All right, I do my best work at three thirty in the morning. I do.
Disclaimer: Sherlock not mine.
Chapter Four
Harry had been more than intending to go to work the next morning; her real work, that is, not whatever mess Mycroft Holmes intended to get her embroiled in.
She hadn't intended for the sleek black car with the bombshell brunette in a suit to intercept her, or for the brunette to look up from her BlackBerry with a sweet, albeit quite absentminded, smile and say:
"We've sold your apartment for quite the pretty penny, Doctor Watson. Do get in the car."
Harry, a bit stunned by the blunt non-introduction, obeyed. Immediately, the car which had been in idle began to speed away from the clinic that Harry had almost managed to set foot in.
"Er, what do you mean you sold my apartment?" she asked tentatively, trying very hard not to stare below the woman's neck.
"Precisely what it sounds like, Harriet," she murmured, and started texting away on her mobile device. "Mr Holmes was most adamant that you shouldn't be living in that part of town anymore. But we've arranged for you to get money back in installments, provided of course that you..."
"Live with his traumatized brother?"
The woman smiled, and said no more for the rest of the trip.
They were not chauffeured to 221b Baker Street, like Harry had been furiously anticipating. Instead, the car idled outside of a very large and old-fashioned home that looked very much out of place in the otherwise modern London street. Harry's brunette abductor looked up with some surprise.
"This is your stop dear. Just ring the doorbell."
Harry felt quite tempted to ask what would happen if she didn't do what she was supposed to, but then decided she really didn't want to know. Biting her lip, she walked up the imposing staircase and rang the bell. Another simply gorgeous woman in a suit answered.
"Hello. You must be Doctor Watson," said she in a voice accented heavily with some kind of Eastern-European tint. "Come in. He has been expecting you."
"Well, I suppose he has," Harry said crossly. She did not appreciate this elaborate game of smoke and mirrors, particularly when she knew that at the end of the trip was going to be a mildly overweight and middle-aged toff who had too much fun playing Big Brother in all senses of the phrase.
Mycroft Holmes sat drinking tea as she came into the study and was seated. She looked around; this place didn't look very lived in at all.
"Enjoying the decor, I see," Mycroft said. "I admit I'm rather fond of it myself. Not my choice of wallpaper, perhaps, but then again, it's not my study. I shouldn't complain."
Harry stared at Mycroft, her eyebrows bunching in the middle and causing a small pinprick of pain in the middle of her forehead from the pressure.
"I was going to work."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about work," Mycroft said flippantly. "You weren't happy at the clinic anyhow."
"And how..."
"Your blog is quite engrossing, though a tad more trivial than my usual reading material."
"You read my blog. You read my blog? But I've locked it."
Mycroft smirked condescendingly.
"Doctor Watson, Blogspot is hardly a secure place for your thoughts. If it's in the ether, people will find it. Now, as for the matter of your payment..."
"I'm not looking after your brother. He's John's friend, not mine," Harry said shortly. Mycroft, who'd been lifting his mug carefully to his lips, started to set the cup back down again.
"I wasn't asking you to be friends with him. That's more than I can ask from most anyone," he said. "Especially now. I merely wish for you, that is, you exclusively, to treat him."
"And I decline."
"Pity. We've handed in your letter of resignation at the clinic and you've acquitted yourself of that hole that you called your apartment this morning," Mycroft said, and shifted papers around on his desk with chilling nonchalance. "Really, Dr Watson if you want to keep a job and a fixed address, this is the easiest way to go about it."
"Is this how you hoodwinked John into living with that lunatic, then?" Harry snapped.
"No. Heavens no. Your brother came of his own accord. Birds of a feather and all that. My assistant will have you driven to two-hundred-twenty-one-bee, Doctor Watson. You'll find your belongings will have been unpacked and distributed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. My brother will be expecting your arrival. Do be civil."
And with that, the Russian female butler came in and escorted Harry back to the sleek black car with the gorgeous automaton inside.
