are further north on the moors. There's a hunting lodge called Harewood House, about twelve miles north of Pickering. My father inherited it when his elder brother died."
"Before you were born?"
"No -" he hesitated for a moment, and then continued. "I was two years old, I think."
"Where did your family live prior to that?"
"Well -" the same strange pause, and then: "My father was a businessman, and travelled often. My mother was living with her relatives in Lyons when I was born. Mycroft was away at school."
Something oddly clipped and guarded had slipped into his tone.
"You spent the first two years or so of your life in France," I said, seeking to prevent, perhaps, the conversation dwelling needlessly on what must have been a complicated family dynamic by turning it to matters more innocuous.
"Yes," Holmes replied, somewhat more readily. "Though admittedly I remember little of it."
"Doubtless it explains your facility with the language now," I conjectured.
"In the entire household only my mother spoke English," he agreed. "I'm told my first words were Maman and abeille. I doubt I had a decent grasp of English before the family had moved to Yorkshire."
"Abeille?" I wondered aloud, butchering the pronunciation.
"Bee," Holmes provided. "My grandmother's garden was full of them."
A/N: The above is an excerpt. It's what gets published when I write something that isn't any good except for one brief bit I find intriguing anyways.
