Joan's notes, Yorkshire 1895

It was cold, bitingly cold, in our upstairs room. A fire had been lit, but obviously not until late. The heat had not even begun to penetrate the room before it had to be banked up for the night.

I opened my travelling bag, looked at the nightdress I had brought with me and closed it up again.

"Socks," said Holmes.

He was standing at the windows, gazing out into the village green. He spoke without turning round.

"Sorry what?"

"Socks." His hand moved behind him in a gesture towards the armchair where his bag tested. "In my bag. Bed socks. I have two pairs with me. Use one."

I went to his bag. He would know, of course, the moment I opened it. Yet he did not turn round, seemed intent on the moonlit green. I unclasped the bag and dug around carefully. His things were packed with great precision.

"Mind the gun," Holmes said casually from the window.

"Gun. Right."

"A mere precaution. The Count, and his people, are dangerous."

I found a woollen bundle and pulled out socks. One pair I stuffed back into the bag.

"I'm not getting undressed," I said to Holmes' back. "It's too cold. I'm just getting into bed as I am."

He turned at once. "You'll find it uncomfortable. The bones in your dress, your, your, personal garments -"

His delicacy! A man who could look upon a smashed skull and observe the telltale trace of cricketers oil on the bloodied hair, yet he was unable to refer to a woman's underwear.

However, I took his point. "Oh."

Also, Alice helped me in and out of the carapace, as I had come to think of my dress, every day. I was pretty sure that if I tried to undress myself I would wreck it.

"Yes," said Holmes his back to me once again.

"Sorry what?"

"Yes, I can assist." This in a tone of great weariness. "If you permit me."

"Thank you."

I turned my back to him and he approached, still puffing on the wretched pipe, and unlaced the top four inches or so of my dress, very briskly. "Thanks."

He moved away. "I'll take the chair, of course."

"No," I told him. "We need to conserve body heat. In this level of cold you actually could freeze in your sleep. Share the bed."

He turned his face to me, outraged.

"Oh for God's sake," I said. "This is practical, logical and vital. And we are supposed to be married."

"But we are not married. Bad enough to be in one chamber -"

Bohemian Holmes had vanished, and Patriarchal Stickler for Social Mores Holmes had materialised in his place. "What happened to hang society?" I demanded. "What happened to carving your own moral code?"

"That applies to my work," he said stiffly. "Not my personal habits."

"Listen," I told him. "We are going to share this bed and it is going to keep us warm. That's it, that's all, end of, ok? Just forget that I am a woman."

Not that he ever knew I was one. His willingness to call me Watson spoke volumes about my place in the colleague-versus-female scale.

Suddenly it struck me that perhaps it was not my virtue under consideration, but his own. That he was worried I might molest him, dishonour him with my twenty-first century wantonness. "Holmes," I said in a softer tone. "I promise there will be no - nothing improper. Ok?"

He spun round, his hand on his cravat. "You need not reassure me. This is a logical solution to our problem at hand. Of course I acquiesce. I will allow you a few moments to compose yourself before joining you."

I nodded my gratitude at our eventual agreement.

In bed I dragged the covers up round my chin and curled into a ball, trying not to lose the warmth of my own body to the heat sink of chilled sheets and blankets. A draught was persistent across my face. My nose was cold. My feet were freezing but I could not bear to curl them under me and cool down any other part of me with the contact.

The bed creaked: Holmes getting in, also fully dressed except coat, shoes and cravat. The playboy mansion this was not. I chuckled despite my chattering teeth.

"What?" Holmes asked.

"A silly thought," I said. I did not dare explain. "I think the cold is actually stopping my brain."

"Frostbite on the brain lobes would be both painful and irreversible," he mused.

The blankets were piled on top of us and into the valley between us. I relaxed. "Do you know that during treatment of cancer, they give the patient a skull cap chilled with ice water?" I asked.

"Why?" His interest, keen, pouring across the bed towards me.

"Its to slow down hair loss during chemotherapy. The drugs are given, but because of restricted circulation to the scalp due to cold, the drug does not act as powerfully there and the patient has a better chance of avoiding hair loss."

"Fascinating," he breathed, and I realised I had set myself up for an all-night discussion of oncology treatments. "Especially important for women," Holmes added, and his assumption was so accurate that I found myself, curled up facing away from him, making a sarcastic face. His professions of innocence around women were utter bull. Holmes has a good and detailed grasp of female psychology. He just doesn't much like it, is all, and would rather not subject himself to it. Makes sense.

"We're not really getting the benefit here," I said then. "Come closer."

It shocked me a little, when I thought that I was essentially inviting him to spoon me, in bed, but all the same I pressed the point.

"I would rather not," he said, adding before I could argue, "but I will."

He wriggled across the bed and came to rest on his back next to me. His shoulder touched my back.

"That's much better," I said. "God, you're fantastically warm."

"No. You are simply very cold."

He shifted then. "Forgive me," he murmured, and turned on his side and pressed his body against my back. "I had not appreciated how cold you were," he said. His face was completely clear of me, and his whole stance was tense and unhappy.

"Keeping warm," I said. "That's the point. The only point."

The shared warmth worked its magic. I felt myself drifting.

"Miss Watson?" His whisper, hot across my scalp.

"Yes."

"Tell me at once if this offends you."

His arm passed over my waist and rested across me.

"It's fine," I mumbled.

An impulse seized me. "Tell me if this offends you," I said, and clasped his cold fingers with my own. He twitched and shuddered as if in disgust, but allowed me to hold his hand and rub his fingers.

It was strange, my longing to comfort him. maybe I just wanted to get some reaction from him, some normal, human reaction. But watching him work – and he was magnificent at work – I still felt primarily pity, for such a lonely life, and a life where he had lost his one friend. I wanted to give him a hug. Around fifty percent of the time, I realised. The rest of the time I wanted to shake him. Ok, that's unfair. Mostly he was just incredibly good at what he did – I existed in a near permanent state of awe. But sometimes he was just downright annoying.

But he had feelings and he was a human being, no matter how much he despised the weakness of people with their emotions and softness. I knew, I just knew that he yearned for company and comfort the same as everyone else. He denied it to himself and kept busy with work. How well I knew that particular trait.

I lay back against him, stroking his hand and wishing I cold ask him about his life. He would hate that, though, even more than this enforced intimacy. Silence was the key if he was not to leap from the bed and spend the night in frozen obstinacy in the armchair.

After a while his thumb came down over my fingers, stopping me from any more stroking. I lay still and listened to him breathing. And admitted to myself that the cuddling was for my benefit as much as his, not the warmth but the closeness. I had not had a hug of any description since I got here. Not one person to console me, to cheer me , to touch me. Only Holmes, the least likely person in the world to display physical affection.

It occurred to me then that this might be the very first time he had ever been in bed with a woman. (Or man?) His starchy morality about marriage and intimacy might well have prevented any kind of physical contact.

Men went to brothels though, didn't they?

Maybe not this man. It was a little hard to imagine.

Also, I had to not imagine anything of the sort, given he was lying right with me and knowing him could probably read my mind.

"Miss Watson," he said.

"-Yes?" How guilty did I sound?

"Stop thinking and sleep."

"Says you."

He chuckled, then stopped himself abruptly. I wonder what it would be like if one day he did not stop himself. "Are you comfortable?"

"Amazingly so, yes."

Oh, that was a bad thing to say. Yes, I am enjoying the sensation of your body next to mine, even though we are not married and you had to stop me ravishing your hand just now because it offended your sense of propriety.

But he just said, "Then sleep." I felt a hesitant pressure from his fingers around mine.

He talked to me then, seeming to want distraction, about a lake and how it frosted by stages, and how by taking samples of the ice, certain locals could accurately predict the weather for the next six to eight months.

I dozed off at last, soaking up his heat, grateful that he was still a warm human being despite all his protests about thought, brain and worthless emotions.

My final coherent thought, before sleep overtook me, was that I'd never done anything like this with Sherlock, and that now, that seemed strange.