A sunset-haired woman, dressed in a cloud-white shirt and midnight-dark skirt, appeared behind the even darker door. Mycroft briefly lowered his eyes before he addressed her, making sure to shift his weight onto the folded umbrella that he had planted in the white marble. "I believe Miss Adler is expecting me." The carrot-curled assistant barely allowed herself a moment to digest his words, before she lit up in a complacent smile. "Of course, Mr. Holmes. I will let her know right away that you're here." His contact from Diogenes had staged the introduction on Mycroft's behalf. And thank goodness for that; he would not like to have the dirt commonly found on nude women stuck underneath his nails for all public to see. Indecency and indiscretion kindled the professional funeral pyres for a dozen good men in the government on a daily basis. But it would hardly be difficult to keep this visit a secret to the world. As long as Anthea had her Blackberry with his schedule encased in her palm, her vocabulary was equivalent to that of a metronome. And Sherlock, in spite of his uncanny ability of observing rather than just taking things in, would laugh out loud at the very idea of his neat brother indulging in the anatomical labyrinth of some woman who had thrown propriety to the same wind that had swept all possible garments on her body away.
His junior seemed to nurse the thought of the opposite sex being too intimidating and controversial for Mycroft, whereas he unconditionally presumed that women were predictable and boringly desperate for his attention. Clever Sherlock could not have made a deduction more to larboard of the truth than that one. It provided such a good alibi that Mycroft had allowed the fallacy to persist throughout their adolescence and early adulthood. Mycroft Holmes was not in the least wary of women and their tendency to physically and emotionally exhibit themselves in the face of danger. Their bodies were smoking cannons, waiting to be sponged with wet pads by their subjects; their conduct the grapeshot and cartridges fired at unsuspecting victims.
Sherlock failed to see that however boring women may occur to him, they had to be understood in order to be avoided and being ahead of. Their whims as well as their bodies had been the downfall of many good men and women throughout the years. Even though their siren song had never managed to run him aground on omnivorous rocks, Mycroft was truly fascinated by them. He also ran people aground on a daily basis, though he approached it in a slightly stealthier fashion than they did. But it was worth stressing that he wasn't fascinated to an extent that he would like to be reminded of their power everyday in what ordinary people defined as a 'relationship'. Relationships were tall ships. You surrendered unconditionally to the mercy of wind, weather and the lice always to be found in even the finest wood work. Mycroft had no need for the laboratory of emotions known as love to study the opposite gender in miniscule detail. He used his eyes for that; one of the few things he and his brother had in common was that they translated the world into facts. The ingenuity and the intelligent touch in Irene Adler's sandwiching of the Maskelynes had brought him here. He knew them, though that hadn't fuelled his actions in the slightest; it had merely blue stamped her intelligence that she had been able to conquer them. The Adler-woman was one of the women Mycroft needed to study in order to stay ahead of. Besides, he needed the intellectual stimulus. One could only cope with so much Sherlock Holmes in a week.
Whilst being lost in thought, the assistant had wafted away like gun smoke. He parked his umbrella next to the door and placed the weight on both feet by looking around in the hall. Had it escaped his notice, this was decided proof of the building housing a business unlike any other. There was no need for books or lists to keep track of one's clients. And if Adler's services were but half as good as this grandeur insinuated and the bold words on her webpage had implied, being a woman of power was bound to be lucrative. Miss Adler evidently resorted to a much more aesthetic solution with a mind of its own and its own agenda to advertise her authority. That was certainly relatable. She relied on that red-haired assistant for reasons similar to those he had for keeping Anthea around. Mycroft did little to bridle the smile spurred onto his lips, as he scaled the threshold and unbuttoned his coat. He had not expected to be able to relate to the train of thought of a woman.
"Dear me, Mr. Mycroft Holmes. You didn't strike me as a man incapable of holding his horses." Barely had Mycroft looked up to find the trace of the drawling mezzo-pitched voice, before he was approached by a slim middle-aged woman, wearing a transparent negligee that could have done well with some extra years to make its peach content less obvious. "I'm flattered." She added, unfurling her ochre pennant of a mouth into a brazen smile to emphasize the thought she obviously found synonymous to a compliment. Painfully conscious of miss Adler's body not being of a particularly secretive disposition, Mycroft respectfully kept his eyes levelled with hers. It was not easy, but it was a necessary precaution. She planted one blood–stained nail on the third button south of the throat and another on the fabric of his dark coat. He could feel the two fingers exerting their weight on his collar bone. "Trust me; I need no help to unbutton a posh one like you." She reassured him without the slightest wavering and tugged slightly at both button and coat. They parted ways wordlessly; an inch of Mycroft's grey suit presented itself to her, as she brushed the ends away. She briefly allowed her eyes and the two fingers to pave their way further down the torso of the mute Mycroft as if she was deciding whether to continue unbuttoning him. She eventually resurfaced their eye contact and moved a step closer to the icy man. "Keeping your eyes north of my throat. I could grow rather used to this. Should I be flattered yet again, Mr. Holmes?" she asked teasingly.
As she paused, Mycroft angled his head slightly, raising a dubious eyebrow and prepared his answer with a contemplative smile. Careful to make as little noise as possible, he swallowed once to moisten his dry throat. Unbuttoning him. She surpassed his expectations with more altitude than an airplane. In spite of her crudeness and the subtext of her polished words being the dirtiest of gems, she sent sparks of confidence flying from the rails that composed her equally exposé and self-contained body. "Most certainly, miss Adler. One must pay one's respect where respect is due, even if the body meriting that respect does its utmost to distract you." There was something oddly masculine encased in that most feminine conduct. Interestingly enough, it was as if she subconsciously insisted on stressing the second syllable in woman. He had thought he would be able to speak more, being one of the most eloquent men around these parts. Sherlock was a blunt knife in comparison to his skilful composition of words. But this Adler seemed to pose a challenge. He was not sure how to react. Under the circumstances, he might as well assume cold indifference.
The laugh that ensued was more of a full-scale laughter than a faint giggle, adding to the impression of her as a woman of power. "Pleasant in speech as well as appearance. You're as lofty as a feather and as delicate as one, Mr. Holmes. Why haven't we had this pleasure before?" she asked with a sensual stiltedness of speech equivalent to that of licking the surface of every single word before uttering it. Mycroft smiled vaguely. "Had the pleasure, you must surely mean." He corrected and stressed the article in the sentence. She laughed and shook her head in reply; the ivory buns crowning her hair stayed fixed and regal. "I haven't had the pleasure until I've had you properly." She retorted with a bluntness that could have brought any erotic novel to its knees. Now he just couldn't maintain his stoic posture any longer. He smiled at her ambiguity, and he smiled wholeheartedly. She evidently interpreted it as a good sign and eliminated the rest of the distance between them. "Let's have dinner." She prompted. Mycroft feigned to laugh to cloud his imminent confusion. "Alas, no, though I am sorely tempted." He replied politely, trying to jest her with his loftiness as she had done with her brazen ways. "I won't stay to dine, I'm afraid. I'm here about the Maskelynes. How did you do it?" he asked with a raised jaw and an appraising look at her. The man was pushed aside. Now the detective was back on his feet. The better detective, for that matter.
Irene smiled smugly, as she took him by the arm and herded him up the stairs whilst she talked. "About poor Lyall? Well, I knew what he liked. Quite ironic, actually. An author of sea stories who likes spanker booms." They laughed almost simultaneously at the pun most certainly intended. Looking at one another, their merriment was fuelled further. They still laughed as they entered what was bound to be her living room. As she sat down and crossed her legs so that they were very visible in all their salmon glory underneath the revealing lace, Mycroft paused in mid-air. A stern look and a mocking smile from the woman made him sit down immediately. He looked at her in spite, yet found that it was curiously pleasing to look at her. "Should I call for tea since you're not staying for dinner? Kate can fetch us some faster than I could tear that suit off you." She said with emphasis. Mycroft smiled at her quaint innuendos and unbuttoned the coat. He slung it across the back of the sofa and sat down next to it.
"That depends how much there's to learn from you. If you can tell me the rest in less than five minutes, I do have a car waiting at the door. If you can do better than that, tea would be our prerogative." He said, resembling the old Mycroft Holmes more than ever with his confident smile and folded hands. Irene got up with feline grace and disappeared briefly down the stairs to the hallway. She rematerialized in the room almost immediately and sat down on the sofa seat next to his coat. "Now, what on Earth can a man who likes umbrellas and refuses a hot meal want with me?" Irene asked more soberly and tugged her legs underneath her thighs. "You noticed the umbrella?" She nodded in response with a warm, almost friendly, smile drawn on her lips. "It was rather difficult to turn a blind eye when Kate asked me what to do with it in the kitchen. She thought it was a new toy of mine." Once again, they both laughed.
When one set aside that she presented every aspect of herself four-dimensionally and devoured people through both her eyes and her words, Mycroft had to admit that he was enjoying himself.