Chapter Two: Ain't Misbehavin'
"I see here that a broch is an Iron Age dwelling native to Scotland," Molly said conversationally as they wove around on a meandering road the next morning. She squinted a little and titled her mobile away from a glare so she could continue reading.
Ignoring the history lesson, Sherlock scowled at the damp collecting on the car's windows. "You have data reception out here?"
"Mmhmm." If she'd noticed the jealousy practically steaming off of her driver, she made no mention. "Apparently, brochs're great feats of drywall architecture. Archaeologists still debate the purpose of their original use, though the word broch springs from brough, which means fort."
"Archaeologists rarely agree on anything. How do you have data? We have the same mobile carrier." Was there no justice in the world?
She looked up thoughtfully. "Make you wonder what the word Edin means, doesn't it? As in Edinburgh?"
"'Burgh' and 'Brough' are not one in the same, Molly."
She didn't respond right away, tongue stuck out in concentration as she typed on the mobile's tiny, digital keyboard, and then another moment passed as she scanned her screen. "They are, actually. According to my lover, Google, brough is low-Scottish, burgh or burh are Middle English, but they have the same meaning."
"You have 4G LTE?" he demanded, aghast by the speed with which she'd been able discard his etymology know-how.
"Edin, meanwhile, is possibly an exclusively Scottish word, derivative of Eidyn, which is a toponym—"
"That's great," Sherlock interrupted. "Give me your mobile."
Molly squawked when he reached over to yank the phone from her, but she managed to evade his pincer-like hand, flattening herself against the passenger door. "No!"
"Don't be ridiculous. Just give it to me for a moment."
"Why?"
He stretched is arm further, still trying to reach it. "I just want to check my email."
"Not while you're driving, you clot!" She swatted at him.
"Fine!" Sherlock straightened slammed on the breaks, letting the engine stall out.
Unfastening his seat belt, he leaned over again, fingers grasping for the phone. Molly jerked around, turning from him and shielding the prize with her body. He tried worming his hand under her vice-like arm, making her jump as his fingers tickled her side. Which inspired him to experimentally repeat his actions, hoping to gain some ground in getting that damn, desired mobile off of her.
They tussled a bit longer (neither realizing that they were laughing), and it was only when someone knocked on the windscreen that Sherlock realized he'd nearly moved all the way across the car's center console. One knee was up by the gear shift, and his chest was flush to Molly's back, his arms around her, hands buried against her midriff. He'd been taking a two-tiered approach of tickling her into submission while he continued his attempts to seize the phone from her clutches.
A man in a porkpie hat squinted in at them, befuddled and either annoyed or merely old (Sherlock frankly couldn't tell which, thanks to his massively wrinkled face).
Blowing her hair out of her eyes, Molly cleared her throat and used the hand crank to roll down her window. "What seems to be the problem, Mister…?" she asked.
"MacTavish," the man supplied. It was the only thing Sherlock managed to translate. The interrupter set off in a thick, rolling brogue. Sherlock caught something about coos and rudes and a plethora of rolled r's. Beyond that, he assumed the man was angry about something. Or just old. It really was difficult to tell.
Molly seemed to follow a little more easily, for she nodded sympathetically. "I understand. And it's a beautiful head of cattle you have. If you'd be so kind as to move them aside, my companion and I will be on our way." She smiled winningly. "We're unused to free-range livestock."
Sherlock finally noticed the giant herd of fluffy highland cattle that had swarmed and surrounded the car during his wrestling match with Molly. He blinked, astounded that he'd neither heard nor felt their approach (there had to have been a minor earthquake from plodding hooves, and they had rather sonorous moos).
MacTavish nodded and said a few more r words and something about sasunnachs.
Though Sherlock only understood and spoke broken Gàidhlig, he recognized the word. The man had called them Saxons.
"I have very few Germanic roots in my ancestry," he informed the farmer haughtily. Who looked wholly unimpressed (old) by the rejoinder.
"They call anyone not from around here 'sasunnach'," Molly explained quietly, turning her head to look at Sherlock.
His nose brushed her cheekbone and his gaze narrowed, reminded once of their physical proximity at the moment.
This had to stop.
He had no need to know how pleasantly clean she smelled or how soft her jumper was (or how soft she was). Those were extraneous details that he'd just have to delete later, lest he embarrass himself with sentimental thoughts.
"Ah," he coughed. He set to peeling himself off of Molly, nearly hitting his head on the roof of the car as he contorted himself back into his seat. He frowned, baffled, wondering how he'd managed to move across without injuring himself in the first place.
While he and Molly straightened their clothes, both trying and failing to act casual about it (like teenagers, he thought to himself, caught out while getting off). MacTavish had turned away to grumble instructions to a huge dog of indeterminate breed. It eagerly began running, circling and barking at the cows, using the car's bonnet as a convenient springboard a few times.
"Did you get damage protection?" Molly asked, finger combing her hair back into sorts as the car rocked a little with the force of the dog's jump. "I think that thing might be part draft horse, part wolf."
Sherlock's lip curled derisively. "The hire agency will probably insist that coverage doesn't include monster claws."
Finally, the road ahead of the car cleared of the russet animals, though he wondered if he'd still hear cattle lowing even in his sleep. Giving a jaunty salute to the farmer, who only stared back them, unmoved. Sherlock restarted the Peugeot and they puttered away from the good man and his cows.
When Molly offered to come with him that morning, he'd shoved aside his instinct to agree. She'd help, yes, but she'd also be distracting. He'd tried to dissuade her with temptations of exotic sightseeing and sweeping vistas.
She'd only arched an eyebrow and peered out of the kitchen area's window.
"Oh, look. A rock in the loch. And another. And another. And an—"
"Molly," he'd warned.
She'd only blinked innocently at him.
With a sigh, he went to the door and held it open, waving her through impatiently when she'd insisted on grabbing her coat first.
Really, he'd thought to himself as he pulled his Belstaff's collar tightly closed, it isn't that cold.
The broch that Maurice Stonebridge and his fellow students had made their holiday home certainly looked bucolic. It's circular shape seamlessly transitioned into a grassy hill, and its inner rooms likely behaved similarly. The in-ground design would keep the broch warm in colder months, and cooler in the summer. Nothing outside relieved the structure of its grey, dour look, though Sherlock did see remnants of an outdoor fire and chair marks in the dirt.
He felt an unjustified level of smugness as they climbed out of the car. Surely, Molly would not find scathing words about privileged camping if the inside of the drab rock pile looked anything like its exterior.
For the time being, "Cozy," was her only, dry comment while she watched Sherlock pick the lock. She frowned, realizing what he was doing. "You're breaking in. Are you telling me we're not the only dolts 'making holiday' in off-peak season?"
Sherlock grunted, pushing his shoulder against the door for leverage as his pick set quailed under the heavy iron lock. Finally, though, he heard the bolt fall back.
"Why would I stay in a yurt if I had the choice? I believe the owner resides here during the autumn and winter months," he explained, putting away his picks.
"Why." She didn't even bother pose it as a question.
He shot her a look. "As much as you denigrate 'glamping', you, yourself, pointed out that brochs have a rich heritage in the Hebrides."
It was shame that the same moment he snippily informed Molly of her disservice to the broch lifestyle, he also pushed the heavy, wooden door open and flicked on a switch just inside.
Together, they stared inside at the small foyer and great room beyond it.
Molly slowly turned back to Sherlock with one, sardonic brow quirked. He forcibly stopped his hand mid-reach, just short of his thumb arriving at that taunting eyebrow to prod at it until it lowered once more. Instead, he exhaled huffily through his nose and waved her into the house. Nearly prancing, she stepped into the ornate rooms beyond.
The stonework that comprised the outside of the broch was still visible in patches around the foyer and into the living area. Sherlock imagined some interior decorator had described it as 'rustic'. It was the only thing that passed as such in there.
Gaslights sconces circled the main living area, reflecting off gold threads of the Aubusson area rugs scattered throughout. The only place without a filigree sconce, in fact, was the seven-foot span of wall that had been replaced with a large, picture window. It overlooked a sloping ridge leading down to the shoreline.
A mounted stag's head loomed over a large fireplace, its glassy eyes observing the general splendor of fur throws on overstuffed settees, designer lamps, and crystal decanters.
"Rich history, indeed," Molly murmured. She idly picked up a decorative pewter ball from a sideboard, rolling it in her hands while she looked around. And then her eyes widened and she set the ball back down with a thunk. Sherlock watched, curious, as she approached a heavy oak desk and pulled out her mobile, thumbing up the camera. "If I put an Instagram filter on it, this iMac's antique provenance will really pop."
He didn't deign to respond.
When she'd finished snickering, literally trying to pat herself on the back, she finally sobered a bit. "So what are we looking for? Do you think your client 'Cask-of-Amantillado'd' his friends in the broch walls?"
"Oh, decided to ask, have you?" he sniffed. "And did you just use a Poe story title as a verb?"
"Huh. I'd have thought you'd delete something so crass as a short story."
"I do enjoy some fiction on occasion," he sniffed. He decided not to mention his mother reading all of the stories to him as a child. He was still put out by her heavy-handed matchmaking.
Just to be contrary, he said, "As for our missing Uni students, I'd prefer if they'd been 'Tell-Tale-Hearted'."
"Not enough floorboards here, though. Just flagstone. Flagstone with radiant floor heat, if I'm not mistaken. The putrefaction would be intolerable," she reasoned.
"Not if he buried them in the larder. I imagine that it's unheated. And it's been a month since they disappeared. Plenty of time for the smell of decay to diminish."
Molly wandered over to the fireplace, looking pointedly at the flue. "What about 'Rue Morgued'? Maybe an orangutan did it and stuffed the bodies up the chimney."
It surprised a small snort from Sherlock and he registered a burst of enjoyment. He was having fun. It was needless waste of time: coming up with outlandish, improbable solutions to his case. But Molly looked just as happy, and he felt a warm pressure settling in the top of his chest as they smirked at each other.
Finally, though, he had to look away, embarrassed. Crouching down, he felt the floor. Molly was right: heated flagstone. Looking up, he examined the upper floor, housing what could only be bedrooms.
"Bedrolls."
"I rarely eat sushi," Molly said.
Sherlock's lips quirked, but he steered the conversation back to his actual point. "I had Stonebridge give me an itemized list of his companions' belongings that disappeared with them. It was all of their clothing luggage and their bedrolls."
"And they left in the middle of the night?"
He hmmed, confirming. "But the bedrolls."
"What about them?" Molly prompted.
"Does this place strike you as the sort not to have bedrooms?"
She snorted. "Oh, yes. People spend their social time here in opulence before retiring to a medieval shared room with soggy rushes and nothing else."
"Exactly. So why did my client and his friends buy ninety pound bedrolls from a boutique camping site?"
Molly looked at him, aghast. "Ninety quid? That's highway robbery!"
"I never said they were smart university students. In fact, I'd say my entire reason for being here proves that they are the exact opposite of smart."
"I wonder what it'd be like to elect to sleep on a bedroll instead of in a real bed. And those disappeared, too? That's a shame. Stonebridge could have sold them to get a little money back after his failed holiday." She bit her lip. "And this was in late September? Not exactly keen weather for camping out under the stars."
Sherlock spared a moment to be glad he wasn't the only one who was offended by the wasteful purchase and subsequent loss of the bedrolls. It now nagged at him, though. Why the hell had Stonebridge, Whitehall, Flannery, and Blackburn purchased them? Stonebridge had mentioned that they'd let the broch several months before their trip, so it wasn't because they'd not known where they'd be staying.
Pulling out his mobile, Sherlock tried to call Stonebridge while he strode up the shadowed staircase, wanting to verify that this broch wasn't just a show lounge and otherwise-stable. At a glance, though, the rooms beyond were just as extravagantly appointed as the lounge, and furnished with enormous beds.
Sherlock's ornery phone made a sputtering crackling noise and the obnoxious dropped signal alert blared in his ear.
He scowled, looking down to see Molly wandering into the kitchen. He could either pickpocket her for her mobile and face her wrath, or he could ask nicely to borrow it.
He considered it for a moment. Pickpocketing it was.
Her wrath was formidable and… invigorating.
Quietly, he moved back to the ground floor and skirted the heavy furniture, eying the stag trophy in case it tried to tattle on him. The animal maintained a stony and taciturn indifference. Sherlock saluted it before darting up to Molly on tiptoe. She stood at a diary hanging on the wall, reading the blocks of reservations highlighted in hot pink marker.
"Don't even think about it," she said conversationally as he stretched his hand out.
Sherlock wilted. "You don't even know what I was going to do."
"I deduce," she turned and rumbled in a horrible imitation of him before resuming her normal voice, "that you were going for my mobile. You had yours to your ear, but you never spoke, and you quickly pulled the phone away and started stabbing at buttons before any voicemail would have kicked in. The no-signal alert is shrill and repetitive. You were trying to disconnect, but weren't able to."
"Maybe I was headed towards the toilet," he suggested feebly.
"Loo's in the opposite direction, and it'd be weird to break and enter and then avail yourself of it. Also, you've been coveting my mobile for the last hour."
Sherlock sniffed. "Coveting is such a strong word. If I'm struck by the disdainful fact that I'm here in a professional capacity and my one means of communication has failed while yours continues to work perfectly, well, you can hardly fault me."
"I can when you keep trying to get your slimy paws on it without permission." Molly moved to the fridge, pulling it open to study its contents. She glared. "The entire unit is stocked with Bachelor's brand food. It's impossible to take anything but the natives seriously here, I swear."
"My hands aren't slimy," Sherlock defended. "Molly, may I please borrow your phone?"
She swiveled to face him, smiling beatifically. "Of course." She pulled the mobile out of her pocket and handed it to him. "Knock yourself out. Except don't really, because I don't think I can carry you out of here and I'd rather not linger much longer."
Sherlock shot her an unimpressed look as he dialed Stonebridge.
And of course, the call went to voicemail.
Once the recording beep sounded, Sherlock barked, "Mr. Stonebridge, I have some questions for you. Call me back."
Molly darted forward in a mad rush before he could disconnect. and called loudly to the mobile, "This is Sherlock Holmes, by the way. Have a nice day."
"He'd know that," he said peevishly after he'd ended the call. "And I don't give a damn about the quality of his day.
"Why would he know it's you? He's met you once. It'll be a shame if he reports you to the Better Business Bureau for poor manners."
"I'm his only hope for proving that he didn't kill his friends or help them disappear." His tone was haughty. "I somehow doubt he'll be overly concerned with manners."
Molly shook her head pityingly. "You say that now, but the next thing you know, he'll invite you to dinner. You'll say, 'No thanks, I'm not hungry,' and he'll drop the deadbolt in place and say, 'Oh, but I am.' Politeness saves lives and internal organs, Sherlock."
"I'd like to see him try," Sherlock sneered.
Molly just shrugged, holding up her hands in a placating gesture. "Just warning you. If he produces a nice Chianti, run. Run and don't look back."
Sherlock shook his head, though he secretly wondered how Molly knew so much about the psychological and behavioral profiles of modern cannibals.
"I'm going to take a closer look at the bedrooms. If you're quite finished cataloguing the ways I might insight a man's hunger for human flesh, you're welcome to come, too."
"I'm sure they'll be perfectly rustic," she said sweetly, making for the staircase and snagging her mobile from his hand on her way by.
He could only hope that she wouldn't notice the crystal chandeliers hanging above each bed.
Dejected, they left the broch, no closer to an answer. Too much time had passed between the students' holiday and Sherlock's investigation. He'd moved on to the locals to suss out a better angle on inquiry.
Stonebridge never called Sherlock (or rather, Molly) back.
"It's like he doesn't really care that I'm out here trying to save his posh derriere," he groused as they walked back into to the yurt after a fruitless afternoon speaking with shopkeepers and a few police constables in Stornoway.
"Or he's trying to keep his head above water. New term, no friends, potential murder charges. I know it really affected with me when I killed a man," Molly mused, sinking down onto the small settee in front of the wood-burning stove.
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but he lowered himself down beside her. His weight pushed the cushions down, and she rolled in unintentionally until her side was pressed to his.
She stilled for a moment, as if wondering if she should grab the settee's laughable excuse for an armrest and haul herself away. But she didn't. Instead, she sighed forlornly and shook her head. "Poor Esteban."
Very well. He could be just as unaffected as she. "You didn't kill a man called Esteban."
Trying to look worldly and haunted, she gave him a small, sad smile. "You're right. He was called Steven. But we were in Spain, so it seems a fitting tribute to him. I remember how he'd follow me around, softly singing, 'Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no–mmmff'"
Sherlock had placed a hand over her mouth. She pulled at his fingers futilely for a moment before subsiding, though her eyes twinkled over his thumb, and her torso shook with tiny, muffled laughs. He could feel their vibrations against his arm.
He was flustered and almost laughing, too. He had to be adult about it.
"Molly," he murmured, sobering. "Are you quite done?" But he all too quickly realized—both from Molly's shiver and the sensation of his bottom lip glancing off of the skin of her earlobe—that he'd gotten rather close to her to make his demands. His voice was pitched low and he'd asked her rather, well, silkily.
Molly's eyes darted around. To the thumb of the hand covering her mouth. To something over his shoulder. To his lips. Back to the thumb. It was a circuit and he followed it with an interest that he couldn't pretend was detached.
He could feel each point where they touched, hand to face, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Her fingers flexed and released nervously in her lap, close enough to his leg that he could just feel them.
Cataloguing it all, he wondered how much longer he had before Molly lost her patience and amusement at his hand covering her mouth. If he ever tried anything like it in a non-joking way, she would likely bite his hand with enough force to break skin and then refuse to administer First Aid.
When she nodded a little, he willed his tense muscles to relax and pulled his hand away, feeling the cool air hit a damp patch on his palm in the shape of her lips.
He told his body that it should straighten away from where he was still pressed to her. He should get up and go call Stonebridge again. Or make another poisonous soup. Anything, really. Apparently, though, nothing worked right today, for he stayed right he was, and Molly appeared to be of a like compulsion.
They stared at each other, faces now only inches apart after she'd turned in more to look up at him, bewildered, eyes dark. Her breath fluttered the collar of his shirt while he could see her hair move a little with his careful exhalations.
She leaned just a little forward and his breath stuttered. But he didn't draw away. In fact, he might have leaned towards her in turn. It was an interesting experiment in polarity, he justified to himself.
She moved her hands, those flexing fingers grabbing the open flaps of his blazer. With a huff, she shook her head and leaned forward, closing the distance between them, and he could only wait.
Just before her lips brushed his, though, a horrible cry came from outside the yurt's felt walls. Jerking apart, they whirled around, trying to identify the direction of the shouting. Rushing to the window, Molly looked around wildly, and then let out a gasp.
"What is it?" Sherlock demanded, hurrying over to her. She only turned and ran out of the yurt door. Glancing outside, Sherlock discovered why.
Farmer MacTavish lay under the bulk of one of his cows, her huge head on his chest, pinning him to the ground. Feebly, he tried to move from under its mass, with but he barely budged.
Running out the door, Sherlock caught up with Molly halfway between the yurt and MacTavish.
"Mr. MacTavish, we're here to help you!" she cried.
MacTavish lifted his head. Instead of looking on them as if they were his personal saviors arrived to rescue him from Death by Cow, he started waving them away. He yelled at them to 'nooze out' and something about his coos, but Molly only shook her head.
"Don't struggle! We'll save you!"
MacTavish began cussing in the inventive stream of profanities distinctive of the Scots. Tapping firmly on the cow's front leg, he shouted something else, and the cow lumbered to her feet, shaking her fluffy head and mooing in distress. She took one look at the new arrivals and went running away in an ungainly gait.
Standing too, MacTavish pointed accusingly at Sherlock and Molly, remonstrating with them over 'upseytin' me coo' when she was purportedly just 'shooin' some affeyction'.
He stormed off, calling after "Roberta the Bruce", apologizing to her with all of his heart.
When Roberta the Bruce's lowing and MacTavish's pleading faded over the hillside, Molly and Sherlock could only stare at each other, not entirely sure what had just happened.
And then they seemed to recall what had almost happened right before their timely interruption. Clearing their throats, they let their gazes slide away from each other. Sherlock scratched his neck and kicked at a clump of grass that the cow had kicked up in her hurry to get away.
Molly rubbed her arms and looked out at the water, frowning. "It looks like a storm is coming."
Sherlock nodded, clearing his throat. "The bookshop owner we spoke to in Stornoway said this one will make last night's storm look like a wafting breeze with a slight trickle of rain."
"Ah," Molly said, not really listening to him.
They stood there for another minute before she shook herself out of her embarrassed stupor. Smiling brightly—her fakest, I'm Happy and Unbothered smile—she said, "Pub, then?"
Sherlock tamped down a small flicker of disappointment that she didn't slink over to him (as much as a person wearing a giant wooly jumper, two shirts, jeans, Under Armor, and thick boots could slink) and suggest that they pick up where they'd left off.
But instead of voicing his displeasure, he only nodded curtly and turned to retrieve his coat and car keys.
He really hated cows.
A/N: In his long career as a farmer, Mr. MacTavish has named all of his herd after various Scottish monarchs or would-be-monarchs. Which hasn't been easy. He's had approximately forty-eight Bonny Prince Charlies and sixty head of Mary, Queens of Scots. A lot of James occurrences, too.
Thank you so much to everyone who's followed, subscribed, favorited, kudos'd, and reviewed the story so far. I truly appreciate the interest!
Thanks to dietplainlite for the beta and suggestions.
Next week, we move into territory that's a tad more salacious and a tad more getting-to-the-main-point-of-this-story *old timey radio announcer voice* Stay tuned to learn the fate of our champion and her dashing-but-cranky love interest in "The Accidental Bridegroom - Chapter Three: Le Petit Mortification"!