I awoke long before it was daylight, my sleepy mind wondering for a moment where I was, and then it came back to me: the Earl, the murder of his wife, the peacock feather...
...and Holmes, lying asleep beside me.
I leaned on my elbow and gazed at him, so beautiful in sleep: his silken eyelids fluttered rapidly; he was obviously dreaming. I drew my hand down his naked chest, bent and kissed his neck... he was warm, blood-warm, delicious.
He moaned softly and turned onto his side, his arm going around my waist... I tilted his face to mine and kissed him, a caress that he returned, sleepily... "Watson..." His grey eyes flickered open, focused their gaze on me. "Did I dream it, or did we...?"
"We did." I wondered if he regretted it, now that he remembered. Or perhaps he put it down to wine--he had drunk rather a lot at dinner last night.
"Oh, good..." His lean features melted into a smile. "You told me you loved me."
"I do." My chest felt constricted with such an agony of love, looking at him, lying there naked and vulnerable, completely open to me. Before last night, I'd never seen him this way. "I've loved you for a long time, Holmes."
"This feather fan, Watson."
I smiled. Already his mind was up and working, setting itself against the problem at hand. "The feather fan that the niece owns. Marjorie, her name is--" I broke off, something stabbing at my consciousness.
"Watson, my dear fellow, what is it?"
"A woman, last night--"
"What woman?" He sat up, the sheets falling away from his slender waist. His dark hair was tousled, his lean jaw dusted with a blur of stubble.
"As I was falling asleep last night, I could have sworn that the door opened and closed..." I tried to remember it, concentrated as hard as I could, but the memory, imprinted as it had been upon my sleepy mind, was elusive, slipped through my grasp like sand.
I rose, shrugged into my dressing gown, moved to draw the blinds.
There, on the floor before the casement, was a single peacock feather.
Holmes had requested some time alone at the murder site, and the Earl, doubtless eager to speed the investigation, acquiesed. I accompanied him, in order to record his impressions and aid in the search for clues. I realised that I am no match for Holmes in terms of intellect, but I do like to help as well as I am able. Besides, I was in love with him, and I wanted to be near him.
The murder scene was largely untouched, the suspicious peacock feather resting on the bed. There was no blood--the Earl's wife had been strangled--and the bedclothes were strangely untroubled. This bothered me; if the woman had been strangled, there had to have been some struggle. Unless--
"The bed has been remade, Watson." Holmes's eyes were twin grey fires. "Damn!" He paced quickly up and down, his boot heels ringing hollowly on the flagstones.
"Somebody is trying to cover something up," I offered.
"Yes, but who?" His gaze met mine briefly, and he was off again, pacing as before, his finger to his lips. "And why?" He dropped to his knees and in a flash, scuttled under the bed till only his heels were showing. I crouched beside him, content to watch and be silent, as was so often my role in these matters. After some long moments, he shuffled back out again, much covered in dust for his troubles. "Nothing. The floor has been wiped with a cloth; the dust that you see around here--" He indicated the area surrounding the bed "--has been removed."
"Then something was dropped in the dust--or the dust held some evidence of the murder."
"Yes." He tapped me on the shoulder. "Brilliant, Watson."
"The peacock fan," I mused, half-aloud. "Remember last night at supper, when you showed it to the Earl ... when Marjorie had dropped it?"
"Went as pale as a Derbyshire sheep, yes." He sniffed, fingers tapping his cheek. "That young woman, Watson... we should find out what we can from her. Surely, if the fan belongs to her, then she is the key to much of this..."
"Do you want me to talk to her?" I smiled. "You once said that the fair sex was entirely my department."
Holmes grinned. "That was before I knew you had a preference for gentlemen." He glanced around, made sure that we were unobserved, and kissed me heatedly. I melted into him, and my arms went around him of their own accord... we fitted together like two halves of the same person. "Mmm..." He extricated himself from me with difficulty. "Later, my dear Watson. Indeed, later."
"The young woman," I prompted. He seemed more than a little flustered, and it made me smile. The unflappable Holmes, utterly undone by his introduction to the sensual pleasures...
"Yes, she shall have to be questioned, Watson."
We found Marjorie wandering outside, clipping early roses in the garden. She wore a long apron over her dress, and was gathering the flowers into a basket.
"Miss, I wonder if I might have a word with you." Holmes approached her in his usual brusque manner, and I winced.
"Mister Holmes!" She whirled, dropped the basket, and the roses scattered about her in a cascade. I bent to pick them up, gathered them again, laid them back into the basket.
"Your feather fan... I trust it has been returned to you?" Holmes pursed his lips, watching her keenly. Her right hand bent itself obediently around the handle of the basket, yet her left was clenched in the rough fabric of her apron. 'Details, Watson,' he'd said, once, when we'd been talking at our rooms in Baker Street. 'My technique depends upon the observance of trifles.'
"Yes, Mr. Holmes. Uncle gave it back to me." Her eyes darted from Holmes to myself, and back again.
"Uncle gave it back to you?"
"Yes, Mr. Holmes."
"You were in your room last night?"
"Of course."
"And your room is on the same level as ours ... two doors down, I do believe?"
Her mouth opened and closed on nothing. "Yes."
"And your uncle's room?"
"Uncle sleeps where he always has."
Holmes cast me a triumphant look--we both knew that the Earl's bedroom (that he had once shared once with his late-lamented wife) was located in that section of rooms now closed off, ostensibly out of respect. The Earl slept elsewhere.
"Thank you, Madam, you have been most helpful." He motioned to me, and I hurried to catch up with him.
"Either she's lying or she doesn't know," I said.
"She does not know, Watson. I'm convinced of it." He walked quickly into the house, head down, deep in thought. Only when we had reached the bedroom did he turn to speak to me. "Her feather fan..."
"The Earl?" I tried to put it together in my mind, and could not. "Holmes, surely you don't think that the Earl--"
"Watson, this has been a most illuminating and satisfying case, I'm sure you will agree." He closed the door and locked it behind us, threw himself on the bed with a sigh. I stared at him, mystified.
"I don't understand," I confessed. A feather fan, the Earl, the niece who was startled by our appearance in the rose garden, the Earl's bedroom...
"Marjorie is hiding something--"
"The death of her aunt, surely--"
"Not just that, Watson!" Holmes sat up, shrugged out of his coat, unbuttoned his collar, and lay back, hands clasped behind his head. "What Marjorie is hiding is much more than that. Of her aunt's death, no, she is not cognizant of the full details." His gaze became faraway, his grey eyes narrowed. "There is much more here than meets the eye."
"Like what?" I hung my coat over a chair, stretched beside him on the bed.
"Marjorie is regularly stifled by her uncle--you did notice the way he silenced her at dinner last night."
"Yes, but surely Holmes, she was just over-exuberant--"
"Of course she's over-exuberant, Watson! What young woman have you known to be otherwise? It's a female trait." He brooded for a moment, and I leaned close and pressed my mouth against the smooth column of his throat. "Mmmm..." His hand closed around the back of my neck as he drew me to him and kissed me, a most satisfactory kiss. "You quite destroy my concentration, Watson."
"So the Earl keeps her silent for what purpose?" I mused on this for a moment, while Holmes's hand insinuated itself into my shirt-front.
"Because she knows something." Holmes nipped my neck with his sharp teeth, turned my face to his. There was a long silence in the room, broken suddenly by Holmes's soft moan, as he pulled away. "She knows about something that is going on in this house, and which has to do with the murder."
I felt cold all over, realised that Holmes had completely unbuttoned my shirt and pushed it off my shoulders. "We have to find out what that is."
He smiled, his grey eyes caressing me. "I do love you, John." He whirled up, off the bed, grabbed his coat. "But we will not find it here! Come, Watson, repair the state of your garments--"
"What--" I buttoned my shirt hastily. "Where are we going?"
"To seek answers where they are almost always found, Watson--the common people."
We walked for some distance over the dales, always a daunting prospect, but even more so now, in early spring--the winds were chill and bitter, turned our faces and our gloved hands into cold lumps. Holmes had picked up speed and was dashing ahead of me in his usual fashion, heading towards something that only he could see. "Consult your map, Watson, and tell me where we are."
"I thought you knew where we are," I said. I am afraid that I sounded a little peevish, but I was starving by now, and we'd had no breakfast. Holmes had jumped right into the meat of the day, without pausing to take refreshment.
"There is an inn, just over that rise, if I am not mistaken," he said. He turned to look at me for the first time in hours, and his gaze softened. "My dear Watson ... you look chilled to the bone."
"I am," I admitted. "I'd rather be in a hot bath..."
"With me?"
Oh, dear... the lovely, forbidden images it conjured... "Oh, yes..."
"Come, then--let us consult the good people at the inn, and then back to the Earl's keep for a hot bath." He leaned towards me. "Watson..." His gaze became suddenly bleak.
"What is it?" I laid my hand on his arm. "Holmes?"
"The young woman, Marjorie..."
The back of my neck prickled. As long as I'd known him, I'd sensed that Holmes harboured some other, special ability... he knew things that it was not given most mortals to know; he had an extra sense that alerted him to various potentialities... "Is she in danger?"
His voice was a mere whisper, snatched from his lips by the chilly Yorkshire winds. "I do very much fear for her, Watson."
I listened to the wind for an eternity.
"Come along, Watson--we must hurry to the inn before it is too late."