A short little thing I wrote last night. Enjoy!

As Julia was bent over in the ventilation shaft, his eyes snapped to her rear end and he fondly remembered the first time he stared at her backside (before they were married such ruminations were inappropriate, but now that they were man and wife, it was acceptable in his mind).

It was late December 1894 and she had come into his office to personally hand him her report before she left for the evening.

"Thank you, doctor." When she didn't immediately leave he looked up at her. She seemed hesitant to go. "You're off then?"

"Yes, indeed. There's a rather dreadful ball I must attend now."

She grimaced but he just looked puzzled and steepled his fingertips. "If it is so disagreeable to you, why not simply go home and read?"

That's what he did most nights by the fireside and he was perfectly content.

"Oh, the burdens of high society," Julia lamented with a smirk. Murdoch raised an eyebrow and Julia's smile faded. "My sister has enforced her will on me once again. I'm afraid she will be quite put out if I don't show up, and I shall never hear the end of how unsociable I am."

Dr. Ogden unsociable? What did that make him then?

"I see."

There was an awkward silence between them, something that happened rather frequently since Liza's passing. It seemed like she wanted to ask him something, but what, he couldn't fathom. She was staring at him again in that most bewildering way and it made him very uncomfortable. He fiddled with the papers before him.

"Well, I suppose you should be on your way then."

"Yes, I suppose I should," she replied with a massive sigh. "Good night, detective."

"Good night, doctor."

One last small smile at him and she turned and parted. It was then and to his great surprise he found his eyes trailing across her backside! This grievous misstep was thankfully very short lived (though whether this was more to do with with his line of sight being impeded or his own conscience, he could never be certain).

A very repentant Murdoch showed up early for confession the next morning...and from that day forward, many times to come. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn't understand why his eyes kept betraying him, or what this could possibly mean. He knew he couldn't be attracted to Dr. Ogden because Liza had been his beloved and always would be. To think of another woman at all, let alone only six months after Liza's passing, was monstrous, and he was determined to hold onto her memory forevermore.

In this folly he succeeded for far too long. Then after a particularly vivid fantasy, he knew that his will was quickly coming undone and sooner or later he would have no choice but to act on his ever growing desires.

Recently he had done just that - repeatedly, to the delight of them both - and he wondered how he ever thought such feelings could possibly be wrong; that any feelings towards anyone could be wrong. We loved who we loved, for better or worse, and that was the end of it.

As Julia herself once vehemently told him, 'If God didn't want us to express our desires, then why did he give us desires in the first place?'

Why indeed, Mrs. Murdoch, why indeed.