Greg Lestrade blinked several times at the sight of his mother staring dejectedly at the window of her small, front parlor. He frowned. The gauzy white curtains were drawn and her only company was a dim oil lamp. She wore an older, taupe gown and her normally perfectly styled white hair was a bit lopsided. Guilt prickled his conscience. He had asked his mother to harbor a fugitive and had not yet entertained the thought that it might be too much of an emotional burden for the elderly matriarch.
"Mother, you appear rather dour," Lestrade remarked softly, "is there anything amiss?"
She sniffed and turned up her chin. For a moment, he thought she might give him an earful but her lip trembled instead. Greg swallowed a knot in his throat.
"Mother?" he scooted next to her on the flower-print settee.
"Never mind me," she mumbled while rubbing her wrists, "or at least, do not start now."
He sighed and took one of her arthritic hands. Her simple gold wedding band looked loose on her ring finger. Her engagement stone had turned sideways towards her knuckle. The march of time seemed to beat loudly at his back in that moment. He cleared his throat.
"Ah, do not be daft. I care about you very much, Mum. Do not ever doubt it."
Greg's mother sniffled. Her lips quivered again. He inhaled a fortifying breath. He did not know what he would do if she began to cry. He had never seen his mother cry, not once. Not even the day his father died, taken at a younger age than he was then. He huffed and chased away the melancholy thoughts of his own mobidity.
"Mother?"
She sighed. "I do not relish being alone, you know, my lad. It is very hard on an old woman."
Greg clucked his tongue. "But you have a guest-"
She turned her sharp gaze to her son and snatched back her hand. "Exactly! My first bit of companionship in years."
His forehead bunched. He shifted in his seat.
"You enjoy Miss Donovan's company, then?"
His mother pursed her lips and straightened her shoulders. She swallowed against the prim lace at her throat. Her antique cameo pendant jiggled.
"I do," she admitted haughtily.
The expression on her face was a bit defiant. He scratched his temple and tried not to smile. Several nights he had overheard Miss Donovan reading to his mum or entertaining her with stories about her memories from her island home. There were even times they bickered but the pair had developed a tenuous rapport all the same.
"Lord help me . . . why are you upset?"
His mother's lips turned down. "Miss Donovan is upstairs as we speak. She packs her things. She means to leave tonight. I . . . I am concerned about her welfare."
Greg's head whipped in the direction of the stairs outside the parlor. Panic made his blood pound through his ears.
"What?!"
He hopped to his feet, then turned quickly.
"There has to be some sort of mistake. E-Excuse me, mother."
"Gregory," she called after him.
He glanced back.
"Please let her know that she is . . . very welcome here, for as long as she would like to stay."
He nodded impatiently. His mother stopped him again.
"A-And tell her I deeply regret if I have caused her any more offense."
"Yes, Mum, of course!"
"And G-"
Lestrade spun and shook his hands. "Dear God in Heaven, Mother! Will you let me go to her?"
Finally, she relented and dropped a shaking hand back to her lap. Greg expunged a breath as he shook his head and flew up the stairs. His heart raced in his chest as he took the steps two at once. He slowed his pace in the upper hall and smoothed his tweed suit back into place. Fortunately, the door to Sally's room was ajar; she still leaned over her bed and folded items. He heaved a sigh of relief.
"A-Ahem, Miss Donovan?" he ventured.
Her shoulders jumped. She raised her head and cricked her neck before jauntily turning to face him. However, she kept her eyes averted and fiddled with the cuffs of her blue and black plaid dress. His eyes grazed her braided crown and the blue ribbon threaded through her hair. She was particular to blue. Not coincidentally, he found himself more and more particular to the hue as well.
"Good Afternoon, Inspector."
"Afternoon, Miss Donovan. I see you are leaving?" he queried, his voice tight.
Her eyes finally lifted. "Yes, I have arranged passage for myself to New York."
Greg's throat constricted. "New York?! Th-That is . . . ahem, very far away."
She smiled brightly but her eyes glistened. "Precisely! I have worn out my welcome here in England, Inspector. Far away may not even be far enough!"
Greg wracked his mind for a counter-argument but none was forthcoming. He could gallantly swear to protect Sally forever, but that would be a dishonesty on his part. Fleeing England for the United States was the probably only way she could gain her liberty at that particular time. There had been little he could do to help her, she was a wanted woman and had not been forthcoming about any part she played in the deaths attributed to the ghost bride. The prospect or her leaving made his stomach lurch. Would life be any better for her in America? His mind whirled with every dangerous scenario imaginable. There was a sudden flare of pain in his heart. Desperate words slipped past his lips before he could rethink them.
"Please stay."
He dropped his chin for several seconds and closed his eyes. He could not believe he had allowed the plea to pass his lips.
"I am a fool," he lamented silently.
When he glanced up again, Miss Donovan stared at him curiously. Her eyes flicked rapidly up and down his face as if she were trying to sort him out.
"Stay and do what?" she prodded in an icy tone. "Hide myself away here as your mother's servant?"
Greg winced. "Oh, God, no . . . oh, lord, h-has my mother been treating you as such?"
Sally sighed. "No! No . . . in fact, she has been kind. Well, as kind as she can be, I suppose."
She looked around as if cataloging the sparse bedroom. She swallowed. The delicate muscles in her neck strained at the effort.
"So, then, you would like me to stay for . . . you?" her eyes returned like the lash of a whip.
His chest constricted. She was beautiful like no other woman he had ever known. A ribbon of steel ran through her and gleamed from the depths of her gaze. She wasn't frail at all, she certainly didn't need him, and perhaps that was what was most distressing to him. He felt redundant.
"Y-Yes, I would like you to stay with me, I mean, w-with us."
Greg watched her expression change quickly from surprised to contemplative to irritated. Her lip curled with an unpalatable thought.
"Mm, hmm," her voice reverberated with disdain, "you would have me tend to your needs instead? No thank-you, Inspector, I have had this offer before and turned down richer men than you. I am not interested in being your mistress."
Mistress, he repeated to himself? Greg's lungs burned as if the air had been thumped from his chest. His eyes widened so considerably that he felt as if they would pop from his sockets. He shook his head vigorously. She'd completely misunderstood his plea.
"N-No, that is not-"
They were interrupted by a loud banging from the entry downstairs.
"Miss Donovan," Greg stepped forward, "Sally, please . . ."
She moved away with a shake of her head. The banging resumed. Greg cursed and excused himself to chase off whoever had interrupted their exchange. He tromped down the stairs and flung open the door.
"Begone-!"
His voice waned. Holmes and Dr. Watson stood on his front step with quizzical brows. Greg clenched his teeth and glanced up the stairs before returning his gaze to the pair.
"Dr. Watson, Holmes, good afternoon. Ah, now is not the right time-"
"Nonsense," Holmes' voice rumbled as he brushed by the Inspector, "in fact, I suspect we have arrived at a moment most opportune."
Greg scooted around Holmes in his mother's small foyer and stood between the detective and the stairs. Holmes' eyes constricted and glinted with a glimmer of suspicion as he doffed his deerstalker. Dr. Watson peered around him. His mustache twitched. For a few seconds, the three men squared off.
"Do ask Miss Donovan to come down and speak with us, will you, Lestrade?" Holmes deep tenor reverberated in the small space.
Greg expunged a breath. There was no use in denying her presence. He had never been able to conceal anything from the consulting detective. He scratched his sideburns anxiously.
"When did you deduce she had come here?"
Holmes' lips crooked up at the corners. "Deduce? I did not need any clues to determine your involvement in sheltering Miss Donovan, Lestrade. I just made a particularly adroit assumption from the inevitability of numerous factors-"
Greg sighed and waved his hand. "Oh, never mind!"
Above them, a female cleared her throat. When Greg glanced up, he saw Sally descending the main stairs. She had a resigned expression on her face.
"It would appear I lingered a day too long," she lamented. "Come to take me away then, Mr. Holmes?"
The large detective gave his hat a shake and lifted his chin. Dr. Watson hastily removed his cap.
"Not at all. I have come to set you free, Miss Donovan," Holmes murmured before his eyes slid to Greg, "that is, if you would be amenable to that?"
Sally slowed her steps and then paused and leaned over the stairs' balustrade. Her intelligent brown eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"What is the catch, Mr. Holmes? True freedom is seldom free."
Holmes smirked. "Ah, well, you are correct. There is a price to pay. In your case, you must give up the ghost."
Molly's hand shook as she carefully sealed the second envelope with wax. She set it next to the first on her writing desk and stared at the pair of missives for several moments. One was addressed to Holmes' mother and the other to Holmes himself. Her eyes flicked to all the crumpled sheets in the bin next to her heel She had written several long-winded messages but in the end decided that no amount of words, numerous or sparse, would adequately justify what was contained therein. It was better in this instance, she thought, to cut to the quick.
"Dearest Mrs. Winifred Holmes,
I regret to inform you that I will not be marrying your son. He is a most admirable and worthy gentleman but alas, I have become convinced we will not suit. Please accept my sincerest regrets for any pain I may have caused your family in breaking our engagement.
Yours, Molly Hooper."
Her second letter offered a similar vein of bland resignation.
"Holmes,
I would like to convey my gratitude for your having considered me as a potential marriage partner. However, I no longer believe we are a good match and do not wish to marry you. Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Regards, Hooper."
Molly swallowed against a rise of bile. Her courses had come that morning. Her recklessness had gone unpunished; physically, at least. She felt another tremor deep in her soul before her stomach turned again. She pressed her lower palms against her eyes as ugly tears tried to squeeze out. She hiccuped and growled sadly through the throbbing heartache.
"Aaarg," she wiped away fat drops, "s-stop! Stop it!"
Still, her heavy tears fell like the first spatterings of a gathering storm. She should have been relieved to discover she had not conceived during their ill-advised lovemaking, and she was in a way, yet she had never been so thoroughly disappointed in her life to start her monthly cycle. She was not pregnant. Holmes didn't love her. Their relationship had run its course. She sputtered a sob and collapsed on her desk.
"Stupid, foolish, rube!" she whispered as she cried.
When had she let that silly, greedy romantic creature within her gain a foothold into her life's plans, she wondered? When had her biological inclinations become imperatives? She blubbered another sniveling sob over her cherry desk. She was mortified by how pathetic she felt in that moment, at being distraught over the dissolution of her engagement as if she were a freshly turned out debutante whose sole purpose in life had been to land a husband. Her chest shuddered again as Holmes' deep voice reverberated cruelly through her skull.
"Listen to me, I do not want your love. I do not want its demands."
"Huuugh," she sniffled, "fool! Foolish, fooling, fool-y, fool-y . . . f-f-fool!"
Molly pushed up from the desk and vigorously rubbed her eyes. She paced for an indeterminate time until her orbs were raw and her misery could not wring another drip from her ducts. Then, numb, she snatched the letters from her desk and drifted down stairs in a daze. She needed to get rid of them, to get them out of her sight before she lost her nerve because if she gave in to the still-hopeful voice trying to convince her she might be wrong, she knew that next time she had to face the truth, her pain would be infinitely more unbearable. The sad truth was she could not marry a man who would never return her love or maybe she might have been able to, she debated herself, if only he was able to accept her love.
Gomery didn't ask what the letters were about when she found him in the foyer. He looked at her, looked at who they were addressed to and his lips pressed together tightly.
"Good Riddance then," he said gruffly before his he glanced back up at her, "I never thought that dandy was worthy of you."
Molly grimaced and shook her head. "D-Do not speak ill of him to me, Mr. Gomery, and I bid thee, do not do so below either. Mr. Holmes is a gentleman and has done nothing wrong. This was all my doing, my fault. I . . . I am just not the lady I ought to have been."
Gomery went very red. His spine stiffened. Molly clenched her teeth. Holmes wasn't to blame for her misery. It was her, it was all her. She had fostered hopes of something more and disregarded his every protestation otherwise. He had never wavered from his assertions. She just finally listened to him. He was a man who did not want to be married but was trapped by society's conventions and his own expectations for his behavior as much as herself. She would be damned if she allowed their farce of an engagement morph into an even unwieldier sham marriage.
"Hmmph, I will not accept such talk from you. You are every measure a lady, as fine a rose as I have ever seen bloom in such shite-"
Molly stepped back and put up her hands. "I am not. Not! Just, please, see that those letters are delivered and let us not speak of this again."
Gomery's gnarled fingers clamped on the letters before he tucked them into his pocket. He snorted.
"Have you told your Uncle yet?"
She gave her head a single shake.
The old servant frowned. "Would you like for me to inform him?"
Molly clasped her hands together as they began to tremble. Unexpectedly, a fresh well of tears bubbled up within her and she had to gulp them back. Her Uncle would be so disappointed. His relationship with Holmes might never recover. She couldn't speak. She just nodded, ashamed at her frailty and cowardice. Gomery's lips turned down and his eyes glossed over. His empathy was her undoing. She dipped her head and fled for her room to face the specter of a life without her Holmes.
