John attempted to dissuade him, naturally enough. Sherlock could not fault him for that, although he did find the man's exaggerated indignation a bit annoying; hadn't he been the one to brag about his experiences with 'the fairer sex' when they first met one another three years prior? In fact, hadn't he been the one to persuade Sherlock to experience the joys of being in a woman's arms at least once while he was still young and unattached? It had astounded him, from his lofty perch of two-and-thirty years, that a man of Sherlock's age and station had never taken advantage of all the hedonistic pleasures that life had to offer. He'd practically had to drag Sherlock to his favorite bordello, only to watch with amusement as his friend returned on two more occasions before his first time being sent down from Oxford.
John had certainly not approved when Sherlock's interest in expanding his horizons began to include the drugs that were the cause of that disgrace. It turned out his friend was quite prudish when it came to the matter of narcotics, and Sherlock's drug use had nearly destroyed their nascent friendship before the younger man had come to his senses – in no small part due to the intervention of Molly Hooper when she'd discovered his hidden vice during a visit home for the Christmas holidays. He'd been terrible to her, he recalled with a flush of shame, during the week she'd hidden in the unused barn behind the house she and her father shared.
Yes, he'd been terrible; calling her names, taunting her with exaggerated descriptions of his sexual escapades as he raved in his withdrawal. Even though she'd accepted his apologies for the cruelty he'd displayed during his feverish rantings, the nagging sense of guilt his actions had raised had never entirely disappeared.
This, of course, was a vastly different situation, he reassured himself as he brushed aside John's strident protests. He was in his right mind and he was certain that Molly would agree to his plan. It made it easier to ignore John, just as he'd ignored his brother Mycroft's threats to thrash him within an inch of his life if he ever so much as glanced at morphine again (after snippily reminding his brother that such a thrashing would undoubtedly result in the doctor attending to him to prescribe that very drug to reduce Sherlock's pain).
"Molly will agree," he told John confidently as he bounded around the room, peering into various beakers and tubes to check on the status of his ongoing experiments, feeling and looking very pleased with himself. "She'll see that it's the only option available to us," he concluded, coming to a stop directly in front of his friend.
"It certainly is not the 'only option', Sherlock," John snapped. "You propose to ruin a young lady's reputation, to impugn her honor for your own selfish needs..."
"And for her needs as well, John," Sherlock reminded him, settling himself on one of the high-backed armchairs scattered about the room in between the many overladen tables. "I can assure you, Molly has no desire to be married off to the first overeager young idiot to attach himself to her father's practice."
"Of course, you've already circumvented her father's wishes by talking me into taking that position under false pretenses," John grumbled, taking the chair next to Sherlock's and fixing his glare on his oblivious friend's face. "How long do you intend to allow this farce to continue, Sherlock? I do have my own practice to return to...and my own wife," he added pointedly, the true nature of his discontent allowing itself to be seen. "Honestly, Sherlock, if you want to marry the girl in spite of your father's likely unwillingness to accept such a match, why don't you simply propose and run off with her to Gretna Green like every other young pair of lovestruck idiots in the Empire?"
Sherlock gave him an aggrieved look, one John knew well and did his best to ignore whenever it was bestowed upon him. "Because we are not some 'young pair of lovestruck idiots'," he snapped. "Although I suppose if we took your advice and did so, we would certainly qualify as the latter," he added snippily. "Think, John. The purpose of my marrying at all is to prevent my father from cutting off my allowance. Sadly, until I reach the age of twenty-five I depend on that income. The pittance I earn from assisting Lestrade and the imbeciles he commands is hardly enough for me to live on, let alone manage a wife and household! And if I wed under such circumstances – by simply running off with the first convenient woman to come along – I can assure you, my father would not hesitate to not only remove that source of income, but to deny me and my bride welcome in any of my family's various places of residence. No, simply running off will not solve anything."
"And deliberately taking an innocent young girl's virtue will?" John demanded, exasperated at the circles in which their argument seemed to be taking them.
Sherlock turned his head and gave him a cold stare. "Of course I shall inform Molly of my intentions when the time comes, John. I am neither a complete idiot nor some rakehell who brags of his conquests and counts his 'successes' in the number of bloodied sheets he collects. No, once Molly is pregnant – "
John practically exploded from his seat at that word. "Pregnant?!" he repeated incredulously. "What do you...you mean you intend to not only take Miss Hooper's virtue but hope to get her with child as well?! Sherlock, this plan of yours is..."
"The only one that meets all my requirements," Sherlock barked out, remaining in his seat although the tension in his posture betrayed the effect John's disapproving words had on him. "And 'Miss Hooper's' as well," he added, a bite of mockery in his tones as he used her title and surname rather than calling her Molly as he preferred.
"In what way?" John demanded, sounding not one whit convinced, the scowl on his face only growing in intensity as he waited for Sherlock to explain.
"My father has a horror of any Holmes being born on the wrong side of the blanket, John," Sherlock replied. "The mere thought of a child with his blood running through its veins being labeled a bastard will be enough to cause him to not only permit the marriage, but encourage it as well – without withdrawing his financial support the way he would if I were to take your advice and simply enter into an unsanctioned marriage before ensuring such an outcome," he added, deliberately settling back in his chair.
"And what of the young lady's reputation?" John demanded, not appeased by his friend's assessment of the situation – nor his assertion of the lady in question's willingness to allow herself to be drawn into so troublesome an arrangement. "I daresay you'll find she's not so willing to trade her virtue simply to avoid the complications of an arranged marriage, no matter what her feelings for you might be," he added disapprovingly, before pointing out: "Which, I might add, you have yet to take into consideration in this mad venture you propose."
"Her father did not take her feelings into consideration when he elected to bring a partner into his practice with the secondary intention of offering his own daughter to take to wife," Sherlock shot back with a scowl. "Besides," he added smugly, "Molly is in love with me."
John raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you are so certain of that, are you?"
Sherlock nodded. "I've known her my entire life, John. And although I may often seem insensible of the romantic interest women have shown me in the past, I can assure you I have become adept at reading the signs. A lesson you helped me to learn," he added with another smug grin before continuing: "Aside from yourself, the only persons who will know that Molly and I had unsanctioned relations will be her father and my parents...and believe me, none of us will wish to advertise the circumstances under which Molly becomes my wife."
"People can still count, Sherlock," John muttered, but his friend could tell he was weakening and simply waved off that objection.
"Yes, and yet there are still many, many 'premature' births at all walks of life, are there not? How many healthy, good-sized infants have you delivered in your practice that supposedly arrived a month or more early, hmm?"
John had no argument to offer to refute those questions, since he knew very well that his friend was correct. The situation still did not sit comfortably on his shoulders, but he had never been able to out-argue Sherlock Holmes under any circumstances except one – and having been the one to convince the younger man to sample to pleasures of the female flesh, he could hardly fault him for his willingness to continue to do so.
While he dithered, Sherlock was speaking. "Now. Can I depend upon your continued assistance in this matter, or have you decided to denounce me as a cad and force me to find some even less savory method of ensuring my future does not include an unwanted marriage to a woman I will detest for as long as I am tied to her? My brother recommended producing an heir as quickly as possible and then taking on a mistress, a lovely way to live one's life, don't you think?"
John, who had married for love, would surely accept that argument, which wasn't wholly calculated to play on the other man's personal weakness for sentiment – although such calculation did, indeed, play a part. Sherlock believed that his scheme would work, that Molly would cooperate in its execution, and that they would both be in receipt of what they most wanted: the freedom to live their lives without unwanted spouses being forced upon them.
"Are you so certain that Miss Hooper will embrace this scheme, Sherlock?" John's words were quietly spoken, as if he sensed his friend's incipient melancholy. Because if things did not go as he wished them to, then the life he'd outlined – a life forced upon him by his father – would, indeed come to pass, and the barrenness of a life without even the semblance of love in it was not one John would wish on anyone, even a man who decried sentiment at every turn as his friend did. But if Sherlock was in any way engaging in some sort of wishful thinking where Miss Hooper's feelings were concerned, then that needed to be addressed, and right now, before she was brought into this insanity.
"Molly, as I have already pointed out and as you have no doubt observed for yourself during your time here, is an intelligent young woman," Sherlock replied, fingers steepled beneath his chin and eyes fixed on some unseen point in the middle distance. "Imagine her chained for the remainder of her days to a man who forbids her to use that intelligence, who refuses to recognize that her true worth lies not in how many sons she can give him or how smoothly she runs his household, but in how her keen mind can assist him to reach conclusions he might otherwise have overlooked."
Suddenly Sherlock was no longer speaking in the abstract, but revealing truths about his relationship with Molly he had never actively considered before. John remained silent as Sherlock continued: "When we were children, Molly never derided me for my intelligence, John, the way so many of my so-called peers have," he said, his voice gone soft, meditative. "She never shrank from me, never declared my interests in chemistry or biology as 'unnatural'. In truth, she assisted me, displaying an interest that very nearly matched my own. I encouraged her, and would have continued to encourage her, had her mother not stepped in and insisted that our association was inappropriate once Molly began displaying the first signs of womanhood."
He fell silent, and it was a long moment before John spoke. "Sherlock," he said softly, "if I didn't know you so well, I would say you are giving a remarkable imitation of a man in love."
He rose to his feet before Sherlock could respond to so outlandish a statement, clearly heading out of the room. However, he paused on the threshold with his hand on the door knob to say: "I will continue the charade until you are prepared to put this mad scheme of yours into action. But I want your word that you will do nothing to force Miss Hooper into acceding to your wishes; if she does not agree, then you are not to try and coerce or bully her into doing this for your own selfish purposes. If she refuses, then you will drop the matter. Agreed?"
He waited until he heard his friend reply, "Agreed," before leaving the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Then he shook his head and wondered if he'd just committed the gravest error in judgment of his life.