One Week Later
The quiet of the early morning routine into which Molly had fallen since Sherlock's leave-taking was shattered by the sound of shouts and the thunder of horse hoofs. She hurried to the door, throwing it wide and gasping at the utter chaos that greeted her eyes: a milling mass of men and horses, soldiers and townsfolk, John Watson shouting orders, Billy Wiggins scrambling to assist a limping man...it took far too long for her mind to translate what her eyes were showing her, but once they did she let out a gasp of mingled shock and horror.
Incongruously, it was Sherlock's horse, Redbeard, that helped her make sense of the scene before her eyes. He stood, riderless and shivering with sweat while young Martin tried to coax him off toward the stables. If Redbeard was here, then this must be Sherlock's men she was seeing. Many of them were wounded, some quite badly, but of their commanding officer there was no sign.
Heedless of her own safety, she rushed outside, intent on discovering the full nature of the calamity she faced, only to be stopped by a hand on her wrist. She turned her head, intent on giving whoever had been so casual with her person the sharp edge of her tongue, only to find herself face to face with the very man she sought. "Sherlock!" she cried, flinging her arms round his neck in relief. "Thank God!"
"Thank the fact that your countrymen were so easily rousted from ambush, rather," he corrected her, wincing and lurching. She immediately let go her inappropriate embrace, only to catch him by the arms as she saw the grey cast to his face, the hollow expression in his eyes...and the blood soaking the upper thigh of his uniform trousers.
"You're injured," she gasped as he swayed on his feet. Only the sturdy wall of the house and perhaps her own hold on his arms kept him from collapsing - and, of course, that indomitable will of his. "I'll fetch John…"
He waved her away. "I can walk," he said through gritted teeth. "There are others who require more immediate attention than I do. Just...help me to my bed so we can bind this up again. There is no bullet to remove, I assure you, as the damage was done by a bayonet. All I need is some stitches and perhaps some rest…"
While he continued to blather on, Molly took action. She slipped her shoulder beneath his arm on the uninjured side of his body, and did as he bade, assisting his limping progress into the house with Corporal Wiggins' assistance. Once they had him sat on the edge of the bed she urged the younger man to go and do what he could to help the others. "I'll tend to Captain Holmes myself," she promised when he hesitated, clearly torn between doing his duty by his commander and aiding his comrades in arms. "If the wound is more serious than he claims, I'll fetch Doctor Watson myself."
"Just go, Wiggins," Sherlock interjected irritably. "Leave me to the tender charms of Miss Hooper; I've no doubt her skills with the needle will prove far less irksome than yours."
Wiggins looked at him askance before offering Molly a strained but grateful smile. He then turned and dashed for the door. Only when she heard it shut behind him did she turn her attention back to her patient. "That was unkind," she chided him as she poured water from the pitcher into the basin. "Wiggins is devoted to you."
"He's also a terrible field medic; it would be more of a mercy to have him to stay here and assist you, rather than forcing him on the poor fools out there," Sherlock snarled, then winced as he tried to lean forward to remove his boots. "Damnation!"
Molly ignored the profanity as she pulled out the basket of supplies she'd laid aside against just such a possibility. "Leave your boots for now," she instructed as she pulled out several rolls of unbleached linen, a pair of scissors, a card of needles, a spool of white thread, a small bottle of brandy, and the sharp-bladed knife she generally used for paring apples. "We'll have to cut away your trousers anyway, and we'll remove your boots once we've dealt with your injury."
"Why do you need a knife? To slit my throat and finish the job your compatriots failed so miserably at?" Sherlock snapped - but he did as she instructed, lying down and wincing as he lifted his leg onto the bed.
"If I wanted you dead, Captain Holmes, you'd not have survived our first night together," Molly snapped right back as she rolled up her sleeves and settled carefully on the edge of the bed beside him. "Rest assured of that. Now stay still and allow me to help you."
Shockingly, he did exactly that, wincing a bit when she cut away the soiled fabric around his still-bleeding wound, exposing it to the air. Using the lukewarm water from the bowl she'd fetched, she carefully wiped away the encrusted blood and grime, grimacing at the sight of the jagged wound in his thigh. "A few inches higher and your assailant would have spared you any further need for a mistress," she murmured thoughtlessly, then blushed as she realized what she'd said.
"The thought did cross my mind," he said through gritted teeth, but there was a sardonic smile on his lips when she met his gaze, and she gave a sympathetic smile in return.
She carefully cut away the leg of his trouser, leaving the bloody fabric beneath his leg as she cleaned and dressed the wound. She took up the small bottle of brandy and first doused the injury - causing her patient to curse under his breath at the sting of the alcohol - then offered it to him to allow him to internally fortify himself for the ordeal ahead. Once he'd swallowed several mouthfuls, he nodded, and she commenced stitching up the wound. Her father swore by it, claiming that it helped prevent sepsis from setting in, and she only prayed that he'd been correct in this belief.
She hoped she'd managed to successfully hide her nervousness at performing this medical act on him; heretofore she'd only ever practiced on corpses, and once on a gash in the leg of her aunt's milch cow. Still, her hand was steady in spite of the butterflies churning in her stomach, and that must be counted as a win. She could feel Sherlock's eyes upon her as she worked, making small, neat stitches in his flesh, and began to speak somewhat nervously. "I suppose you're wondering about the alcohol. My father…"
"...was a doctor, yes, as well as the local mortician," Sherlock finished, causing her to gape at him. "And no, your aunt didn't tell me that, I deduced it from your methodology: you've clearly been trained in some informal manner, and what better way to practice than on a corpse?" He closed his eyes as she finished sewing and tied off the knot, then carefully wrapped the linen strips around his leg. His hands remained tightly clutching the bedclothes, and his knuckles were white, but he made no sound as she completed the job.
Once she'd finished, however, he began speaking as if he'd never stopped, even as she urged him out of his bloodied uniform jacket and attempted to wrest his boots from his feet. "As for the alcohol, your father must have observed at some point that injuries that had been treated thusly tended not to become infected, or at least not as often. An interesting theory - presumably he stumbled across it by accident, at a time when he had no water easily to hand during some...bloody hell!"
Molly frowned at the obscenity, but could hardly fault him for it as she'd accidentally tugged too hard at the boot she was attempting to remove from his injured leg. "Sorry!" she said, her voice a mouse's squeak as she flushed bright red. But really, it was his own fault; she'd been so engrossed in the way he'd correctly deduced the reasons for her father's reliance on alcohol as a cleaning tool that she'd forgotten what she was doing.
"I can manage from here, thank you," he gritted out as the boot finally came free in her hands. "Just hand me my night-shirt and leave me to rest, if you please."
"You'll not take some laudanum first, for the pain?" Molly ventured to ask, eyeing him askance as he began undoing the buttons of his shirt, stubbornly working each small bone circle free in spite of his obvious discomfort.
"No." The answer was abrupt, surly, and clearly not to be questioned. There was a story there, but not one Molly cared to chance, not just now.
All she did was nod, rising to her feet and carefully lifting the bowlful of bloodied rags to take with her. "Right. I'll leave the scissors and knife so you can finish cutting away your trousers. And of course," she added tartly, "you'll be able to completely divest yourself of the rest of your clothing, wash yourself, arrange yourself beneath the coverlet after you've struggled into your nightshirt…"
"Just send Wiggins in to tend to me, woman!" Sherlock snarled, a fine sheen of sweat dampening his face. "You're not wanted at the moment, so kindly do me the favour of leaving me in peace!"
Molly's lips pinched together as she felt the blood rushing to her cheeks at the unwarranted rudeness of his words. "Wiggins, as you may recall, is otherwise occupied at the moment. On your specific orders. However, if my presence is so displeasing to you, I will remove myself."
With these words, not bothering to see if he could reach the nightshirt where it had landed across the foot of the bed, she turned and left, closing the door firmly behind her.
oOo
Sherlock scowled as the door slammed behind Molly's fuming form. Damn and blast the woman, why did she have to make his life so difficult? He'd been an utter fool to come to her rescue; he should have left her to Moran's tender mercies, should have let Sergeant Moriarty question her…
Even in the heat of his anger he knew he was being utterly unreasonable, that his thoughts were unworthy not only of an officer and a gentleman, but of the lowliest thug in the mean back alleys of London. It did nothing to deter him thinking them, however, at least until he'd triumphantly (if slowly) wrestled his shirt from his body and pulled his nightshirt over his head. He paused and gazed down at his neatly wrapped wound, the image of her working to aid him bringing him out of his personal misery - and with that memory came the realization that he'd pushed her away, not because her presence annoyed him, but because it didn't.
She wasn't the one making his life difficult; he was perfectly capable of doing that himself. And while he wanted to resent her for being the cause of Moran's decision to send him on this ill-fated mission, it would be disingenuous - not to mention entirely unfair - for him to do so. He and Moran had been at odds ever since Sherlock had been assigned to his command, and such a transparent attempt to get him injured or killed in the field had been all but inevitable.
"Hell," he mumbled as he realised what a colossal ass he'd made of himself.
He was made even more aware of that fact when, hours later, long after he'd given up on removing his shredded trousers and had simply collapsed back onto the bed in a fitful doze, John Watson awakened him by noisily entering the bedroom. Not by knocking; oh no, the good doctor was not so subtle as that! Sherlock was startled into wakefulness by the sound of the door slamming against the wall, then being returned to the frame with just as much force.
Sherlock raised his head from the pillow and glowered. He was about to snap out some pithy comment on his desire for privacy, but trapped the words in his mouth before they could emerge as he got a clear look at his friend.
"You look like hell," he said frankly as John limped wearily over to the bed, his worn and battered brown physician's case in one hand. A musket ball he'd taken in his leg two years previously had left behind an intermittent ache that became more pronounced as exhaustion - or exceedingly damp weather such as they'd been experiencing all month - overtook him.
"Yes, well, I can assure you that you look no better," John said, sounding as weary as he looked. He placed the bag on the room's single chair and relit several candles that Sherlock, in his peevishness, had blown out after Molly had left him. "Let's have a look at that leg, shall we?"
"Are your other patients already cared for, that you can waste time on such a minor inconvenience?" Sherlock grumbled, but grudgingly allowed John to peel away the tattered remains of his trouser leg to look at the limb underneath.
"You're more of a pain in the arse than a minor inconvenience," John said, "but since you refused to allow Miss Hooper to continue to tend to you…"
"She was...coddling me too much," Sherlock protested, knowing how ridiculous he sounded even as the words left his mouth.
John's raised eyebrow and pursed lips told him the other man felt the same way - as his next words proved. "You sound like a petulant child," he pronounced briskly. "But you needn't worry, I've no intention of 'coddling' you. I won't even open the wrappings to examine your wound; Miss Hooper told me what she did, and I approve."
"Then why are you here?" Sherlock asked, honestly curious.
"I am here, Sherlock, firstly because Molly was worried about you and asked me to attend you," his friend replied.
"And secondly?" Sherlock prompted, unable to deduce the reason for himself - and quite annoyed at the fact.
"Secondly, because this is the perfect opportunity for us to discuss what happened to her in your absence. No one will question my visiting you as a patient, even after our 'falling out'."
Sherlock sat up far quicker than he ought, but ignored the burn of pain in his thigh as he focussed his attention on John. "What happened? She said nothing, gave no sign…"
"Sergeant Moriarty paid a call on her aunt, and made certain to inform Molly that should she disappear, Mistress Hudson would pay the price."
Sherlock's concerned expression became a scowl of anger. "I should have known something like this would happen, should have taken more precautions…" He made as if to rise from the bed, then sank back against the pillows, his face grey with pain. "Damn this leg," he said feebly. "How the hell am I supposed to protect Molly when I can't even stand on my own?"
"This injury is actually the best way you can protect her right now," John interjected. At Sherlock's incredulous glare, he explained, "You are confined to your bed. Miss Hooper will attend you. Now that she's aware of the threat to her aunt, she's less likely to run off at the first opportunity - and by caring for you, she'll be given the chance to prove that she's no danger to us. Perhaps Moran will allow you to return her home once you've healed."
"Hmph," Sherlock muttered as he worked through the permutations of John's suggestion - it was hardly detailed enough to be given the courtesy of being called a 'plan'. However, it was perhaps not as ridiculous as it had initially appeared. Indeed, by demonstrating her relief at his return in the way she had - surely an intimacy that had been witnessed by those inclined to report such gossip to Moriarty or Moran - she'd already laid the foundations for her own eventual release.
John was waiting less than patiently when Sherlock brought his attention back to the external world. "Sherlock? Have you heard a word I've said?"
"No," his friend replied with frank honesty. "I was determining the validity of your hypothesis."
John rolled his eyes. "And?" he prompted when Sherlock once again fell silent.
"I believe that it might - might! - be of value in convincing our dear commanding officer that our relationship is quite real," he admitted, ignoring the clenching in his gut as he spoke. It would afford Molly the opportunity to return to her life, and free him to resume his own, unencumbered by either her person or the deception that she was his mistress.
He should be relieved. Then why, he wondered, did that thought not give him any pleasure?