Molly Hooper started her career working in one of the five DynaMatch labs in London, sequencing DNA and adding her findings to the company's giant database. Once a person's profile was entered into the system, they could be matched by algorithm with the person most likely to produce the healthiest offspring. DynaMatch had originally been founded as a matchmaking service, but when the island's population had been decimated in the most recent wars, the government had commandeered the service, and what had been voluntary became compulsory.
The powers that be weren't just interested in creating a nation of test tube babies, however. Their goal was to restore UK to its former glory via a resurgence of the "traditional" family unit. Marriage with your genetic match was as compulsory as procreation.
Soon after the takeover, Molly managed to move into research, heading up a team dedicated to increasing fertility in the population, an issue since the Chemical Blitz. As the leader of her team, she always imagined she was so invaluable that she would escape a forced marriage, her mind being more important to her country than her body's ability to have babies.
She was wrong.
On a beautiful morning in September, a rare day off, one which she'd planned to spend outdoors, Molly sat at her kitchen table in St. John's Wood with a cold cup of tea, staring at the official document in her shaking hands.
Her presence was required at her district magistrate's office at 0900 a week from tomorrow. There, she would be lawfully wed to one W. Holmes, a match that would result in "the strongest of offspring and the brightest of futures for the Kingdom." Provided she passed the physical examination that had been scheduled for her in two days.
Molly's cat hopped up onto the table and butted her hand with his head, rousing Molly from her stupor. She patted him before shooing him to the floor, then opened her laptop.
She had access to the DynaMatch database, but she didn't want to log a search unless absolutely necessary, so she started with the Internet and a search of all single people designated male at birth over eighteen named W. Holmes in the UK. Plural marriage not fitting into the government's definition of traditional family units, matches were limited to one at a time, per person, and individuals were not tested until they reached their majority.
There were over a hundred hits, ranging in age from twenty to seventy-six. She looked out the window at the brilliant blue sky and decided she could at least work from her balcony if she couldn't go to the park.
She microwaved her tea—a habit her late mother had always detested—and settled in. Her row house was on a quiet street, and the birds were out, so Molly opted to work without listening to music.
Wallace Holmes. Twenty. A forklift operator at Walbrook Wharf. BTECs at Esher College in Surrey. No criminal record.
Walter Holmes. Forty-four. General Practitioner. University College London. Several citations for drunk driving.
William Holmes. Thirty-seven. Unemployed. Chemistry at Cambridge. A rap sheet a mile long, including possession of narcotics, possession of cocaine, breaking and entering, assault, and petty theft.
"Christ," she muttered, moving on.
Wilfred Holmes. Seventy-six. Retired barrister. University of Manchester. One citation from the sixties involving protesting without a permit.
"Oh hell," she said, shutting her laptop. "What am I doing?" If she had to go through with this, did it really matter whether it were a twenty year old dock worker or a septuagenarian former barrister? Shouldn't she be devoting her energy to finding some way to get out of it all together? There had to be some loophole. She had just reopened her computer to redirect her search when the doorbell rang. She stood and looked down off the balcony onto the street, where a tall, dark haired man waited.
"Can I help you?" she called down. He looked up, presenting her with a smile and one of the most interesting faces she had ever seen. High, prominent cheekbones and tilted eyes she could tell were icy blue even from this distance, and a set of full Cupid's bow lips that any girl (including herself) would kill to have. He looked altogether unreal, but strangely attractive.
"Yes you can." he said. "M. Hooper, I presume?"
"Maybe," she said. "Who are you?"
He took a piece of paper from his inside coat pocket and waved it in the air. "One W. Holmes. If you're Molly Hooper, I'm your fiancé, at least in the eyes of the government."
"Oh!" Molly said, and took a step back. She'd opened her mail first thing, like she did every morning so she could read it over breakfast. She hadn't gotten past the marriage summons and never finished the rest of her routine. She wore an old university sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants, her hair was piled on top of her head. She had her glasses on and she hadn't even brushed her teeth.
"Oh stop it, Molly," she admonished herself. "It's not like it matters what you look like." She stepped back to the railing.
"Is there something you wanted?" One could never be too careful. Marriage summonses used to give the entire name and address of one's betrothed, but there had been too many cases of murder, usually by a current significant other, so they'd begun using as little information as possible. Of course, most people could still be found relatively easily, especially if they had an unusual surname, but the number of unfortunate incidents had gone down significantly.
"I'd like to talk," he said, still smiling sweetly. "We only have a week to get to know each other so why not start now?"
"Just a moment," Molly said. She made her way downstairs, checking herself in the mirror in the foyer and deciding it was hopeless. She looked out the peephole. "Will you show me some ID, please?" A fleeting look of irritation crossed his face before the affable grin came back.
"Sure," he said, and held up his driving license. The face matched the name, though he looked either bored or pissed off (perhaps both) in the picture. She did a double take at the first name.
"William Holmes?"
"I go by Sherlock, but yes."
Of course. Of course it would be the Cambridge educated junkie. There'd been more than one William Holmes on the list but the age fit and what she'd seen and heard of him absolutely screamed posh.
He sighed when she hesitated. "I see you've been doing some research, too. If you'd gone far enough to look at dates you'd know that all occurred in my twenties. I'm mostly a model citizen now."
"Okay. But I'm well versed in self-defense. And my very nosy elderly neighbor is home and these walls are very thin."
"Noted," he said.
Molly undid the locks on her door, giving in to vanity long enough to take off her glasses before opening it. The man smiled and stepped into her foyer, removing his long wool coat and scarf and hanging them up as though he lived here. She noticed that in this light, his eyes looked more green than blue.
He smelled heavenly. A mixture of vetiver and lavender and sandalwood over something unmistakably male. He looked her over and was sure he knew everything about her from one glance.
"Erm, come in," she said, gesturing to the sitting room. "Tea?"
"Why not?" he said. She left him standing in front of her bookshelf, scanning the titles. It wasn't likely the best idea to leave him alone but she had to take a moment for herself because Christ, if he wasn't one of the fittest men she'd ever seen.
"Get it together," she said as she got out the tea things. She chose the set from her mother's wedding china and threw a few shortbread fans on the tray before taking it out. As she set the tray on her coffee table, she tried not to think how ridiculous it must look, her in her pajamas and bare feet, serving tea to this impeccably dressed man. He wore a suit but no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt open and revealing a long, pale neck dotted with freckles. He sat in the armchair across from the sofa, staring at her with his hands steepled under his chin.
"How do you take it?" she asked with some effort, as her mouth had gone dry.
"Just milk, please." He continued to stare as she poured and handed him the cup and saucer. "Thank you," he said. He looked far more like his ID photo now than he had before he'd entered her home.
She poured her own tea and sipped it while he continued to watch her. An image popped into Molly's head, of fifty years of having tea with this man and being watched in silence, and she started giggling.
"Care to share?" he asked, brows furrowed.
"Nothing. Just, erm. Do I have something on my face?"
He smiled again, though it didn't reach his eyes. "No, Miss Hooper. I'm just observing. I have to say I am glad you like shortbread. It's a favorite of mine, too."
"So why aren't you having any?"
"I don't eat when I'm working. Digestion slows me down."
"And you're working right now?"
"Of course. Why else would I be here?"
"You said you wanted to get to know me. And I thought you were unemployed."
"Self-employed. I'm a consulting detective. The only one in the world. I invented the job. And yes, I'm working, if you consider saving my job by preserving my autonomy to be work."
"Save your job?" Molly said, standing up and taking the tea tray into the kitchen, despite his not being finished with his tea. "I'm the one that would have to give up my job. Not to mention I have to give up my name, because of sodding 'tradition.' I can't work because they'll expect us to have a baby a year. I'm thirty four. That could mean four or more babies! I don't want to be dealing with teenagers in my fifties. I don't want to deal with teenagers at all!"
Sherlock followed her. "Yes and if I were saddled with a wife and kids, no matter how generous all of those "Happy Family Bonuses" are, I would have to choose my cases based on how much they pay, not how interesting they are. So I think we have a mutual interest in avoiding this—situation."
"So what do we do?"
Sherlock shrugged and looked her over again, tilting his head to the side. He stepped closer to her, into the light streaming in the window above the sink, and she noticed the red highlights running through his dark curls.
"May I?" he said, gesturing to her neck.
"What?" she said, but he had already leaned in and taken a deep sniff of her nape. He then lifted her arm and did the same with her armpit. He started to kneel but she broke free of his grasp and put the table between them before he could go for her crotch.
"Mr. Holmes, what the hell are you doing?"
"You're a geneticist, surely you're aware of dissimilar histocomplex and how it's thought to be communicated through smell. I was merely attempting to test it out."
"Of course I'm aware, Mr. Holmes. But I haven't showered today." She gulped. "And I barely know you," she added, stupidly.
"All the more reason to get a good sniff, unimpeded by soaps and lotions and perfumes. And, well, we have the rest of our lives to get to know each other, don't we? I have to say, I'm not entirely put off, but I don't go around smelling women every day and—"
"I thought we were going to get out of this?"
"Oh, do you know a way?" he said.
"Not yet, but there's got to be something. And you just said that it's mutually beneficial for us to find a way out."
"Yes. But that doesn't mean there is one."
"Oh come on," she said. "There are ways; otherwise the wealthy and connected wouldn't magically still be getting married to each other while the rest of us get matched up with Mr. Random."
"Are you wealthy or connected, Miss Hooper?" Sherlock said, leaning forward, hands braced on the table.
"No. You?"
"Moderately wealthy, though I can guarantee not enough to buy my way out of marriage. Until recently, connected. Which is why I didn't have to submit to screening until two weeks ago."
"What? But you're—"
"Thirty seven. Yes." He stood up straight and walked around the table to her. Molly resisted the urge to back away.
"Anyway, I suppose I should be grateful for my nineteen years of single bliss. I do wonder, though, how you managed to go this long without being hitched. You're supposed to have at least two children by now, if not three."
"I always assumed it was because of my importance to the fertility project. Even with DynaMatch, actually conceiving children and getting them to full term is still a major problem."
"So either you aren't as important as you thought, and it's just a coincidence that a viable match wasn't discovered until now, or you were vital to your project but aren't anymore. And as unpleasant as the latter option may sound, regarding coincidences, the universe is rarely so lazy, as my brother likes to remind me. Constantly."
"You don't get along with your brother? You sound irritated."
"Oh I'm always irritated with him. Just more so recently. He was my connection, you see. If you ever meet him, which seems very likely, he'll try to convince you that he's a minor government employee. But he practically is the government. Or was. Until he decided to grow a conscience and objected to the practice of sending people who'd undergone gender reassignment and otherwise infertile people into labor camps. They demoted him, drastically, and now I have to do my duty to my country and become…domesticated." He shuddered lightly, then looked at her and smiled, clapping his hands together. "But at least you're relatively smart, and a scientist, so you won't be too boring and-Oh!"
Sherlock froze, his eyes wide and his mouth open.
"What is it?"
"The universe is rarely so lazy!" He grabbed her by the shoulders. "What are the odds, really, Miss Hooper, that just as I became forced into eligible bachelorhood, that you would also be thrown into the pool, as it were? You, a geneticist with top clearance into every aspect of the DynaMatch poject, matched with me, the smartest man in England and my brother's greatest weapon? It would obviously make sense that our children would be smart so we could actually be a match. But it's all just too neat. So either my brother called in a final favor in order to ensure I at least wouldn't be chained to a moron, or he called in a final favor in order to pair me with someone specific who could help me overthrow the government. And since there must be any number of intelligent, eligible women that aren't working on top research projects, I'd say the latter option is far more likely, wouldn't you?"
"What?" she said, her head spinning, from his words and because his proximity rendered her absolutely stupid.
He smiled and kissed her on the forehead before turning to leave. "Thank you, Miss Hooper. I'm off to see my brother. No need to see me out." The front door slammed and the cat came into the kitchen, weaving between Molly's legs as she stood rooted to the floor.
"Jesus, Toby," she said, bending down to pick the tabby up. "What the hell was that?"