My computer is back! I still can't get to my manuscript until my missing WORD disk shows itself. In the meantime, I'm practicing with some "filler" scenes in this second book. I hope you accept the little bribe!

Victorian courtship came with so many, many rituals and pitfalls...it was fun to research but thank goodness many of these rules only exist in a watered form today. For those of you who haven't read the stories, Lestrade and Clea Cheatham are being rushed into a marriage and Lestrade has the extra burden of being a good example under the jaded eyes of his many in-laws. Lucky for him he has friends like Bradstreet...or is he?

. . . . . . . . . . .

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

Victor Hugo

"Have you been sleeping at all?"

This reasonable question was given quite reasonably from the reasonable lips by the most reasonable of men (Roger T. Bradstreet, Bow Street Runner), for the most reasonable of reasons...

...alas that it was targeted to his closest friend.

Closest friends are not elected to the post for being reasonable. They acquire their office by their ability to socialize with you, remain honest about your faults, and still maintain the relationship because for some inexplicable gasp the Newtonian Laws, they like you anyway.

Geoffrey Lestrade lifted bloodshot eyes from the soothing expanse of paper-work and allowed his heavy head to lower upon the precarious rest of his chin upon the heels of his hands, elbows splayed wide upon the blotting-paper. His arms wobbled, struggling to evenly distribute the weight.

"Why," he asked in a voice not unlike a metal rasp against a plank of virgin pine lumber, "do you ask?"

Bradstreet thus paused, his developing speech quite frozen in the act. The English language is an intricate beast, and a sensitive one with many sore teeth in the areas of spelling, punctuation and grammar. But ask a reasonable question and to be countered with another question that proves the other person missed the sheer obviousness of it all...well it just boggled belief as severely as the coincidences in a Dickens novel.

Behind his shoulder, Bradstreet was aware that Gregson (the rank sod), had perched in his office doorway, hiding in Bradstreet's broad shadow, listening hard for the inevitable delight of an enraged Lestrade.

"Oh, no particular reason, Lestrade." Bradstreet strangled. "The fact that you look like someone tried to stuff you up a chimney again-"

"Again?" Lestrade yelped. "What d'you mean, 'again'?"

"I mean-"

"I have never, ever been stuffed up a chimney at all-"

"What I mean to say-"

"No one has even attempted it!"

"That's grand, but-"

"Ever!"

"-But-"

"So what the deuce did you mean by that?"

"I didn't say you were stuffed up a chimney! Bradstreet roared. "I meant that you looked like it!"

"Again." Lestrade prompted in chilling voice.

"Yes."

"When was the first time?" Lestrade continued to use his Scary Voice. It was the same voice that made everyone at the Yard wonder if he'd had a particularly vicious man of the cloth in his childhood.

Bradstreet thought fast. "When we were running the roofs after the lead-thief, and you had to lie flat on your front to lift me off the edge of the gutter."

"Wasn't a gutter." Gregson tutted from behind. "It was a stone gargoyle. German style wasserspeier. Shaped like a toothless, giggling demon. Those toffs at Pall Mall know how to put on a roof."

"Gargoyle." Bradstreet corrected hurriedly.

"If that had been a reg'lar building, we'd've been peeling you off the street with that big spatula Morton uses for turning his fishcakes." Gregson snickered.

"Shut y'gob." Bradstreet advised through a chain-link forest of his own clenched teeth.

Lestrade grumbled. "I was over at the railyard if you must know. There was a frightful amount of soot and cinders and not only did we all get caught in it, but half of us wound up breathing in a chestful of steam and smoke." He blinked wearily, which did nothing to improve the fact that the whites of his eyes were now red as currants. The most delicate mist of grey had settled upon his once-pristine white collars and cuffs. Small wonder he was in a fettle. Lestrade would rather be in pain than unprofessional in his appearance.

"The railyard? Browne still the man over there?" Bradstreet folded his arms about his chest with a frown.

"Oh, aye." Lestrade paused and rubbed at the tight knot across his forehead. "He's convinced there's something fishy about the thaw that caused the landslip that wrecked the Hammersmith."

"If Browne thinks so, then I'd trust him." Bradstreet caught Gregson's silent nod in the corner of his eye. Browne was a quiet, cautious man with nerves of frozen steel. He lived, breathed and walked for the plainclothes RPF, and thought of very little else. "So what are you going to do?"

"Can't do anything until he finishes chasing down a few leads." Lestrade grumbled. "In the meantime, I've got to finish up here and get myself home." The hint to allow him this duty was pointed.

Bradstreet grinned at him, and saunted out the office with a polite little clap of the door upon its hasp.

Gregson was rolling his eyes and searching for one of his eternally foul penny cigarettes. They gathered over his teapot by unspoken accord.

"So you're his Best Man." Gregson squinted through a steam of tea.

"That I am." Bradstreet grinned. "Got to make certain he does a good job."

Gregson's squint grew in proportion to cover most of his face. "I see."

Bradstreet faltered. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Gregson was slow in his reply, cautious in his wording, and genrous in his intent. Not at all how he treated Lestrade. "Bradstreet, I was your best man at your wedding because your original man couldn't make it. I'd like to think I did well."

Bradstreet snorted. "Please. You were far better than that worthless cousin I'd asked. Thank the mercies he'd gotten himself too lushed at the pub to perform!"

"Er, yes..." Gregson cleared his throat. A very slight twinge of guilt timidly lifted its beaten head. Gregson beat it back to submission where it belonged. "Well. I'd be pleased if you let me return the favour, you know."

"Pardon?" Bradstreet gaped.

Gregson prayed for patience. "Lestrade's going to need some extra help in this. I wouldn't put those daft Cheathams to wage one more campaign of mischief."

Bradstreet grinned like a shark. "I get you." His sharkiness spread. "You'd just love to get your hands on someone tied to Quimper, wouldn't you?"

"You have to admit, some of those Cheathams are destined for prison. Just look at them."

"I don't have to. They're like walking boulders."

"So the first step is to make certain Lestrade doesn't get stuck in their craw."

"I've already thought of that." Bradstreet assured him.

"You have?" Gregson didn't bother to hide his surprise. He couldn't.

"Certainly. Now that they're officially engaged, he's expected to see her every day he can make it. And that means exchanging gifts." Bradstreet sipped his tea with aplomb while Gregson's finely developed eye for disaster grew sharper and sharper. "After work I'm taking him to the shops. He needs to pick something suitable for the lady."

"Oh. Ah. Yes." Gregson agreed faintly while distant (but not distant enough) memories of Bradstreet's courtship with Miss Hazel Roane swirled in his feverish brain.

"Bradstreet...you aren't going to suggest he buy her...a fish are you?"

"What, this time of year?" Bradstreet chuffed. "That'd be daft, wouldn't it?"

"Not nearly as daft as my coming along with you."

. . . . . . . . . . .

Getting Lestrade to the shops wasn't as hard as getting him out of his office. Between the two of them, they managed, but Gregson had to explain his presence all over again.

"Look, Roger was my best man, and I'm here to make certain he's just as good."

"I see." Lestrade said in scathing tones more loaded with suspicion than a nettle had stings. Gregson knew his rival didn't trust him for one minute. Which was natural-Gregson was lying about his reason for being there, but he doubted Lestrade would understand.

Bradstreet was salt of the earth, a real workman with unimpeachable honour and a devoted family man, provider, loving husband and a credit to the police.

The balance to all of this was the fact that most of the time, he was utter rubbish when it came to knowing what women (especially THE ONE) wanted. Fairly early into the marriage, Mrs. Bradstreet had simply provided her husband with a list to consult. Bradstreet had it memorized, and followed it as faithfully as a Bible...

...but...

Gregson knew full well women were different, and Clea Cheatham's tastes would not-could not possibly-mirror Hazel Bradstreet's in everything.

This might get bloody without proper intervention.

"Ready, gents?" Bradstreet beamed cheerfully, and took off into the street without waiting for a response.

Heaven have mercy.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The shop was the stuff of nightmares-if not the origin of deep and vague fears into men.

Well, men besides Bradstreet...Lestrade thought miserably. He'd never thought about what it must be like to be the doll in the doll-house, but being surrounded by scores upon scores of miniatures, collection-items, mementos, and confections of paper, paint, colour, tint, gilt, and flowers.

At least Gregson looked just as miserable, he comforted himself. The man clearly wanted another smoke, but in this shop that was open license to burn the shop to ash.

Bradstreet was well known. The puffy pink gentleman behind the desk and his young assistant inquired as to the health of his wife and daughter with considerable familiarity. Bradstreet answered in the same language.

Lestrade was just contemplating his odds of escaping (if he moved quickly enough, he could do it without Gregson; but if he moved too slowly, Gregson would block the entrance and trap him like a rat). Gregson's silent glare from the other side of a bowl of dyed ostrich plumes promised meaningful agony if he tried anything.

"Ah, here we are!" Bradstreet triumphantly produced a mechanical valentine from a shelf. "Try this little work of art!" he snapped the card open with a flourish.

Lestrade stared, dumbfounded. Unfolded, the pale pink paper accordioned out to a pedestal shape, ringed by cut and lithographed roses. The pedestal was the trunk of a bizarre sort of a set of scales-a scales crossed with a floral bower-only instead of weights resting in the swinging dishes, each dish held a barely-dressed and beaming rose-cheeked cupid with unnaturally curly locks.

The cupid on the left held a dove in a way no dove in Lestrade's experience would tolerate (you didn't manhandle the wings of anything if you didn't want to be pecked to death). The opposing cupid gleefully displayed a swollen red heart stabbed with a murderously sharp golden arrow.

Perched atop the trunk of the scales ws a third cupid, smirking unpleasantly as he poised an empty bow in a fat hand. Lithographed roses, ribbons, and swollen fruits decorated the atrocious display.

Lestrade caught himself. He was still staring, and it looked just as awful as it had thirty seconds ago.

"Well?" Bradstreet was waiting.

Lestrade struggled to think of a word-any word. At the same time, he wondered if it really was impossible to expire from horrification.

"The man's overcome with joy." Gregson smiled insufferably. His face was exactly the one the smug little archer-cupid was wearing.

"I'm overcome, yes..." Lestrade agreed faintly.

"Well?" Bradstreet persisted with just a bit more impatience.

"W-well...what?" Lestrade stammered.

"We've got a full shelf of these to choose from. Women like cards. What about this one?" Bradstreet just did not know how to drop a hopeless quest.

"That?"

"YES!"

It wasn't the first time Lestrade was rendered speechless by the unfathomable-or by Bradstreet-but it didn't get easier with practice.

"Oh, for..." Bradstreet sighed to the heavens, which was in this case, a richly moulded ceiling from which depended a collection of paper birds, butterflies, flowers, honey-bees embracing flowers, and one green dragon whom was (going by his sickly grin), suffering the effects of gorging on too many sweet young maids.

"Lestrade, old fellow..." Bradstreet took a deep breath. Had he or Lestrade truly known how much Gregson was enjoying life at this moment, the shop would have been sprayed down with his bright Norman blood. "Women like these little expressions of affection. It makes them feel appreciated."

Lestrade was still not trusting himself to speak. Bradstreet chose an optimistic outlook: He wasn't arguing.

Unbeknownst to Bradstreet, Lestrade was speechless anew at Bradstreet's last statement. Mrs. Bradstreet was a near-six foot, flame-haired Amazon. Her husband's choice of phrase, "makes them feel appreciated" had nearly blasted Lestrade's limited imagination to the Hottentots. How could anyone MAKE a woman like that feel appreciated? For that matter, how couldn't she appreciate herself?

Bradstreet gave up. He looked at Gregson. Gregson shrugged.

"What did you give your future missus during courtship?"

Gregson huffed. "Stationary."

"Stationary." Bradstreet repeated. Lestrade blinked. Even he hadn't expected that answer.

"Well, she can't talk, so she does go through a lot of paper." Gregson said a bit defensively. "And she's so choosy about her perfumes, there was no sense in flowers, or possets, or tussy-mussies, or fruits and sweets. And you know, it isn't easy getting ladyish stationary and envelopes because they always want to scent that."

"I see." Bradstreet railed bravely. "What did your father get your mum, Lestrade?"

Blank panic was on Lestrade's face.

"Well, what kind of thing does he get for her? Surely he gave her a token of affection once or twice."

Gregson thought 'surely' was an ambitiously sunny adverb when it came to all matters Lestradish, but in the hopes of an amusing answer, he kept mum.

Lestrade's brow broke into a sweat. "Spices."

"Eh?"

"She missed the things she ate back on the Continent, so he bought her what she missed."

"Spices?"

"Yes...what are you two staring at?"

Gregson and Bradstreet traded looks with each other. Once in a great while, Lestrade demonstrated the utter alienism of his upbringing. He clearly didn't know spices were an horrendously unsuitable gift for one's fiancee.

"Rule out spices." Gregson said firmly. "She's got her own kitchen, for Heaven's sake. You might insult her if you bought any additions."

Bradstreet wilted in silent relief. "It shouldn't be overdone, but there should be something."

Lestrade took a deep breath. He was stuck.

He wasn't an ignoramous over the rules of courtship. He knew he was expected to see his intended every evening until the wedding date, hell or high water (and both being likely in equal proportions).

However-and this was a real snorter-the sheer number of visits meant a great many gifts.

A great many.

Many.

Lots.

"Geoffrey?"

Many.

Lots.

SNAP!

Lestrade jumped, thrust back to the planet by Bradstreet's large fingers before his face.

"Your head was deep in a coal pit." Bradstreet accused. "Are you gunna be all right? you're looking pale."

"He's right." Gregson agreed rudely. "And when a Scot says you're pale, you're pale."

"HALF Scot, you bloody Norman!"

"No, it's 'Normans! Bloody!'"

Lestrade groaned. this wasn't going to work. He just knew it.