The Watches of the Night

by Darcy Lindbergh

  I was nearly asleep when Mary slid across the bed, pressing herself against me. Her initial intention was clear, but I kept my answering touch light and chaste as I wrapped an arm around her, and eventually she subsided.

  'You're very quiet lately,' she said. Her voice was deliberately even, as though she had already reasoned any anger away. I kissed her temple.

  'Between my patients and Holmes' clients, I barely have a moment's rest,' I deflected, equally as deliberate.

  She hummed, and her tone turned discerning. 'You certainly have been particularly busy with Mr Holmes lately.'

  Mary was a bright, intuitive woman, I knew, with incredible strength of will and a perceptive eye, and I had not forgotten that she was the sort of woman who would engage a detective if she were truly mystified. I knew I would have to be careful in order to deceive her fully, yet the thought of deceiving her at all filled me with guilt and discomfort.

  I had no desire to hurt her, even as I succumbed to the desires that betrayed her.

  'I'll try to spend more time at home,' I promised, though I was sure I would break that promise entirely. I laid awake all night, thinking about the conflict I had created, wondering if I could ever find a balance.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mary and I did not attend very many parties, but every so often there was one I simply could not avoid. By the time I had delivered her back home and set out for Baker Street, it was hideously late – nearly two in the morning – but I hadn't seen Holmes in days.

  I could see from the street that 221B was dark and quiet, but I let myself in nonetheless. Moonlight streamed in from the open curtains, illuminating the empty chairs, the cold fireplace. The violin was set on the table, abandoned. The dark made the room feel deserted, neglected – an ancient ruin built of books and papers.

  I made my way to Holmes' bedroom, and was relieved to see the familiar curve of a body under the bedcovers, to hear the soft susurrus of breath. He was awake, I could tell – he was breathing light and soft, not in the deep, even way he did in sleep – but he didn't turn to me.

  I shed my shoes and my jacket and slipped, fully dressed, under the covers behind him, wrapping an arm over his ribs. 'I've missed you,' I whispered into the shell of his ear.

  He did not answer. Instead he found my hand in the dark, his fingers winding in mine, holding me closely, keeping me tightly bound.

  The storm raged over London, thunder and lightning rattling against the windowpanes. The city cowered under its force, and I claimed my room again in Baker Street to weather it out, blaming my sore leg and achy shoulder for being unable to move comfortably under the winds and gusts of rain.

  It should have been a luxury, to spend so many days at once with Holmes without any need for excuse. To wake up in the drizzling mornings and see him soft and rumpled at the breakfast table, and to while away the rainy afternoons, exchanging quiet glances and the occasional laugh. To let the days wash themselves into evenings, into nights, and never have to wonder about the time.

  It should have been the perfect taste of life lived side-by-side. Instead it was only playacting.

  The risk of our secret lost its dark appeal under the constant onslaught of things we could not do or say, the ways in which we had to censor ourselves, and I could see the impermanence of my stay begin to wear on Holmes as the spectre of my eventual departure filled the space between us. He looked at me as though I were already gone; I felt his gaze so heavily upon my heart I thought it might even leave a bruise.

  That evening Sherlock was particularly beautiful, stretched out on the sofa. I told him I thought so, matter of factly, then leaned over to prove it to him with a kiss, pressing him down into the cushions as softness slowly gave way to crushing heat.

  We were both distracted enough that neither of us heard the pull of the bell, and it wasn't until Mrs Hudson was knocking on our door as she cracked it open that I realised the danger, and then I startled away so fast I nearly fell to the floor.

  Holmes, for his part, immediately set about coughing, one hand clapped over his mouth. 'Mrs Hudson,' I exclaimed with authority, catching on to his game, 'I need a hot compress and a pot of tea immediately. I have just examined him, and Mr Holmes is coming down with a cold.'

  'Oh, dear,' she said, her hands fluttering. The client she'd brought up peered around her curiously. 'But he seemed so well earlier.'

  I placated her as best I could, gave instructions to get the client's name, and finally pushed the door closed behind her before turning back to Holmes. 'I'm so sorry,' I said.

  He raised himself from the sofa, shaking his head. His hands were trembling. 'It's all right,' he said. 'We are both to blame.'

  The next night I set off for Baker Street with the adrenalin still heavy in my veins. I had had several false starts – first, like a habit, telling Mary that I'd had a message from Holmes at my practice, requesting my presence, and then, suddenly, changing my mind and telling her I was too tired to go, before changing it once again and making an excuse of having expected another message and received none. She accepted each lie in turn with an ease that made me ill.

  London was alive outside the cab window, and I was not at all sure I wanted to be at Baker Street, but every option that presented itself was dismissed in turn; I had no desire to appear in such a rough state at my club, where my friends would surely notice my distress. Every other pub or restaurant that rose to mind carried with it such memories of Holmes that I shied away from them instinctively.

  There was one place, however, I had never been with Holmes.

  I pounded on the roof of the cab to get the cabbie's attention and redirected him down to the docks. Perhaps a game or two of cards would set me to rights, and I settled back, my mind made up, feeling suddenly reckless and also strangely buoyant.

  In the days following Mrs Hudson's unfortunate interruption, Holmes was uncharacteristically silent and subdued. When Mary left for another weekend in the countryside, I returned once more to Baker Street, worried that his mood would turn so black that he'd seek relief in his needle.

  I didn't notice any sign of the little glass bottles, however, and by Sunday evening I was able to relax enough to pull out my papers and work on another story for The Strand. I had just finished adding the title across the top with a flourish when Holmes leaned over my shoulder to read it. 'What's this?'

  'Have a look then,' I offered, handing him the papers. I was sure I had done a neat enough job of it this time, and he would find very little to critique. 'I'll light my pipe while you read it.'

  I did so, and he spent a few minutes reading the pages before handing them back without his usual, affectionate tease. 'Are you pleased at last?' I asked, trying to bait him to it.

  He offered me a pale, weak smile. 'It is not inaccurate,' he admitted. 'But in the beginning – perhaps you ought to make a mention of your wife. Let us not forget that I am the only one of us who still remains a bachelor.'

  It would take Holmes hours to explain everything he had discovered about our latest suspect: it was the price he paid for his brilliance. When my leg began to stiffen in my seat, he brushed a hand over my knee and told me gently to go home, and for once I couldn't argue.

  Mary met me at the door, fresh from the coast, and her smile was rejuvenating. 'I didn't expect you home so early,' she said as I shed my hat and coat. 'I got your word that you would be late with Mr Holmes.'

  'The case concluded earlier than anticipated.' Her good mood was catching, and I leaned in to sneak a kiss onto her cheek. 'And he had no more use for me tonight.'

  We went into the parlour, where we shared a small dinner and a quiet conversation about the goings-on of the house, until finally I sat back in my chair and rubbed at my leg. 'It went stiff at Scotland Yard,' I confided, and she smiled warmly. I knew that look; I had seen it on Holmes' face many times after a case. Instinctively, my blood began to rise.

  'Then let us go upstairs,' she said. She helpe
d me to my feet, her voice coy with suggestion. 'I will call for a hot bath.'

  It was a quiet evening spent at Baker Street when next I managed it, an increasingly rare occurrence as I tried to balance Holmes’ and Mary's claims against one another. I sank into the pages of a novel, letting the familiar hum of our rooms wash away the stress: the rustle of Holmes' papers, the clink of his glassware, the pace of his step across the floor. The smell of smoke – I caught my thought. Smoke?

  I looked about; there was indeed a cigarette dangling precariously from Holmes' mouth. A cloud of smoke hung about the room – I was surprised I hadn't noticed before. 'I wish you wouldn't do that quite so enthusiastically while I'm here,' I said, coughing. 'It's horrible.'

  'Mm. Gotten into the habit of you being out,' Holmes returned. His tone stung, and I could see from his glowering expression that it was meant to. I ought to have realised – Holmes had been in a foul mood lately, increasingly bitter about my absences, and I should have suspected that being quiet did not necessarily mean being genial.

  'I can't say that all these fumes entice me to come more often,' I threw back, uninterested in placating him when he behaved like this. He blew out another stream of smoke thoughtfully.

  'No,' he agreed. 'How lucky for us both.'

  For many months, things were steady, if not easy. Then in February of 1890, Mary took ill with a fever. I stayed home to fret alongside the staff, though Mary insisted she was fine and Holmes insisted he needed me. I'd told him quite clearly that he most certainly did not, and regretted it for days.

  'It's just a lingering chill,' Mary assured me. 'Once spring comes I'll return to the coast, and be much improved.'

  'The fever will have to go long before the winter does,' I said, taking a moment to listen to her lungs, fearful the sickness would move into her chest.

  'The worrisome doctor,' she said, affectionate but teasing. 'What a loathsome nurse you make, John Watson.'

  'As stern and unyielding as the worst sort,' I agreed.

  She caught my hand as her expression softened. 'A good husband though,' she decided, her voice quiet. 'The very best. I'd recommend him to the ladies but, you see, I'm rather attached.'

  My stomach lurched; my chest burned fiercely all the way up my throat. Even here, at her sickbed, I had been thinking about Holmes. 'Ah, but even great men have their weaknesses,' I warned her. 'And I'm naught but a devil.'

  She laughed. 'A devil, but a beloved one,' she said. 'There's no way I'd love you better.'

  We almost never had the time to come together slowly, restricted as we were to stolen moments and shadowed secrets, but tonight, finally – a week on from our petty disagreement – would be different. Mrs Hudson had gone for the weekend to the country, and Mary, having recovered from her fever, to the seaside. Without having to discuss it aloud, Sherlock and I closed up the house. Anticipation curled heavily through the air.

  But by the time I had him laid out in front of the fireplace, nested in cushions and blankets stolen from anywhere we could find them, I could barely bring myself to touch him. I did not want to break through the soft, hesitant atmosphere with urgent hands and crude thrusts. I wanted to show him how it always ought to be between us, how it felt in my heart to think of him: warm and tender and everlasting.

  He trembled under that slow, gentling touch. He shook and gasped, and stretched up to meet me, and when I looked down at him in the firelight, I found I had to kiss away the tears pooling beneath his eyelids, pressing my lips softly and carefully against his skin in complete adoration – pressing my devotion and my reverence into his flesh as though each kiss could be our holy benediction.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The avenue of chestnuts leading to and from Wisteria Lodge made for a dark, rather somber walk as we set off back toward town, leaving Inspector Baynes and his constable to lock up the house once again. Holmes hummed to himself here or there, but I could not shake the cold feeling of what Mr Scott Eccles must have experienced there. I shivered at the very thought.

  'Are you all right?' Holmes asked, putting his hand to my forearm and stopping in the lane. 'You look nearly as pale as that constable back there.'

  'Fine,' I managed. 'Only thinking how very unsettling it must have been to wake up there alone.'

  Holmes' face grew serious. 'You understand the risk that Scott Eccles had taken in coming here, of course.'

  I nodded, my heart heavy. 'He was like us.' I already knew this; I had known it as soon as I had seen him at Baker Street.

  'Like us, yet not so lucky,' Holmes nodded. 'But we'll protect him, John. I promise you that.'

  'Would that men such as us needed no protection,' I muttered.

  Holmes squeezed my hand in his. 'I wish it too,' he said. 'Someday that may yet be the case.' He kissed me then, under the chestnuts, and I let him, wanting desperately to believe it could be.

  The bed was huge and ornate, heaped with pillows and drapes, and as I stared across its great expanse, a trickle of fear went down my spine.

  Holmes had thrown himself into a chair by the fire to review his knowledge of Nicholas Ruskin and his state of affairs, though the dilapidated manor and wild grounds were probably indication enough. I wondered how much more devastation the blackmailer would wreak on the estate if Ruskin could not find a way to supplement his income.

  Looking at the bed, I thought I might suspect one way he had in mind. 'Don't you think it's odd,' I asked slowly, 'that in all this great house, there's only one room suitable for guests?'

  'Not at all,' Holmes snorted. 'Given its state of repair, I'm surprised there's even that.'

  I shifted, trying to sound nonchalant. 'You don't think there's any chance that Ruskin is aiming to become a blackmailer himself?'

  'Ruskin's not intelligent enough,' he said dismissively, and then, as the question's true meaning caught up to him, the tiniest hint of hurt appeared between his brows. 'If you are disinclined to share a bed with me, I can make do on the floor.'

  'No, of course not,' I assured him quickly, but the guilt did little to soothe the fear sharpening underneath my breast.

  We'd both had far too much drink, I thought, eying the flush creeping out of Holmes' collar. Too much brandy too late at night, and we had meandered into as frank a conversation as we had ever had before. 'Have you really never?'

  Holmes shook his head. 'It didn't even occur to me until after I'd left school,' he admits. 'But no – never. I suppose I'm just not' – he waved a hand ambiguously – 'for women at all. I think most women of my acquaintance are glad of it.'

  I grinned. 'I'm glad of it.'

  'Ah, and you are the one that counts.' His flush was furiously pink now. 'But you have, haven't you? Had interest in women. Before your marriage.'

  'Yes,' I admitted. 'Before the army, and occasionally during my service. The women of the world are…' I sighed wistfully, teasing him a little. 'Well. You'd not appreciate it anyway.'

  'And how are the men of the world?' Holmes asked curiously.

  If he blushes any further, I thought smugly, I shall have to take his temperature. 'As diverse as the men of England.' I stood and leaned in to kiss those blushing cheeks. 'But I'm afraid I've forgotten them entirely,' I confided, smirking. 'Shall I show you why?'

  'Oh, I imagine so,' Holmes murmured. 'But first – another brandy.'

  Sherlock rose above me in the dark, his tall, thin form glowing in the bronzed light from the lamp. His chest heaved around his ribs, sweaty with exertion, and I reached up to steady him around his waist as he raised and lowered himself on my prick, inexorably, relentlessly captivating.

  I shifted underneath him, squaring my hips and pressing myself up, chest to chest with him as he shuddered in my arms. He moved against me with abandon, and it was beautiful – it was divine – and I could not stop the words; I did not even know I was going to say them until I already had. 'Oh, God, Sherlock – God, I love you.'

  There was a sharp inh
ale, and Sherlock stilled against me. I held my breath, staring up and waiting for him to respond, to return the sentiment – and suddenly I longed to hear it, needed to hear it. To know that it was true; to know that I was not here alone, utterly exposed.

  He did not say it.

  Instead he kissed me, hard, as though he could put the words back in my mouth, and began to move again, as though I had not said it at all. I closed my eyes, and felt something hot and sharp pull taut inside my chest and begin to break.

  I found the article days later, tucked away in the back of the evening newspaper. It was barely three lines of text, but they filled me with dread: one of the Turkish bathhouses in Bishopsgate had been closed upon reports of immoral acts.

  I knew the number listed for the place. I'd been there with Holmes.

  I could scarcely breathe against the choking terror, but somehow managed to make an excuse to Mary before heading to Baker Street. I had nearly sweat through my clothes by the time I arrived, and when I burst through the door, Holmes was on his feet in an instant to help me to a seat. 'Good Lord, John! Whatever is the matter?'

  I brandished the paper, torn and crumpled from its journey in my nervous hands. It took him a moment to find the article, but when he did, the colour drained from his cheeks.

  Finally he looked up. 'They don't keep accurate records,' he said, already reasoning his way through it. 'False names, and so on. They can't ever know that we were there.'

  'Unless we were recognised.'

  His hand found mine, stroking my skin. 'Did you ever recognise anyone there?' he asked gently.