William Wellington is not normally an early riser. He's more of a late night owl, used to going to bed at 3am, and rising around 10am. Perhaps it's the sun pouring in through the two unfamiliar large bay windows because the drapes hadn't been drawn. Or it's the bed that he's never slept in before. Or maybe the warmth of the unfamiliar body that's fast asleep next to him, and the gentle sound of her breathing.
He blinks his eyes open, he takes in the room that he saw for the first time last night, and now in the daylight he could fully make out the yellow painted walls and the white woodwork, the soft blue drapes, the dark wooden wardrobe and dresser with all her pots of lotions and hair things laid out on top. Then he looks over at her, sleeping soundly unaware that he's awake.
Eliza Scarlet… His Eliza… could he call her that now? Or would she defiantly tell him otherwise when she woke. Her blonde hair was spilt over the white pillow, her lips pouted slightly, her hand resting, fingers curled near her face. To him she was perfect.
He can't say for sure how they got to this moment of him waking up next to her in her bedroom. Some might say it was inevitable, and only a matter of time. For him though, it had taken a lifetime, and he could still scarcely believe it was real. For years he had waited, while she'd pulled him in only to push him away when he got close to her.
He gently brushed a finger over her cheek, not wanting to wake her, just be sure this was real and it had happened, and it wasn't some delicious dream. She gave a soft hum at the feel of his finger, that sent chills through him, but she kept sleeping soundly. Was he a fool for waiting for her? If he was, then be damned, because here he was lying next to her.
He couldn't say for certain, the moment things had changed between them. It had been slow and subtle. There was no one-day, date or specific event that he could recall as their first. Their years of teasing and arguing, had slowly progressed to polite respect. A few dinners between friends had happened and she'd willingly linked his arm after. Then came the polite acceptance of her offering her hand to him instead of him taking it, for him to kiss her hand goodbye on the steps of her house at the end of the evening.
It had taken many more months of dinners, and arm holding, before she would hold his hand without question and she fully stopped leaving the perquisite one-meter distance between them, or occasionally allowed him a kiss on the cheek. Finally, one night he hadn't left her on the doorstep as he would ordinarily, she'd invited him in. She knew that Ivy was spending the night at her mothers, yet she chose to let him join her in the house for a drink.
They were rarely ever alone, even in her house, Ivy was usually somewhere, or Mr Parker would turn up unexpectedly. This particular evening though was different, there was an air about her, like she was preparing for something he wasn't even aware of. Even with the dark hour, she seemed to be expecting him to stay.
She nodded to him to light a fire, while she poured him a whiskey, and herself a brandy, neither of those drinks would actually be drunk. She'd placed them on the hearth, while they sat on the floor next to each other in front of the fire. If it was at all possible, she seemed even more beautiful in the warm yellow light of the fire. For a few moments they had settled on polite conversation. He remembers subconsciously touching her cheek with his thumb, and she didn't seem to retract from it. If anything she seemed to move closer to him.
She was quiet, and Eliza was never quiet, or still for that matter. Then it all seemed to happen so fast, but also in slow motion, that now he can't even remember if she kissed him, or if he kissed her, or perhaps they just mutually met in the middle. Yet, he can remember every single second of that kiss in his minds eyes. From the awkward way they sat not quite facing each other, to her soft lips and the catch in her breath. The way she pulled at his bottom lip and drew him in while he licked at hers, and how he never wanted it to end because he felt terrified she would pull away and slap him again.
The timid way they pulled apart, and she wouldn't meet his eyes at first, and when she finally did, it was the question in her eyes, the silent is this okay, and all he could do was kiss her again and show her it was, because lord knows he had no words for her in that moment.
It could have been seconds, minutes or even hours, before they had come up for air that evening, with smiles, laughs and the occasional whispered words. When he'd finally left her house, his lips were bruised and his heart was full. She'd let him kiss her, not just once, but maybe a thousand times, and not only that, but she'd kissed him back.
It would be a few more weeks before he plucked up the courage to invite her for dinner at his house. She'd been a little skeptical at first, it wasn't proper to be alone with a man, let alone in his house having dinner, but he'd insisted it was just dinner. He'd kept to his word, of sorts… he'd made her help prepare the food while he took charge of the actual cooking, along with some gentle jibing about her lack of cooking skills. Afterwards he'd taken her home, as promised, with only a gentle kiss on the cheek from inside the carriage. He was working on building her trust, that they could be alone in his house without fear of anything she didn't want happening.
It was also a little fun on his part to confuse her, to make her wonder if and when he might kiss her again. The trouble was, he was also only teasing and tempting himself, having her in front of him and doing his best to remain a gentleman and do nothing.
It was worth it though, when one night after dinner, when he was just finishing cleaning up, he offered to take her home, and she stood leaning against the kitchen wall, her eyes soft with a look of resolution, she finally asked if he was ever going to kiss her again. He'd laughed, put down his cloth and took a few steps towards her, before carefully wrapping his arms around her waist, and asking if she would like him to kiss her.
She'd rolled her eyes at him, because she thought she'd made it quite obvious, but it was exactly that acknowledgement from her that he had needed. That what he felt was happening between them was what she wanted, that he wasn't reading things wrong, or that she wasn't about to pull a rug from under him.
This time it wasn't like the gentle somewhat innocent kissing at her house that was going no further. This time, there was meaning, there was purpose to their kissing. Hands were moving, and exploring, and whilst they remained fully clothed, they were both egger for more, and their kissing left them both seeing stars.
So finally a new chapter had started in their lives. One where, each week on Ivy's nights off, William ate dinner with Eliza at her house, nearly always cooked by him, but Eliza was slightly more interested in learning, and always ended in them not so innocently kissing in her drawing room afterwards.
That wasn't to say that things were plain sailing. If Eliza wanted to work with William and help him with cases, they had to remain professional and no one could know what was going on behind closed doors. Despite a few rumors about them around Scotland Yard, they managed to keep their distance from each other and their private relationship quiet.
Perhaps what helped is that they still had an uncanny ability to annoy each other, and make each other mad. Especially when it came to work, their methods to working cases being quite different, and their personal safety a worry to both of them. William didn't always approve of her working with Moses or putting her life in dangerous situations, but then Eliza didn't approve of William putting himself in harms way for the sake of it being his job and he had to.
Still, they had resolved an unspoken rule, that the moment they left their offices and either front door shut, whatever grudges had happened during the day were left outside. It seemed to work… most of the time. So this continued for a while.
They were happy, but for one thing. William never pushed for more then Eliza was willing to give for fear she would bolt away. Never voicing his thoughts about what he hoped would come next. Until one evening, after a particularly dangerous case, one which Eliza had failed to heed even his most serious warnings, did he finally snap.
Looking back, it probably wasn't his finest hour, as they stood in her drawing room, him yelling and ranting at her about her safety, and did she not realize how much she meant to him, and did she really want to spend the rest of her life like this, and what if they were married, or even had children, what did she expect to happen?
She had been most un-Eliza like, quietly staring at him blankly, blinking, and taking in his words. If she was honest, she'd known what he wanted all along, and the longer he didn't say it the longer she could avoid thinking about what came next. She never answered him that night, she just stood quietly looking at him, unsure what to say, because she didn't have a correct answer for him.
He'd walked out of her house angrier with her then he had been in months. They didn't even see each other for a week afterwards. The reprieve had only come when a case Eliza was working on crossed over with one of his and they'd had no choice but to see each other. As polite as they were, everyone around them could feel something was off between them.
Once the case was resolved, Eliza had quietly asked him to take a walk with her, and they had strolled their way along the Thames embankment towards Tower Bridge, her arm tucked in his. In the sunshine, with the Thames for once sparkling, she finally admitted she loved him, words she'd never said to him out loud, for one reason and one reason only.
Marriage. She wasn't ready for it. For him little would change, only he would gain a wife to support. He would expect her to be traditional and stay at home, and look after the children, and have dinner on the table when he came in from work. For her, it was losing ever shred of independence that she held dear. She would be expected to give up her agency, her life, her body, even her childhood home that she held so close and had fought so hard at times to keep, would be his.
What he wanted out of life differed from who she was so completely, where did they go from there? If this life was all she could offer him, could that be enough for him?
Even by the end of their walk, they were no closer to common ground on the subject, but at least they were on friendlier terms, and William had finally got out what he wanted from her.
It would take weeks before he started joining her for dinner, he missed her and it was too hard to stay away, but it was always on a night when Ivy was home, and the days of them kissing for hours in her drawing room were a forgotten memory. It was a haze of being together, but not together whilst trying to find some sort of compromise where neither won nor lost completely.
There would be no grand proposal, but a negotiation, as was always the way with Eliza. There was though a ring. A beautiful gold band, with tiny diamonds set in the shape of a flower. It was one he'd been walking past in the Jewelers window for months, too afraid to go in and purchase for fear of rejection if he gave it to her, but eventually it seemed like it was just waiting for him.
She had held her breath when he placed the small black box that contained it on her dinner table one evening, with a simple sentence, it's not what you think. She had listened carefully, as he explained, this was not an engagement ring, this was instead a promise.
She could take it and keep in a draw, or wear it, which ever she saw fit, but one day, when she was ready to marry, he wanted a promise that she would marry him. He couldn't change the terms of marriage, that was set out by the laws of the land after all. However, her house would always be her house, he would never take that from her, he would never force her to do anything with him she wasn't willing to do, and as for children they might have, he would leave that up to fate.
When he finished she could only offer him a simple, sincere and heartfelt thank you. A thank you for not forcing her perhaps? A thank you for understanding maybe? She had kissed him, and held him so tightly that evening that he wasn't even sure what she'd been thinking.
He would be lying if he'd said he never looked at her left hand to see if she wore it, but he did soon forget to check, always just assuming it wouldn't be there. He concentrated on his work, and was finally against all odds promoted to Chief Inspector, still remaining at Scotland Yard. Eliza continued her work too, though it was more noticeable that their paths were crossing less and less on cases, which meant their time together was more precious.
The kissing returned, and so did the evenings out, and the dinners at his house. Kissing on his armchair soon changed to nights spent kissing in his bed, though there was a mutual respect that "that" wouldn't happen. If she wasn't ready for marriage, then she wasn't ready for the consequences of that happening either. Also, her father might not have been alive, but William felt fairly certain that if he were to get Eliza in trouble outside of marriage, Henry Scarlet would find a way to come back a kill him for it.
His small one bedroom house became their private sanctuary. A place where they could be alone without fear of Ivy hearing something she shouldn't, or accidentally walking in on them. A place where they didn't have to stand on ceremony as the world expected, they were just themselves, and could relax in his armchair, or his bed, they could smile, and talk, and whisper their words that were meant for them only.
It would be many months later, when on a non-descript cold, wet, grey London day, walking towards her office that Eliza was holding his hand. It surprised him, mainly because she wasn't wearing her gloves, which was expected of her, but he felt it. His finger brushed the roughness of diamonds, and almost in shock, he stopped them and pulled her hand in front of him to see it with his own eyes.
She laughed, because she'd been wearing it for a full week, and he'd not noticed at all. The smile on his face beamed, and impropriety be damned, he wrapped her in his arms and spun and her around in full view of whoever was around them.
If he could have, he would have pulled her off to the nearest church there and then, before she could change her mind, but there were proper protocols that had to happen. Word had soon spread around Scotland Yard that Miss Scarlet was seen wearing a special kind of ring. No one was brave enough to bring this up to the Inspector, yet he did seem in a strangely cheerful mood.
Finally, on a beautiful Spring Friday afternoon at a quiet church in Bloomsbury, in the presence of a handful of guests including Ivy, Rupert, and Moses, he finally got to move her mothers wedding ring from her right hand to her left. She'd placed her father's gold wedding band on his left hand, he only hoped he could live up to it previous owner. After years of waiting, he finally got to kiss her, not in the privacy of their homes, but in front of people. No longer needing to hide away or pretend their relationship was just a friendship.
Ivy was spending the weekend at her mothers, so they had Eliza's home, now their home, all to themselves. In all the years he'd know her, he'd never been upstairs to the bedrooms, not even once, and he noticed she seemed nervous. She'd never had a man in her room, they always slept at his house, and this was different, this was symbolic, this was to be his room as well now.
Now, he watched her sleeping, he remembered the slowness of their actions of the previous evening, neither wanting to get to the end too quickly, both enjoying the mutual love and years of friendship they shared. He had held her so tightly as she drifted off to sleep in his arms, him fighting sleep, never wanting that day to end.
He felt her starting to stir, his time of peace with her almost at an end, and he heard her take a deep breath and sigh. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, then started a trail of kisses down her neck and to her shoulders, and back up again.
"Good morning," he whispered into her ear. He saw the smile on her face and she stretched her body close to his.
"Surely we've only just fallen asleep," she said sleepily.
"There's no need to wake up yet," he told gently.
"Five more minutes," she replied, lazily.
Contentment is a strange feeling, a passing moment, where nothing and no one can take anything away from you. William Wellington was happy, not that he'd been unhappy for a while, but this feeling was new. He now had her in his life completely, without fear that she would run away, or that she would leave like everyone else had.
After all these years of waiting in the wings for her to be ready, he had finally found his place, his family, his home.