John knocked back another mouthful of brandy which warmed his throat as it went down. He looked over at his companion who seemed to have gone quiet. Dr. Stamford appeared lost in thought, his tumbler hovered just shy of his lips. John coughed.

"Are . . . are you sure you do not mind Holmes going upstairs to speak with your niece?"

Dr. Stamford shook his head as if clearing cobwebs. "What? Oh, yes, yes, of course, Dr. Watson. I have known Mr. Holmes a very long time, if you recall."

John set his drink down and shifted forward on the settee. He glanced around at the modest parlor with its faded leaf-patterned wall paper and well-worn furniture. It seemed odd that they had not visited Stamford's home before. John scratched behind his ear.

"Sorry, Doctor, forgive me, I am still a bit confused as to why you are not more concerned about your niece's virtue . . ."

Dr. Stamford looked sideways at him with a sly grin. "Oh, trust me Dr. Watson, when the time comes, I will be."

John tilted his head sideways and frowned. He was still somewhat perplexed. Dr. Stamford twitched his brows.

"Your Mr. Holmes is an honorable man, is he not?"

John nodded slowly. "Erm, yes, he is the most honorable man I know despite his oft-times caustic manner. In fact, Holmes has the truest and most stalwart moral compass of any man I know . . . Oh! Good God, you hope to encourage an attachment between them!"

Stamford chuckled as he resumed sipping his brandy. "My dear boy, I think we both know that encouragement is unnecessary."

John rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had avoided thinking about Holmes' partiality for the winsome Miss Hooper but there was no use denying what had become painfully apparent. Sherlock Holmes was abnormally fond of his examiner. John sighed and winced at the implications.

"Dr. Stamford, I cannot deny that Holmes might have developed feelings for Miss Hooper and . . . that h-he is the best and bravest of men," John inhaled deeply, "but I would be remiss in my duties as your friend if I did not dissuade you from promoting a closer relationship between them. Holmes . . . Holmes would not make your niece a good husband."

John gritted his teeth. Once said, the words bounced back to him like a slap. Their phantom echo did not sound right between his ears even though he could easily imagine any wife of Holmes being neglected. Yet, as his closest friend, John himself had never felt that way. He rubbed the tight wrinkle of a frown between his eyes.

"Lad," Stamford murmured, his voice dropped an octave, "Molly does not need a husband and certainly not one deemed 'good' by society's standards. Everything special about my niece, everything that illuminates her from within, would be quashed by a typical husband's demands."

The weary gentleman turned liquid eyes towards John. His emotion was as palpable as the brandy.

"Now I have fielded all manner of criticism for the way in which I have raised my niece since her parents died. I have been accused of being irresponsibly indulgent but you must understand, my boy, that I would s-sooner . . . c-cut off a limb than deny that precious girl anything."

John was speechless. He kept nodding until he palmed his drink again and took another swig.

"Mm, ahem," he hacked out the lump in his throat, "and you think Holmes of all people could make her happy?"

Stamford stared unblinkingly at the dying coals in the parlor hearth.

"Sherlock Holmes is the smartest man I know. If he cannot deduce Molly's worth and what she needs, then there is no man in existence who can do so."

Knock, knock, knock.

Molly heard the light rapping of knuckles from where she laid like a fallen cake on her creaky four post bed. She folded her arm over her tummy. It had been dangling off the side and her fingers were numb from hovering so long above the floorboards. Her gaze followed a bright white crack in her navy blue plaster ceiling back towards the door and down to the floor where the shadow of feet waited. She sighed. Light from the hall illuminated the shiny patina of the path where generations had tread to and from that entry, a testament of their uncomplicated lives. She huffed and looked back up at the once white decorative plaster medallion in the ceiling above her bed. It looked dirty and bits of it had broken away in the century since it had been molded.

Tapping sounded from the door again.

"I am sorry, Gomery," she called out wanly, "I am sorry about the mess I made. I will make it up to you but for now, I would like to be left alone."

Molly was not yet done feeling wretched. She imagined herself a spring bud trying to unfurl underneath a sodden mass of last years' leaves. The past surrounded, oppressed, and suffocated her even. The home in which she lived seemed determined to remind her of the hopelessness of her future.

"It is not your manservant Gomery," a muffled voice spoke from behind the door.

She stiffened, sat up and gave her head a shake. She thought she must be imagining that deep familiar timber. She hopped from her bed, swished her skirts back and padded towards the door tentatively.

"E-Excuse me?" She queried.

"I am not Gomery," came the reply.

Molly pressed her hands to the smooth wood separating her from Mr. Holmes. Her heart raced. She was perplexed as she hastily dried her sweating palms on her skirts and then cracked the door. Then she felt the full force of his nearly crystalline bluish-green eyes as they flicked sideways. He was such a fearsome creature with his severe hair style and angular features. The only thing that softened his look were his sensuous, full lips. She blinked angrily at them as if to chastise their unnatural perfection.

"Wh-What are you doing up here?" She stammered in a kind of squeak, then took a breath. "If my uncle learns that you visited me at my room-"

Mr. Holmes scoffed as he rolled his eyes and dipped his head towards the narrow opening. "I think we can dispense with the idea that your uncle is at all concerned about your virtue, Miss Hooper. Besides, you and I need to converse."

Molly scrunched her nose and chewed her lip briefly. "Do you ever speak politely, sir? I-I do not believe I have heard a gentle word from you yet."

His eyes constricted as he studied her for a few seconds. Then an internal musing affected a minor spasm in his lid. His lips poked out just before he spoke.

"Deep wounds require extreme treatments, Miss Hooper. One must stitch or cauterize them to stop the bleeding. Neither solutions are gentle."

Her lips pressed tight together against her teeth. One side of her nose twitched up. She didn't know whether to admire his use of medical metaphor or be incensed by the cheek of it. His eyes travelled up and down her face, then his expression relaxed. Her breath faltered as he lowered his lids. He was infuriatingly attractive when his eyes were hooded.

Molly inhaled sharply. "Well, I do not know what you expect me to do-"

He put his hand up to lean on the interior of the door frame, his fingers curled into her room around the molding. Then his tongue ran over his teeth.

"Open the door."

Her hand flew to her chest. Her pulse fluttered in her throat.

"Mr. Holmes!"

"Miss Hooper!" He mocked her in return then scoffed when she just stood there. "Let me in. We will leave the door ajar. Come, let us not pretend either of us gives a damn about propriety."

Propriety! Propriety was the least of her concerns. Truth be told, she did not trust herself around the alluring detective, especially in that instant when she felt so adrift. It was only days previous that she would have let him obliterate her innocence in the confines of a hackney cab if he had wished. However, despite her misgivings, she stepped back from the door. It swung open with a groan which somehow sounded louder than she had ever heard it before. She glanced around ruefully at her tired furnishings as the impeccably dressed detective with garb the very definition of modernity and affluence, stepped into her ancient bedroom.

She glanced down at her own faded lower class uniform of taupe, a drab colour selected for its modesty both in price and appearance. It lacked any kind of feminine frippery. There was nary a superfluous button, ruche or ruffle to be found. Normally, she cared little for how she looked but she could not help feeling wholly inadequate standing just a few feet from a man who so obviously took great pains with his attire.

Molly fingered a loose thread at her cuff. She could not raise her eyes to look at him.

"Erm, wh-what would you like to discuss, sir?"

She heard him huff. "To start, I would like you to cease addressing me as 'sir'. You are not my servant."

She nodded as she tugged at the thread and her seam popped open. Confounded garment!

"Sorry, Mr. Holmes."

"Just Holmes."

She supposed she was using it as a distraction but the thread stubbornly refused to break. Her seam opened up halfway to her elbow as she pulled. She cursed under her breath and heat crept into her cheeks. Next thing she knew, Mr. Holmes was upon her and had hold of her arm. She looked wildly up at him as his head lowered and he muttered something about her not listening. He then wrapped the thread around his finger, gave it a yank and popped it from her sleeve. Instead of releasing his grasp, his hand closed gently over the bare flesh of her exposed arm.

"Address me as Holmes," he murmured as his head raised again.

She was caught in the gravity of his gaze. "Oh, um, okay, and h-how would you address me?"

"Hooper."

Molly was acutely aware of his incredibly warm hand on her arm as if that point were the center of her being. His fingers twitched and alternately pressed into her flesh. Every movement turned her limbs to jelly, a flush coursed through her lower belly and downwards between her legs.

"H-Holmes, what is so imperative that you need compromise my sanctuary?"

His pupils magnified. Why she did not pull her arm away and step back, she could not say. Her mind returned to their late night carriage ride and the tease of his aloof lips.

"I require your assistance at the morgue."

His words doused the fire raging within her and suddenly the reality of what had happened flooded back to her. Her lip quivered.

"H-How could you ask this of me today?" She scrunched her nose and grimaced. "I am no longer an aspiring doctor. I-I am nothing . . . nothing."

His eyes narrowed into angry slants. His fingers flexed again on her arm and he rubbed his thumb over her pulse.

"Speak such nonsense again and I will not be held responsible for my actions," he said gruffly. "I assure you that your situation is a temporary setback which I will correct in short order."

"You?" She breathed. "What can you do?"

Her heart lurched and then beat swiftly like the clacking of wheels over cobblestones. She desperately wanted what he said to be true but she could not envision any way he could remedy her situation. His head tilted as he scanned her face. His lips practiced his words before he spoke.

"I am not a man without influence, Hooper," he intoned in his deepest voice. "I need but bend the right people to my will and what is done will be undone. Do you doubt my skills in manipulation?

Her nostrils flared. "I cannot say. Do you manipulate me?"

Holmes shook his head once slowly. "No, I have no need. You want to assist me."

She sucked in a breath. "Y-You are a smug beast! Perhaps I do not feel like helping you right now."

He smirked. "Then I will inform you that you are obliged to assist me for ruining my favorite silk waistcoat. Now, unless you have a spare guinea in which to pay for it, you are going to have to reimburse me with your time."

Molly knew by the temperature of her face, her skin must be very red. She was both angry and mortified as she was reminded of her earlier outburst. She pulled away at last and stumbled backwards, her breaths harsh and heavy. His left brow lifted.

"Of course, it might be easier for you to just clean my clothing."

"This from the man who claims he does not manipulate me!" She spat.

His lips rattled in a sigh. "To manipulate is to deceive which I have not done. No, what I have given you is a distinct option between the menial and the meaningful. It is your choice, Hooper. Are you coming or not?"

Molly shook her skirt off her boot as she prepared to step up onto a new piece of equipment at the morgue- a wooden bench with the legs sawn in half. It was quite sturdy and a great deal safer than the buckets she had been using as step stools to examine bodies. It was a small thing but it made her feel welcome in the morgue even though Phillip Anderson, her uncle's bumbling assistant, kept eyeballing her from the other side of the slab as if she were a specimen under his magnifying glass. Dr. Watson stood next to him with an anxious expression. She looked away from them quickly, preferring to analyze the body of a bride who appeared to have taken her own life. Somehow, the dead woman was less unnerving than her jittery audience. Holmes appeared at her side and offered his hand to help her step up.

"Is this not a joke, then? Are we seriously letting a woman examine this corpse?" Anderson asked with a sneer.

Holmes extended his arm and then held his hand up as if to silence the man. "Yes, Anderson, I required an examiner with less delicate sensibilities and someone infinitely more rational than yourself."

"Pfft!" Anderson sputtered and turned to Dr. Watson. "Can you believe this?"

Dr. Watson blinked at him with large eyes. "Oh, um, yes, sure."

Holmes frowned at his friend. "What in God's name is wrong with you?"

Dr. Watson glanced between them all. He kept crossing and uncrossing his arms. Finally, he took off his bowler hat and stepped closer to the examining table with his head down.

"Holmes, this woman has been seen around town and you have yet to discover how-"

Holmes' head lolled back before dropping forwards with his mouth open in disbelief. "You do not seriously believe she has risen several times in the last few days to flit around murdering people, do you? You cannot be that illogical!"

Anderson made a sound and interjected. "Oh, oh, see, you have not been able explain her resurrection either, Mr. Holmes, and she has, I will attest to it. Why, just this morning, she was nowhere to be found and then she had bizarrely returned to this very table after my lunch break."

"That is easy to explain, in actual fact," Holmes bit out. "You probably forgot what slab she was on."

Molly covered her mouth so as not to laugh. Holmes glanced sideways at her with a faint smile, altogether a little too pleased with himself.

"Several credible witnesses have come forward claiming to have seen this woman in the street, Holmes," Dr. Watson added.

"Witnesses! Witnesses are not evidence, Watson," Holmes chided. "Hooper, help me please. How long has this woman been dead?"

Molly leaned forward over the woman garbed in a wedding dress. There was no question that she had been dead for nearly a week.

"My opinion is that she has been dead for about six days," she said as she poked the distended abdomen with a gloved finger. "Furthermore, she has not been up and about."

"She was absent from this very table this morning," Anderson replied emphatically. "Now, you might not believe in the afterlife, Miss Hooper, but you cannot purport to know everything about death. It is a strange and mystical condition . . ."

Her eyes fluttered sideways in disbelief. Holmes' chest seemed to expand in exasperation.

"Well," Molly attempted diplomacy as she removed her gloves and tossed them next to the body, "do you believe in physics, Mr. Anderson? Our bride's internals have already begun to putrefy. If she had been mobile in this morgue this morning she most certainty would have left a rather foul trail of liquids in her wake."

Holmes snorted a laugh whilst Dr. Watson sighed in relief. Unexpectedly, the gas lamps above their heads sputtered causing the light around them to flicker. They all just managed to look at each other with rounded eyes before a loud pop issued and the room plunged into darkness. Silence reigned a moment before an icy gust blasted through the room followed by what sounded like a low moan.

"It is her! It is her!" Anderson shouted hysterically in the opaque blackness. "She is rising again to kill us all!"

"Oh, Christ, Watson, get him out of here!" Holmes barked.

"Come," Watson's voice preceded shuffling, "calm yourself, Phillip. Let us see if we can find the hospital steward and sort this out. Holmes, Miss Hooper, will you be alright?"

"We will follow right behind you, Watson," the detective responded.

Molly listened to Anderson's blubbering as they made their way from the morgue. Unfortunately, without the gas lamps, there was no light whatsoever for one's eyes to adjust. It was easy to rationalize that an open door or window somewhere had snuffed the lamps but that did not stop fear from stiffening her spine and making her heart pound. She turned slowly on her bench-step which tottered beneath her feet.

"Holmes?" She whispered fretfully.

A hand fumbled for hers and she gripped it tightly.

"Do not be alarmed, Hooper," he answered calmly. "We will find our way out together."

She stepped down to the cobblestones then held his hand with a near death grip as they navigated their way between the tables into the larger open void of the morgue. Her boots kept bopping into his heels. The wind chose that moment to howl through the expanse again. Molly squeaked and scrambled against the large, solid form of Holmes just as he turned around. She felt like such a ninny but the eerie moan of the wind and not knowing whether they were going to walk into a table and knock a body to the floor made her tremble. She spread her fingers out over his chest as his arms wrapped around her and enveloped her in warmth. Fingers curled into the hair at the nape of her neck

"Sh, I have you," Holmes murmured, his breath feathered her hair.

His hold was like an instant salve. His chin brushed the top of her head, then she felt a hand slide along her jaw and a thumb rub over her cheek. She slanted her head up at him even though she could not see anything. She felt the energy around them shift from one of comfort to something else. Oh, God, it was madness but she wanted him to fulfill the physical promises he had alluded to the other night.

"I-I am s-sorry-" She sputtered, now knowing what to do.

In the shadows darker than the darkest pitch, she heard a soft growl. Then her words were cut off by the suddenness of lips covering her own. At first, Molly was transfixed by the yielding feel of flesh and the slight dampness of their press. Actually, she was stunned until she realized that Sherlock Holmes was in fact, kissing her just as she had wished. Instinctually, she parted her lips so she could have more. She moved them shyly, hoping it was the correct way to encourage him. A deep groan emanated from Holmes' chest and vibrated her whole body. She felt as if she were being devoured in the darkness as he fell forward and coaxed her lips further apart. With each ebb and flow, her stomach formed another knot. Waves of sensation swished through her insides and she felt the flexure of muscles between her thighs she hadn't even known existed.

She clung to the lapels of his suit as Holmes' mouth drank from hers. Somehow, despite the passion of his ardor, she felt starved and wanted more. His arm tightened around her back until she did not know where her body began and his ended. When she thought the embrace couldn't get any more rousing, a wet, hot tongue plunged into her mouth and swept over hers. Again, she was shocked into a kind of immobility until his fingers contracted on her back. She wanted to respond but insecurity made her doubt herself. Would he think her entirely immoral if she reacted with the vigor that her body demanded? His lips lefts hers temporarily.

"Am I . . . your first?" Holmes rasped against her lips.

She swallowed. "Y-Yes."

He swore. "Hell and damnation! You have never experimented?"

Molly did not quite understand the question. "W-Well, yes, b-but I do not know what my lab studies have to do with this . . ."

Holmes groaned a laugh, his breaths pulsed against her face. "No, not that kind of experiment . . . has no man ever touched you intimately?"

She swallowed and thanked her stars that the gloom concealed her face when it flashed hot. "I-I do not know what you mean."

His hand slid from her jaw down the length of her body to her skirts. She held on to him as she tried to anticipate what he was going to do next. She could barely hear her own thoughts over the cacophony of blood pounding in her ears. He bunched the fabric up at her hip until she felt a cool draft and next thing she knew, a very warm hand found the goose-pimpled flesh between her stockings and her drawers at the outside of her thigh. She gasped as the slightly calloused pads of his fingers stroked along her skin and rested with just their tips pressing into the side of her derriere.

"O-Oh!" She cried softly. "Um, no, no one has ever touched me like that."

A scorching breath warmed her face. "Good."

His nose nudged hers up and once again, his lips staked their claim. His fingers slipped just under the curve of her behind and she reacted by bending herself against him like a metal post buckling under a strain. She was nearly frantic in her need for everything he was doing. His lips were buttery supple, insistent and decadently addictive in their raw debauchery and she responded with an enthusiasm that was anything but chaste. Every probe of his tongue caused her feminine core to heat and tingle as if it too wanted to experience a similar penetration. He kissed her until they were both panting in the blackness, their breaths a ragged underground symphony. Holmes rested his forehead on hers.

"Dear God, Hooper," he mumbled, "if you were not an innocent, I would rut you right here in this morgue."

Molly nearly choked on her surprise. Her face burned. She had never heard a man speak in that manner.

"I s-see."

"Hooper-"

Suddenly the slap of feet on the stone steps at the far end of the morgue echoed through the chamber.

"Holmes?" Dr. Watson called.

Molly felt like a spinning top as she was released so quickly she nearly fell over. Her skirts swished to the floor just as the soft glow of a lamp approached and illuminated their immediate vicinity. She glanced up shyly at Holmes standing a few feet away. His chest heaved as he stared back at her with eyes constricted in intense concentration. Dr. Watson lifted the lamp aloft. His face was full of question. His mustache twitched.

"Is everything alright?"

"Fine, Watson," Holmes tugged at his waistcoat. "Your timing is perfect as usual."

"Yes, well, I had to get back and make sure nothing had arisen," his eyes flicked between them and even in the dim light, Molly watched his face become splotchy with colour.

Dr. Watson's brow furrowed and he started shaking his head. He shot daggers at Holmes as he held out his arm for Molly.

"Miss Hooper, allow me to escort you out," he grumbed. "I imagine you have received quite the fright."