The Marriage of Mary Russell Read Free

now as near to a mother as I would ever again have.
    No, I thought, as I studied her bloodshot eye: it would not be possible to wed Sherlock Holmes without the participation of Mrs Hudson.
    “I don’t suppose he’s still up there?” I asked.
    “In the laboratory? No, he discovered some urgent task elsewhere.”
    “Of course he did. Any idea what direction?”
    “He put on his Wellingtons.”
    That meant either towards the sea, or up the Cuckmere. I thanked her, and beat a hasty retreat from the noxious fumes.
    A few snowflakes danced around me at the Birling Gap cottages, where I followed the sound of a hatchet to ask the young man—the son of one of the lighthouse keepers—if he had seen Holmes go past. He said no, and pointed out (with patience, as if to a sweet but stupid child) that in any event he’d not have got far, since the tide was in.
    Not the lighthouse, then.
    Walking back up the silent lane, I decided to abandon my tracking of Holmes across Sussex to Alfriston or Seaford—or wherever he had gone. All I wanted was to deliver an apology, that my presence in his life promised not only to complicate matters, but to do so without even such benefits as doing open battle for his ancestral manor. Perhaps if I offered to accompany him on his next tedious and uncomfortable investigation, by way of recompense?
    Both apology and offer could wait until he was restored to his aired-out home.
    However, it had been a long cold walk across frost-crisp Downsland, with an equally long and frigid way back again. I could always throw myself on Mrs Hudson’s hospitality and thaw out my toes before her fire, but it might be simpler (and less dangerous, when it came to letting slip Certain Pieces of News) to plant myself before the considerably larger and less socially fraught hearth at the nearby Tiger Inn. The innkeeper might even have a pot of soup on the hob.
    Naturally, having decided not to seek after Holmes, the Tiger was where I found him, stockinged heels propped up before the crackling logs, beer in one hand and pipe in the other.
    The sight of that ravaged scalp over the back of the chair gave me pause: his barber had made an attempt at tidying the results of the fire, but short of taking a razor to it, ear to ear, only time would restore normality. His head was currently an odd mix of neatly cropped greying hair and frizzed stubble, with traces of nearly bald skin here and there. It looked curiously…vulnerable.
    With that thought came another—one that would not have crossed my mind for a thousand years, were it not for the events of this past week: should I present my cheek for a demure but affectionate kiss? It was the done thing, between two people on the edge of marriage, but…Holmes? I stood there a moment longer, studying that mottled scalp, but in the end, the thought of the reverberations of such a greeting—through Sussex and to the world beyond—swept any faint impulse out the door.
    That decision, I would realise a very long time later, both reflected and set the pattern for our future behaviour: affection between us remained a private thing. Private even, occasionally, from one another.
    “Hello, Holmes,” I said.
    He tipped his head as I came around his chair to the fire; his eyes were still a touch shot with red, which I did not think was from the cold. “Ah, Russell,” he said. “I see you have been down to Birling Gap. Did Mrs Hudson tell you where to find me?”
    I wavered briefly over how he’d known, then refused the bait. “Mrs Hudson seemed to think you were headed to the lighthouse—or to the beach, at any rate. She’s got all the doors and windows wide open.”
    “Yes, I’m not sure what went wrong. I may have added sulphur when I meant to reach for the saltpetre. Nothing seriously wrong, but the air was a touch thick.”
    “I’m glad the walls are still standing. No, I was heading for home, but thought I’d have something warm first.”
    “Do sit,” he agreed, making