Author's Note: An epilogue will follow this chapter, and I've no plans to make the wait for that to be as long as the wait for this chapter.

"Mary alerted me to it. She'd mentioned, amid telling me how she planned to take Mrs Abbot to the theatre, that Molly had told her of spending the summer at Greenwood House; and that she'd encountered you there—"

"Sherlock—"

"It seemed worth investigating. After all, if I was going to have her…" He took a breath. "I needed to be thorough. No stone left unturned."

He turned on his heel. He beckoned. Wiggins stepped forward, and bowed. His rat-like face was half-lit by the evening.

"My master instructed me to go to Greenwood and see what I could find out," he began. "I used a number of vails; on the gatekeeper, the housekeeper – she was kind enough to bring me the maid who served Miss Hooper's – as she was known at the time – bedchambers. She told me everything she saw. Including what she witnessed on your arrival to Greenwood, Lady Adler."

"Stop it."

"What else, Wiggins?"

"The maid revealed, sir, that she'd also seen you, Lady Adler, entering Miss Hooper's bedchamber on numerous occasions. And that she heard – moaning, sir. Moaning of an 'intimate nature', she said. I returned and relayed my information to you, sir, just as Mrs Abbot, as she is now, came to visit you with Mrs Watson."

"I remember," Sherlock smirked. "We discussed vails."

"Sherlock!" She stamped her foot like a distempered spoilt child. Her cheeks flushed. Her lip trembled. It was every rejection, every spurn, coming to the surface, just as they had shared every laugh in the breath of one idle joke.

His breathing was short, shallow in the long silence.

"So, you knew."

He'd expected the ice calm from her.

Sherlock glanced to Wiggins, nodding once. With a bow, Wiggins departed the room. Sherlock walked towards the side cabinet, throwing his dressing gown onto the sofa. He poured himself another drink, turning and leaning against his desk.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the scribbled musical notes. The half-written pages. He drank. The stains on his fingers made his hand shake. His teeth clinked on the crystal-cut glass.

"I suppose it hurt you, when you found out." She spat that question, stretching her neck up, trying to gain the higher ground when neither of them possessed it. "After all, you pride yourself on damning the people – our people – in whichever way possible."

Molly, asleep in her bed, him by her side feeling security for the first time in his life. She had unconsciously reached for him.

"I don't damn them; they do a good enough job of damning themselves. All those assembly balls," he said. Molly Hooper's fingers, in his hair. Her ankles, at his back. Just simply, only her. "All those masques… where they fuck who they want to fuck in the dark of abandoned parlour rooms. They all return to their routines in the morning. Husband, wife. Politician, doctor, lawyer. Mother, housekeeper. Answer me this, Lady Adler. We two are always compelled to choose the ones who run. Why?"

"Immaturity."

Her anger blazed despite the flippancy of her reply.

"Humans, by their nature, are immature. And immaturity wields consequence," she said. "It is the consequences, however, where the differences in our genders become apparent. Husbands submit to consequence in the form of payments and the loyalty of their peers. Especially in the ranks of the nobility."

He raised an eyebrow. "And the women?" he asked flatly.

"The women… We take on the consequences you do not have. We are the ones who submit fully. Bow our heads, wear the black, carry the rosary and pray to a lifeless moon. To save ourselves from submission, we obey. We cut out our own tongues to make room for your cocks. From the moment I was fifteen, my mother tried to push the knife into my hand." Then a smile snatched the corners of her mouth. "I knew it from the first. I was born with one sole purpose: to dominate your sex and avenge my own."

"And Miss Hooper? Where did she fit into your plans?"

"She… Miss Hooper…" Irene's voice cracked. "She is nothing."

"Liar."

Sherlock turned his back on her.

"Where are you going?" Glancing back, he saw her dart forward, then stop as their eyes connected. Sherlock pulled open the door, wrenching his eyes from hers.

"You know exactly where I go," he said into the silence. "How I think, who I fuck, who I help, and who I destroy. I am a man of my word, Lady Adler, and this game… well, you said it yourself. It really has gone on far too long."

Her hair ran loose down her back, curled from a day of being pinned and pulled into place, and she wore a blue satin robe over a white nightgown. Her smile was giddy. It was something she'd worn when they first met, mellowed then by the happiness of her marriage. The giddiness she displayed now was unguarded, dazzling as she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him in greeting.

"I missed you," she sighed, and all at once, her hand slid into his, and he followed her up the stairs, into her bedchambers. The room smelt of her; she had recently pleasured herself, he noted. Eager for his arrival. He dimly remembered sending on his doorman to inform her of his impending arrival. The scent of her in his nose, in his head, he kissed her, deeper than her greeting embrace, pressing her against the bedchamber wall. She moaned, and her fingers sank into his hair. Around his neck, caressing, drawing him closer to her mouth. Her nails would leave scratches. Shallow white lines that would soon fade.

He dropped to his knees as she exposed herself before him, drawing up the hem of her nightgown until it was around her hips and her legs were spread. He took in the sight of her, the dark thatch of curls bared to him as it had been so many times before.

His lips brushed the skin of her thigh. He could so easily lose himself in this—for a moment he almost believed that, if she wished, she could reach right inside him, underneath the flesh and the bone and the muscle, to find what it was that ached so much when he kissed her, touched her, had her.

The thought snapped everything into focus. He paused. He felt his fingertips stroke and knead at her thighs, drawing out her arousal.

"No," he sighed.

He pulled back from her. She grew lax, her hands dropping from his neck onto his shoulders. She shifted, until she was before him, on her knees. She touched his face, sliding her palm underneath his jaw.

He wanted so badly to cringe back from her.

"Sherlock?" He had never seen her naiveté. It had always been a term pinned to her by others. A flash of it crossed her features when he said nothing. "Tell me what's wrong."

He was up in a flash, hurrying towards the window. He breathed. He stared out at London. Carriages passed. Pairs and groups walked by. He saw things no-one else saw: a pickpocket ridding a distracted gentleman of his wallet. A lover tugging at the arm of his latest conquest, barely waiting to be out of sight before he cupped her face and kissed her.

"I – know of Greenwood."

"Greenwood?"

Her innocent tone bit his heart. He whirled round to face her, feeling a dangerous smirk creep onto his lips.

"Let's not do that, shall we?"

Avoiding her eye (she looked lost, like a hunted deer, when she had been part of the whole thing, drawn into this battleground), he reached into his coat.

The letter was curled at the edges, yellowed with faded ink from multiple readings, multiple arrogant scans of the elegant hand.

He dropped it on the floor between them.

"Evidence. You'll find it riveting."

She stood. Her legs trembled, he noticed. Her hands were calm, though, as she picked up the letter with its broken seal, and thumbed it open. She did not read aloud. He knew the words of the letter off by heart.

My dear Sherlock, a kiss? I should think you have softened. I have given her the account of how we met, with a certain blur of the truth here and there. I have urged her to forget her transgression with you—I should think she should be yours within the month, at most. Then, once you have procured this notorious letter, we may have our triumph: the promised one night. It'll be enjoyable enough for us to regret it's to be our last—

"Fine," she snapped, tears edging into her voice. As he looked up, pulled from his thoughts, she swallowed. Her eyes were pinked, alight with fury. "I've read enough."

No. It wasn't fury. That was a poor deduction. This was jealousy.

"Let me give you the truth. I stole a lover from her, as a game. One of our first. I took her lover to Bath, where we spent some time together before I broke it off. She tried to visit our former lover to give her condolences, but was turned away at the door by our lover's husband. I always knew she'd want revenge for it." He tilted his head.

Molly dropped into a crouch as he spoke, her head sinking into her hands, her fingernails sinking into her hair. Her tears came without preamble, nor any dry sobs. He crossed the room, bending over her crouched form. "I'd wager that your time with Lady Adler at Greenwood? It was a part of that revenge."

"Stop it!" She leapt up to her feet as he straightened. Her jaw was drawn tight, her body trembling. She slapped him across his cheek. The pain was sharp, fading quickly as the sound echoed. "Just… stop it."

She slapped him for a second time; a third too. As she raised her hand again, jealousy green in her brown eyes, he lashed out, catching her wrist and stilling it. Her breathing was heavy, his shallow breaths mingling with it.

Her breathing slowed as he, with his free hand, held her waist.

Her wrist slid from his grip.

Slowly, his arms wound around her shoulders until he was holding her, his fingers clutching at the shoulder of her robe, the back of it, feeling satin where once he'd felt her flesh and blood, warm and wanting and waiting. Her arms were cold around his waist, her height rising as she arched her feet, both sinking into one another's grip. Her tears flooded her cheeks, wet on his waistcoat as she nuzzled against him, seeking security from the truth. Still holding her, he stroked the tendrils of her hair, letting them scatter over his fingers. Some rebel part of him wanted to take everything he had broken and put it back together in whatever way possible. Even if the outcome wasn't the same as what had come before, it would be better than what stood in his arms now.

It was he who broke. Shifting, he curled his hands around her thighs, picking her up. Her tears gave way to gasps, snatches of noise as her breath returned to her.

Wrapping her legs around his waist, she clung to him as tightly as he knew she could dare, and turned her cheek to his shoulder. She softly kissed his neck, brief brushes on his pulse.

Her hand covered his heart as he sat among the tangled sheets of her bed. The scent of her pleasure was fading, but her perfume stuck to his skin while she clung to him. He rubbed circles into her back and kissed her bare shoulder as the satin of her robe slid down her arm. He kissed her cheek, kissed away the drying stains of tears. The fresh ones too.

When the kisses faded, when her breathing returned to normal, he lifted her from his lap and laid her out on the bed. She was small and fragile among the white, her body folded in as if ill, in physical pain. Her energy and her strength drained from her. He the fault of it, the cause of it.

The letter lay abandoned on the floor. Sherlock stood and went to pick it up.

"Leave it," she said. Her order was dull, hollow. Sherlock straightened up. Her eyes flickered towards him. A glance, and for that glance, he saw a moment of her strength returned. "Leave me," was the second order.

Sherlock shut the door behind him, leaving the letter alone. He heard her weep anew.

Lady Adler, Wiggins told him, had hurried back to her townhouse. Gathering the rest of his letters, giving no glance to the half-finished notes scrawled on music sheets, Sherlock followed her. Her footman allowed him inside from the cold without protest, and told him she was sitting in the parlour.

He dropped the letters, tied together with ribbon, all with ink written by a well-trained hand on their pages, at her feet.

She sat by the unlit fire, unmade-up, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and a smile on her face before she arched an eyebrow.

"The game has been concluded," he spat, a breath between his words.

She abandoned her shawl on her chair as she rose to her feet. "Go home, Sherlock. It's late."

Oh, he'd known there was a chance of arch dismissal. Yet there was no ache at hearing it said, for that ache remained with a married woman crying.

"Not late enough," he called after her retreating form.

He watched as she slowly turned, inclining her head. Sherlock glanced down at her hands. Her left trembled. Catching it with her right, she faced him fully.

Sherlock spoke again.

"The night's still young," he said, gesturing to the high arched windows of the parlour. "London is still alive. If the night is alive, then so is our promise." He reached her and grasped her upper arm. He narrowed his eyes. "I'll see that promise fulfilled, Irene."

"In what manner?" Softly, she inclined her head. Her perfume flooded him, her made-up lips gentle on his cheek. She lingered, but the kiss was brief. Her lips inched close to his ear. The whole room was still. "What exactly will you do?"

He let her go, and the room moved again. The curtains moved with the wisp of a draft. Irene blinked. Her smirk twitched, but did not abate. The more pain he saw in her, the wider her smile seemed to be.

"Oh, Sherlock. Despite the claims you make, you crave sentiment. You're entirely driven by your emotions. What, are you so surprised that I made you chase after a girl who is, if she is anything," she laughed, and the sound was hollow, "the very definition of sentiment?"

She remained there; with her head inclined and her smirk turned into a smile. Her eyes brimmed, wet and shining.

Sherlock took a step forward. Her breath caught, the great Lady Adler nothing more than Irene, and she dipped her head as he cupped her cheeks. He kissed her forehead.

Just as he'd fallen for it, she had fallen too.

He cupped her cheeks, and pressed his lips to her forehead. He murmured something, soft with no meaning to anyone else. She could laugh in his face; break the tension so taut and claim the victory once and for all. Instead, she sighed. She hardened the sigh, so a laugh might come.

Tears finally came, salty as they slid against the corners of her mouth. She shivered.

Heartbreak can leave a human broken. He had concluded the game, and, Irene sensed somehow, severed something significant. He had left her without triumph and no anger.

She was alone, Sherlock long departed, when she moved with a gasp that had her doubling back. She flailed out, grasping at the cold stone mantelpiece as she gasped back breath over breath. Tears streamed down her face.

Molly.

Molly, who had read quietly by a window pane.

Molly, who smiled when defeated.

She had to see her. Wiping her eyes, Irene called for her maids. Changed herself, picking out a blush pink gown, its three-quarter sleeves ruffled. She ordered herself to be made up, her hair combed. Leaving her maids behind, she rushed down the stairs.

"My carriage," she barked to her butler, "call for my carriage."

Calmly he bowed.

"My cloak – my cloak—" she muttered, jittery as she waited in the entrance hall.

"Here, my lady," said her butler. He quietly gestured as a footman slid the garment over her shoulders. Irene nodded, drawing it closer over her chest, tying the fastenings.

"Good, good – my carriage?" She reached for the hood and drew it over her head.

"Arrived, my lady," her butler replied, glancing out of the window. A footman stepped forwards, offering out her gloves. Irene shook her head, dismissing him as she started for the front door. Civilians wandered past the opening door, their cotton cloaks covering home-sewn garments which whipped up around their legs in the wind.

"My lady," began her butler, making her pause. She did not turn her head to face him. Coming to stand beside her, he bowed and continued. "You understand I shall have to inform the Admiral."

She blinked, swallowed. "It's no matter of mine."

Leaving no more time to waste, she picked up her skirts and hurried onto the pavement, climbing into her carriage. Slamming her palm against the carriage roof, she settled back in the seating. The driver urged the horses on. The curtains flapped in the wind, which only seemed to be growing stronger.

Irene hugged her waist, her other hand brushing over her bottom lip. With her thumb, she traced the shape of it. The shallow shape, where she'd shared kisses plenty with men and women who stared at her with the same learned corruption.

(Part of the games had always been letting the other players think they were the victor triumphant.)

Molly had always resisted that corruption. Irene half-smiled. That always was what Frances had wanted Irene to teach her daughter: to be a part of high society, corruption was key. The ability to look the other way. Irene had taught her to look society fully in the eye, to focus on all its foibles and flaws.

She knew why.

She'd wanted Molly to run away, and hide. She'd wanted her afraid.

She'd stared at that girl, now a woman and married to a fool, and been amused enough by her singular, simple desires, that she'd wondered what it'd be like if she ran away with her.

And yet. Molly Hooper had never done so. She'd done as taught, and stayed. Consequently, Irene turned the screw. For what purpose—surely to see how far she could take her dear friend, the one she had fucked and kissed like the others, before her friend broke. Before they, together, could finally run away.

She had never been built for patience, nor had she ever liked idleness.

The carriage came to a stop.

"Mrs Abbot's, my lady," said the driver, opening the carriage door. Irene stepped out and hurried to the door. Thrice she knocked on the door. It swung open.

"Lady Adler," she told the footman. "I'm here to—"

"My mistress doesn't wish to see anyone."

Irene blinked. "What?"

"My mistress is unwell," the footman explained. His lips were thinned, but his features were otherwise blank.

At last, a laugh, high and short, came to her lips.

"Get out of the way." Surging forward, she pushed past the footman. She hurried up the steps. One, two, one two. "Molly! Molly!"

She ascended quickly, her skirts bunched in one hand, the hem of her cloak flurrying around her skirts. As she reached the corridor, her feet broke into a jog.

She pushed open the bedchamber door.

Molly was laid on the bed, her legs curled up to her chest. Her nightgown was pooled around her thighs, her robe half-slipped off her shoulder. Quietly, Irene shut the door behind her. She inched closer to the bed.

"I am not well enough to receive visitors."

Molly spoke with acid civility. Her tone wasn't weak, but strong. Strong enough that Irene cracked a smile as she stood over her.

"Surely you can see a friend?"

Molly rolled onto her back. Her brows narrowed.

"Get out."

Irene widened her smile, tutting. "My friend, do not—"

"Get out!" She convulsed with the force of the command. Irene blinked, stumbling back from the force of it. Wordless, she watched Molly struggle to sit up, wiping approaching tears from her eyes. She stood, feet bare on the wooden floor. She stared Irene fully in the eye. In the growing silence, the kindness and quietness of her character fell away.

"Your letters are in a drawer of my dressing table. Take them, and get out."

Irene swallowed back her reply.

There was no kindness in Molly's eyes because she was angry. That was the truth.

Turning, Irene hurried towards the dressing table. Her skirts brushed over another letter, left in the middle of the room, and the paper skittered across the hard floor.

Opening the drawers, Irene searched and found. Each letter was folded back into their envelope. There were no curled corners, no softened edges that came with rereading. A soft pink ribbon tied the pile together. She had read each letter once, and put it away.

Molly had always taken things to her heart too quickly.

"Molly, I…"

"Don't try such tactics with me. I know the game," she spat. It was a short distance from her dressing table to her bed, but a world apart as they stood on either side, the wind picking up outside. Oh, yes, Molly was a world away. But her anger was as intimate as the small room in Greenwood, as intimate as the look they shared over the banister of a stairwell. "I know you do too. Get out."

The command was echoingly final.

It was the drawers at her bedside where she had taken, in the past months, to keeping her letters. The ones in her hands now felt heavy. They felt heavier as the maid before her clumsily tried to stand before the bedside table, her hands adjusting her skirts, trying to hide from view the bulge in her apron pocket, tucking in the familiar ribbon that tied together every correspondence, every piece of the puzzle.

Irene felt no rage. She simply sighed and dumped the letters in her hand on the soft cotton of her bed, going to sit at her dressing table. In the mirror's reflection, the maid's back was to her. The maid possessed long black hair, tucked within a white cap with strands escaping at the nape of her neck.

"Do I not pay you enough?" Irene asked, trying to sound bright. She picked out a handkerchief from her dressing table's right-side drawer. She smeared at her makeup, the heavy red of her lips, the pink of her cheeks, the white of her powder. Her skin emerged, flushed underneath the weight of the make-up. Half in make-up, half-naked, she glanced over her shoulder at the maid. "You could've just said. Come here, undo my hair."

The maid bowed her head in a single nod and stepped forward. The weight of the letters caused her apron to sway a little as she approached. Irene settled back in her chair, staring at her half made-up face, the smeared marks of her lipstick. The maid withdrew well-hidden hair pins from her head, one by one. Irene winced at the last few, her eyes flicking towards the neat line of pins the maid set out on the dressing table surface as she worked.

The maid's fingers drew over her hair at the last, teasing out the tangled waves of hair to tumble over Irene's shoulders. She picked up a comb, and began at the ends. She drew the comb softly and rapidly over knots. Irene's closed her eyes, feeling the comb's teeth sink through her hair, biting on her scalp as the teeth ghosted through the smoothed hair.

A brush next, soft where the comb bit. The maid's fingers ghosted over her neckline, her collarbone as she scooped Irene's hair around her shoulder.

A silence followed.

"Very good," Irene said finally. She stood, facing the maid. "Undress me."

The maid bowed her head once more. "Ma'am."

"You're Irish," Irene remarked as the maid worked from behind her, undoing each lace on her bodice. The maid was silent save for a low noise at the back of her throat as she helped her mistress out of the bodice, the sleeves sliding down her arms. She removed the skirt too, undoing the hoop skirt underneath. In her slip and stays, Irene stood in her bedchamber.

The maid returned to the front, her hands lowering towards the base of the stays. With practiced fingers, she hooked her forefinger underneath the first lace, holding the knot in place as she pulled at the bow. Irene watched her.

There was a dipped crease at the space between her brows. A mellowed frown, a mark of professional concentration. Trained never to give a word of confusion, or question how something worked.

Her lips were full, her eyes brown, almost the same black shade as the hairs poking out from her cap. There was little eagerness to please within her. She stood in a maid's dress, her hands rising towards Irene's breasts, undoing the last of the binding, and she looked defiant.

She went to leave, taking the stays and garments with her.

"Stop. Just a moment," Irene added, as the maid turned to face her.

"Ma'am," she said once again.

Irene quietly approached, tilting her head. Her smirk hovered at the corner of her mouth, not quite taking. She held the maid's chin between her fingers and thumb. She drew herself close. Her breath was warm on the maid's mouth, but her lips felt cold. She curiously, desperately, searched for a kiss while their lips connected.

The maid's eyes were unchanged as Irene drew away.

"Thank you, Ma'am," she said, dispassionately.

She gathered up the letters from the bed. Tell them all, Irene thought, watching the maid leave. Let them know truth rather than gossip.

They all deserved to be wounded by truth.