The Marriage of Mary Russell Read Free Page B

two hours later. My first exploratory telephone call was to Dr Watson. He was not at home. His housekeeper informed me that her employer was currently visiting friends in Edinburgh, and although he would return in two days, he would be at home less than seventy-two hours before boarding a ship for New York, where a band of literature lovers (or at any rate, fans of the Doyle tales) were to present him with an honour and—more to the point—a paying lecture series. The dates, unfortunately, were set in stone.
    It was now Monday evening; the good Doctor would return on Wednesday; his ship sailed at midday on Saturday.
    I hung up the telephone earpiece and gazed down at the scrap of paper on which I’d made some quite unnecessary notes. Holmes and I were in my newly painted and partially refurbished house a few miles north of his, where the air smelt not of sulphur but of varnish, paint, the fresh dyes of carpets and curtains, and the eggs I had scorched for our supper. In the current absence of my neighbour and occasional housekeeper, Mrs Mark, the only sound was the whisper from the fire. “This is not going to work.”
    “Don’t sound so disappointed, Russell. You were not keen on the venue to begin with.”
    “I am now.”
    “We could proceed without Watson.”
    “We really couldn’t. No, Holmes, it’s just not practical. Even without posting banns for a church—assuming we could convince a rector that I counted as one of his flock—we’d still need a fifteen-day period for the Registrar.”
    “When Watson gets back, then.”
    I looked sadly at my final note on the page: July 7. Five whole months. An eternity.
    But what did it matter? Holmes and I would go ahead as we were—as we had been before I stood on a London pier and, seeing him resurrected from a fiery death, literally embraced an unexpected future.
Patience, Russell.
    And yet, I was afraid. That real life would intervene. That doubts would chew at our feet, causing one or both of us to edge away from the brink. That neither of us had really meant it, and the memory of those dockside sensations would turn to threat. That my gift to him was nothing but the selfish impulse of an uncertain young girl.
    I felt his gaze on me, and put on a look of good cheer before raising my face. “Of course. July will do nicely—and will give us plenty of time to arrange a distraction, to get your cousin and his shot-guns away from the house.”
    He did not reply. Under his gaze, my smile faltered a bit. “It’s fine, Holmes. You have commitments in Europe next month; I have much to do in Oxford. I will be here when you get back.”
    Abruptly, he jumped to his feet and swept across the room to the door. I watched him thrust his long arms into the sleeves of his overcoat. “Thursday, Russell,” he said, clapping his hat onto his head. “Be ready on Thursday.”
    “For what?” I asked, but he was gone.
    For anything, knowing him.
    —
    Tuesday morning dawned. I expected…I don’t know what I expected. Excited telephone calls from Mrs Hudson, a disapproving telegram from Mycroft. Earthquakes…
    What happened was precisely nothing. A pallid sun crawled above the horizon, setting the frost to glittering. Patrick, my farm manager, let the horses out and wrestled with the aged tractor for a while, achieving a few moments of roar and a stink of burnt petrol over the landscape. Mrs Mark let herself in and pottered dubiously about the newly equipped kitchen. The children from up the lane hurried by for school. An aeroplane passed overhead.
    Normal life, it appeared, was going on.
    I dressed and went downstairs, eating the breakfast Mrs Mark cooked for me and drinking her weak coffee without complaint. I tried to settle to a paper I had been working on, back in the days of innocence before I turned twenty-one and reached out to seize my majority, but I could make little sense of it. None of the crisp new novels I had bought in London bore the least interest. Even the