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“Do not be confused, husband. Everything I have said remains the case. I want none of you. I want none of any man.”
Susan Hart was not a frivolous woman.
She truly meant every word she told her now former husband at the dance hall, only hoping the fat pig Duggan was still agonizing in his last moments to hear her say that. All of her experiences with men in her life had always proved her that they were all vain, stubborn creatures, unable to see anything besides their pride and the needs of their pricks. Granted, not all of them were like this… there were also the ones who were too coward to act like that and so hid behind a mask of “goodness” and “decency” - if sergeant Drake thought she could not see right through his willingness to “save” her girls, he was even more stupid than she thought - But one of them managed to slip through the cracks of her stern opinion: Detective Inspector Reid was still a complete mystery to her, his quiet and collected but seemingly gentle demeanor not fitting in any of her classifications of the male sex.
Still, there was no use thinking about men right now. She had just pleasantly woken up completely free of Silas Duggan and with the fortune of Obsidian States to be put to work on her favor.
Each villain, every paymaster, each and every whispered scheme or rumor, no matter how trifling they seem, I want them all.
Reid sighed as he closed the door after the Captain. As much as he appreciated the man and his skills, there was only so much he was willing to tolerate for a good knife on his side.
The girl had been barely old enough… and on his missing daughter’s bed, of all places. He could overlook the drinking, the gambling and debauchery but that...that was too much for him.
As soon as the man left, he finally came to the realization that he was alone. His daughter, his wife, Bennet and now Jackson had all walked out of his life. The only thing he had left was Whitechapel, in all of its rotten glory and dark magnetism.
He throws himself on work, doing overtime to chase after whatever complaint walks into the station. The archive begins as a collection of discarded notes on his desk that soon takes over his desktop and drawers before filling up the shelves on the wall and stacking on top of every available surface in his office.
His head throbs, his eyes squint, his hands hurt and are permanently ink stained but he cannot stop writing.
Maybe the next perp will bring him closer to find her.
But a man still has needs and when he comes home for a clean shirt and finds that it’s the last piece of clothing inside his wardrobe, he decides it’s time to pay an old acquaintance a visit.
“I do believe you know this is no longer a house of ill repute, Inspector… I am not sure how appropriate it would be for me to get a man’s shirts laundered under this roof…” she calmly sipped her tea, her mouth forming a small straight line.
She was clad in black chiffon and lace from the neck down, looking very much like the widow she was not. Respect was something to be earned and she found out that people think it lays in things as meaningless as clothes. At least the black dress hid the bruises he - she couldn’t bear to say his name even in her thoughts - left in her that were only beginning to fade .
“I never took you for being someone who cared about what was appropriate, Miss Hart…”
He knew his comment could be interpreted as teasing, but there was no hint of it in his tone. He had known Susan for years now so it was merely an observation. Still, he hoped she would take it in a way that convinced her to get her laundress to do his shirts. He did not wanted to look for a reliable and efficient one and lose precious time that could be used on working on the archive.
“I never took you for being someone who did not cared about it either, mr. Reid”
She smiles over her teacup. The world around her is changing so fast she can barely wrap her head around it but Edmund Reid is still the same. He seems slightly bothered by her comment but he has become the closest thing to a friend she has left so she decides that he deserves to have his feathers stroked.
“But what is a small favour between good friends, right, Inspector?”
The sun shines through the window of her living room for the first time in months. Some things, after all, are meant to stay the same.
It becomes a ritual.
Every Wednesday, at three pm sharp, Inspector Reid knocks on Miss Hart’s door with a bag of clothes in need for washing. He hands them to Charity, who is now her governess, and she shows him to the parlour where he waits sitting in an armchair facing the door to her study. A tray of tea and biscuits or cake is soon brought over by an invisible maid but he does not touch it until she joins him after her solicitor leaves. Their little tea meetings can only begin once she is comfortably perched on the armchair that almost swallows her tiny figure whole and the sacred question is asked.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Inspector? ”
After those magic words are spoken, the fog of formality begins to dissipate around them. He asks about her plans to turn Obsidian into a benefactor of the East Side and she asks about his progress with the archive. This seems like ordinary small talk but maybe that’s just what they need now. Someone to discuss pleasant matters with instead of sharing the pain and darkness they both know lay nested inside their hearts.
“Yes, one sugar please”
He is the first one to realize something is wrong with her.
They eventually got to a point where she was comfortable telling him she was not completely happy with her solicitor and his ways and he was also comfortable enough to suggest a few names of men he knew to be of great skills and outstanding character.
She was the one who suggested the idea of a “Library of Crime and Perversion”. He told her the name was an exaggeration for the notes and ramblings of an old policeman. Still, he was glad that she could spare some archive materials to lend him.
Susan might not want none of any man, but Edmund Reid wasn’t a man in her eyes. He was a friend.
And she was in need of that.
They are taking their usual Wednesday tea. Reid notices she has been looking pale and tired recently but decides not to pry on such intimate matters with a lady - despite what everyone else might say, he does believe miss Hart to be one of the finest he ever met - when she suddenly touches her stomach and drops her teacup. He charges forward to help her as the woman tries to stand up but almost falls.
She stays on his arms for what seems like forever.
“Are you alright, miss Hart?” he helps her stand and then sit back on the couch.
“Yes… thank you for your help, Inspector” she answers as she tries to avoid stepping in the puddle of tea left on the carpet.
He realizes now is the time to voice his concerns.
“I have been concerned with your well being, miss” he takes a long stop. “Are you in need of any special attention?”
She simply sits there, mute and scared.
It takes him two hours of carefully eroding her defences to get to the rotten truth behind her illness and how a man could cause such ruin upon a woman that it still lingered after he drew his last breath.
It’s the most painful interrogatory of his career and the worst conversation of his life.
As he gets ready to leave, since the hour is far too advanced, she grabs his arm.
“Will you think ill of me if I get this matter taken care of, Mr. Reid?” her eyes are scared and worried.
Edmund takes a deep breath. Moral be damned if it forces a woman to live forever with the product of a crime which she was a victim of.
“I shall not think ill of you regardless, miss… it’s your decision what you do with your conscience and your body” he says, taking her hand and giving it a small squeeze. “I might have need of some extra shirts this week. I shall come over when necessary”
“Thank you” she whispers and he pretends not to see the tears she is blinking away from her eyes.
She does not get a choice in the end.
It’s a couple of months after their conversation. Their meetings for tea have gone back to the normal pleasantries, only with Reid noticing Susan’s dresses getting a bit tighter and chastising himself for thinking of such things. Neither of them mention their past conversation and he is not completely sure it was not just a bad dream.
Reid knows something is wrong when one of her maids is the one knocking on his door in a Sunday afternoon, saying that Charity told her to get him because the madame is feeling poorly.
He doesn’t even remember grabbing his hat and coat before rushing with the poor girl back to Susan’s house.
She is laying on her bed, looking even smaller between all those blankets and pillows. He wonders why no one has called for a doctor.
When he sees the reddish brown stains in one of the sheets he has no more questions.
She is crying and looks at him with desperate eyes. The only thing he can do is taking her hand.
“Will you allow me to call for someone to help us take care of you?” he asked softly, staring deeply into her eyes.
“Please… not a man” she lets out a whimper of pain.
“Not a man. I promise”
In the end, he sends for a name he recently saw on the collaborator's list of a medical journal, hoping it is indeed a woman and not an oddly named man.
They both let out a breath they did not knew they had been holding when Amelia Frayn sweeps into the bedroom and asks Reid to leave them for a moment.
He waits outside, pacing the hallway in agony, hearing the evidence of Susan’s pain and feeling it ache inside his own chest.
When dr. Frayn leaves the room, she is clean but he can see the blood in her nail beds that will take a careful scrubbing to wash away.
He returns to Susan, who is now crying as she rests on clean bedsheets. He takes a seat besides her and waits for her to calm down.
“I had decided that I wanted it…” she mutters between her sobbing.
Susan is wary of him in the next months.
Their tea time meetings continue as usual only she will be extremely careful to avoid touching both him and the dreaded subject.
He knows of her shame, of the dirty, terrible things she allowed Silas Duggan to do to her, of the monstrosity that grew inside her womb.
She wonders how he still can look at her face and see a human being.
Meanwhile, Reid sympathizes with the pain of losing a child, even though her situation is very different than his own. He then begins to realize she is even stronger than he thought.
She cries. She mourns in private. She moves on… like he wish he could do.
He only wishes he could tell her that. But it all gets buried under the pleasantries, tea time meetings and laundered shirts.
Reid eventually begins to tell her all the words left unspoken between them with small gestures.
The flower girl from Leman Street is most helpful.
Pink roses for admiration. Oak geraniums for friendship. Snowdrops for hope and consolation.
Her smile at the bouquet brings one to his lips for months.
It starts as a business proposal.
He is a widower now. She is in need of a husband.
As it turns out, it’s hard to be respectable if you are an unmarried woman hoping to run your own business. And it’s even harder to uphold your reputation when it was so tarnished by a missing daughter and a mad wife. Nothing changes the fact that they need each other.
Edmund and Susan move about the affair quietly. On Tuesday they visit the register office together and a quick hug is exchanged alongside a pair of plain gold rings. By Thursday afternoon, his particulars are sent to her new house.
Saturday is their first day as husband and wife.
Susan runs a hairbrush through her long curls nervously in the luxurious upstairs bedroom they are now supposed to share. Her marriage to the inspector was the right decision but now that it’s a tangible reality she is starting to doubt it.
Even though Edmund was her friend and had swore that their marriage was only a convenience matter and he had no inclinations of that sort towards her, he was still a man made of flesh and blood with desires the law now allowed him to satisfy with her.
The thought of male hands over her skin again, cold and rough. A shiver ran down her spine as she imagined Reid seeing the damage Duggan had done and touching her in such now shameful places.
Shaking such thoughts from her head, Susan buries herself under the covers before the door creaks open and Reid comes in already fully dressed in his sleeping clothes. He gives her a small shy smile as he joins her on the bed.
Edmund tries to lay down as far away from his new wife as the size of the bed allows. After all, he does not wish to intrude Susan’s life more than he already has, nor give her the impression his intentions with her were anything other than platonic. He turns to face her for a moment before turning off the gas lamp.
“Good night, Miss Hart” he says out of habit, completely forgetting she is now Mrs. Reid
“Good night, Inspector” she answers.
They both fell asleep feeling rather glad things hadn’t changed. Yet.
A bottle of whiskey transforms their relationship.
A few months after their wedding, Edmund finally finds himself alone in his new home, Susan still working on the Obsidian paperwork, Myrtle and Charity having long retired to bed. It’s a cold night and he decides to indulge in a glass of whiskey and a good book by the fireplace.
His head turns immediately when he hears the footsteps on the stairs, feeling rather embarrassed that one of the women caught him so off guard. When he sees it’s Susan - he cannot yet think of her as his wife - he gives her a smile.
“I thought you were already sleeping” she said, thankful for the poorly lit sitting room hiding her blush.
“So did I” he answered as he moved on the couch so she could sit comfortably.
They both stared at the flames awkwardly for a moment before Reid cleared his throat
“I suppose now I have offer you a drink”
She chuckled and reached for one of the glasses on the side table.
“I suppose now I have to accept it”
A few hours of quiet, pleasant conversation and a bottle of liquor go by and soon they are physically closer to each other than they have ever been, his arms across her shoulders and her head resting on his chest as they are both pleasantly tipsy.
“I imagine now we finally look like a married couple”
“I don’t think so… most couples in Whitechapel are never this close unless they are fighting or fucking”
He nearly choked on his drink at her words.
“True… although I hardly think we are an usual Whitechapel couple” his fingers slowly ran down her arm. “In fact, I don’t think we would be an usual couple anywhere ”
Now it was her turn to laugh.
“I thought we were just friends who happened to be married to each other”
They both laughed before an uncomfortable silence took over the living room and the mood suddenly became serious despite the previously playful nature.
“What if… we were to be really married to each other?” she asked shyly, looking up at him.
Reid felt his stomach sink. So Susan at least considered the possibility he had nurtured deep inside his soul that they might some day be a real couple and start a real family together. A sudden boldness took over him as his hand moved up to caress her face.
“I don’t see why we cannot try” he held her gaze and for a moment he believed she could see inside his soul.
Susan leaned forward, her lips brushing against his in a long overdue kiss. Reid wrapped his arms around the small woman and kissed her back.
After almost six months they are finally able to call each other “husband” and “wife”
Susan laid besides her husband, her golden hair spread over her pillow, hearing his breath while he slept in a tangle of limbs with her.
Maybe that’s what real happiness was like.
Edmund’s girl was still missing and she still felt a pang of sadness every time she thought about the Captain. It was not perfect, but they would manage it. Like they always did. Fate had a weird way of bringing them together and that probably means it was always supposed to be like this.
She had to cross an ocean to find someone with a spirit so akin to hers. It was worth every step.
Susan turns her wedding ring around on her finger before allowing one of her hands to rest over her stomach. She has not told anyone yet, but she is late… still, after what happened last time, she wants to be sure.
Life gave them both a second chance. It was just convenient they would enjoy it together.