Author's Note: I've been spending some time working out typos and such on my new machine, hence a whole (gasp) day of not updating! I'm working through the previous chapters of the story as we speak, the new versions should all be up by the end of the day. ;)

Chapter Seven: Hell Hath No Fury

Miss Fairchild appeared in a cab not twenty or thirty minutes after I had camped out on her doorstep. I was eliciting some very intrigued stares from the neighbors, and was sure that, seeing as I was rather well known as Holmes' chronicler, there would be quite a scandal in the morning. Poor Mycroft Holmes might never hear the end of all the intrigue that had gone on around his doorstep, what with Holmes and I both calling so often for Miss Fairchild.

To my surprise, the lady came alone, quite from the opposite direction, so that it occurred to me that perhaps Mycroft had not found her, and that she had not been to the station at all. I rushed down to meet her as she got out of the cab, almost rushing her back towards it in my urgency.'

"Miss Fairchild, I don't know if you've heard about the trouble that our Sherlock Holmes has gotten into."

"I've heard." She gave a little, aggrieved sigh. "What a mess, don't you think? What an awful mess." She tried to push past me into the house, but I grasped her by the wrist and retained her.

"You'll need to go to the station," I insisted, "and bring that bracelet of yours." She looked surprised, and I shook my head hurriedly. "It's all right, I know everything." Miss Fairchild blushed crimson, and I softened my stare, patting her on the arm even as I tried to pull her away from the door. "It was all done with the best of intentions. I should never hope to have better friends, and I am not angry. But we really must hurry, we must get back to Holmes with the bracelet as soon as we possibly can, there's not a moment to lose in revealing the truth of it all to the police."

Suddenly, a disturbing change came over Miss Fairchild's dainty features, so that her face, usually gently set and demure, became harder, colder, almost malignant. She smiled a little, and shook her head, more to herself than to anyone else. "Oh, Doctor Watson," she said. "When you said that you knew everything, I thought you meant that you really did know. I see now that it cannot be so."

For myself, I had no idea what she was going on about, but I was sure that it could wait until after we had saved Holmes from the fate of a wrongly accused murderer. I am a goal oriented man, and my priorities asserted themselves firmly as I continued to tug at the lady's arm. "Please," I insisted imploringly "you can tell me or not tell me anything that you might wish to on the cab ride. For the moment, it is absolutely crucial that we go to the station at once, with that bracelet."

"I will go nowhere with that bracelet," she replied in a strange, distant voice. "I will not go to the station, and I will not go to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Let go of my wrist, Doctor. I am going inside."

So struck was I by this unforeseen refusal, and by the calm, malicious tone in Miss Fairchild's voice that I let go of her wrist, and watched her walk into the house. She did not bolt the door behind her, and I stood there, staring open-mouthed at it, Holmes' most recent request echoing in my mind. I could see the somber resignation in his eyes as he asked me to entreat Miss Fairchild on his behalf. He had known that she would refuse, and so apparently had Inspector Lestrade. Yet, I could see no reason this obstinacy.

I went into the house, to find the lady in question seated at her dining table, her coat and hat laid gently on the sofa nearby. She looked up as I entered, and her blank, composed expression did not change even as I advanced on her.

"Please," I said, coming to her side and taking both of her hands in my own. "Please, Miss Fairchild, I beg of you to come to the station and tell all you know. Holmes is to be hanged if we do not prove his innocence, and it would take nothing more than your word and the bracelet to back up everything that Inspector Lestrade and I have said in Holmes' defense." She did not look at me, and I continued, pressing her hands urgently, trying to meet her eyes. "For Mycroft, then," I insisted. "For Mycroft's sake, you will go, won't you?"

Miss Fairchild laughed. She gave me a sour, amused look, with one eyebrow raised, not unlike a look I had often seen on my friend's face when he was feeling cynical. "My goodness, Doctor Watson," she was saying. "You are a very naïve man, aren't you?"

I bristled slightly at this, but was too preoccupied to be offended for long. "However that may be, what I think and what I know have nothing to do with this."

"It has everything to do with it," she pressed. "If you knew what you do not know, you would have all of the reasons why I shall never go to the station, and I shall never bring the bracelet, and I shall never speak up in Sherlock Holmes' defense until he has kept his promise to me."

With those words, things began to come clearer. I remembered all the nights that Holmes had spent at the window, and all of the times that I had seen he and Miss Fairchild together, all of the fleeting looks and the glances that had so stirred my soul. And yet, of course he could do nothing about it. She was promised to his brother, and he could never follow through with any of it. He knew that, no doubt. Certainly so did she. It was only a matter of frustration at having been left, after all, that was causing this, and with a little persuasion, with a little careful thought the lady would realize the error of her feelings and come to the station.

"He made you a promise, then?" I asked. "He knew, I'm sure, that nothing could ever come of it."

Miss Fairchild tossed her head defiantly. "He made me a promise with his eyes," she said, "a promise that did not need to be spoken. His face told me that I had his love, and I expect to have that love if I am to come to his aid. I want a promise from his lips that if I do so, he will in turn come to mine and take me away from here."

"But this is crazy," I ejaculated, my head spinning with different interpretations and emotions. "You know it is crazy. What about Mycroft? Don't you love him, after everything that has been between you?" It was an impertinent question, an inappropriate question, and yet under the circumstances it seemed normal and correct.

Miss Fairchild laughed again, darkly, in a low voice. "We command our loves," she murmured. "As we command our actions. I have loved Mycroft because I found that it was convenient to do so, and I do not believe that he has suffered by it."

But he will, I thought, backing away from this callous and heartless creature, whom I had only weeks before defended to my friend. Poor Mycroft would suffer by it, if he had not already, once he discovered how easily his lady's heart was swayed away from him, and in favor of his own brother!

I tried to keep calm, and to think of how to combat the mocking resolution in Miss Fairchild's dark eyes. There was nothing I could say, I knew, in the face of that determined feminine rage, and there was nothing that I, a mere bystander to the love affair, could say.

"You will have to see reason," I implored her helplessly. "No good can come from any of this. It would be better to just put it all behind us and to start afresh. We will get Holmes out of danger, and we will work it all out in the privacy of our own homes to avoid any scandal."

"Why avoid it? I relish the idea of being the woman who tarnishes the record of the great Sherlock Holmes." With that parting shot, she turned away from me to readjust a picture frame on the wall, and I found myself, after a moment, standing outside in the street, staring blankly at the road in front of me where Miss Fairchild's cab had been.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," said Sherlock Holmes ruefully when I met him again at the police station, and told him all that had passed between Miss Fairchild and myself. "And yet, even she does not have the right of it. I made her no promises, and I intended to make her none."

"Of course you did not, for your brother's sake." I nodded, feeling my confidence in my companion returning even as he refuted the woman's statements. "You would never betray Mycroft in such a way."

Holmes smiled. "I am not a terribly malicious man, Watson, and yet it was not for my brother that I would not have Miss Fairchild." He glanced over at the door, which was again being guarded by an uncomfortable looking officer.

"To avoid scandal, then, to avoid throwing all of us into some sort of disgraceful intrigue."

"No, no," Holmes insisted, shaking his head and laying one hand across him on my knee. "Neither to avoid scandal, nor disgrace, nor to avoid my brother's ire. No, I am not nearly as upright a man as you would have me be, Watson, but perhaps in time I will learn to follow your way of living, although it is so much more dull to live as safely as you wish."

"Well, then," I asked, "why did you do it?"

Holmes fixed me with a long, penetrating, curious stare, his eyes peering into every telling nuance of my face as he did when he was claiming to read my thoughts from my expression. "You don't know, then," he said, very quietly, so that even our reluctant guard could not hear him. "That is well, I think."

This was too much. I had been kept in the dark so long about so many things that I found myself unable to sit quietly as he hid more secrets. "There is more?" I asked, trying not to let my irritation creep into my voice. "More that I don't know? Surely, Holmes, I can't help you without everything that you can give me. You yourself have always told me that the best defense is the truth."

"My dear Doctor," he replied, "you must always think the best of me, no matter what I tell you to the contrary. I know you well enough now to know that. I should not hurt your resolve to think well of me. No, nothing, in fact, would make me a more bereaved man than to have lost your goodwill."

That was everything he would say on the matter, and I left him with the promise that I should return the next day with Mycroft, and that we would work it all out together.

That in particular was not a meeting that I was looking forward to, seeing as no doubt if I knew everything Mycroft Holmes would know the truth as well. I was not pleased, therefore, to find the man in question splayed comfortably on the sofa in my own Baker Street rooms when I returned.

"How is he?" Mycroft asked immediately, jumping up as I entered. "They wouldn't let me see him, though I waited for over an hour. I hope you had better luck than I did."

I stared at him, surprised at the cordiality of his greeting. "Why yes, I did see him. We talked the whole matter over. I was hoping to meet with you myself tomorrow, but I see that that won't be necessary."

"No, no, not at all," Mycroft insisted. "Anne and I are going to go over as soon as she is feeling better. She's very ill, you see, and can't leave her bed. I'm very worried about her, but these fits take her at times, it isn't entirely unprecedented. Poor darling, she's terrified about Sherlock."

He did not know, then, about Anne's deception, about what she was truly like, and about the power that she held over all of us. I wanted to tell him in that moment exactly what was going on, and I opened my mouth to do so in a rush, so that he would accost her and force her to bring the bracelet, and the truth before the authorities.

Even as I did so, and I looked into his keen features, I saw how he was softened by his love for Miss Fairchild, and how he would hear nothing against her. Even now, in the face of his brother's mortal peril, the most pressing concern on his mind was Miss Fairchild's feigned illness. There was nothing I could say that would change his mind, and if I attempted the truth, I would only harm his opinion of me, something that I could not afford to do.

"You'll come with me tomorrow, then, to see Holmes," I said. "We'll talk about it together and decide what is to be done." If anyone could convince Mycroft of the truth, it was Sherlock Holmes, and not myself at all.

Mycroft was laughing. "What is there to discuss?" he asked, with a little shrug. "All will be well as soon as Anne is feeling better."

She would never be feeling better, I thought. And the longer she took to feel better, the more weight would pile on top of the weight that was already pulling down on my heart.

And yet, despite myself, against my will and better judgment entirely, I felt a little twinge of unwarranted joy every time I thought about Holmes' insistence that he had made no promise to Miss Fairchild. Once everything had worked out, once we had won against this charge, we could retire back to our home, and continue our lives as if Miss Anne Fairchild had never forced her way into them. I, for one, wished that I had never encouraged my friend to give his brother's fiancée a chance. Perhaps seeing the best in people was both a virtue and a fault.