Above the Orchard

by "I'm getting too old for this," he muttered

England is supposed to be a cold country. It is known for a damp, cool climate that produces creamy complexions for young women, roses the size of a child's head, chilblains, and miserable head colds. Its winter fogs are legendary, especially in London, which was nicknamed "The Smoke" for good reason. And what, after all, would my Uncle John's Sherlock Holmes stories have been without the fog and the chill and the early dark of an English winter? He could hardly have had Holmes and Watson pursuing malefactors through London streets awash with sunshine and birdsong (true, at least one of Watson's stories begins during a heat wave, but somehow it was the winter London that had taken hold in people's minds). Holmes had told me once, with an air of resignation, that readers around the world had formed their mental pictures of London through Uncle John's "unnecessarily romantic" stories. I had pointed out that the pictures might have become cliché-ed, but weren't necessarily inaccurate.

The point of all this is that it was August in Sussex, and it was hot. It was miserably hot. England had been caught in the withered hand of a drought since the late spring, and the exceptional heat had come with it. Oh, the temperature broke from time to time for a few days of perfect English summer weather, sunny but low in heat and humidity -- and then soared upwards again, lurking in the high double digits for a few days or in the worse case, a week or more. This week, the entire southwest of the country was sweltering, and in London and other large cities, crowded and without access to sea breezes, it was well nigh intolerable. People were collapsing in the streets, some dying of heat prostration. The wealthy escaped to their country houses, the King to Osborne, and the prosperous middle class to seaside resorts and watering places all over the coast, from Brighton to Bude. Holmes and I, with our country home no more than an easy walk from the sea, stayed put. We were hot, nonetheless. True, we were better off than our inland countrymen; the sea breeze usually freshened in the morning and evening, offering some badly needed relief, and we could -- and did -- go for a swim in those late afternoon hours when the whole county seemed as if it were sizzling in a chafing dish. One of the peculiar qualities of heat, however, is its ability to reassert itself commandingly regardless of the length of one's respite from it. By the time we dried ourselves, collected our things and made our way back up to the house, we were as hot as if we'd never cooled off in the first place.

Holmes dealt with the temperature better than either I or Mrs. Hudson. As the heat wave continued, I developed a persistent headache, difficulty sleeping and a lack of appetite. My stomach seemed permanently out of sorts. I was irritable. My body felt bloated and anything with a waist, pinched. Mrs. Hudson snapped at Old Will, stumbled over the cat more than once, and on one memorable occasion dropped an entire bowl of eggs, sat down on the back step, and began to weep. Maddeningly, Holmes was suspiciously sweet-tempered and appeared indifferent to the heat. So far as I could see, he did not even perspire. It was impossible to know whether he simply felt the heat less, or was employing the same strength of will that allowed him to appear unruffled and serene whether in a stone hut on Dartmoor or an oasis in Palestine. He took to leaving his collar and jacket off when he was around the house but otherwise his appearance was as sleek and yes, cool as ever. Holmes had astonished me with this cat-like neatness more than once, usually when I was dirty, footsore, unkempt and bedraggled, and I found it no less annoying now, as we entered a second consecutive week of unrelenting heat. I had to admit that I had been perversely gratified when, earlier today, he'd attempted to make notes on the current experiment, found his hand sticking to the page, and -- before he noticed that I was listening -- hissed a choice oath or two as he peeled the damp, smudged paper free.

A year or two before, when we were in India, Holmes had told me that the extreme heat and humidity there inevitably led newly arrived Europeans to begin shouting at people or things, normal equanimity disintegrating under the onslaught of sticky skin, heat rash, nasty smells, strange food, and unsuitable clothes. As the present heat wave wore on, I would have added that moderate heat, in countries that are generally cold, is likely to have a similar effect although for somewhat different reasons. While one could speculate that people of northern European descent are simply not brought up to endure heat, in truth they do well enough, once they have learned to adapt to the special living requirements of hot climates. Dealing with heat in a generally cool country, however, is a different matter. For one thing, houses in cold countries are built to retain warmth, not to offset it. Visit a southern clime and you will find breezeways, wide center halls to channel a breeze from front door to back, generous porches, ceiling fans, and rooms with excellent cross ventilation. There were no such cooling amenities in our snug cottage in Sussex, designed to keep its occupants cozy against the damp, chill and fog of the English coast. For the first few days of this hot spell, our house had been pleasantly cool, the sturdy flint walls and tile roof trapping and holding the inside temperature as they had been designed to do. On the third day of the heat, the house had begun to absorb the warmth from the outside, and to retain that warmth. At first the air inside was merely stuffy, impervious to shades drawn during the day and windows thrown open at night. Then, the furnishings grew hot; to sit on a chair was to sink into a pool of heat that grew more intolerable by degrees, amplified by one's own body temperature. Electric fans, while better than no fans at all, merely stirred the hot air. By now, there was no comfortable place in the house to escape from the heat. Early in the morning or late at night the terrace, or the grass under the copper beech, were marginally more comfortable, but even in those pleasant places there was so little breeze that a sufferer's best chance of relief was to sit absolutely still, avoiding any activity that might raise a sweat. Since lifting a hand to fan oneself was enough to generate perspiration, comfort was fast becoming a fond memory.

When night came, Holmes and I stayed downstairs, or outside, later and later, trying to ignore the weariness that was made worse by the heat of the day, reluctant to subject ourselves to the atmosphere that we knew awaited us in our bedroom. If the ground floor of the house was hot, the first floor was unbearable. One cannot stay upright indefinitely, however, and so we were usually dragging ourselves reluctantly up the stairs by midnight. I would take a quick bath in cool water, put on the lightest nightgown that I owned, and fling myself into bed, dispensing with the covers. There I would either toss and turn, trying to find a spot not dampened by my own perspiration, or lie corpse-like on my back, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts going round and round, and attempting not to pant. I suspected that Holmes was just as uncomfortable but he remained better than I at hiding it. He too forsook the covers and lay absolutely still, maintaining a careful distance from me. As the world knows, my husband was a genius; one sure sign of it, in my view, was that for the last two weeks he'd made no nocturnal overtures, although under normal circumstances he was as interested in marital relations as any other man. Perhaps a life as the world's first consulting detective had given him an exaggerated instinct for self-preservation. He'd become famous for, among other things, deducing a great deal about other people simply by observing them; clearly he did not need me to tell him that in this heat I was in no mood for lovemaking.

It was now about 1 a.m. and I was, as I had been frequently over the last several nights, wide-awake and miserable. Irritably I ran my right hand over my damp forehead and reached out tentatively with my left, to see if Holmes was in bed. If he was there and awake, one might at least pass the time in conversation. My fingers encountered emptiness on his side of the mattress. This was not unusual; Holmes might not have been a classic insomniac, but for the greater part of his life he'd more or less ignored the distinctions of night and day. If he'd been too uncomfortable to sleep, he might well have gone out to the terrace to smoke or into the laboratory to distract himself with some reading. Just as I was wondering if I should go to look for him or resume my struggles to sleep, a soft voice came to me from across the room. "Over here, Russell."

I sat up in bed and looked toward the window. Holmes was perched in the window seat, his knees drawn up to his chest in a pose that had been captured at least once in the Padgett drawings of him. Not for the first time I wondered how so tall a man could fold himself into such a position and appear comfortable doing it. He had removed his pajama top -- indeed he must have been feeling the heat -- and the light of the three-quarters moon gleamed on his pale shoulders and forearms. The window was wide open; in the day he would have had a view over the downs to the sea. Now, since it was just past a full moon, he was likely seeing a landscape in shades of black and silver. "Is it cooler over there?" I asked.

"Not in any measurable fashion, but you appeared to be so miserable that I thought it might help if I removed my own rather warm body from proximity. I have been watching you toss, turn and mutter for the last half-hour, at least."

"I hope you are not saying that I've been keeping you awake, Holmes," I replied testily. "You have the nocturnal behaviors of a bat in the best of weathers."

He held up a hand in the universal gesture for peace. "Assuredly not, Russ," he said, "I must confess that I've had no luck in sleeping, either. This room increasingly reminds me of Calcutta. Or Baker Street in summer." At that I laughed and pulled myself up into a sitting position.

"Thank God, Holmes," I admitted, "Had you not admitted to some discomfort from this heat soon, I might have found myself joining the rather lengthy and distinguished list of individuals who have tried to murder you." Even in the dim light I could see his grin. He stretched out his legs, rose from the window seat, and leant down to pick up a mysterious bundle. Holding it under one arm, he crossed over to my side of the bed and held out a long, elegant hand.

"Come, Wife," he said, "let us go find a cooler place to sleep."

Two weeks of heat and lack of sleep and food had done nothing to sweeten my disposition. I glared at him. "The heat has addled your senses, Holmes, I assure you that there is not one cool spot in this house."

He repeated his gesture again, impatiently. "Precisely, which is why I have no intention of staying in the house. Now collect your pillow and another quilt and come along."

I was still inclined to be mulish, but now he had caught my interest. "You propose to go sleep outside?"

My husband was beginning to appear exasperated. "Have I not just said so? And what of it, we've 'slept rough' many times before, have we not?"

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, shoved my feet into slippers, found my spectacles -- without them I was likely to walk into a tree, day or night -- and turned to him. "In Palestine, yes. In India, of course. Even in Wales. But Holmes, this is Sussex." He chuckled, quietly as befit the middle of the night. I tried again to make my point. "Mrs. Hudson is sleeping just downstairs. What will she think if she sees us?"

Holmes put a gentle finger under my chin, tilted my face upward, and kissed me soundly without making any effort to offer an embrace. "My dear young wife, I was scandalizing Mrs. Hudson with my bohemian ways before you were born. Her expectations of me are low. It's infernally hot, you are miserable, and I want to get out of this room. There are a number of places on our own property that will be more pleasant than where we are now. I know better than to order you to do anything but I beg you Russ, do come along now."

I confess, the kiss had been pleasant and somewhat mollifying. I resisted the temptation to observe that it was not only I who was miserable, and said, "Oh, all right, husband, it's true that any place outside is likely to be an improvement over here. Lead on." I opened the blanket chest at the foot of the bed, retrieved an old quilt that could hardly be further battered by a night outdoors, and picked up my pillow.

We made our way through the hall, down the stairs, and across the combined parlor and study. We were especially quiet as we traversed the ground floor, conscious of Mrs. Hudson sleeping -- or not sleeping, the heat being what it was -- in her little suite of rooms off the kitchen end of the house. Holmes, who despite his age had better night vision than I, wove neatly around furniture and piles of books, but I stubbed my toe at least once and said something that would most certainly have shocked our good housekeeper. As was his wont, Holmes made no comment on my outburst but simply reached back, offering his hand as we stepped through the French doors that led to the terrace. I took it. We stole across the terrace, the flagstones still warm under my light slippers, and slipped down its broad steps into the garden. By now my eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness so that the moonlight was adequate illumination, but I retained Holmes' hand, anyway. In the warm night the garden air was heavy with the scent of roses and boxwood and the herbs Mrs. Hudson was cultivating in a corner near the kitchen. We emerged from the garden on the wide stretch of lawn that ran to the top of the hill, and proceeded down the sloping path that led to the orchard, to a point where the terrace became invisible and the path was surrounded by moderately high, sweet grass. Here Holmes stopped, moved a few steps off the path, handed his pillow to me, and began to unfold the bundle he'd been carrying -- another large quilt, a thermos, two tin cups, and an unidentifiable object or two that he kept hidden in his hand as he swirled the quilt out and let it settle on the grass. I dropped the pillows and my own quilt and knelt to help him straighten our new bed. Finally I lowered myself onto it gratefully, sat back with my arms stretched behind me, my weight resting on my hands. In another spot the ground might have felt hard even with the quilt, but here the taller grass created a cushiony effect. A faint breeze touched my skin and now that I was freed from the confines of the house, the air seemed far less oppressive although the night was far from a cool one. "You were right, Holmes," I sighed, " it does feel better out here."

Holmes regarded me for a moment and then sat down and joined me on the quilt, his knees again pulled up against his chest. I looked up, trying to find the stars through the remaining heat haze, and again encountered his eyes on me. As our glances met, he turned away, innocent as a choirboy or a diplomat, and gazed out toward the orchard and the sea. I knew that look. "You are curiously well prepared for this outing," I observed. "What do you have in the thermos?"

"Merely a little water, should we need it," he told me. "As to being prepared, I didn't spend the entire evening in the window seat." He reached over and brushed a few tendrils of hair away from my face. "I've always liked that particular nightdress," he said, his voice hushed. It was too dark for me to see his eyes, but I suspected that their normal crystalline gray had transmuted to something closer to smoke.

"Holmes," I said, "are you thinking of making love to me?" A further suspicion crossed my mind. "Were you thinking of that when you suggested coming out here?" I realized that I was sounding cranky.

If my husband was disappointed by my reaction to the signals I had come to recognize after several years of marriage, he was too much a gentleman to show it. I could not quite make out his smile but I could hear it in his voice. "Hmm, I was not so disingenuous," he replied, "It merely seemed sensible to escape our oven-like bedroom for a pleasanter venue. However, it is a sultry night, and I find myself in my own garden -- or near it, anyway -- with a lovely young woman who is rather scantily clad." I glanced down, suddenly conscious of the thin cotton lawn of my nightdress and the fact that, in my current position, the material was pulled rather snugly across my breasts, which seemed to have become fuller of late. The heat, I grumbled to myself; it made my feet swell, why not my breasts? My cheeks flamed but I peevishly made no effort to sit up. I would not feel guilty just because the heat had left his carnal inclinations unaffected, or even worse, exacerbated them. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that this was one of those areas in which men and women differed. Holmes drawled on. "It has been quite some time since -- well, since I had the opportunity to express my affection to this young woman, who is, I would add, my legally wedded wife. Would it be surprising if the thought of making love to her crossed my mind?"

As others had noted before me, the man could be infuriatingly logical. One could seldom argue with Holmes' reasoning however inconvenient the conclusion. "No," I acknowledged, trying to sound less peevish, and added, "It's too hot, Holmes."

"You're doubtless right," he said offhandedly, sounding rather less put out than he might have been. I was immediately unsure as to whether I was relieved, or a little hurt, at his careless acquiescence, and my reaction made me further annoyed with myself.

The night air was still, and it was very quiet. With a little effort, one could hear the sea, but its breezes had either failed to shift toward the coast or were making no headway toward us. Despite that there was a faint tang of ocean in the air. We were curiously private here. The slope of the hill sheltered us from the house, where no one was awake in any case, and while in daylight we could have been seen from the orchard, there was little chance of that at this hour. The grass, while only a bit higher than in an unruly lawn, would give one a sense of shelter once we lay down, yet would not break a stronger breeze if one developed. We sat there for quite some time, unspeaking, enjoying the silence and the relief from the suffocating closeness of the house. I felt my tension and irritability begin to slip away. Finally I straightened up to sit next to Holmes. "It's beautiful here, isn't it?" I observed. "So clean and peaceful. One doesn't take enough time to appreciate it, generally."

Holmes continued to look down toward the orchard, though I knew he could see little even with the moonlight. "I thought it was beautiful the first time I saw it," he said, "although Watson was always under the impression that I was oblivious to the countryside." He drew a breath, released it. "I needed a little peace and cleanliness in my life, then."

I did not ask him what he meant; I thought I knew. Holmes had been relatively young when he "retired" to Sussex. The conventional wisdom was that his premature rheumatism had grown increasingly painful in the London damp and that moreover, he was bored with the banality and ugliness of the contemporary crime scene. I had my own theory. Holmes was a passionate, fiercely emotional man who at some point in his youth had learned to deal with his feelings by maintaining a stranglehold on them, constructing a cool, cerebral façade. By the time he was in his forties, I thought, he was exhausted from putting on that performance for a cast of thousands, many of whom thought they knew him through Watson's stories. Whether he'd known it or not, he'd sought a country retirement as a way of saving his sanity. The difficulty was that the peace that his heart and body needed was intolerable to his restless, voracious brain. Bored and frustrated and yes, I believed, lonely, he'd turned again to cocaine and slipped back into the erratic eating and sleeping habits that had wrecked his health more than once, and when he was a good deal younger. No one could truly know what would have happened to him had I not stumbled across him on the Downs that day, thus opening an unexpected new chapter in his life, but I could not forget what Watson had told me the day we met -- that Holmes, then, had been a very sick man, perhaps a dying one.

Not surprisingly, this line of thought reminded me of how important our friendship and, later, our love, had been to both of us. It was not as if I had been a well-adjusted young woman the day I met Holmes. To the contrary, I had been physically and, worse, psychologically, damaged; I had been angry with myself and with the world. If I had saved his life, it was no more than he had done for me. An unaccustomed wave of sentimentality washed across me -- the heat seemed to be making me more emotional, too, no doubt from lack of sleep -- and I laid a hand on his shoulder. Beneath my palm I could feel the fine pattern of scars that marred the skin on his back, the souvenirs of the Donleavy affair and of the trip to Palestine that arose from it. Holmes did not like to talk about what had happened to him in Palestine -- indeed he had never spoken of it to me directly -- but sometimes, when I held him, I would stroke his back in a wordless effort to tell him that I was sorry he had suffered so, sorry that I had not been there to prevent it. It was a wordless apology that we exchanged, whenever he kissed the scars that covered my chest and shoulder. Now I turned to him and said, "Holmes, I have been so hot and wretched -- my hair feels like a bird's nest. Would you take it down and re-braid it for me?" It was a peace offering of sorts. I loved the man, after all.

Holmes was well aware that I appreciated his extraordinary dexterity with women's hair, even if I'd carefully avoided asking how he came by it. He picked something up from the quilt -- the mysterious objects that he'd hidden in his hand as we'd left the house -- and held them up in the moonlight for my inspection. I smiled when I saw my comb and brush, smartly purloined from my dressing table. "I had hoped you might ask," he said, and then took me by the shoulders, turning me so that my back was toward him. "Now relax," he instructed, "This light is not the best for undoing your braid but I shall endeavor not to pull." His quick, sensitive fingers found the bottom of my long braid and the ribbon that I'd used, earlier in the evening, to secure it. He made quick work of releasing the knot and began the delicate business of loosening the braid, pausing every few inches to comb through the strands that he'd freed. I closed my eyes, let my body sway with the gentle rhythm of the comb. Holmes proceeded slowly; my hair was thick, a little damp from perspiration, and with his usual attention to detail he was concentrating on working out the tangles without hurting me. When the last twist of the braid had been undone, he slipped both his hands under my hair, lifted it from my neck. "Lean over," he whispered, and I bent forward, the whole heavy, hot mass falling down over my face, the ends touching my lap My husband changed his position, knelt behind me and began to brush my hair from the nape of my neck upwards, lightly so as to avoid any snarls. The night air on the back of my hot and, yes, sticky neck was divine, the tender, thorough strokes of the brush almost hypnotically soothing. I felt every sinew of my body softening, a peculiar response that came over me whenever Holmes attended to my hair. Rather too quickly for my preference, the brushing ceased and Holmes' hands were again on my shoulders. "All right, first phase of the mission accomplished, you may sit up now."

I did sit up, my hair falling back over my shoulders in an unwieldy mass, and somehow found myself leaning back against him, my head against his shoulder. I felt his chest move in a deep sigh. After a moment his lips touched my temple, then my cheek. I started to turn my head to return his kiss, but instead he straightened and gently lifted me upright. "How am I to complete my assignment if I am distracted in this manner?" he asked, lightly. I wondered if my earlier coolness had hurt him more than he showed, but his voice did not sound annoyed or even ironic. He lowered himself from his knees to a more comfortable position and began to brush my hair again, this time from the forehead back, but still with that gentle, sensuous touch. Finally he said, "You've not had a decent night's rest in over a week, Russ, you need to sleep. You were right, it's hot and, though you didn't say so, I was being an ass a few minutes ago. Let us attribute it to the nature of the beast. Just relax and enjoy this -- if you are enjoying it, that is."

I reached up and clasped his hand. "It's wonderful, Holmes, thank you." The soft strokes of the brush resumed. I wondered if he was counting to one hundred, or simply letting the texture of my hair guide him. Some minutes had gone by before he spoke again, this time in an casual tone as if what he had to say was of no great moment. He had finished brushing and now began to braid, starting at my crown, a difficult style of braiding I'd never had the patience to master. "When I was a small boy," he said, "oh, no more than four or five years of age, I'd guess, my mother used to allow me to brush her hair, in the morning, when she was getting dressed." I almost stopped breathing, but caught myself and exerted every ounce of will to show no reaction to this remarkable statement. It was remarkable not in its content but because Holmes almost never spoke of his childhood, not even to me. He continued, his tone carefully neutral, his fingers still working the intricate braid. "She had beautiful hair, I remember, darker than yours but just as thick, and it came to her waist. I suppose it wasn't very pleasant for her to have me brush it, I was a child after all and clumsy, but I think she enjoyed having me with her and she knew it made me happy -- I thought I was helping her. I was a child, I loved my mother as a small child does... " His voice trailed off for a moment, then he resumed, briskly. "I should have been in the nursery at that hour, of course, but my father would ride out early to check on the fields or the tenants, and when my mother had gotten up and bathed, she would ask Nurse to bring me downstairs for a while. Sherringford and Mycroft were already away at school and I was lonely -- I was so much the youngest -- so those brief intervals with my mother meant a great deal to me. At any rate, she would cuddle with me for a time, tell me a story -- or let me tell her one -- I remember that I was very fond of pirates then -- and then she would give me the brush... it was silver, almost too heavy for me to hold... and say 'Sherlock, Marie has too much to do this morning, would you help her and brush my hair, please?' And of course this made me feel very grown up, and useful... Marie, the maid, would bring a footstool that was in the room, because I was too small to reach the top of my mother's head as she sat at her dressing table, and I would begin to brush... "

He stopped speaking. He had nearly completed my braid, now, and he felt around the quilt until he found the ribbon he'd removed earlier. I heard the soft whisper of silk as he ran the length of it through his fingers, and began to tie it at the bottom of the long braid. "I was very serious about it," he resumed, "brushing my mother's hair. I would try to count to one hundred strokes, and endeavor not to miss one, to do it the right way." Now there was a smile in his voice. "Quite an undertaking considering that I had only just learned to count! I took much the same care with my pony's mane, come to think on it. I remember I enjoyed the softness of my mother's hair, and the shine of it -- much the way a child will enjoy stroking a kitten, or a rabbit... I suppose children are attracted to pretty, soft things." I remained silent, thinking how odd it was that my acerbic, impatient, undemonstrative husband was ruminating on the small, commonplace things that delight small children. He would, I told myself, have observed them as he observed so much else. Holmes finished the bow, tugged it to fasten it securely, and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. "Lie down with me, Russ," he said, and drew me down onto the quilt. I nestled my head into the hollow of his shoulder and his left arm came around me, held me close. I laid my own left hand on his chest. The heat that had distanced me from him earlier seemed less intense and entirely unimportant, now. We rested there for a few moments, our bodies falling into their familiar pattern, and then he continued.

"It was pleasant in my mother's dressing room -- warm and sunny, and it smelt like her perfume -- and of course, there were many shiny, intriguing things about, all the little gewgaws that women enjoy and that are fascinating to a child. I felt safe there, and happy... it's odd how strong that memory is, so many years later." He did not go on and I wondered if that was all he meant to say.

"It was your mother's gift to you, that memory." I said. I knew that his mother had died young; he had not had her long.

"Yes, I suppose so." he replied, his tone thoughtful, and then he drew a breath and resumed speaking. "My father was a serious man," he told me, "a 'manly' man, some would say. In his universe, men attended to serious things -- politics, or war, or the land -- the church perhaps, if they had no better option... and when a man was not working, he hunted, or fished, or rode. Perhaps to humor his wife he went to a concert, which he slept through, or entertained his like-minded friends at dinner parties... soft things, beautiful things, were women's business. Men were stern, hard. Oh, I think he loved my mother in his way, but he had no time for the things that were important to her... and she was the one with the art in the blood, after all..."

"But you inherited it," I said, and felt his lips curl in a smile against my temple.

"Yes, and Mycroft too, in his fashion." he replied. "Very frustrating for my father. I don't think he knew what to make of us. Thank God that Sherringford, who was more like him, was the heir. Anyway," he went on, "one morning when I was in my mother's room, discharging my rather harmless little duty for her, my father came home unexpectedly. I don't recall what had happened, perhaps his horse had thrown a shoe or something of that nature... but at any rate he decided to visit his wife's room." My husband's voice changed in timbre, became lower, as if it were coming from someplace deeper than his throat. "Even as a grown man, I've not been able to understand why he became so angry. Perhaps he had been looking forward to some intimate time with her; perhaps he simply didn't expect to see me there, doing something that he saw as the maid's job... perhaps he believed that what my mother was permitting me to do was going to make me effeminate. Later, of course, I comprehended that he had rather rigid views on the proper activities and amusements for boys. Whatever it was, he was angry, very angry. He came into the room in a great rush -- of course in those days he seemed enormous to me, although he was shorter than I grew to be... He was still carrying his riding crop and he picked me up by one arm and gave me two or three sharp cuts across the back of my legs... told me to leave off my girlish foolishness and to get back to the nursery, and that I should have nothing to eat the rest of the day... of course I cried, and my mother protested, which made him angrier. Marie began to weep, and he ordered her out of the room, and told her to take me with her, that he didn't want to see me again until I could behave like a proper boy and not some puling girl... Marie took my hand and pulled me out of the room, and I could still hear him shouting at my mother as she dragged me down the hall and up the stairs to the nursery. I was far from being in long trousers and I knew then that I'd failed my father somehow, and endangered my mother..."

He stopped speaking, cleared his throat harshly. Several moments went by and when he spoke again, his voice was lighter, as if he'd merely told me a fondly remembered childhood escapade. "So that was the end of my brushing my mother's hair," he said. "She died when I was eight years of age and I never visited her again in the mornings, not until she was formally dressed and downstairs and could receive me 'appropriately.' And while as I grew up my father disapproved of me in every way, in the end he would have said, at least, that I became a real man." He snorted, with a faint undertone of bitterness. "I suppose Dr. Freud would say that that explains my fascination with women's hair."

I pulled out of his embrace and propped myself on one elbow so that I could look down at him. "Holmes," I said, "that is a terrible story."

He was entirely himself now, back within that dispassionate veneer he put on so well. He looked up at me, raised an eyebrow. "Is it? I'm sorry, I had no wish to upset you. My father was probably no worse than many others of the period -- it was an age which did not believe in coddling children. One was often beaten out of one's foolishness. It was well meant."

Well meant, indeed! I was indignant on behalf of that little boy, so many years before. "A grown man taking a riding crop to a small child? And for no greater foolishness than loving your mother? It is a good thing that your father is deceased, Holmes, or I swear I would apply a riding crop to him, myself, and see how he liked it!" This time Holmes' laugh was genuine. He took up my hand and gave it a quick kiss.

"I hardly knew when I met you, Russ, that I was acquiring such a fierce defender. Don't waste your anger -- it was a very long time ago. And as you can see I've suffered no lasting damage."

Some would disagree with that, I thought. Something in his past had taught him to hide his softer feelings, shove them deeply inside and hold them down until the effort almost broke his health and his sanity. He had found his way out of that self-imposed trap but not before he had endured years of loneliness, worse perhaps because he had not even recognized his own isolation. I stroked the hair back from his forehead, and then kissed him tenderly on the mouth. "It is not foolishness to love one's mother, Holmes, and that's all you were doing. And as to finding a woman's hair enticing, you are hardly alone in that. I am no scholar of the New Testament but I believe St. Paul had a bit of a fixation in that direction, himself." My braid had fallen across my neck and he took the end of it in his right hand, wrapped it around his fingers, and pulled me back down to him, gently but inexorably. He returned my kiss, gently at first and then with growing passion. His hand slipped away from my hair and slid slowly down my body, paused in all the right places before it drifted under the hem of my nightdress. I found myself melting into him. In the last moment or two before words became superfluous, I pressed my lips to his ear.

"It would seem that it is not too hot, after all, Holmes," I murmured, and sighed as his lips traced down my neck.

"Just hot enough, my dear young wife," he replied, and I realized that he was not talking about the weather.

Not surprisingly after that interlude, we slept. When I woke up some hours later, dawn was still distant, but a faint lightening in the eastern sky showed that sunrise was not far off. The breeze from the sea had finally shifted inland and it had become cool enough that at some point in the night Holmes had pulled the second quilt over us. As often happened, we had gotten ourselves into the "spoon" position, my back firmly against Holmes' chest and his long arm relaxed around me. He was still asleep and I could feel his breath, regular and warm, against the back of my neck. I snuggled back against him. The strongest, most independent of women, I thought, finds something delightful in being encircled protectively by the arms of the man she loves. Holmes must have sensed my movement because his arm tightened around me slightly and he grunted, a small, contented sound that made me smile. I lay there in the dark, thinking about that hurt little boy, then the young man on Baker Street, so brilliant, so arrogant in his self-assurance and intellect, so convinced that he had no need of love as most men understood it. Who of Watson's readers could ever have pictured him in this particular setting?

Eventually my left side began to grow numb and I carefully made a move around toward Holmes, squirming as unobtrusively as possible to lie on my back, my head on his outstretched left arm. Despite my best efforts my resettling woke him, and he turned with me, so that we were lying side-by-side. After awhile he sighed and rubbed his eyes, then slowly sat up, stretching to ease his back. "The ground seems harder these days than it used to do, some years ago," he grumbled.

I remained comfortably horizontal beneath the quilt. My husband looked around, located the thermos, opened it, and handed me a cup of water which I drained gratefully. While I finished he poured himself a cup, drank, and then lay back down beside me, reaching out to pull me to him. "We should go in soon," I said, "Mrs. Hudson will be stirring not long after it gets light and we don't want to give her a fright."

Holmes did not seem overly concerned, perhaps because giving Mrs. Hudson a fright was something he'd once done more or less regularly. "Let's wait a bit and see the sunrise," he replied and in truth I was still drowsy and not over-anxious to return to the heat inside the house. I turned my cheek against his chest and pressed myself against him, twining a leg over his. We rested for a few minutes, and gradually I became aware that Holmes was running his fingers through my hair, patiently teasing out the braid he'd so carefully constructed last night. I did not protest. The feeling was pleasant and strangely soothing, and after all I would have had to do it myself, in any case, prior to bathing and getting dressed. My hair had not quite returned to the length it had been prior to my emergency shearing in India, but Holmes liked to see it down, anyway. The darkness, the intimacy of the setting, and the story he'd told me the night before somehow gave me the courage to ask him a question that I'd often contemplated but never voiced.

"Holmes," I said, "will you tell me how you became so adept at dressing a woman's hair?" His fingers paused for a moment, and then, a little to my surprise, he chuckled.

"There's nothing very mysterious about it, Russ," he answered. "Once, for three or four months, I made a nice living as a fashionable ladies' hairdresser. In Vienna, as a matter of fact."

I sat up abruptly, my hair -- now entirely freed from its braid -- spilling down my back. "Holmes, it's on record that you have a strange sense of humor but it is too early in the morning to be teasing. I'm serious, I really want to know."

My husband looked genuinely wounded. "What, have my hairdressing skills so deteriorated that you cannot believe that I once employed them professionally? I assure you, Russell, I am telling you nothing but the truth." My glare must not have softened noticeably because he continued, "It was on a case. For Mycroft."

This, at least, sounded plausible given some of the things I knew my husband had undertaken for his brother, the man who attended to all manner of secret things for the British government. Intrigued if not entirely convinced, I laid down again and felt Holmes' arm slip around me. "Tell me," I said.

Holmes paused long enough to kiss the top of my head, and then began the story. "It was not long after you were born," he said, "in the years when all the murderous ingredients that ultimately led to the Great War were beginning to ferment. Vienna was one of the places where agents of all the European powers came together, publicly or in secret, or both. It was a bit of a powder keg in those days. There had been a series of dangerous security leaks from the British Embassy, leaks that threatened to set the whole mess off in the wrong direction, even then, and the Prime Minister had made it clear to Mycroft that he wanted it stopped, and stopped permanently. The difficulty was that the leaked information was turning up in the oddest places and in the hands of the most unlikely people, and the leak could not be traced to any of the usual sources -- no junior ministers being blackmailed, no Embassy clerks with drinking problems... eventually Mycroft came to believe that the origin of the problem was on the distaff side of the Embassy community."

"The distaff side? You mean your security risk was a woman?"

"Indeed, but not in -- well, not in the expected manner. We were not dealing with a femme fatale who was seducing secrets out of a besotted diplomat or a typist who had somehow managed to get her hands on a secret document. This information was coming, apparently, from a far more rarified circle."

I reflected on this for a few moments. "The wives of the diplomats themselves?" I asked. Holmes nodded, his night's growth of whiskers rough against my temple. "Or daughters, or sisters. You can see the problem."

"Indeed, one can hardly barge in and ask a British diplomat whether he is revealing secret government matters to his female family members -- or even worse, if one of them is talking out of school."

"Quite. And while Mycroft even then had some female operatives, none of the ones available at the time had quite the -- shall we say finesse? -- to infiltrate that particular group."

Captivated now, I turned onto my side so that I could see his profile. I grinned up at Holmes. "So Mycroft proposed to send in a fashionable, highly expensive, and much-sought-after society hairdresser, someone who could frequent the boudoirs of the Embassy ladies without question or comment -- and listen."

My husband nodded. "Yes. You are hardly one to devote much thought to such activities, but many women devote an inordinate amount of time to their hair. Frequently they confide in their hairdressers, but even when they do not, they have a tendency to chat with one another in the presence of the hairdresser, who after a time becomes a fixture -- invisible." Holmes rolled his eyes. "You would be astonished at what I heard whilst on that case, and having nothing to do with the matter at hand, either."

"I think not, Holmes, you forget that I spent some years residing in a women's college."

Holmes looked slightly taken aback, as if he did not care to contemplate the conversations in which I might have taken part while in my college at Oxford. I pressed on. "But how on earth did you become sufficiently skilled to pass in that role?" I asked. "And what made the women in question -- the suspects -- call you in? Surely they had their own favorite hairdressers?"

"As to the first question," Holmes said, "Mycroft commandeered the services of one of London's most fashionable hairdressers, who put several days aside (and a good many exorbitant fees, I should imagine) to put me through a kind of immersion in the art. I never cared to ask Mycroft how he persuaded him to do it -- I believe, to use the common parlance, he 'had something' on the man. I assure you that the fellow was so highly motivated that at the end of the week I could have obtained a position in any salon in London." He looked amusingly self-satisfied. "The chap said that I was good with my hands," he added, smugly, and I offered him a slow smile.

"As I can testify," I said, and my husband looked at me, looked away, and then regarded me again with a faint twitch to the side of his mouth. I suspected that he was blushing but could not verify this in the faint pre-dawn light. There were times that I forgot that, bohemian tendencies or not, my husband had spent his formative years in the Victorian period.

"I shall not delve further into that statement," he replied primly, and continued. "And as to how the ladies were persuaded to retain my services, Mycroft had it put about that Monsieur André -- my alias for the case -- was relocating to Vienna temporarily at the request of the Austro-Hungarian Empress, who had heard tell of my ability, to train her own hairdresser... he also made sure that it was generally known that my services were extraordinarily difficult to obtain, that I would work with only the most refined, and the most stylish, clientele, that I was very difficult, temperamental, imperious... needless to say, by the time I arrived in Vienna with the tools of my trade and sent around a few tastefully designed cards, every fashionable lady in the metropolis was clamoring for my attentions."

I shook my head. "Holmes, you never fail to astonish me. And so... did you, in fact, style the hair of many society ladies?"

"I did."

"And were you -- what was it -- difficult and temperamental?"

"Oh, assuredly. It was essential to my role. I absolutely refused to style a lady's hair in a requested way unless it was suited to her and not an insult to my art. I was revoltingly highhanded. " His eyes twinkled. "Of course, Watson would have said that I was only being myself. In my defense, I was also charming a good deal of the time. And I gather that my work, and my manner, satisfied."

I pulled myself into a sitting position and regarded him steadily. "You know, husband, I have heard it said that some women are inclined to seduce their hairdressers."

Gazing up at me, he nodded with every appearance of seriousness. "I believe there were one or two who had that in mind."

"And did they succeed with you? Purely in the interest of the case, of course."

Holmes was scandalized. He sat upright. "My dear Russell," he said, "Must I remind you that in contrast to the fictional detectives of the present day, I was never any kind of a Lothario? Rather the reverse, in fact."

I took his hand and wove my fingers into it. "I am gratified to hear it, not that I am surprised that several of these ladies had a 'go' at you. You realize, of course, that your very remoteness makes you highly desirable. Catnip, my dear Holmes, pure catnip." My husband looked at me as if had taken leave of my senses. The most intelligent of men can sometimes be remarkably naïve in these matters and I was tempted to elucidate, but I was more anxious to hear the end of this particular case. I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. "Never mind. Let's just say that I never thought Watson quite captured all your facets," I said, and pulled back before he could become entirely distracted. "I take you that you identified the security breach?"

For a moment he was far away; I thought the kiss might have been a mistake. Then, he cleared his throat and continued, briskly, coming to the end of the story. "It was the wife of the cultural attaché, who was, of course, not a cultural attaché at all. Regrettably, he talked in his sleep, and, to make matters worse, in a rather coherent fashion. More regrettably, she had a lover, a fine, handsome Austrian man-about-town, who had the looks of a Greek god and the brains of a sheep. She, no intellectual giantess herself, had merely thought to amuse him with some anecdotes she'd overheard from her husband in the night, not recognizing the significance of what she'd heard. He'd spread the stories to his numerous society friends in the city. Between the three of them, and with no evil intentions whatsoever, they'd managed to pass on British secrets to virtually every one of the major powers. The Americans may have missed out; they tended not to move in the same circles. At any rate, the break in the case came when the lady in question was preparing for a great ball at the French embassy and invited me to her home to dress her hair, and that of some of her lady friends -- I heard her confiding to her closest companion about the lover, and from there, it was fairly simple to construct a chain of events. Not one of my most challenging cases, unless you consider the difficulty of knowing a chignon from a Pompadour."

I laughed. "Surely this was not difficult for a man who identified -- how many sorts of tobacco ash?"

"One hundred and forty," he replied, "but, my dear Russell, tobacco ash does not weep if one mistakes a Trichinopoly for a bird's-eye." I chuckled and shook my head, mentally adding an item to the long list of my husband's surprising accomplishments. We sat silently for several minutes. The faint, bright line at the horizon was shading to pink and seeping slowly upward, driving the light ahead of it. Already the air was feeling a little warmer. Holmes handed me my robe and made as if to collect the few items we'd carried out with us, but did not attempt to rise. Finally I said, "What happened to them?"

"Oh, it was all done very discreetly. The cultural attaché was called home and reassigned to a job in which he would no longer have access to sensitive information; in due course Mycroft saw to it that the lady learned of the indiscretions of her lover, and she broke it off, as if the sheer distance between them would not have accomplished that, anyway. In this case it would not have served the government to have a scandal, even if it resulted in the solution to the problem."

"No, I can see that." I glanced over at Holmes. He continued to study the sunrise as if he'd never seen one before.

"And Monsieur André moved on to establish a business in -- St. Petersburg? Hong Kong?"

Holmes nodded. "Somewhere far from Vienna, or London, in any case. He was considered quite a loss by the ladies who had become accustomed to his skills."

"Quite a loss, indeed. I am fortunate to have discovered Monsieur André all for myself," I told him, amused. Holmes snorted, acknowledging my comment, but there was something reticent in his manner, something hovering beneath the surface. This anecdote had raised another specter from his past. It did not take me long to reason it out. I had released Holmes' hand when I kissed him, but I now I recaptured his right hand with my left. His fingers stroked my palm absently. "You didn't really come into it as a novice, though, did you, Holmes -- Mycroft knew that you already had some experience in dressing a woman's hair, didn't he? Before he -- before he asked you to take the case."

Holmes, avoiding my eyes, inclined his head. "Yes... he may have had some intelligence to that effect."

"Irene used to like you to do her hair, I suppose -- as I do. And Mycroft -- Mycroft would have been having you watched. Spied on, for your own safety. Maids, bellmen, people like that. After all this was when Colonel Moran was on your trail."

"Yes." Holmes turned to meet my eyes. He looked uneasy, and I squeezed his hand.

"It's all right, Holmes; I've always known that there was someone before me. Another woman you loved." He did not reply and sadness crept into his eyes. I started to ask him what was wrong and then gave myself a mental slap. This was a fiercely proud and private man. Suddenly I was sorry that I had asked the question about his talent with women's hair in the first place, since in my heart I had known the answer all along. And what was it that Uncle John had said of Holmes once, in one of his stories? -- Holmes was "the last man with whom one would care to take anything approaching to a liberty." Even if you are his wife, I thought.

The sun was now fully over the horizon and color was beginning to creep back into the world around us, along with the first hint of another hot day. "We'd better go in," Holmes said, "or we will indeed have to explain ourselves to Mrs. Hudson." He stood up and pulled one of the quilts around his naked shoulders as a form of dressing gown, offering a hand to help me up. I slipped my robe on and helped him collect the pillows and other items we'd carried out from the house, and we started back up the path to the garden. He was quiet and I wondered if he was angry with me for intruding on ground that was both painful and private, or even worse, if he was hurt, if I had somehow hurt him. We made our way silently through the garden, the dew dampening our feet and darkening the hem of my robe. When we emerged on the terrace, Holmes stopped abruptly and threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him.

"Russ," he said, lowering his voice in the event that Mrs. Hudson was awake and stirring, "Let us bathe and get dressed and ask Mrs. Hudson to set breakfast out under the copper beech. Once we've freshened up a bit, there's something that I'd like to tell you."

I gazed into his gray eyes, those eyes that missed nothing. He did not appear angry with me, at least. "You don't need to tell me anything, Holmes," I said, and he raised a hand to touch my cheek.

"I know. But I want to." He opened the French door that led into the Great Room, and stepped aside to usher me through.

An hour later we were seated under the copper beech, finishing off the last of Mrs. Hudson's excellent coffee and watching the bees at their early work in the garden. As usual of late I had no appetite for breakfast but under Holmes' concerned eye I had managed two pieces of toast and was feeling satisfied. There was a faint haze over everything; indeed, it was going to be another sultry day. At this hour, and in the shade, though, it was still pleasant and one could discern a faint breeze. It was the sort of day that inclined one to laziness, the more tempting since it was a Sunday, as well. Both of us had bathed, and Holmes had changed into a lightweight linen shirt and trousers. He was collarless, and with his hair still damp from the bath and his rolled up sleeves, he had a faintly undergraduate air about him. It was too hot for my usual trousers, and I'd hunted through the wardrobe for a sleeveless dress, finally finding a casual garment that I'd picked up when we were in India. It was pale pink Indian cotton and so lightweight that it was rather like wearing nothing at all. Holmes regarded me appreciatively. "That is a remarkably attractive color on you, Russ," he said.

"Thank you, Holmes," I responded, "you are looking rather appealing, yourself." My husband lifted an eyebrow.

"We have both benefited by a night sleeping rough, it would seem."

For some reason I suddenly felt shy, a rather atypical state for me. I rolled the material of my skirt between my fingers and then glanced up at him under lowered lashes. "And... other things," I said. Holmes held my gaze until I looked up and his eyes were entirely serious.

"Yes," he said after a moment, "our lovemaking last night was -- it was extraordinary." I felt a blush work its way up my throat and take root in my cheeks. I had not expected him to answer me so directly. Holmes cleared his throat. "I don't mean to embarrass you, Russ. I was not referring to the physicality of the business, although that was certainly satisfactory. I simply meant that -- we were truly one flesh, as it is intended to be. You know it is not easy for me, to lose myself in such a way."

Now I had no difficulty meeting his gaze. "Or for me, Holmes," I said. We sat quietly for a moment, reflecting on what that meant. Then I took his hand. "What did you want to tell me, husband?"

Holmes patted my hand affectionately, released it, and then sat back in his chair, stretching out his long legs. He took thought for a moment and then began to speak, deliberately, choosing each word to have the desired impact. "I wanted you to understand two things about me and Irene Adler, Russ," he said. He had begun slowly, for him, and I took the opportunity to interrupt.

"Really, Holmes, you do not need to tell me anything. I do not want to intrude." Holmes shook his head impatiently, mildly annoyed now if he had not been previously.

"You are not intruding; I have come to a point in my life -- in our lives -- when I think it is important that you know these things. And you cannot tell me that you have not wondered about it -- thought about Irene and what she meant to me."

I was not going to start lying to him now. "Yes, I have wondered," I admitted.

"Well then, do me the kindness to hear me out. The first thing you need to know, Russ, is that I loved Irene. I loved her very much." I drew myself up slightly and took a breath.

"I never doubted that," I told him. He leaned forward suddenly, placed his hands on my knees. His eyes were intense, suddenly dark as they often became at such times.

"The second thing, Russ, is that she did not love me." I frowned, surprised. Of all the scenarios I had ever imagined for their romance, this was the one I had never contemplated.

"But you --"

"Had an affair? Mutually reciprocated love is not essential for that, Russ, just physical attraction." He drew a deep sigh and straightened up. "Here it is, my dear young wife. If I had not met Irene, if I had not fallen in love with her in a most precipitous way, I would not have been able to love you. You see, before I met her, I was convinced that I was unable to love, that the things -- the things that I saw as a youth had damaged me in some way, left me without that capacity." He saw my immediate concern and shook his head. "I cannot tell you about them now; perhaps I will be able to, one day, but not now." I thought about the story he'd told me, about the sort of household in which a parent would take a riding crop to the legs of a young child, and decided that I was not ready to hear the full story of his childhood now, even had he been able to tell me. I didn't think that I could bear it. He hardly seemed to notice my silence, and went on. "I let Watson believe that I disliked and distrusted women; I told him that even the best of them was untrustworthy; I made him think that I did not notice whether a woman was attractive, or not. I told him that I would never marry, because I did not want to be distracted from my work. In truth I was rather like the fox in the old fable about the fox and the grapes, I believed that I would never be able to love a woman in the way of other men and so I told myself that I did not want such a love. I told myself that I was unemotional, cold, a machine. I told myself many such things."

He bit off the last sentence harshly, as if he was disgusted with himself. Now I was the one to lean forward. "Watson was onto you, Holmes," I said, and he looked at me quizzically. I said, "You were able to pull off that act in the earliest stories, my dear man -- when he first knew you -- but as Uncle John continued writing he made it perfectly clear that you had a heart, that you were a kind man, even a passionate one. You fooled yourself more than you did him."

Holmes grimaced. "Perhaps you're right. Watson is far from insensitive, however those moronic playwrights have portrayed him. I gave myself away, of course, in the case that he called 'A Scandal in Bohemia.' I saw Irene and I was instantly as besotted with her as a schoolboy with his first 'crush.' She was beautiful, she was the very essence of music, and I soon found out that she was clever as well." He leaned back in his chair, sighed, and laced his fingers behind his head. "God," he said, "how utterly conventional it was, when you come down to it. There I was, inexperienced with women, sure that there was something lacking in me, thin as a rail... and what do I do but fall in love with a woman internationally renowned for her beauty and talent, a woman who had men dancing around her like -- yes, bees around honey -- it would be laughable if were it not so pathetic."

This, of course, was ridiculous. I had not been lying to Holmes when I told him that he was attractive to women, in part because of his very austereness. He was good-looking, if in an unconventional fashion, and as my friend Ronnie had once said, he had "heaps of S.A." The "S.A." was the more alluring because he was completely oblivious to it. I could not believe that he had been any less attractive at what? -- 26 or 27, the age he'd been when he first saw Irene Adler. He was well along in the story now, though, and I did not want to interrupt him again. Holmes straightened up, stretched his arms for a moment, and then continued. "Of course at that time it didn't matter -- Irene had married and left England, giving my nose a good tweak on the way out and rather putting me in my place. I was able to convince Watson that I admired her as a credit to her sex -- The Woman -- and nothing more. I put her picture on my desk as a memento and I put her gold sovereign on my watch chain -- and I set out to forget about her, to put her in the past."

"But then came Moriarty, and Reichenbach Falls, and suddenly I was free of my own past... I was not even Sherlock Holmes. When I encountered her again in Montenegro, she had left Norton and was back on the stage. I attended one of her performances, I could not stay away... and when it was over, I went back to her dressing room. I should not have done, of course, I was literally risking my life by appearing to someone who would know my true identity. Mycroft was furious with me when he learned of it." Holmes paused and gave me a rueful smile. "But I was in love with her, you see."

"I know, you've told me that," I responded. I hoped he was not going to tell me what happened next in any detail. I had always striven not to be jealous of Irene Adler, a woman who, had she lived, would have been old enough to be my grandmother, but I was discovering a violent aversion to picturing her in bed with my husband. The fact that I'd not been born at the time was irrelevant. Cerebral as he was, Holmes had no lack of intuition, however, and so he moved forward in the tale without providing the particulars.

"I apologize, Russ. I realize that not all of this may be congenial to you... we were together for about four months. I think I amused her, at first. She was a highly intelligent woman and there was much we could talk about, many interests we shared in common... the music, of course. She was warm and -- affectionate. Kind to me. I was not a virgin -- I had had the usual indoctrination that many young men undergo in their college years -- but I might as well have been, for all I understood of women or of true lovemaking. She found that refreshing, I suppose, after years of playboys and jaded minor royals. For a time she was very warm to me, and of course I would have done anything for her... I was, in truth, willing to die to be at her side, whether I admitted that to myself or not. There was a real risk that Moran would hear that I had surfaced in Montenegro, track me down. But young men seldom truly believe in their own mortality, even when they have come as close to death as I had at Reichenbach. And certainly not when they are -- obsessed with a woman." He was talking to me but from time to time during this speech his eyes were far away, perhaps revisiting scenes in Montenegro. Eventually he turned back to me and really looked at me, his gray eyes again taking on that hint of sadness I'd seen before. He seemed to be searching for something in my face, something I could not yet identify.

"I told you, Russ, that I had feared that I was damaged, deficient in some way when it came to loving a woman, and eventually it was just as I feared. You know that I -- that there are private places in me, places that I have great difficulty sharing, even now. It was the more so, then. I loved her, but I could not love her in the way she wanted, and if she loved me at all she had not the patience to wait me out, to get under my defenses. She wanted me to open myself fully to her, to relax into her world of gaiety and music and pleasure... and I tried, but I could not, not entirely. I still saw too much suffering, too much injustice... and I could not live entirely through the heart. I could not accept anyone, or anything, at face value. I was always observing, standing a little outside, analyzing. My brain, my damn brain... it has always craved stimulation, problems to solve, it was a harsher mistress than a woman could ever be. It could not drowse and be satisfied with a conventional existence, even a conventional existence of a bohemian sort. I suppose that I treated her as I did some of my friends then, carelessly, of less interest than the latest puzzle... So one day I appeared at her apartments and she asked me to go, and told me not to come back. She said that I was cold, critical, over-intellectual, that she had had enough of my moods and my sarcasm and that cutting brilliance that my friend Watson seemed so impressed by... that no woman, much less she, wanted to sleep with a calculating machine. She said a good many other things that I would prefer to forget, but which of course, being a calculating machine, I remember to this day. And so I left... I moved on to Tibet, to those other places I told Watson about. I never saw her again."

His voiced faded and he pulled his gaze away from me, out toward the sea. He was very still, the only sign of any emotion the faint movement of a muscle at his jaw-line. Without stopping to wonder how he would react, I got up, went to him, and settled myself in his lap in the big chair, arranging myself so that he did not have to bear my full weight on his thighs. Holmes touched my cheek with two fingers, turning my face toward his, and whispered, "Mrs. Holmes, I thought you were concerned about scandalizing Mrs. Hudson. What will she say if she sees us now?"

"She will say that I am sitting in my husband's lap, as any wife may do," I said firmly, and gazed into his face, so close to mine. "So you learned that you could love," I added, "but also that you were unlovable." He did not answer me. I took his face between my hands. "Holmes," I began, and then paused. "Darling," I said, and my husband raised his eyebrows. His arms closed around me gently. Holmes and I were not inclined to conventional endearments; on the rare occasion when one of us chose one, it had added impact. "Darling," I repeated, "You are not cold, you are not a calculating machine, there is nothing deficient in the way you love. She was wrong, you know that, don't you?"

Holmes drew a breath. "That is what I wanted you to understand, Russ," he replied. "She was not wrong, not then. She knew men, she was an expert in matters of the heart. She knew a frozen soul when she saw one. Do you think a man who could love would have left Watson and Mrs. Hudson and my other friends to believe for three years that I was dead, and barely apologize for it when I returned? No, she was not wrong."

"It was for their own good, Holmes, you did not want to endanger their lives by an association with you."

"Perhaps, Russell, but with love comes trust and I did not trust them to keep my secret, Watson knew that. It hurt him and he let me know it. No, I took the path most convenient to myself. I did not know how to love, then, not really." Holmes drew me against him and rested his chin on the top of my head. He began to speak again, his voice hushed.

"Irene showed me that I could love, in the way that the Sherlock Holmes of that day could love, but the man you married, the man who loves you -- Russ, you found him, you brought him to life. Oh, I had mellowed a bit by the time you met me on the downs, a man is not generally as volatile at 54 as he was at 30, but I was still that poor, limited creature until you, with your wonderful mind and your braids and your blue eyes and your innocence -- until you got inside me in a way that no one else had. You were a child and I had nothing to hide from you, and by the time I realized that you had become a woman you had gone all the way inside me, all the way in here." He tapped his chest, over his heart. "I let you in and you did not hurt me, Russ. And evidently I did not hurt you, either, I was able to be for you something that you needed, wanted. That was when I finally knew I could love like any other man. Even with this inconvenient, restless brain of mine."

I found that I had no words with which to respond to this remarkable statement, at least no words that would do it justice. Even "I love you" seemed inadequate. Instead I turned my head and kissed the base of his throat where it was revealed by his collarless shirt. I laid my left hand over his, where it rested on his heart. We sat there easily for a few minutes, content in the gathering warmth, listening to the droning of the bees and the occasional call of a bird. Inconveniently, my mind drifted back to Irene, who had done one other thing for Holmes that we seldom discussed. "She gave you a son, Holmes," I said, and felt his chin left slightly as he drew a quick breath.

"She bore my child, Russ, there is a difference." I had re-braided my hair and he stroked the back of my head with his free hand, letting his hand stray gently down my back when he came to the end of the braid. "She knew she was with child when she sent me away and she never told me, not then, not when she gave birth to him. She did not want me involved in his life, either because she did not want to be bothered with me, or because she felt that I would be a poor father to him. She bore me a son but she did not permit me to be a father. I find it hard to forgive her for that, although she may have been right in what she did. As I was then, I think I would have been a poor father."

It was so comfortable there in his arms, and I was feeling strangely drowsy, despite the coffee and the fact that I had arisen not long before. Nonetheless it hurt me to hear Holmes speak so harshly of himself. To my mind there had been no justification for what Irene had done to him, especially when one considered the end of their story, the tragedy that had deprived Holmes of the son he'd barely known. "You would make a wonderful father, Holmes," I murmured, my cheek pressed against the linen of his shirt, his skin warm against mine. His voice floated dreamily above my head.

"Would, or will?" he asked. I snapped abruptly out of my drowsiness, pulled back so that I could see his face.

"What?" I said, a serviceable rejoinder if not a witty one. My husband gazed at me patiently.

"Come now, Russ, for the last couple weeks you have been suspecting that you are with child. I have been wondering when you were going to tell me."

I gaped at him; there is no other way to describe it. "How did you -- ?" I broke off and considerably to my consternation, and certainly to his, began to laugh. My laughter continued long enough to bring a concerned frown to Holmes' face. Clearly he believed that my condition -- or at least the condition he believed me to be in -- had uncovered in me a hitherto undemonstrated tendency to hysterics. When I finally got myself under control -- I had been embarrassed more than amused -- I tried to explain myself. "I'm sorry, Holmes," I told him. "I suddenly realized that I was about to ask Sherlock Holmes how he knew that -- that I've been suspecting I might be pregnant. And then the question -- it just -- it just seemed so ridiculous. You observed, did you not?," I concluded, and started to laugh again. This time even Holmes looked faintly amused. Finally he fished a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and handed it to me to dry my eyes.

"Yes, my dear wife, I observed. Your body has undergone certain changes of late, become -- more generous. You are uncommonly sensitive in certain places that I have touched before, without causing you distress. Your appetite, normally healthy to say the least, has been indifferent. Six months ago we both saw Dr. Chapel for our regular medical examinations, yet earlier this week I was looking for something on your desk and I noted that you have a new appointment with him in your calendar, for next Tuesday. With the exception of the few trivial things I've mentioned, you appear in good health. Why does a young, healthy married woman make an appointment with a physician?"

I leaned back against his chest, again resting my cheek against him. "Because she thinks -- hopes -- that she is pregnant?," I said.

"Indeed. And there was one other clue."

"What was that, Holmes?"

"You are not generally so affected by the heat."

I had known the man for more than ten years, had been intimate with him for more than four, and he still had the capacity to astound me. "Why haven't you said anything, Russ?" he asked, again.

I paused for breath and then said, "I was going to tell you today. At first I wanted to be sure, and then... I wasn't sure how you'd feel. When we first married, when we talked about the possibility of children, you were ambivalent. Even -- reluctant."

He continuing stroking my back, his hand moving in lazy circles that were close to being hypnotic. He did not speak for some time and I waited, nervously, trying to guess what he was thinking. Finally he said, "When we married I was just over 60 years old, Russ, that is old to become a father. And you -- you were not sure that you could conceive, because of the damage you had sustained in the accident that killed your family. I did not want to you to feel any pressure, any concern. But you will note that over the years of our marriage I have never taken any steps to prevent a conception, either."

I was normally sharp of mind but between the heat and the lack of sleep I'd gotten in recent days it took me a moment to work out the implication of these statements. I straightened up, causing him to grunt and pull himself up in the chair, and put both my arms around his neck. "Holmes," I said, "are you telling me that you want children? That you have wanted them all along?"

He pulled me into his embrace, his lips touching my ear. "Russ," he whispered, "I am trying to tell you that I am like any other man -- I would like to leave a bit of myself behind on this earth when I go. I would like -- I would like to have the chance to be a real father, even if I do not live to see our child grow up. Most of all, I would rejoice in the gift of creating a new life with you, from you, the woman who is the love of my life. If you are with child, Russell, you have made me a very happy man."

He kissed me. He kissed me for a long time, very softly, very carefully; no passion in it, just tremendous tenderness and longing. His lips touched my eyes, my nose, the pulse point under my jaw. Finally he drew my head down to his shoulder and held me close. "When do you think it is due?" he asked.

"December."

"Positano, then."

"Yes, husband, Positano." In the early spring, Holmes and I had undertaken a complex inquiry that had taken us to Rome. It was May when we'd concluded the investigation, a difficult and dangerous one, and Holmes had suggested that we take a few days of rest on the Amalfi coast, in the lovely cliff side village of Positano. We'd stayed in a small hotel, in a comfortable room that had its own balcony, looking out over the Mediterranean. We'd slept late in the morning, taken long walks on the beach, eaten fresh and delicately seasoned food, and drunk a great deal of good local wine. Our room had a generous, soft welcoming bed and at night, with the shutters open, the breeze carried the scent of roses and the sea. We'd spent part of our honeymoon in Positano; last May, freed from the tension of the case and in one of the most romantic places in the world, we'd behaved like newlyweds again. My present condition appeared to be the result.

"I'm afraid, Holmes," I said. "I don't know the first thing about infants. I don't know the first thing about being a mother."

"I'm afraid, too, Russ," he responded. "My experience to this date has hardly prepared me for this role, although biologically, at least, I've been a father. You, on the other hand, have the first essential preparation for being a mother, your memories of your own. From what you have told me, Judith Russell was an exceptional parent. If you emulate her you can hardly go wrong, however bumbling I may be as a father." The image of Sherlock Holmes bumbling anything made me laugh. He gave me a squeeze and then one of his rare smiles. His eyes twinkled. "And there are books on this subject, are there not, Russ? Surely a scholar such as yourself would turn to books."

"Yes -- I'm sure that there are books... Holmes?"

"Russell?"

"Last night... why did you tell me about what happened to you when you were a little boy, when you were brushing your mother's hair? And this morning... why did you tell me about Irene -- about -- that she didn't love you?"

Holmes shifted in his seat and lowered his legs so that it was natural for me to slip off his lap and into a standing position. He remained seated but pulled me forward, so that I was standing between his knees. His hands caressed my arms and then slid downwards until they circled my wrists. He looked up at me with that penetrating gray gaze, unflinchingly honest and kind, that seemed to look right into my soul. "I had reason to believe that you might be carrying our child," he said. "And I suppose I wanted you to understand that I know what it is to be a child that is loved, and a child that is unloved. I swear to you on my life that no child of mine will ever be the latter. As to Irene -- I simply wanted you to know that whatever Watson told his readers, you are 'The Woman' in my life, now, then, forever. That's all, Russell, nothing very mysterious, really. Now, may I ask you a question?"

Damn my emotions of late, I had an alarming feeling that I was about to cry. I snuffled in a patently immature manner, remembered that I had Holmes' handkerchief clutched in my palm, and freed my left arm from his grip long enough to blow my nose. Finally I said, "Of course, what is it, Holmes?"

He stood up, placed his hands on my shoulders, and drew a breath as if he were about to say something dangerous. "Forget about me, for the moment, Russell. Do you want this child? I know that I can rely on you to give me an honest answer."

I slid my hands upwards, placing my palms flat on his chest, and considered for a moment, my eyes on his face. Holmes was very still, and I could sense his unease, but he did not look away and his face betrayed only a courteous spirit of inquiry. My answer was going to have a dramatic impact on his life, one way or another, but from his expression he might have been questioning me on my views regarding women's suffrage or the Treaty of Versailles or any other issue of the day. I could feel the warmth of his skin and, I thought, the beat of his heart, through the fine linen of his shirt. "Holmes," I said, "I have long thought that I would never be able to bear children and so, in the manner of your fox with the grapes, I told myself that I did not want them, that they would interfere with our lives, with my studies. Now that I find myself in this condition, I can tell you in all honesty --" I was standing close to Holmes and despite his iron self control I felt him take a breath, then hold it -- "I can tell you in all honesty that while I am scared to death, while I have no idea how we will make this work, I couldn't be happier. I am happy that I am going to be a mother, and I am happy to be carrying your child." I grinned up at him. "What is that line from 'Romeo and Juliet'?" I asked, "Juliet says it to her mother when she asks her if she is ready to be married -- 'It is an honor that I dream not of'."

My husband put his arms around me and regarded me gravely. "Russell," he said, "I am quite convicted that you are teasing me regarding the honor; nonetheless, let me say that had I done a scientific study to find the perfect mother for my children -- which of course as a calculating machine I might have been expected to do -- I could not have selected a finer woman or a better partner. It was as well that I let the bees do it for me."

I reached up to touch his face. "Let 'the calculating machine' forget everything that Irene ever told you, Holmes," I told him. "You know how to love very well -- very well indeed."

Holmes slid his arms down from my shoulders until his hands were circling my waist. He stepped back from me ever so slightly and his right hand smoothed gently across my body until it was spanning my abdomen, which at this point was still flat, giving no hint of the life that I believed to be within. Holmes pressed his palm softly against me, spreading his long fingers wide as if he meant to cradle the child I carried, his child, our child. With his left arm he pulled me closer, stepping a little to the side, leaving his right hand in its protective place. I realized to my surprise that he was trembling, ever so slightly. Finally he sighed and buried his face in my neck. I could feel his breath against my skin as he spoke. "Both of you, Russ," he said, as I put my arms around him, felt the trembling quiet. "Both of you."

The End